I was woken by something alien, coming through the rear-door, sandwiched between the two lobes of my behind. Two things that make their way up that aisle are tissue paper and water. However, they don’t venture too far but halt at the exterior. What then was this warm and stiff thing trying to push up through me?

I lay still. I heard a sharp sucking sound just before my bunk started shaking. Surely, Jeremy wouldn’t be masturbating so late in the night would he? Jeremy was my bunk-mate, and those palms of his were very familiar with cream. He scarcely rested his hands at night, mostly, smothering his miserable pipe. I’ve caught him several times with a jellied hand wrapped and traveling the length of his erect member.

Every other student avoided Jeremy’s bed because it exuded the strong metallic whiff of semen fused with petroleum jelly and secretions. His pillow was flecked with dry semen and browned with sweat. Another object was introduced to my rear entry, it felt like a peg was clipped to my sphincter muscles and twisted softly. Ah, that very object is a finger; I just knew it, the roughness. My eyelids snapped open. I saw someone, his shorts loose and down to his laps kneeling over my rear.

I turned on my side, hand at the ready to get hold of him. Whoever it was, scrambled down my bunk and slid under the base. I pulled at my pants, took the cream positioned at the bunk railings and clutched it tightly. That vile room-mate had a story to tell, he was in for it. I made to climb down and some sticky liquid slid down my thigh, trickling down to my leg. I promptly ran my fingers along my crotch and felt the liquid. Spittle mixed with Vaseline. I scrambled down and confronted the fellow concealed beneath the bunk.

“Why is that?” I recognised him. “Shanks, you better start explaining yourself,”

“Please, please… I’ll explain,” Shanks pleaded.

“Come out at once,” he was getting on my nerves.

Shanks crawled out and fell to his knees, pleading and holding my legs imploringly.

“The urge often overwhelms me,” he remonstrated.

“I swear by Ojukwu’s beard you’re in for it.” I slammed the Vaseline in his face.

A torchlight beam was thrown across the room.

“Who goes there, injukaa… Hey why are you out of bed?” the house prefect bellowed. Shanks slinked off and I climbed back in bed.

There was a sly smile of acknowledgement draped across Jeremey’s face; the solitary spectator of the scenario. He lay in bed, looking lost in thought. He was muttering.

“The laundry room is convenient for that activity,” strings of titters accompanied.

“It’s not what you think, that gumbo tried to rape me,” I retorted.

At dawn, Shanks accosted me in the laundry room where baths were taken. His outline was evident under the skimpy towel he tied around his waist.

His hips were corpulent and accentuated like mine, backside firm and robust almost a landslide. The two lobes of his buttocks bobbed like a female’s. If you took a close look at Shanks’ school and compound shorts, you’d see that the seams holding the yards together are relaxed and loose due to his effeminate physique.

He treaded my arm slowly with his fingers. “We can be friends, you know, tight-buddies,” he let his fingers wander down to my hips. “What do you think?”

I drew a baleful look. My turn now, I gripped his collar bone and jerked him sideways. “Stay away from me and my rear end.”

“Relax man,” he winced. I exhausted buckets of water to flush out and rinse-clean the spittle slathered over my crotch. I was scrubbing my back when I felt a finger running along my spine. I turned around and Shanks’ bulbous lips brushed my cheeks, smudging spittle on the spot.

I threw a round-house punch, smacking him right across the temple.

I hit him severally till he bent double on the laundry floor, his body covered in algae and muck. Meddlesome mates formed a horseshoe around us; some eager spectators expecting a fight couldn’t wait, they’d forced us to. I relented. “Look, this fellow invaded my nether region, he should be beaten. I’m not fighting,”

The crowd roared, “You threw the first punch-get back to it,”

“Beat out his front tooth!”

Jimmy had spread the news like a blanket over the dormitory. Shanks merited a nick-name instantly ‘cream de -la cream’ or creamy for short, I was dubbed Oily; as the spectators were now chanting.

Later at night, mates would crack jokes centered on pretended intentions, to send word to their parents. A metal diaper fitted with a latch for maximum security should be constructed and sent over. Security measures against anal violence. They won’t stand the risk of being ‘shanked’. An anal terrorist was among the student-fold.

Someone pushed Shanks hard and he rushed at me, I dodged. He couldn’t put the brakes on his speed. So, his body flew at a concrete platform built up on the laundry wall, extended, wide and, fitted with hooks fused into steel bars; for hanging socks, underwear and towels.

All spectators in the laundry room unconsciously formed an ‘o’ with their lips, all eyes were fixed at shanks body suspended on rusty hooks. A white-layer shrouded his eye-balls.

There was a sudden rigidity in his posture, his head hung sideways and blood oozed from his ears. Before long he relaxed his grip on a steel-bar and came falling through the metal frame. Sharp pointed edges tore at his skin and when he landed, two crooked hooks were buried in his left eyes.

His innards were spattered over the wall. The membrane covering his brain looked a lot like parts from a broken tortoise shell. His stomach was shredded, his insides popped out like heated corn. The white sheath laid over his brains was punctured and looked like cabbage torn off from its whole. His head split up in the style which large coconuts crack up in the Chivita juice commercials.

I ran off when I saw his head become pulpy like an overripe paw-paw hitting the ground. There was the vicarious feeling of death without dying that came from watching Shank lynched by rusty hooks.

That was the last anyone got shanked.