By C.V.C Ozoaniamalu
Nwando had woken up and felt dizzy, dragging herself to the bathroom. A softness in her knees, as though her body had begun, without warning, to withdraw from her, to practice lifelessness.
The tap in the bathroom ran unchecked. Steam rose from the heater in slow, deliberate spirals, climbing upward until it claimed the mirror entirely. Her reflection dissolved into a pale blur, a face without edges, without certainty. She did not reach out to wipe it clear. She was not sure she wanted to see what she had become, what this version of herself looked like.
It had taken less than two hours. Less than two hours for everything to tilt. The apartment held its breath. Only two sounds remained: the steady rush of water and the clock’s thin, relentless ticking. She hated the clock at this moment. Each tick pressed against her skin, insisting on movement, on consequence. Time, it seemed, had refused to pause for her ruin. She should act. She knew this. But the thought refused to settle into action. It circled instead, heavy and persistent, returning always to the same place: The body in her bedroom. An adult man. Broad-shouldered. Still, lifeless and coiled in the pool of his own blood.
The image came to her fully formed, in hours to come, newspapers’ headline shall read, bold and unforgiving: “A Young Woman Found with a Dead Man’s body in her Apartment.”
She felt the shock move through her, sharp and cold, like swallowing water too chilled, the kind that freezes the chest before the mind can react.
Who would believe her? I doubt anyone would. Except Belinkas shows up, only if she has not disappeared forever, leaving only her in this mess.
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She thought about her old self and when all these began. Perhaps it had begun long before tonight. Or perhaps tonight had only gathered all her careless choices and arranged them neatly into consequence.
Three months. Three different relationships. It sounded, even to her, like the careless plot of a story she would once have judged.
First, there was Mayowa, soft-faced, deliberate, his life already arranged into neat expectations. He worked at a Big Four advisory firm and spoke often of structure, of future, of family. With him came conditions disguised as culture: she must learn Yoruba, must cook the meals his mother approved of, must fit into a life that had no space for improvisation. He spoke as though love were an apprenticeship she had not yet qualified for.
Then Emenike. Emenike did not ask; he took. His messages came uninvited and unashamed, images, instructions, demands dressed as desire. He wanted pictures of her body at odd hours of the day, wanted her to perform intimacy in stolen spaces, in public toilets, in hurried secrecy. When she obeyed, gifts followed. When she hesitated, silence. With him, everything was a transaction, even affection. And he would always send his first, naked pictures of himself- unreligious and uninvited.
And then, unexpectedly, she met Belinkas. She met her at the gym, somewhere between routine and escape. Belinkas moved with an ease that unsettled her, spoke with a confidence that did not seek permission. They had talked only once, briefly, between gym lessons, but something lingered. A number exchanged. A thought she tried, unsuccessfully, to bury. Because this, this was not who she was. She had heard of people becoming lesbians but never thought it would be her, or at least, not who she had believed herself to be.
And yet, she found herself thinking of Belinkas in quiet moments, replaying that single conversation, that steady gaze. Belinkas wanted a relationship with her, a queer openness and visibility, which she herself did not find easy. By the weekend, Belinkas had stopped answering her calls because she had sworn not to be hidden.
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So the Monday following the weekend after her fall-out with Belinkas came with its own quiet cruelty. At the office, the air felt wrong before anything was said. People gathered in small clusters, their voices lowered, their faces arranged into careful neutrality.
Musa, the boy who had joined them and had been placed under her tutor and supervision, was at her desk, folded into himself. “What happened?” she asked. “Did someone die?”
He shook his head. “Have you checked your email?” Something in his voice made her chest tighten. She logged in. Or tried to. Her password failed.
Again. She turned to him. “Is the system down?”
He hesitated too long. “There’s… an issue,” he said finally. “With contract staff. You should go to HR.”
Contract staff. She looked around, and most of the contract staff were not around.
The realization came quietly, but it landed hard. At HR, the truth was already waiting. An email had been sent on Friday, which she missed. Termination of contract. Effective immediately.
No explanation that mattered. No appeal that would be heard. Just instructions: return your tools, submit your ID, and sign here. And just like that, her name was removed. Her presence was erased.
Outside, the world continued as though nothing had shifted. When her phone buzzed, it was either Obialor, her younger brother, who was studying Economics at the University of Uyo, asking for money, or it was Musa’s text offering sympathy, which she could not bear to read. She opened neither.
At her apartment, in the downturn of Alimosho, inelegant, noisy, heated yet interesting, she felt withdrawn; the silence in her world felt heavier. She lay on the bed and cried, but even that felt controlled, as though she were careful not to break something further. The tears came quietly, soaking into the pillow, disappearing without a witness.
She called Belinkas on Thursday. No answer. She sent a message: I need you now. I’m losing it.
Hours passed. Nothing.
Then she called Emenike. He picked the first ring. “I’m in a meeting,” he said. “I’ll come.”
There was something in his tone, joyful, forward-looking, and amusement, perhaps that she ignored.
At 9:59 PM, just a day before Good Friday. She heard a gentle knock on her door. She dragged herself towards the door, her feet shuffling, the type that would have triggered her grandmother to call her “Ngana”, unrepentant laziness. She opened the door expecting to see Emenike, but found another. Belinkas.
For a moment, the world rearranged itself into something almost merciful. She pulled her in, held her, let the tears come without restraint this time. There were no questions, no explanations. Just closeness. Heat. Urgency.
They kissed like people trying to outrun something. The door remained slightly open. Neither of them noticed. Without words or discussions, emotions tightened, and unaware of the world around them, they let loose their clothes.
Until the voice came. Male. Calm. Too calm. It was then they knew they fucked up.
“Evil, alu. The world must see this,” Emenike said, “On second thought, you both can make me feel good and have me delete this video. The faster the better.”
He stood there, phone raised, recording. Time fractured.
Nwando imagined, with a sudden tightening in her chest, what her world would become if that video ever went viral. Her mother, the respected leader of the Catholic Women in Mushin, and even more formidable in their hometown of Abatete, would crumble under the weight of gossip. And her father, who had once mocked Mr. Okolie at a full Umunna meeting for “raising a boy who turned out gay,” would see his own hypocrisy laid bare. She begged then, words tripping over themselves, thin and useless things that dissolved in the thickening air.
Belinkas moved first, fast and furious, lunging at Emenike, her breast flat and body structured like a man. The phone fell from Emenike as both held each other down, the room erupted into movement, into noise, into something she could no longer follow.
She reached for the phone. Her hands were shaking, and then she heard the noise, as if a mansion had collapsed on her. A sharp, blinding impact. Darkness.
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Now she stood in the bathroom, the tap still running. And in the bedroom, Emenike lay in a widening pool of blood. Belinkas was gone. The phone was gone.
The room felt smaller now, closing in with each passing second. How do you explain this? How do you survive it? What if she had let Emenike go and face the lesser evil?
A sound cut through the silence. A phone is ringing. Not hers.
She followed it, each step careful, as though the floor itself might betray her. Emenike’s phone lay in the corner, its screen cracked like a splintered mirror, the casing scratched and smeared. And then she saw something far worse, something that hollowed her out instantly.
Belinkas. Pale. Naked. Motionless. Her body sprawled in her own pool of blood, already cooling into a dark shine on the floor. Still. Without pulse.
The phone rang again. Stopped. A message appeared almost immediately. She leaned in, breath trembling. The sender was saved as Obikwelu, and the message read:
“My guyyyyy, you don finish with the babe, I don dey road dey come that side, make we enter club.”
Her breath snagged in her throat. He was coming. Now.
And suddenly the ticking clock no longer drifted in the background like a faraway thing. It beat loud and urgent, unmistakable.
A countdown.