Paracetamol.

Paracetamol.

Shango is my Roommate, Chapter 1.

Bisola was in serious trouble.

There was a naked man in her room. He lay insensible on her bed in her grandmother’s house.

AND — as a final, mind blowing touch — he wielded in his loosened grasp what appeared to be but she sincerely hoped was not a dangerous and dirty looking battle axe.

Bisola twitched.

She didn’t know the man from Adam. So naturally her mind flew first to the most irrational conclusion it could possibly reach — just to establish the parameters of her ability to deal with this event.

He’s dead and I did this somehow.

The thought was, helpfully, just insane enough to jump start the logic processing parts of her brain.

Obviously she couldn’t have done this, she was just getting in from work. Plus, despite how rubbish her memory could be when she was especially tired, she was sure she would remember killing someone.

She relaxed a bit from her position backed up against bedroom’s door frame, her office satchel clutched against her chest like a shield. Her mind, as if to prove it was up and running now, dryly noted what little effect said shield would’ve had against the monstrous battle axe she could see was actually leaving a stain in her sheets.

Lucky for her he was dead.

Bisola frowned.

He was dead, right? She’d never really seen a dead body before so it was hard to tell.

With great misgiving, she crept forward just a little before her extreme desire to live pulled her up short.

Because what if he wasn’t dead? What if this was a trap? This could be his whole thing. A serial killer whose methodology was exactly this - lying naked in your bed with an axe pretending to be dead? Just how stupid would she feel trying to explain how she fell for it in the afterlife? It wasn’t even that far fetched, if you watched True Crime channels as much as Bisola did. In fact her sleepy serial killer was relatively tame compared to some of the things she’d seen on those channels.

Bisola carefully peered at him a little more closely.

God… he really was naked…

And to be perfectly honest, he was… glorious?

All big, gleaming, intricately cut muscle and literally flawless, dusky, brown skin. The face wasn’t bad either. Sharp, dominant nose, unapologetically full lips and deep set eyes under long, poetic eyebrows finely set in a lean, heavily bearded yet distinctly firm jawed face. The face — if you read a lot of high fantasy, and Bisola did — of a King.

Bisola’s eyes travelled down the armor like sculptings of his broad chest and abdominal muscles, past a clearly defined adonis belt and then widened at his crotch — clearly she’d been mistaken in thinking the battle axe was the only weapon he was packing.

She choked on her own saliva, coughed, then fell back against the doorway in abject horror as the body stirred.

Bisola trembled, breath held as her serial killer’s eyelids trembled then slowly rose to reveal unexpectedly light brown eyes. Light-shot cognac.

For a seemingly endless moment his eyes stayed open, staring up at her modest ceiling and blinking very slowly in a dazed fashion. But he didn’t move.

Bisola didn’t move either. Her mind was doing all the moving; racing about and making now useless observations like how she was about to die because she was ogling an unconscious killer like a creep instead of calling the police. She trembled when the man’s brows suddenly descended and, as if finally sensing her presence, he turned his head and his fierce eyes found her.

He seemed… unreasonably displeased to see her.

And — she could not help but notice — his big hand tightened around the heavy shaft of his axe.

Slowly, while the rest of the world seemed frozen, he rosw to a seated position and — Lord — he was huge. How had she not realised how large he was? He was just sitting up and he was already her height.

She only realized she’d fallen when she felt her bedroom rug scratching against her knees.

The huge naked man stared at her as if her on her knees was a perfectly normal response to him waking up. How many victims must he have seen fall to this very pose before he beheaded them, Bisola wondered?

Lost to fear, Bisola’s logic struggled then abandoned her once again leaving her no choiuce but to fall back on her automatic response to all things traumatic. Unstoppable rambling.

“Ha! Oga, serial killer, sa!” she heard herself say, “I haven’t even stayed for 1 month in this house! If I die like this my Mother will follow me to Heaven and kill me again because she always told me this would happen if I stay here by myself! Please, sa, please, can I convince you not to kill me?”

Her case made, Bisola closed her eyes and trembled, waiting for what seemed like certain death.

His voice when he finally spoke was deep but quiet and noticeably clipped.

Just one word, but to Bisola who had expected the wind of a descending axe blade, the word was life itself.

“Paracetamol.” He said.