UNA IMAGEN, UNA HISTORIA

Before I start, I'll love to invite @evangelemmanuel, @zekanem and @comfortpeter to meaningfully comments on my post and drop their entries as well.

I sat there transfixed, in a state of unbelief, my hands were to weak to lift from the ground were they based, my legs to weak to carry my weight, I could not even try lifting my body up because it was to weak due to the shocking news I just heard from the woman I used to call my Aunt. Yes, I USED to call her my Aunt, not anymore. I just stared at her with tears in my eyes. What had I done to deserve this? What had my parents done to deserve this? I wept knowing I could not turn back the hands of time. If only my parents listened to me...

I was the second child of my parents. I had an elder brother who always showered me with love, I was 12 and he was 18. It was just the two of us so who else would he shower with love if not me. My family was the most envied in the neighbourhood, children wished they had parents like mine and parents wished their children where like us. My parents had acquired a lot of things in their lifetime, they had a lot to their name and people especially relatives coveted them. They were to trusting, that was my problem with them, their heart was too kind.

One day, My Dad's sister visited, She was older than him, She had been married but apparently, she divorced her husband because she could not bear living with him anymore. Not like he was a terrible person, I would rather say she was the terrible person but Aunt Emilia would always paste herself around as the victim. She wasn't, she was a lion in a sheeps clothing. But no one saw it. Whenever I disclosed my feelings to my parents, they would ask me how I knew and I would tell them about the time I went to stay with Aunt Emilia and her husband when they traveled with my brother. I saw the way she treated her husband and maid and I was shocked. What my eyes saw my mouth couldn't say it out, but in this case I had to say it out. But my parents didn't want to listen. They thought they could change her, according to my dad she wasn't that way when they were little. So I too thought she could change. Oh how wrong I was, I wish I didn't put down my walls when it came to her, maybe then I would have seen that something was amiss.

She came to our house asking for a place to stay that her house was robbed recently and she didn't feel safe there.
My parents took her in and she stayed with us for about a year. During that period, there was no trace of the woman I saw in her house. So I honestly thought a miracle had occured. But all this while this woman was planning how to take my fathers assets. As she is His only sibling, if any thing happened to my parents and brother she would be the caretaker over me as I was only twelve.

After 15 months of living with her, My parents and brother got into a car accident as they were going to drop my brother in the university and they died. My tears knew no end. My aunt took over everything and I became her slave. The devil i knew resurfaced.
In just few months I looked like a shadow of myself, my cloths were tattered.
I was still living in ignorance of how my parents died until that afternoon. I was in the kitchen washing plates when two plates slipped and fell. My Aunt ran in hearing the noise, seeing the mess I had made she started beating me and cursing and my parents and in her period of ranting she said she should have killed me the same way she killed my parents and I just stared at her, thats when the truth came out. She talked and talked about how she had planned the accident and that my parents where lucky they didn't burn in the accident.
I should have known,I really should have known, it was too late now.
But as I sat there in tears leaning on that table that afternoon, I knew I would get back everything that belonged to my parents. I would definitely get out of this situation.