Short Story - A Deliverance of His Third Leg

By Tola Odejayi

It was a few minutes short of midnight at the bus stop on the outskirts of town. The late night vendors sat hunched over their wares, their flickering candles and dim bulbs doing little to relieve the brooding darkness. People quickly disembarked from the slowing trickle of buses arriving, and they hurried away to the safety of their houses before the wickednesses of the night came out to stalk the town.


He hung back in the shadows of a nearby street, smirking as he watched the people disappear into the darkness. Every now and then, he would peer out from the darkness, as though scanning the stop for someone. After a while, his eyes lit up. There she was, young, petite and well dressed, scurrying away like the rest of them. He emerged from the shadows and began to trail her.

As he followed her at a discreet distance, he could see that she was headed for a sparsely developed part of the suburb where there were still lots of undeveloped and uncompleted buildings. He licked his lips and began to perspire with anticipation. This was good, he thought to himself as he trod silently after her. After a while, he began to lengthen his stride so that the distance between them began to shrink. As he got closer, he began to tread more heavily, deliberately advertising his presence so that soon enough, she looked round. Before she could run, he seized her and held her tight with one arm. A knife flashed in his other hand, close to her throat.

“Now listen!” he whispered sharply. “Just do as I say, you hear? If you co-operate, I will let you go when I am done. But if you try any nonsense…” He brought the knife just a little bit closer in a threatening gesture.

She looked at him and smiled.  ”Ah-ah! No need for all the drama. What is it? Is it sex that you want? Eh, just say so now so that we can get started. After all, sex is something that both men and women enjoy, not so?”

He was taken aback. Where was the fear, the respect? Didn’t she know that he could cause her life to leak away with one sharp slash? He tightened his grip on her, and growled in anger, “Shut up! Do you know who you are dealing with here? If you say any more nonsense, I will just kill you and dump you in a rubbish tip!”

She looked at him, still smiling. “Ah, sorry o! Please don’t be annoyed. See, all this week, I’ve been feeling ‘one kind’… like I need a man to do me well well. But I can’t just walk up to the first man and ask him… he will just think I’m mad. So maybe God has heard my prayers by sending you to me. When you grabbed me like that, I was thinking that it was because you were frustrated that you hadn’t had sex for a while. I was thinking ‘Ah, this is a man who is ready for action!’ I hope I’m not wrong o!”

Now he was confused. Part of him said that this was a trick, something fishy was up. Another part of him said that here was someone who was different from the other women, someone who didn’t ridicule him and didn’t make him feel small, someone who actually wanted him. Yet another part of him said that it was stiff and ready for action, and didn’t have time for these internal debates, and could he kindly attend to the lady who was now smiling invitigly at him?

“OK”, he said gruffly, relaxing his grip. “Remove your skirt and pants. But I’m watching you – don’t try running away!’

She acquiesced, slipping quickly out of both items. Then she turned and said, “Oya, you do. Let us see your kini.”

He hesitated, then he unzipped his trousers and stepped out of them. She oohed at his erect penis.

“Oh, wow! That is something! Wait o, I just have to suck you down there.” And before he could protest, she had knelt down and he began to experience an intense, personal pleasure. He closed his eyes as he savoured the feeling. Oh, that was good. Ah, this woman really knew what she was doing. Tonight was going to be gooood. Ahhh…

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”

The intense pleasure had been abruptly truncated and replaced by a searing, excruciating pain. He howled in agony and slumped to the ground as he clamped his hands over his crotch. Shock and fear quickly took over as he discovered the the warm wetness around his mutilated genitals. A few yards away, she stood looking at him, her earlier smiles replaced with a look of utter contempt. As he looked, she spat out the remains of his penis and testicles into the dust.

He stared at the mangled flesh and began to whimper. “Yeeh… I am dead… you have finished me today…”

“Shut up! Useless man. You thought that I would just lie down and allow you to rape me just like that, eh?”

He looked up at her again. The pain was becoming even more intense, and his mind was beginning to fog over from the loss of blood.

“I… I don’t know why… why I followed you tonight,” he whispered. “It must have been the… the work of the devil.”

“Then consider today your day of deliverance, now that you are freed from the evil spirit in your penis that used to control you.”

He watched her turn and walk away. Then his vision began to dim, fingers of darkness reached out to draw him in, and he felt himself slipping, slipping into a black void…