EXODUS

In this post we look at the second chapter-styled “Exodus”.

II. Exodus

13 You shall not murder. 14 You shall not commit adultery. 15 You shall not steal. Exodus: Chapter 20:13-15 (The Holy Bible, New International Version)

1

“How was it possible to experience such levels of ecstasy?” Jane thought.

It was almost too much to bear. She had not known that anyone could derive so much pleasure from one sexual encounter. It was like a continuous flow, beginning from the moment of the first touch. He was kissing and touching her everywhere. Each successive contact had an incremental pleasurable effect. It was almost unbearable!

In a lot of sexual encounters, one partner might wish to be kissed or touched on a certain part of his or her anatomy and would direct their partner towards the desired spot. Jane did not have to do this with him. His every touch and kiss was going to the exact desired spot without any prompting from her. A kiss, a touch of the breasts, all exactly as she would have desired. The touch always on the correct spot and the right amount of pressure. She was going crazy!

 Now, the caresses were emphasizing the lower part of her body. She was not sure she could take any more of this. How was it possible that the pleasure was increasing with each successive contact. It was truly incremental and it was driving her crazy. The scream that then came out of her could have genuinely been mistaken as emanating from somebody experiencing extreme pain but it was just a testament to her level of pleasure.

2

They were so much alike. Without looking closely, it was difficult to tell them apart. But they were not twins. They were brothers, but they were not twins. Jane watched them as they sipped their beers whilst all three were sitting on the balcony. She was married to the elder brother, Thomas. The younger brother’s name was Anthony but of course, everybody called him Toni. They were at Thomas and Jane’s place which was located in a very posh apartment building in the city. Toni was visiting. As she looked at them, Jane wondered why she had married the elder brother Thomas. She had really been “Toni’s girl” at first, but for some reason she had ended up marrying Tom.

It was such a lovely evening with the sun having just set. There was still a hint of an orange glow still lingering on the balcony. Jane realised that she knew why she had married Tom instead of Toni. She had initially gone out with Toni. At the time, Toni had been waiting for his final discharge papers after leaving the Army.

They had first met in the department store in which she had been working as a shop assistant. He had been looking for a birthday present for his mother and Jane had helped him choose a floral blouse. During that brief encounter, there had been a spark between them which both seemed to have been aware of. The following day, Toni had gone back to the shop pretending to have come to buy another item. This ruse would have been easier if Jane had been working in a section of the store selling men’s goods. Her work area was however, exclusively for female goods. Toni went through the motions of looking for another item for his mother but he had the feeling Jane knew he had come back to the store because of her. When he finally asked to meet her after work so that he could buy her some coffee at a nearby cafe, she agreed without too much hesitation.

Jane and Toni had gone out together a few more times when she finally met his brother Thomas. She and Toni were leaving a movie theatre when it started to rain. Because of the rain, there were now a lot of people looking for taxis outside the theatre. A large black Mercedes, which was clearly not a taxi, pulled off the road and stopped near them. The driver came out of the car briefly and shouted, waving to Toni, asking him to get into the car. Toni saw that it was his brother Tom and he pulled Jane and shoved her towards the car. They got into the car with Toni sitting in front with his brother. Jane had the luxurious back seat to herself. She immediately observed that the two brothers were very much alike. In the short period that she and Toni had been dating, he had never mentioned that he had a twin brother. The only close relative he would constantly talk about was his mother.

When they arrived at her flat, she invited both men in for a cup of coffee. Thomas tried to turn down the invitation but both Toni and Jane managed to persuade him to go in for the “promised cup of coffee.”

“You didn’t tell me that you had a twin brother,” said Jane to Toni.

Thomas and Toni laughed at this at the same time. This usually happened a lot of times whenever they both met some people for the first time. They looked so much alike that people assumed they were twins.

“Actually we are not twins but as I said in the car, he is my ‘rich’ elder brother,” Toni said. “Tom is a stockbroker. He owns his own firm which seems to have a knack of making a lot of money on the stock exchange,” continued Toni.

She ended up cooking dinner for them and the two brothers left together after that. After they had gone, Jane was already saying to herself, “Why didn’t I meet the rich brother first?” Tom was also single and seemed to be just as charming as ‘poor’ Toni. Of course, Tom probably had a “bevy of girls” all waiting for him to choose a bride. On their next date, Jane never seemed to stop asking Toni questions about Tom. Toni realised, as happened in some cases in the past, his girl was now interested in his rich brother. He should have ignored Tom that other day when the big Mercedes pulled over to offer them a lift, he thought. Now he was probably going to lose this girl to his brother.

Just as Toni suspected, Jane started making excuses when he suggested they go out. She would plead that she would be doing one thing or the other. It was, therefore, not surprising to him when he finally saw Jane and Tom together one night leaving one of the most expensive restaurants in town. When he confronted her about this the next day, she rightly pointed out that she could go out with whoever she wanted. After all she and Toni were not engaged, they had just been going out for a “brief period of time.” Toni did not let this bother him too much. He even agreed to be best man when his brother told him he was going to marry Jane.

Tom and Jane had a big wedding.

Jane did not go back to her job at the department store after the honeymoon. Toni also did not see much of the couple after that.

Jane was not happy in her new marital life. She had everything that money could buy but she was not happy. She lived with Tom in a large apartment in one of the most sought after locations of the city. She was, however, not at all happy. Her problems related to the “activities in the bedroom” or more accurately, “the lack of activity” in the bedroom. Tom was impotent in bed. She had found out this during the honeymoon when all Tom wanted to do in the bedroom was “use his tongue and fingers.” This is okay for “foreplay” or if one is masturbating, Jane thought, but she did not want to go through life without never again experiencing the real thing. She was not a virgin after all and she knew she missed the thrills of “real love-making.”

They did not discuss Tom’s problem in their marriage. Jane tried to pretend that she was happy. For God’s sake, she had everything! She did not want for anything. Tom was a very generous person. But, he could not give her everything in the bedroom. So when Toni started visiting them, after having stayed away for a period of almost a year after Jane and Tom had got married, she began to have “some ideas.”

“What was the chance that both brothers could be impotent?” she asked herself. She strongly doubted that Toni could be afflicted by the same problem that had affected his brother. She started encouraging Toni to visit more often.

3

Now she was thinking about all this as they sat having drinks at the balcony. Tom also seemed to enjoy his brother’s company. They had never talked about the fact that Tom had “snatched” Jane from Toni. If Tom felt any guilt about that, he did not show it. Jane wondered if perhaps Tom secretly hoped that his wife would start an affair with his brother. Jane knew that this thought was not far-fetched. In other similar situations to the one she was in, she had heard that some brothers had “shared” a wife in an effort to procreate. The husband would look the other way hoping his brother would “give his wife a baby.” After all, this would still be happening in the family! Maybe Tom was like that, Jane thought. On the other hand, she knew that she was perhaps trying to justify an “unjustifiable” action that she was about to take for selfish reasons.

Tom was going away to a business conference that was going to take place at one of the tourist-resort places of the country. He was leaving the next day. Jane decided to test her theory.

“Toni, you know that your brother is going away for a week from tomorrow? Why don’t you come and visit me during the week? Maybe take me out to a movie or something,” said Jane.

This was said in full hearing of Thomas and Toni wondered what his brother’s reaction would be, knowing Toni’s past brief liaison with his wife. To Toni’s surprise, Tom quickly said, “Yes Toni, why don’t you do that? Keep her company whilst I am away as much as you can.”

Maybe my theory is correct after all, thought Jane as she looked at Toni with a smile. Toni seemed to be the only one who had been taken aback by this suggestion. He, however, said, also with a smile, “Of course, I would love to. That is if you trust me to be alone with your lovely wife?”

“Why shouldn’t I trust you? You are my brother. Who else could I trust to look after my wife when I am away?” said Tom.

4

Toni did not visit Jane immediately after Tom’s departure. Although Tom and Jane seemed to fully trust him, he did not trust himself. He knew that if he found himself alone with Jane, especially if it was at the apartment, he might not be able to keep his hands off her. So he did not contact her for the first two days. On the third day, however, Jane called him.

“Hey stranger, I thought you promised your brother you would look after me? Why are you not paying me a visit? Afraid I am going to rape you?” she joked. He promised to pick her up that evening so that they could go to the movies.

At exactly 18:30 hours, he was dropped off by a taxi at Jane’s apartment building. They were, of course, going to use her car to drive to the movie theatre. She was ready, waiting for him. She looked wonderful in a black evening dress. He felt awkward beside her in his blue jeans.

“You look really , really wonderful Jane. I thought we were just going to the movies. You are dressed to kill,” he complemented her.

“Thanks Toni, I thought you might want to take me for dinner after the movie and of course, I had to dress accordingly,” she said.

He took the car key from her as they rode the elevator down to the underground parking of the building. Her car was a bright red BMW Seven Series. Toni drove it carefully away from its parking space, already enjoying the feel of the powerful engine. They drove silently towards the movie theatre, each in his and her thoughts.

Toni was thinking of his brother Tom. He had always lived in Tom’s shadow. People would only notice him if they were mistaking him for Tom. If he was honest, he would say he really did not like his brother. He was jealous of him. Tom was always the successful one when they were growing up. He would get excellent grades at school whilst Toni barely managed to get by. Tom would date all the beautiful girls whilst Toni only seemed to be getting the ones Tom had rejected. No, he did not really like his brother. Now in their adult lives, Tom had found what seemed to be an easy way of making money. The only decent job that Toni could get was in the Army. Now he had left the Army and was back at the place he had grown up, staying with his mother. Their father had long been dead. In fact, Toni could hardly remember him because he had died when Toni was 5 years old.

The movie was average, boring really. Maybe it was because he was not concentrating. Jane sitting next to him in the semi-darkness of the theatre, really unnerved him. The smell of her perfume was intoxicating. The feel of her touch was electric. God help him, he was not going to be responsible for his actions. Even now, he could see what was going to happen. They would go to dinner after the movie and they would play with their food as they waited for the dinner to finish so that they could go back to the apartment to “attack” each other.

This is precisely what happened. They did not have to say anything to each other. The moment they were in the apartment, she was in his arms. They did not even make it to the bedroom, making love there on the carpet in front of the entrance door. “This is what I have been missing,” Jane thought as she lay down panting after the act.

Now that they had started, she was not going to let him go. In fact she wanted his baby. To hell with what Tom might say or do. At this moment, she was prepared to leave all the luxury associated with being Tom’s wife and run away with Toni.

Toni, despite his anxieties, had also enjoyed the encounter. He did not go home to his mother that night, nor did he go back the following day. He was putting on Tom’s clothes when he needed a change of clothes. Jane was having the “honeymoon she had not actually had with Tom.” They did not leave the apartment after coming back from the movies and dinner that first night. They virtually stayed in bed for four days, getting up to nibble a snack and take the occasional shower.

5

Tom was due back on their fourth day together. They expected him sometime in the evening so they decided to stay in bed the whole morning, enjoying their last moments together. Toni would then leave in the afternoon and Jane would go to pick up Tom from the airport in the evening.

Things did not turn out that way though because Tom surprised them by coming back in the morning. One moment they were enjoying each other in bed and the next thing they knew, the bedroom door was opened and Tom was standing there watching them in disbelief. The two lovers were frozen, also just staring back at Tom.

After what seemed like an eternity, Tom went out of the room, closing the door with a bang behind him. The two lovers were energised, jumping out of bed. Before either of them could get out of the room, however, Tom was back, brandishing a big kitchen knife, shouting that he was going to kill somebody. Toni tried to dash out of the room but his brother managed to grab him with one hand. Toni tried to fight him off and in the struggle that ensued, the knife fell out of Tom’s other hand and dropped to the floor. This did not deter Tom, however, as he now grabbed Toni around the neck with both hands. Although Toni, the “Army man”, was the one who was supposed to be good at hand to hand combat, he felt powerless against the attack from his angry brother. Tom was squeezing with all his strength and he seemed to be possessed with superhuman strength as the breath was slowly being squeezed out of Toni’s body. Toni knew that in the next few seconds his brother was going to strangle him to death. Suddenly, Tom’s grip loosened around his neck and he, Tom, was the one acquiring the face of a dying man. As he fell to the ground, Toni could see the big kitchen knife which had fallen to the floor was now sticking out of Tom’s back. Jane had rushed to his rescue, managing to stab her husband with all her strength.

Toni and Jane seemed to be once again frozen in one place as they watched blood gushing out of Tom’s body on the floor. Tom lost so much blood that within a few minutes, he was dead.

“You have killed him,” Toni said to Jane. Jane looked at him as if he was mad.

“Is that all the gratitude I am going to get from you. Tom was about to kill you if I had not stabbed him and all you can say is that ‘I have killed him.’ Of course I have killed him! He was going to kill you! Maybe kill me as well after killing you!” she shouted.

“Okay, okay. Thanks for saving my life but now we have a problem.”

“I am glad you are now saying ‘we’ because at one stage there I thought you were going to make this my problem,” she said.

“Okay, calm down. We have to figure out how we are going to get out of this,” he said.

6

This tragedy happened on a Saturday. The only people who could be expected to make an effort to look for Tom were the wife, Jane herself , the brother Toni, the mother and people from his stock-broking firm. Jane and Toni, of course, knew what had happened to Tom. Toni was sure he could keep his mother quiet with made up stories about Tom. The office presented a bit of a problem. Tom was obviously expected to show up at the office on Monday. Toni and Jane decided they would come up with a plan to deal with the office after they had taken care of Tom’s body.

Toni took the key to Jane’s BMW and drove downtown in search of a rope and a couple of sacks. He had decided that they were going to dump Tom’s body in the dam that was located about 50 miles from the city. The dam was a hive of activity during the day as people enjoyed water sports and some fishing. He, however, knew that it was always very quiet at night. Although some people, like Tom and Jane, maintained cottages around the dam, hardly anybody spent their nights there, probably because the dam was in close proximity to the city. This time of the year was also favourable to what Toni was thinking of doing because winter was approaching and people would be unlikely to be interested in the activities that normally took place at the dam. Tom kept a small speed boat at the dam cottage and Toni intended to use this boat to go to the middle of the dam and dump Tom’s body. This was why he needed the rope and the sacks. He was going to place some rocks in one sack and the body in the other sack. The sack with the rocks would assist in keeping the body submerged once it was thrown over-board. The rope was to be used to tie the two sacks together.

When night came, taking the body down to the BMW in the basement parking lot, proved to be a challenge. Toni finally managed, with the help of Jane. Fortunately, they were not seen by anyone as they struggled with the sack containing the body when they were loading it into the boot of the car. Toni was going to find rocks when he got to the dam.

Their “body dumping operation” went on without incident and they returned to the apartment around mid-night. They had the whole day Sunday to make their plans about how Tom’s “disappearance” was going to be explained. They agreed that Toni would call the office on Monday pretending to be Tom. He would say he had caught a bad cold, which would also help to explain why his voice might be sounding a bit different from Tom’s normal voice. He would also tell the office that he was going to take some time off work, not because of the cold, but because he wanted to spend time with his mother who had fallen ill. This should take care of the office for some days but what “permanent” plan were they going to come up with to explain Tom’s continued absence “from everything?”

7

Late on Sunday afternoon, they came up with a plan. They were going to create an illusion that Tom was still alive. Starting immediately, Toni would try to disguise himself as Tom. This was not going to present much difficulty as they had already enjoyed an unusually close resemblance to each other. The plan was that Toni would start putting on Tom’s clothes. He would also drive around in Tom’s Mercedes, making every effort to be seen by people who knew Tom but making sure he did not get close enough to these people to talk to them. In the middle of the week he would call the office pretending that he still had a cold and indicating he might stay away longer than he had envisaged. He would direct that contact be made with him via email and he would respond to anything urgent whenever he could. The call was going to be made around lunchtime on Wednesday when he was more likely to just talk to the main reception desk. The receptionist was ideal for this because she was going to be only anxious to take down the correct instructions and pass them on to senior personnel. She was unlikely to raise any awkward questions, a development that was likely to occur if he were to talk to the people Tom worked with closely.

Towards the end of the week, preferably late Friday night, Toni and Jane would “arrange that Tom has a fatal car accident.” On that day, Toni would make sure that the car is seen around town with him driving but not talking to anybody. Late that night Toni was to push the car over the cliff along the notorious mountain road. He would make sure the car bursts into flames when it goes over the cliff. They would make sure it burns thoroughly by drenching the inside of the car with petrol first. On pushing the car over the cliff, Toni would throw a flaming rag into the car just before it tipped over. This would ensure it would catch fire even before it hits the ground. The day following the “accident” Jane would report Tom as missing, in the hope that it would be assumed that he had been consumed by fire when his car went over the cliff.

Although Jane was happy with this plan, she was uncomfortable with the absence of a body in the car. The plan relied heavily on the car being thoroughly burnt out, turning most things to ashes. Jane was concerned that the police forensic experts might be able to determine that there had been no one inside the car when it went over. They debated this issue at length until Jane suggested that they might be better off placing a body in the car and hope that the body burns beyond recognition. A pity that they could not possibly go back to the dam to fish out Tom’s body for purposes of placing it into the car.

Finally, it was decided that Toni would get a body by “committing another murder.” On the appointed day, Toni would kill one of the homeless people who could always be picked up from shop fronts at night in the poor section of the city. Toni was to lure one of the “hobos” with food, then strangle him in the car before going on to push the car over the cliff. The more they discussed this idea the more they liked it. The entire plan for the ensuing week was, therefore, complete.

8

As it happened, they managed to execute the plan with such easy that they began to think that they had over-looked something. The police were even quite sympathetic when it was assumed that Jane’s husband was the one who had been completely burnt out in his car Friday night. The only miscalculation that they could think of happened on the Monday following the “accident.” The detective who had been tasked with clearing up issues relating to the accident, visited the apartment Monday morning. Toni did not hear the door bell when it was rung and Jane just got up, putting on a robe and went to open the door. She had no reason to deny the policeman entry and she was sure he was going to leave quickly after clarifying what he was terming “just a few items for his final report.” But, just as the policeman was about to leave the apartment, Toni, who had not realised that someone else other than Jane was in the apartment, walked out of the bedroom completely naked. The policeman was shocked speechless. “This one did not take much time to assume his late brother’s ‘position’,” thought the policeman as he silently went out of the building.

The detective who had talked to Jane could tell that something momentous was afoot the moment he walked into the police station. All his colleagues seemed to be talking at the same time. When he finally managed to get one of them to explain what was going on, the little incident of the “naked brother and the grieving widow” suddenly made sense. Apparently, a body had been found floating in a nearby dam. Although, the body was decomposing badly, it did not need a pathologist to determine that the body belonged to one Thomas Harrison. The police actually found a passport in the inside pocket of Tom’s jacket. Not only that, the wedding finger still had a ring with the inscription, ‘Tom & Jane’ on it. Whoever had killed Tom had not counted on the body being found. Apparently something had cut or chewed out the rope that had been tying the body down to the bottom of the dam.

The detective knew it was time to go back and have a chat with the “grieving widow and her loving naked brother-in-law.”

The next chapter-Leviticus- will be published not later than Monday, 29 November 2010.

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