The Turbulence?? (#1 in the Our Side of The Dice series)

Christopher
Bonn, Germany

Several filthy tables stood against the back wall, grouped around a half-open door. Several dirty sailors and factory workers in clothes stay there, together with a couple of filthy women with very offensive low-cut dresses, playing cards, and sometimes joining in the even filthier song played by a dirty piano player to my left.

To my right, there is a whole filthy bar with large, dirty barrels behind it, and a bartender whose lateness and filth could easily compete with his barrels.

Several people were seated at the bar. They too; surprise, surprise- were filthy and staring into filthy tankards. Only a few who didn't have filthy steins to drink out of were staring in the direction of women. But I bet their thoughts were dirty.

What am I doing in this locale of filthiness? Why am I drinking filthy liquor from a steel cup in my discrete place at the filthy warehouse? I know why but at that moment, I choose to have no idea. All I stick to is the fact that I need it. Badly.

Yemisi has never been that furious with me in all our years of marriage, and I didn't plan on making her mad at me. It was clear that I dealt with everything the wrong way. I lied to her and acted as though nothing had happened. I left her to hurt for an entire week when I should have communicated with her. Even when I had the chance to tell the truth, I gaslighted her.  I didn't know how to deal with the situation.

I was scared. Very scared.

My betrothal with the lady I have never met was a result of hazardous circumstances. It was more of a "desperate times call for desperate measures" arrangement.

It had to happen, and I saw it as nothing when I was a lot younger because I trusted my mum to get the issue resolved and bring an end to the betrothal engagement when the entire ordeal was over. I forgot about it while growing up because my mother never mentioned it to me.

I thought everything was okay.

Little did I know that giving my love to Yemisi had nothing on the existing betrothal engagement. The agreement stood regardless. My mother never resolved the issue. It began to feel like she set it all up to have me trapped, and now getting out of that bait seems impossible.

What's worse is I'm in this damn foreign country with people who speak a language so weird that it sounds like an established, subtle form of tongue-twisting.

Why so?

I have to be here, of course! Thanks to this tyrant called "business" that gives zero hoots about your life struggles. It's either you willingly give the business your attention or business forces you to give it attention, and in most cases, the latter usually turns out to be fatal.

I know I can't stay back to plead for my wife's forgiveness. It would be a futile move. She's vexed at me. Perhaps if I call her on the phone, she'd be calm enough to talk with me.

'... I won't miss you. I promise you.'

The hope that had risen and crashed within my gut just a second ago makes my head ache so bad that I reach for the third bottle of vodka on my table, doing my best to empty its contents on the steel cup. I hope that this bottle won't be sly as the other two bottles of vodka. Still, nothing is forthcoming from the third bottle of vodka as well.

"Come out, will you?" I ask the darn, obnoxious bottle, but it glares back at me like I'd just made a noxious request. What is so hard about my request that is causing the bottle to be so stubborn?

"Hey! I paid for you, so stop being stubborn and produce me some more vodka. Stop acting like every other darn vodka bottle in this alehouse. OKAY?!" I raise the bottle in a slanting position once more, and it rattles noisily with the empty steel cup.