THE ILLUSIONIST’S TRAP Episode 4 – The Lifetime Regret

 

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🎭 THE ILLUSIONIST’S TRAP

A Tragicomedy in Five Episodes

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Episode 4 – The Lifetime Regret

• Marriage for Kazeem quickly became less of a blessing and more of a circus. What he imagined as royal banquets in Banana Island turned into burnt rice in plastic bowls, served with over-salted stew. Vanessa would place it in front of him with a triumphant smile: “Eat, my king. Fit for a palace!”

• He would chew slowly, his face twisting in pain, but before he could complain, she’d clap her hands joyfully. “I cooked it with love. That is more important than taste.” Kazeem would sigh, staring at the ceiling as if God Himself would descend and rescue him.

• Worse still, the hypnosis bound Vanessa’s devotion like cement. She followed him everywhere—market, mosque, beer parlor, even when he went to relieve himself. “Where you dey go?” she’d ask. “Toilet,” he’d groan. “Then I will wait outside the door,” she’d declare.

• The neighbors began to laugh louder each day. “Kazimondo no fit waka alone again!” “See as the queen dey guard am like mopo!” Some called him ‘prisoner of love.’ Others, ‘husband by force.’

• One evening, in frustration, he tried to break the hypnosis. He lit candles, muttered incantations, swung his rusty wristwatch again, and shouted: “I release you! Stop loving me like madness!” But instead of freeing her, she only grabbed his hands, kissed them, and said, “Thank you, my king. Now I love you even more.”

• Kazeem fell to the floor in despair. “Oh Lord,” he cried, “when I prayed for breakthrough, this is not what I meant! Why didn’t this spell catch Aliko Dangote’s daughter? Or even one small oil tycoon’s widow?”

• His sorrows multiplied when people stopped hiring him for shows. Who would pay a magician whose greatest trick had trapped him in poverty? Even children mocked him. “Uncle magician, show us how to marry fake rich woman!”

• At the beer parlor, he became a storyteller of regret. With tears in his eyes and cheap gin in his cup, he’d wail: “I thought I married wealth, but I hypnotized myself into permanent poverty!” The other drinkers would laugh so hard their bottles shook.

• Yet, despite the shame, Vanessa never wavered. Every morning, powdered face glowing with cheap perfume, she would whisper: “Good morning, my king. You are my treasure.” Each time, it felt like a dagger in Kazeem’s chest. Love—unyielding, unstoppable, and unwanted—was the cruelest punishment.

• Slowly, he realized the truth: some prisons are built not with iron bars, but with devotion. And the most painful chains are the ones you forged with your own hands.

👉 To be continued in Episode 5 – The Tragicomic End

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