THE DEMON LOVER OF CAMPUS

As a budding poet and a philosophy student, my leisure time is always given to serious meditation and philosophizing, and being a sensitive person on campus, I am always alert to the whispers of the muse for inspiration. My reservation and almost ghost like presence on campus estranged me from my most intimate friends and before long, my introspective nature which makes me isolate myself most of the time on campus metamorphosed into a habitual thing which eventually was ritualized. I was the invisible man on campus, the shy recluse living in total seclusion. I accepted my new fate without qualms. Nevertheless, I derived immense satisfaction from being the invisible man on campus. As I was able to look from afar, my eyes strained with the alacrity of eagle eyes scaling the towers of the premier university.

My favorite pastime is taking a walk around campus mostly at dusk. And reciting neoclassical and romantic poems which I cherish so much and the rhythm of the poems and the quant truisms and humor would be hovering around my neck like bees. At certain times, I will carry a novel mostly by African writers.

I was half way through a story I was writing entitled the demon lover. After lectures the following day, I decided to work on it and finish it. I sat down and took a plain sheet of paper. I was for some minutes unable to conjure any new episode to the story I was writing and I started toying with the idea that I was perhaps developing symptoms of writers block when suddenly a thought sprang like a genie in my mind and I started writing. To my amazement, the story wrote itself and I was very happy to take a walk since it was getting to dusk and add finishing touches to the horror tale which makes me nauseate anytime I think of writing.


I took the Canterbury tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and the beautiful ones are not yet born by Ayi kwei Armah. And went and sat on a low bench in front of Balme library. The whole place was very quite and there was no one around since it was Sunday. This made me enjoyed the serenity of the environment, the idyllic ambience around that place corresponded perfectly to my introvert nature. I opened a page in the beautiful ones are not yet born and started reading. I was enthused by a passage savagely lampooning corrupt ministers. I brought out my pencil and marked out that passage. I spent some minutes before taking the Canterbury tales. Since I have read it numerous times, I decided to read only the introduction. I absorbed with keen interest and with poetic malignity the perfect descriptions of the various characters, the renowned pilgrims who were the representatives of the medieval era. A stanza that sent me into roaring with laughter was the passage on the oxford cleric or student.


A CLERK there was of Oxford
That unto logic had devoted himself
As lean was his horse as is a rake,
And he was not right fat, I undertake;
But looked thin, and poorly
Full threadbare was his uppermost short cloak
For he had gotten him yet no benefice,
he was not worldly, to have an office.
For him was have at his bed's head
Twenty books, clothed in black or red,
Of Aristotle, and his philosophy,
Than robes rich, or fiddle, or psaltery.
But all be that he was a philosopher,
Yet had he but little gold in coffer,
But all that he might of his friend’s obtain
On books and on learning he it spent,
And busily gan for the souls pray
Of them that gave him wherewith to study
Of study took he most care and heed.
Not one word spoke he more than was need;
And that was said in form and reverence,
And short and quick, and full of high sentence.
Sounding in moral virtue was his speech,
And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.


After traversing the realm of archaic grandeur and the very beginning of English poetry, which presented in picturesque vein my inexplicable predicament, I stood up and continued my purposeless walk. When I reached the drama, studio there was no drama in the air and the place was as silent as a crypt. I went round the drama studio almost unconsciously admiring the large sculpture of stool. Since there was no drama in the air, I decided to cross the road and plunge headlong into the shade of the gigantic Tingitingi. After I had crossed the road, I saw a black plush saloon car packed at the bus terminal in front of institute of African studies. Where a few yards the road curves out to the studios of radio universe, school of communication studies and the Tingitingi.


I walked briskly to Tingitingi and sat down on one of the concrete benches stark to the ground. I felt refreshed sitting down there. Occasionally I will take a look at the baobab tree and my mind will go back to the epic of sundiata. I sat upright and checked the time. It was quarter to six. But the atmosphere was almost dark.
I raised my head and looked straight at the main entrance. I realized that the black saloon car was still packed where I first saw it. But all of a sudden, a young girl emerged from the front seat. Seconds later, a bald man with a stout paunch in a comic black coat also emerged. He had a black mien ad I strained my eyes to see if he was one of the lecturers, but I found out that he was a stranger. It may be the young girls father, I concluded and stood up with the intention of going to my hall. Legon hall. As I was going, I saw the man still standing with the girl. This time, he was more or less fondling the girl. He held her waist gave her a violent kiss on the cheek. The girl pretentiously struggled to free herself from the clutches of the dark man but it was done in an erotic deliberate style. The girl then moved a few paces and then waved the man and started walking towards campus.


What run through my mind was that the girl’s father was really lovely and fond of his daughter. I reached the car and was wondering why the man is still not moving until I saw that he was talking on the phone. I gave him a piercing look and then passed.


When I reached Legon hall, it was bursting as usual with life. There was laughter here and there, students conversing happily with their friends. At times there would be a wild yell or a coarse and huffy scream from some ones throat uttering a nickname or accolades of a fellow student who would also scream out a calculated response which seems to tell all around that he is a legendary figure on campus. At times, they overdo it especially when the girls are around. I walked quickly passed them to avoid the cacophonous and uproarious noise. The canteen in front of my room was filled with countless students in flamboyant clothes. They were in wild delirium. Reveling and partying.


Before I entered the university, I used to hear rumors of the ostentatious lifestyle of Students of Legon hall. They were said to be gaudy hedonists. Engulfed by the pleasures of the flesh. It was also rumored to harbor some of the most notorious playboys and philanderers whose delight is in debauchery.

I walked squeezing my way through the manic pleasure seekers of campus and entered my room. I bumped into kwame and his girl. Kwame was caressing her and she responded with giggles.

‘Julius, he said, panting. Meet my friend Evelyn.



Hi, I said stretching my hand to the girl. Nice to meet you

Hi she responded with a faint, alluring voice.

I went into my sanctum and took my pencil to finish my tale of the macabre. I overheard kwame telling the girl that I write a lot and talk seldom.

I wish you could also write and stop the talking, I like reading romantic poems. The girl said.

Writing, kwame laughed. He said he is a scientist deals with practical things and not pent up with trifling emotional piece poured on paper to entertain girls,

I was amused.

I was very busy during the week and when I was finally relieved on Sunday, I finished my tale of the macabre about a graduate who would not yield to the cargo cult incubus. His family thought by virtue of his education he would satisfy their material needs, but little did they know that he was a true artist and material wealth to him is worthless. After he could not tolerate the taunts torture, the derogatory remarks of his people, he disappeared one night during a violent storm.


When I finally typed the story and printed it, incidentally, kwame was the first person to read.. The day I brought the print out of the story, I saw kwame sitting down looking morose and disturbed. Immediately he saw me, he asked for a storybook to read. I was surprised. I asked him why the sudden change. I told him he should be doing additions and subtraction. Be working with numbers.
He said his mind is unsettled and could hardly concentrate should he take a math book or science.

I eagerly gave him the short story the demon lover – return to the shadows. He was pleased with the title. He started reading with avid interest,


He was in a quandary, and, as he stood alone on the threshold of the peculiar
Façade of the desolate and crumbling house; he understood deeply how pronounced
and formidable was the situation. It dawned on him, and he realized how defenseless
he was in the labyrinth of doubts. He was saddened at the thought of not being able to
do something about the dark vistas hanging precariously in his somber hued horizon.
he could not understand how he had been overwhelmed by circumstances and he could not take
a resolution. as he was battling incessantly with the vagaries of indecision; which was filled with
Immanent doom, there was a sudden transformation which astonished him and yet made him afraid.
Dark threatening clouds like the shadow of his fears besieged the chaste sky. The thunder roared with masculine agility and the lightening flashes pierced the serrated shadows continually.
A strong overpowering wind blew with imperious self-satisfaction augmenting the already precarious situation.
He stood motionless on the silent threshold wreathed with strong winds, thunder, lightening and darkness, yet he was far from perturbed. It appeared the forces of the universe have taken pity on his morbid and depressing reticence, have vehemently and vociferously spoken for him once and for all, and have resolved the riddle of his dilemma. He was inwardly happy yet solemn. And as he rejoiced and celebrated in his heart, he realized that his final dissolution was immanent, the end was near, palpable. He perceived happiness and fulfillment in the darkness and longed to plunge into it. He saw no reason in going back to the throes and torments he had escaped. He stood in a retrospective mood, painful nostalgia.
He was alone in a strange room. The room was wreathed with mystic aura. The floor was strewn with books. He sat in the middle of the room with a little table in front of him piled with manuscripts. He took a pen to write but was restrained by an unusual voice. He was startled, he dropped the pen he was holding and looked around trembling. The sonorous yet strange voice echoed again. At first, he thought it was a terrible dream. He actually thought he has woken from a harrowing nightmare. Even though he was wide-awake, the whole drama appeared like an inexplicable dream to him. Then the voice snatched him from his reveries and he became conscious. He stood up and looked round his study terribly frightened. And absolved calmly the voice that has invaded his sacred sanctum and intruded upon his privacy...

‘Now you have deliberately turned yourself into a mystic. You communicate with yourself in a strange esoteric language. You are walking in a labyrinth you alone understand you are a well-educated person. Your intellectual faculties are well developed. But you are a burden, a curse on us rather than blessing. We do not get anything from you. We spent our money, time and energy on you.
We toiled and perspired blood to give you education. Our expectations were great, high then. We thought we were giving you the powerful tool to eventually deliver us from our present predicament. The squalor, the shame, the painful degradation. But you have worsened the situation. There is nothing we can say or do. Only our wounded souls and maimed conscience will mourn for our effort, which has proved futile.
He was unsettled by the cryptic message of the strange voice, which had appeared dramatically from nowhere and had overshadowed his inherent nature and validity epitomized in words. His worthlessness was made apparent by the authoritative voice from the shadows. He reflected on what had just transpired and was further plunged in to the depths of dilemma - inextricable predicament.
A voice, different from the previous one yet equally strange echoed in his ears.
- I will not let them plunge you further into the depth of dissolution. I am the one who is supposed to reproach them. The tragedy is before my eyes and it behooves me to see if it could possibly be curtailed or not. But not to shut my eyes in shame and disgrace from the ruins.
Before you embarked on your quest, which they forced you to take, it was revealed to me that you were bound to encounter a doomed and disastrous end. I told them to be wary on sending you to embark on such a destructive journey. And they refused to listen to me. They were headstrong and now the worse has happened. You were fated to the hearth, the idyllic ambience of the stream and the serene beauty of the groves. But they forced you to traverse a strange land against my will. Now, there is nothing I can do but to avert my eyes from your doomed end

The thunder roared for the second time with menacing authority and devastating finality. The dark clouds flitted auspiciously in the sky as if pursued by a more powerfully vindictive and predatory clouds. The storm rushed through the trees with unbridled rage. The night became more dark and sinister.
He stood on the threshold indifferent to the raging storm. He became glad and energetic. His melancholic nature yielded to conviviality and mirth. The night to him was friendly and inviting. It was penetrable and blissful. The dark shadows of doubts and burdens pressing his heart inexorably suddenly dissipated. He stepped into the storm fraught darkness with finality of purpose.

After kwame finished devouring my story he shook his head and said that he has seen some parallels in my story with his own experience. The demon lover that your hero plunged into darkness to meet is actually on campus. There are many of them.

I was astonished by kwame’s assertion. Why, I said. Has my story already proven to be prophetic? He shook his head and said I will see the Mephistopheles on campus my self so he would not comment and handed my story back to me.


I plunged into the chariot of Phoebus Apollo and started writing my new story. Before I even finished the first paragraph, I had conjured a title. First semester, second semester, third semester.



My continual odyssey on campus always culminates in a rewarding pursuit, an ordained quest, an adventure worth embarking, which ultimately leads to not only rifling the pockets of the learning towers of legon at six thirty, exposing her volatile conscience and its failure to embrace modern trends of education, of the pursuit of knowledge, its reverence for conservatism and tradition, of the evil forces that are stalking in the darkness to pounce on her, of the accursed lips filled with demented rumors and hearsay ready to defame her, but to self knowledge, and understanding, the place I occupy in the premier university, and the meaning of my sojourn there as a student, a force, an entity. At times, there is a chagrin sense of guilt and betrayal. Because when the learning towers crumble down, collapse into debris, I would be involved, because I am involved my ordained quest must be the ultimate quest, even if others attempt, aneas like into the underworld. It would be a collective vision, which will be transformed into potent pillars of the intellect that would support the learning towers.

When ever I was free and the atmosphere friendly, I followed my ordained quest. Taking a walk round campus of tall majestic trees and towers, of serene beauty and intellectual magnificence. This time I took the complete poems of Thomas grey, a pre romantic and around the world in eighty days. Gray’s matured piece elegy written in a country churchyard torched me a lot when I was reciting it. Where the lines the paths of glory leads but to the grave.


I was so engrossed with grays poems that only the approaching darkness was able to stop me. I started towards my hall. It was six thirty. I went past Balme library and forked left on the road. With Volta at the right hand side. My uneventful walk was suddenly transformed into a blazing drama when I saw the black saloon car again. This time packed in front of Volta hall with the dark man in it with a lady. It was plain from their behavior in the car that they are not father and daughter. But lovers. The dark man in black attire gave the young lady a kiss and she came out from the car. Take care she said and hurried to the main entrance of Volta hall. I was taken aback. When I realized that the young lady was Evelyn, kwame, my roommates girlfriend. What is she doing with the dark bald man with potbelly? I kept my silence and the whole affair was unraveled by two guys who were in front of me. I was not strained to follow them headlong to devour the mystery for the young man was shouting it so that the solemn buildings and the tall trees resounded the saga of the ill mismatched couples.

Did you take notice of the man in the dark plush car who just dropped the girl? The first guy said with a tone unmistakably tinged with disgust and cynicism.

“I saw them but I was not the one to bother or even think about them for a second for I know that it is a common sight on campus especially in front of Volta Hall. I know for sure that, the man cannot be the father of that girl. His manner and the aura of timidity around him and his fixed gaze betrayed his dark conscience and flagrant and hellish irresponsibility!” The second guy responded.


“The man is a public figure. He is well known. I think you didn’t catch a clear view of his face. The first guy said with heightened interest and enthusiasm while I followed them silently absorbing the revelations of the dark dealings of people who hold public offices who preach virtue and practice vice. Who abuse power and authority invested in them by poor folks who have staked their lives and destiny on them for the betterment of the nation after numerous disappointments and setbacks? I listened to my friends who were also seriously concerned about the mania that has now engulfed campus, suffocating it. Blackening the once famous and illustrious towers of edification and the most respected and trusted principles, which no one can deny its potency and power to propel the nation forward.

What at all motivate and compel these men to indulge in such an outrageously vile crime against the earth. Shameless lecherous old men who cannot resist the temptations of the flesh. Depraved men who are engulfed by sensuality. They transform their duty to the state to carnal satisfaction. Learned, responsible, married and leaders. . The very conscience of the state. The society repose absolute trust in them and some of the highest ideals unattainable in human standards is what they are believed to encompass.

These baldheaded lecherous carnal old men with demented passion for expensive wine bought at the expense of the nation, hence their protruding and disgusting bellies. They not only betray the nation and the masses and their on revolutionary ideals but commit an abomination against the earth. They defile it and present sham policies to the masses telling them about good moral conduct while they themselves are corrupt, sexual perverts, wretched men.

How can the nation move forward if our leader with grey hairs indicating that he is wise is caressed by a young girl who is unaware of the vicissitudes and intricacies of life and motherhood at midnight. What advise can her daughter give him? Why should a man with wife and children lose his humanity and conscience and senses in front of a young naïve jezebel who claims to be a university student?

Why should a public figure, an honorable, corrupt, scandalize and squander the treasures of the state to waste it before a young woman? Buying cars, renting apartments and moving about with in a very expensive public places, keeping them in hotels that bills in us dollars!

What an irony! What a paradox! Why should a young university student with well proportioned body, nice features, young, fresh modern voluptuous and enchantingly captivating turn down offers of equally young men also receiving university education with high aspirations and ideals for old withered crooks the size of their fathers’.

If not ignorance and avarice. False perceptions and wrong notions. Fallacious and childish notions of sexuality and beastly modernism. The desire to lead well expensive lives on campus. To ride in latest models while her people wallow in squalor, filth waiting for proper marriage for the sake of the health of the society and virtue.

Who at all allowed these susceptible and vulnerable ladies to the hill of knowledge? It is indeed paradoxical for the tower of learning to harbor such abominable wretches!

I was emotionally purged by the vociferous charges of my friends who seemed unable to tolerate immorality for seconds. From their actions and reactions I was fully convinced that they have noble ideals and ideas and are confident over its validity. Only that they are trapped in space and time and the place they find themselves are averse to such things, it is now fast losing grip on what sustains it. So as I was later to learn, my mates who would opt for a sexual pervert to be burnt alive were from vandal and can actually vandalize, they are students, mere tiny creatures in front of the evil men who seem to have all the advantages.

When reached legon hall, it was almost getting to 6 pm. Kwame was in a cheerful mood. He shouted accolades on me and hugged me. I was baffled. Because for sometime now, kwame was the very epitome of the crypt. Silent, morose and meditative, at times tearful.

You look happy and joyous. I am very happy for you. But I must ask for forgiveness if what I have to tell you offends you. I regret to taint your happy mood. You know nowadays you seldom laugh. Kwame laughed.

“I am ready for whatever you have to tell me. I promise you it will not tickle my mood a bit. Go on and tell me Julius.”

“Well, I will tell you if you are ready and happy to hear a bad news. I saw the DEMON LOVER on campus to day and two angelic creatures that scathingly condemned their actions. The Demon lover was with your fiancée.

Kwame burst into uncontrollable laughter. He laughed loud and indicated with his hands that I should continue telling him more.

I grew apprehensive. I actually thought that I had made kwame mad by my horrifying revelation.

Kwame stopped laughing and grew serious. Julius, he said. The demon lover you saw with Evelyn was in fact the cause of my emotional affliction and dissolution. It was this same demon who made me almost go mad. Nevertheless, I was able to go about it and now I am more than triumphant. Do not think you are scaring me with the lecherous saga of a bald man with potbelly on campus and a greedy girl who is ready to sell herself, exchange her pride for money. I may be poor, I may come from a very poor home but my priority is education, knowledge of the sublime and not the pursuit of a campus girl who would have to keep me as a standby campus fiancé and follow old men for money.

I was affected by kwame’s impeccable reasoning and emotional development. His faultless maturity.

These are some of the ideals I had wanted you to attain long ago.

I understand. Kwame said.

I sat on the bed and felt something hard. I held it out. It was one of my books. Arabian Nights entertainments. There was a pen in the middle and when I opened the place where the pen was, I realized that the reader had marked a whole passage with a pen. Were you reading it? I asked kwame.

Yes he responded. I was curious to know what exactly he marked out so I told him to excuse me for a minute. The passage reads like this.

“The two men traveled as long as day-light
continued; and lay the first night under trees. They arose about
break of day, went on till they came to a fine meadow on the
seashore, that was be-sprinkled with large trees They sat down
under one of them to rest and refresh themselves, and the chief
subject of their conversation was the infidelity or their wives.

They had not rested long, before they heard a frightful noise
from the sea, and a terrible cry, which filled them with fear.
The sea then opened, and there arose something like a great black
column, which reached almost to the clouds. This redoubled their
terror, made them rise with haste, and climb up into a tree and
hide themselves. They had scarcely got up, when looking to the
place from whence the noise proceeded, and where the sea had
opened, they observed that the black column advanced, winding
about towards the shore, cleaving the water before it. They
could not at first think what this could mean, but in a little
time they found that it was one of those malignant genies that
are mortal enemies to mankind, and are always doing them
mischief. He was black and frightful, had the shape of a giant,
of a prodigious stature, and carried on his head a large glass
box, fastened with four locks of fine steel. He entered the
meadow with his burden, which he laid down just at the foot of
the tree where the two princes were concealed, who gave
themselves over as lost. The genie sat down by his box, and
opening it with four keys that he had at his girdle, there came
out a lady magnificently appareled, of a majestic stature, and
perfect beauty. The monster made her sit down by him, and eyeing
her with an amorous look, said, "Lady, nay, most accomplished of
all ladies who are admired for their beauty, my charming
mistress, whom I carried off on your wedding-day, and have loved
so constantly ever since, let me sleep a few moments by you; for
I found myself so very drowsy that I came to this place to take a
little rest." Having spoken thus, he laid down his huge head upon
the lady's knees, and stretching out his legs, which reached as
far as the sea, he fell asleep presently, and snored so loud that
he made the shores echo.

The lady happening at this time to look up, saw the two princes
in the tree, and made a sign to them with her hand to come down
Without making any noise. Their fear was extreme when they found
themselves discovered, and they prayed the lady, by other signs,
to excuse them. But she, after having laid the monster's head
softly on the ground, rose up and spoke to them, with a low but
eager voice, to come down to her; she would take no denial. They
informed her by signs that they were afraid of the genie, and
would fain have been excused. Upon which she ordered them to come
down, and threatened if they did not make haste, to awaken the
genie, and cause him to put them to death.

These words so much intimidated the princes, that they began to
descend with all possible precaution lest they should awake the
genie. When they had come down, the lady took them by the hand,
and going a little farther with them under the trees, made them a
very urgent proposal. At first they rejected it, but she obliged
them to comply by her threats. Having obtained what she desired,
she perceived that each of them had a ring on his finger, which
she demanded. As soon as she had received them, she pulled out a
string of other rings, which she showed the princes, and asked
them if they knew what those jewels meant? "No," said they, "we
hope you will be pleased to inform us." "These are," she replied,
"the rings of all the men to whom I have granted my favors.
There are fourscore and eighteen, which I keep as memorials of
them; and I asked for yours to make up the hundred. So that I
have had a hundred gallants already, notwithstanding the
Vigilance of this wicked genie, who never leaves me. He may lock
me up in this glass box and hide me in the bottom of the sea; but
I find methods to elude his vigilance. You may see by this, that
when a woman has formed a project, there is no husband or lover
that can prevent her from putting it in execution. Men had better
not put their wives under such restraint, as it only serves to
teach them cunning." Having spoken thus to them, she put their
rings on the same string with the rest, and sitting down by the
monster, as before, laid his head again upon her lap, end made a
sign to the princes to depart.

They returned immediately the way they had come, and when they
were out of sight of the lady and the genie Shier-ear said to
Shaw-zummaun "Well, brother, what do you think of this adventure?
Has not the genie a very faithful mistress? And do you not agree
that there is no wickedness equal to that of women?" "Yes,
brother," answered the king of Great Tartary; "and you must also
agree that the monster is more unfortunate, and more to be pitied
than ourselves.








The lecherous lecturer

I love women - wine and whisky
That will be one of the vivacious anecdotes to charm
The raucous air of a wayside in
And will aggravate the fright of the society plunging into puritan ethics
But when I utter words shocking and brave
You must know that the lecherous old man is speaking

I am a lecher and a lecturer
I am not a lecher because I am a lecturer
I may be weak and infirm
Trampling on campus with my bushy hair and revered beard

Here they come succulent and sensuous
Fresh and agile
Relegating me to the very depths of the Paleolithic age

Yet must I struggle with young men for the treasure
And when I cannot be daunted because of my looks
And experience is what triumphs
Let me walk with the young for the treasure
If I have the courage