THE LEVITICUS
First, she had to get her sob story straight: “I’m so nervous and I’m struggling to concentrate, yet I need to because, as a lawyer, I want to make a change at the Constitutional Court. This exam determines that.”
The not-so-elaborate plan was to get even with this man. The most innocuous way to get his attention was in the exam room. He was the coordinator of all law school exams. During the third session, he noticed her. She feigned shyness, crossing and uncrossing her legs and readjusting her skirts tactfully.
His first suspicion was that she was cheating. But she led him on a narrow road to her. His bemusement aided her gleeful spirits. Despite the gaming, she was careful not to be fazed because the first rule about human interaction was body language. “Don’t give anything away by way of demeanour; what your mind ought to give out as a solid defence, even if you do not have much to go on,” rang the advice I gave her for the successful completion of the duplicity to unfold.
She gave him what he thought was a nervous stare, willing him on, and it’s said in one African proverb that “the eyes have no in-laws,” hence, at some point, she found herself staring blankly at him. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, then moved off. Something about that silent stare told her he was hooked.
Later, he re-assumed his position, his stare laser-sharp. She played an ashen-faced horror that her skirt had ridden up her legs. That had him glued! When he dropped his business card on her desk as he went past her, she smiled triumphantly. “He took the bait,” she texted me.
THE CHRONICLES
Lutanda decided to get in touch with him via text at a time she knew he would be home. He immediately called.
“Hello,” she answered.
“You better have a good reason for calling me after hours. Who the hell is this?” came the boomy voice.
“Good evening, sir. My name is Lutanda. Sorry to disturb you at home. You gave me your business card.”
“Oh yes. I have a busy morning, but you can pass through my office between ten and eleven tomorrow.”
They exchanged pleasantries. After cutting the line, she laughed. “Men, Oh, men!” she said to herself. That weekend, they exchanged a few texts, with her teasing him about his wife and him flirting back that she was younger and better suited to calming his still-fresh heart.
She dutifully went to his office at the agreed-upon time. He seemed chirper, chatting away freely, almost generous to the point of offering to pay her tuition. He kept asking her why she looked vaguely familiar, but she gave nothing away. It was clear he was enamoured with her, and she could tell he would do as she asked. But she had a better plan. Revenge was the bold title it bore.
Later on, she reflected on their exchange of messages over the next few days and the money he gifted her too. She had to play it so he didn’t suspect a thing. His malleability helped to tighten the noose she was winding around his neck.
In one text, he wrote, “Would you be surprised if I told you I have feelings for you? I just don’t know how to broach the subject to tell you. You know, with being a dean and all.”
Lutanda: “Is that why you talked about my dressing being skimpy the other day?”
“Let’s put that behind us. I like you and would like to get to know you better.”
Lutanda: “I know you’re a married man, so if anything between us develops, it will just be having fun and games. No catching feelings, nothing serious.”
For some reason, she thought her message was not delivered. She tried again some hours later.
Lutanda: “I thought you were married. Sorry if I’m too blunt.”
Him: “Let me worry about me. You said you were tired when I called. So, what’s it going to be?”
Lutanda decided to squeeze: “But as you get into this with me, bear in mind that I love money. I’ll be expecting you to be giving me.”
Him: “Money is not a problem.” He added a wink emoji.
Lutanda: “I will meet you. But there is no way I am meeting you at a hotel in the city. Maybe the outskirts. And I’m not checking in with you.”
She cringed as she read the final details of their sojourn and rendezvous. She’d be damned if she let him touch her, even with his dirty, ‘matrimonialized’ fingers.
THE LAMENTATIONS
She looked at him, rage burning through her entire body. She imagined stuffing life out of him. His sight congealed her blood with hate. The more he spoke, the more revulsed and nauseated she felt.
“Baby, you know me. You know I could never do this to us or to our children. Not for Three Thousand Kwacha!”
“Not for Three!” She screamed back, clanging her hands against the bars of the tiny jail cell.
He looked at her startled, an anger he had never seen.
“How much does what you have in your trousers go for? How much to throw away our vows? Tell me!”
He stepped back to protect himself, as if she could reach him. He just couldn’t fathom how he, a respected dean at the famed Chelston University, could be accused of soliciting bribes and sexual gratification from a student to tinker with their marks in final exams.
One of the cops called out. A lawyer had come to see him. He was led out to an anteroom.
THE REVELATIONS
Lutanda parked the rented car with fake plates outside the secluded chalet, whose location he had shared fifteen minutes prior. Covering herself up to look inconspicuous was easy with the hijab. Her handbag had everything she needed. She got out of the car and went to the door. He opened it before she could knock.
She smiled, and he drooled. Stepping into the room, she brought out a bottle of wine. A little research had shown the specific chemicals to ingest that would neutralise the effects of the drugs laced with the wine. She gave him a glass like a baby, and he gulped obediently.
Pretending to be a student had been the easy part of the scheming. Revenge for me, her mother, was a thrill.
THE GENESIS
This all started when a university student came seeking legal advice regarding a lecturer who preyed on her vulnerability. He sought sexual favour in return for good grades. She knew others were doing it, and because of her moral code, she couldn’t. But to unravel it all, I knew we needed a tight case to put him away.
I called up a friend who had had a similar experience with a lecturer. Discussing the issue brought back some bad, unsettled scores. The overwhelming aspect of the case was that most sexual harassment cases were mostly tossed when victims shirked testifying.
“We need to make this as tight a case as we can. And one thing I know from the issues at that university is that most lecturers get away with this.”
“I am sensing we need to be wolves in sheepskin to plot this properly,” I said, a plan forming in my mind and even involving deceit of the foamy kind.
Knowing the target lecturer made my blood boil. The same man who had gotten away with raping me in my younger days as a student. Insufficient evidence had been the verdict in the case against him. I vowed that he would pay. And I had just the secret weapon to get him back.
THE APOCALYPSE
As he walked into the anteroom, I smiled. He was transfixed, and I savoured the shock, defeat, and regret that dripped from him.
“Hi, Moses. I know you remember me,” I began, “Lutanda is your daughter.” Oh! He wished the earth would swallow him.
“Lutanda,” he mumbled to himself, the student who had drugged him and planted evidence of his impropriety. The case that would cost him everything he had worked for was his daughter.
He now knew how diabolical and meticulously planned this whole takedown was. How his loins led him to his destruction. He had yet to figure out how his blood work came back negative for drugs. This case would stick. He was going to jail. All because of a rape case he had dodged twenty years earlier.
—
Read: Ejele – A Short Story by Gracious Osuagwu, Nigeria
Kaluwe Haangala is a Zambian fiction writer. His published work goes as far back as 2003, when his story was featured in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s My Street Story Competition with the entry “Crater Street.” Also, his poem titled “You” was printed in the Zambia Daily Mail. He regularly featured and won in the Facebook competitions on the ZAMBIA BOOK CLUB page in late 2021, culminating in an Award of Excellence in Poetry (February 2022). His short story titled “When Graves Wail,” was shortlisted among the top five in The Botswana Society for Human Development’s Share Africa Climate Fiction Award in 2022, and published in the Kalahari Review. A couple of his stories appeared in the Publish’d Afrika Magazine; it is said about him in their August 2023 issue that he “is no stranger to the Publisher’s Choice Award, which makes him brilliant. His piece, “The Last Trumpet”, grabs you from the opening to the jaw-dropping end!”
The December 2023 issue of Labila Magazine featured another story, “Have Ne Not,” a poignant nether-romance about HIV and dating.
In another life, he “talks to computers,” something he has done for over a decade.
