Song for this chapter is:

Terrestrial (Act 2) - Ty Brasel

**
David despised lunchtime. Whenever the nurse entered his room with a plate of rice, stew, and plantain, his stomach churned with trepidation. On other days when he saw amala with ewedu on the enamel plate, anxiety constricted his air passages and pressed his nostrils shut.

He knew Sindara would visit and that all too familiar, overwhelming guilt would cause him to knock his food over. The ewedu and the red stew would slither across the white tiled floor in a linear motion, like water gliding towards a lake.

David, unlike the other psychiatric patients, ate his meals in his room. Yemisi had paid for a V.I.P ward. For the mere reason of this luxury, it seemed as though David suffered more from the hallucinations. The demons in his head saw that he was in an environment that would foster and accelerate his healing process, and they wanted to frustrate that.

The devils worked overtime to ensure that though he slept in an air-conditioned room, he woke up from a nightmare or experienced a tormenting illusion with beads of sweat breaking out of his skin.

Before the psychiatric hospital, David's delirium did not make him feel fear. The ending of his hallucinations had only left a pyrrhic sadness in his heart and a crushing feeling of failure. It was always another unsuccessful attempt at protecting Sindara from twirling to a fall in her pink ballerina costume.

He always took out that feeling of defeat on the young girls, the pseudonymous versions of his sister that he'd made for himself. The inferiority complex and shame did not always last long, thanks to the children he'd abducted. They were channels through which he could unleash his sorrow and bouts of self-blame. His pattern of living before he'd been admitted to the psychiatric hospital was a self-orchestrated one. Every single part of it - the illusions, the feeling of defeat, the girls - were things he'd willed.

Never for once had he felt the need to fight. The thought hadn't crossed his mind. Even if it did, it was an insignificant passerby, almost as if it had never walked through the lanes of his mind. He had never fought, even unconsciously. He refused medication because he wanted to keep seeing illusions of Sindara.

David wanted the guilt because he believed he deserved it as his punishment, and he wanted the girls as maintenance for that gnawing feeling so it didn't get overbearing. Thus, he'd wanted a penalty and hope simultaneously. It was a pursuit as purposeless as trying to fill up a sieve with water. David had never been emancipated from that zone. He had never been pushed to fight it.

Now, he was. The forthcoming change was agonizing, like the travails of a woman in labor. This was why he felt an emotion like fear and why the vision of Sindara no longer gave him that odd thrill. Instead, the sight terrified him. His sister was now like an apparition, a thing he was not supposed to be seeing.

However, the demons responsible for the hallucinations were not ready to let David have any sanity. Each time David hallucinated about Sindara, she looked more real than the last time he'd seen her. Once, he saw a big pimple with whitish pus at its tip on her forehead. From the times he'd known her, there had never been a blemish as visible as a pimple on her face. Each time she came to him, it seemed like she was visiting him as a real, living human being. She looked slightly different, as expected of the average person, who was constantly prone to change.

Another time when she appeared, she'd tried to pick a plantain slice from his plate. The ends of her long fingernails were so filthy that it made him wonder if she had dug them in mud or scratched her dandruff-filled hair. Sindara liked to keep her fingernails short and trimmed when she was alive. She'd hated keeping them because they broke too often.

So how had she grown fingernails as a dead person if it weren't for the relentless attacks from the demons in his head? The illusions that David saw of Sindara in his psychiatric ward did not only come with a different look of her but a different scenario as well.

She no longer appeared as a beautiful, dark-skinned ballerina in a shiny, puffy pink gown. She no longer twirled gracefully and effortlessly in her own little world where she was oblivious to David's existence. She was no longer that Sindara that didn't even see a need to be protected. She didn't dance anymore.

Now, she talked and tried to eat with David. She knew David's existence now and worked hard to infiltrate his universe. She accused him and glared at him. She mocked and taunted him with shrill laughter for trying to shove a spoonful of rice mixed with stew into his mouth.

'Do you deserve to eat after giving me poisoned food?', 'How can you even try to eat when I'm here? Aren't you scared that I'll get my revenge and poison your food?!'

Whatever strong, rebellious attitude David tried to put on would crumble immediately at that threat. The guilt still lingered. He feared she would poison his food since she looked real and even talked. So he pushed the plate away from the tray, causing the food to spill and the bowl to crack into large pieces on the ground.

Strangely, whenever he knocked the food over and straightened, Sindara was always gone, and his lunch was wasted. It was when the plate crashed into pieces that David always realized that Sindara could never put poison in his food because she wasn't real.

The sound of the plate shattering always brought him back from a trance he didn't know he was in. Whenever he turned to the spot he'd seen Sindara only to find that she was no longer there, the wasted food and the broken ceramic reaffirmed his realization.

It was then he felt like yelling at Sindara, to tell her to return to the grave where she belonged. However, it was always late. She'd disappeared by that time. David tried to prepare himself for the next hallucination, so he wouldn't be caught unaware and fall for the trick.

He tried to prepare as well as he could. Unfortunately, another stumbling block sat comfortably in the middle of his road to sanity. He could not bring himself to tell his beloved sister off. He could not muster the boldness to tell her that she was dead and she needed to rest to peace and leave him alone. It felt callous to tell her to stop haunting him because he wasn't the one who'd killed her.

Even if he had murdered her, he'd only been desperate to have her eat a meal since she had a severe stomach ache. He'd only wanted to save her. It felt wicked to ask for the peace of mind that he deserved. It felt like he was back to square one.

Since he couldn't tell her off, he tried to eat his food even as she taunted and threatened to get her revenge. He ate his food speedily, shoving morsel after morsel of grains into his mouth and swallowing them without chewing. He wanted to stop hearing her foul cackling and tormenting threats, so he ate his meal quickly. If indeed she could poison the food, it was better to consume the toxin quickly and die instead of hearing her tease him.

The latter was worse because then, he had to struggle to decipher if she was real or not and if she was capable of avenging her death. Even if he felt like she was not, he wasn't strong-minded enough to stand his ground.

He took the risk. He didn't want to break plates anymore. It was a loss for the hospital staff and evidence of his defeat to the legion of devils.

David knew he needed to make a firm decision, but since he could not, he resorted to the most comfortable option, which was to avoid his plight for as long as possible.

So he stopped eating lunch and asked for more tranquilizers, but he couldn't take the pills on an empty stomach. Whenever he lied and said he'd eaten so the doctor could administer the drug, he became restless and edgier.

Later, he asked the doctor to have him eat lunch with the other patients in the common room. Being in the midst of people would, perhaps, give him a better sense of consciousness and awareness. There would be noise from all directions, and the sounds would easily pierce and deflate the bubbles of the loud voices in his illusions.

So he sat at a separate table in the dining hall but was still surrounded by people. He could not sit too close to people in case he knocked his food over or vomited. The other patients had to be protected from him.

Sadly, demons were no respecters of location. Sindara still appeared. Another pimple was on her chin. She tried to pick plantain from his plate and pinch some grains of rice even. David no longer flung the plate away from the table to stop her from touching his meal. He was sane enough to know that she wouldn't poison his food. It had taken a lot of food wastage for that truth to sink into David's head.

Still, he wasn't able to act as though he did believe that fact. He couldn't bring himself to shoo her off. So he continued to gobble all his food at once and vomited it back on the table later, causing everyone in the hall to stare at him.

Migraines and eye pains accompanied the puking. Gradually, as he continued to shove excessive amounts of food into his mouth, he became unable to hold any food in his stomach. His gag reflexes ceased to function as they ought to. He threw up even when he did nothing to warrant it. If he didn't vomit the food, he excreted it within hours. He was deteriorating.

He began to fear that his life would slip away at the pace he was moving. Would he allow death to seize him because of this same battle? He was suffering, and there was no one to comfort him. He was fighting this war on his own.

Yemisi would visit him the following month to ask if he would be present at Sindara's death memorial. He hadn't even decided if he would or not, if he wanted to or not.

He was stuck in the middle. He wanted to say goodbye to her but was unable to. But one day, he took a moment to think - an activity he hadn't done in a long while.

It was on one of the afternoons when he felt the bolus of the food he'd swallowed minutes ago bounce back to the tip of his tongue. The chewed plantain had a bitter taste of bile mixed with its sweetness. That day, he resisted the urge to throw the food out of his mouth and closed his mouth instead. He decided he would not vomit the food, no matter what.

A series of thought processes had led to that sudden action. He had been brooding on his pathetic situation as he swallowed morsels of spaghetti gloomily. Then he stopped to ask a couple of questions.

Why exactly was it hard for him to say goodbye? Why could he not? Why was he stuck again? Hadn't he been stuck all his life and willfully so? If he had always wanted to feel guilt in the past, couldn't he also decide to break free from it if he was desperate for liberation?

If he could not bring himself to go to Sindara's memorial service and admit that she was gone forever by seeing her grave, he would have to wait till the next memorial service took place. He was not ready to go back and forth, dealing with the legion of devils in his head for another three hundred and sixty-five days.

He wasn't sure if he would be alive by then, especially with the severe difficulties he was experiencing with digestion.

He had finished eating when he made the resolve to say goodbye to Sindara in his hallucinations. Then the food resurfaced, and as a first step to liberation, he swallowed it, determined not to throw up.

At that moment, he wished Sindara would appear so he could tell her confidently that her teasing, taunting, and mocking would no longer work on him and that her false presence wouldn't make him fall. He wanted her to know that he'd decided to let go of the baggage he'd been carrying for eleven years.

He waited for her in the subsequent days. During lunch, he looked across his table too often, expecting that she would be there, sitting on the empty bed, staring at him and laughing noiselessly as he tried to eat his meal. Sometimes, he expected to see a hand roaming around his plate in an attempt to dig into his food.

When David didn't see Sindara at lunchtime, he prepared his mind for unlikely scenarios. When he went to use the bathroom, he imagined seeing her in two-dimensional form, floating in the toilet bowl like a genie with more high-pitched laughter, her voice echoing through the waves of water.

He tried to visualize her appearing in any which way, in different forms, shapes, sizes, and locations. He imagined that she might not even appear in the physical form at all. Perhaps, she would become a more ruthless spirit and would possess the body of his doctor. And he would only realize it when the psychiatrist filled up the syringe with an ominous smile on his face that Sindara was using the doctor to get her revenge.

When ample time passed, and David didn't see Sindara, he concluded that his hallucinations had been tapping their strength and boldness to intimidate him from his fears. Perhaps, it was unnecessary to have a face-off with Sindara to bid her farewell. Maybe all he needed to do to get rid of her was what he'd already done - making up his mind to break free from his self-inflicted bondage and pain.

It was a palpable truth, eye-opening even.

Thus, Davis took his liberation for what it was and lived each day as it came, resisting the urge to create possible scenarios in which Sindara could appear. Eating remained a chore. The food regurgitated to his tongue a few minutes after chewing, but he always swallowed it with his eyes screwed shut. He pushed the soggy and sour bolus of food down his throat.

Sindara appeared on the day the doctors had noticed a remarkable improvement in David and had decided to put him on the same lunch table as every other patient. It was not a scenario he'd ever considered, but it happened. It occurred to test the authenticity of his supposed progress. If his newly found liberation passed through fire and scaled through unscathed, he'd be a victor.

When he saw her sitting beside the bald schizophrenic patient across him, he assumed she'd appeared from the remnants of his cooked-up scenarios. Perhaps it was because he'd just drunk from a steel cup and had glanced at his reflection in the water.

So he diverted his gaze to the cup, hoping by the time he lifted his head, she would no longer be there. It would have all just been a result of his excessive imagination. She could not decide to show up when he was in the midst of people, right?

However, when he lifted his eyes, she was still there, sneering and mimicking him drinking water. Her laughter was so loud that he was tempted to wonder how the people at the table didn't hear it, but he knew he was the only one who could see and hear her. He wanted to tell her off immediately but feared that he would look insane to the other patients.

So he painfully looked away and turned to the plate of moi-moi before him. He cut out a triangular smidgen from his meal and shoved it into his mouth. He tried to chew as slowly as possible to pretend that he was doing fine and that he hadn't seen anything strange.

However, the illusion of Sindara wasn't making it easy for him to ignore her. Her presence was already a cause for discomfort, and she was making it worse by hurling heavy words and remarks that destabilized a person faster than blows. These were words that tested and burned people.

"Do you know I never liked you?" Her voice was pungent, slicing through David's pretense like a knife on butter.

Although David had managed not to look at her, he could not continue pretending she wasn't there. The morsel of moi-moi he'd just scooped remained in his mouth, causing his right cheek to swell. He couldn't chew. His hand froze on the spoon he held, and he gazed down at his plate, blinking back tears.

Sindara was pleased by the effect that her words had on him. So she added more fuel.

"Even while I used to follow you around and watch you solve math equations, I didn't do that because I thought you were smart or good. I just loved seeing the look of a loser on your face. Nothing made you happy. You always looked sad, even when doing the things you loved. You only smiled when you were with me. You often laughed when we played together, but it never lasted long.

You became sad again and started to tell me 'sorry' even when you did nothing wrong. You were always apologizing to everyone in the house too as if you were sorry for existing, as if you hated being such a loser who couldn't save our family from poverty. It amused me.

You looked like a fool to me, like a doormat. I knew I was your weakness, so I asked for jollof rice that day, even though I knew we didn't have rice at home and it would be hard to get such a meal. That's why I caused a fuss and pretended to have stomach pain. I knew that seeing me in pain would make you feel sorry and guilty. But you are still a loser, you know?

You couldn't even fix the things that made you feel guilty. You couldn't do something as simple as feeding me to satisfaction. You still managed to do the wrong thing. You deserve to be sad every day because you are a sore loser."

David clutched his spoon so firmly that the edge of the utensil pressed a thick line into his palm. It was as though his fingers were glued to the spoon. One of his table mates had asked him what was wrong, and another had waved a hand in his face, but the voices and movements of the people around him had all been a blur. The voices were slurry as though someone had set them in slow motion.

The anguish from Sindara's words made it impossible for him to focus on anything else. The physically agonizing effects that her accusations had on him were as real as a migraine. His heart throbbed so fast beneath his chest that he was sure he would collapse.

For a brief moment, David clutched the fabric of his shirt at his chest region and tried to breathe evenly. His breathing was raspy and loud, filling up his ears. His attempt at even breathing was a failure, but despite the chaos and protest from his body, he managed to close his eyes and think rational thoughts. It had to be possible to stay sane if he was desperate enough. He could win this battle, right? There had to be a way out.

The demons wanted to snuff his life out, but he had to be determined to fight if he didn't want them to have their way.

So as the darkness surrounded him from the lack of sight, he reviewed every word he'd heard. There was no way Sindara didn't love to hang around him while she was alive. She hadn't demanded for jollof rice just to watch him run around the neighborhood to get it. Although it was true that he always looked gloomy as a kid and apologized too often, Sindara had always shown him sympathy and reassured him of a better tomorrow. She'd never mocked him with words or even facial expressions.

This Sindara he was seeing was not real. She only milked his tendency to feel guilty with hurtful and seemingly believable words. If he allowed her words to sink in, he would lose this war as always.

Every moment spent in silence would mean that he believed her words and was crushed by them. He had to speak up, even if it meant looking crazy to the patients around him. They were all insane people anyway. That was why they were in a psychiatric hospital. So he opened his eyes, wiped the tears on his cheeks with the back of his hand, and looked at the illusion of Sindara sternly.

"Sindara, I'm not a loser. I tried to save your life. I really did. I wanted to do what was best for you. Although I regret disobeying mom's instruction, I don't loathe that I went to extra lengths for you. I don't feel contrite by the happy look on your face as you ate the food.

Even if I deserve to be punished for rebelling against mother and causing your death, I've carried the weight of that guilt for eleven years now, and that's more than enough suffering to have borne for a lifetime. You should go and haunt the person who poisoned your food.

I let go of you, Sindara. I let go of the constant need to punish myself for your death. You are dead, my dear sister, and there's no way you can forgive me for anything I must have done, even if I continue to punish myself. I know I loved you with all my heart and wanted to take care of you. Sadly, my love suffocated and killed you. Though I will always feel sorry for that, I can't continue to feel bad for loving you that much.

If I had a chance to go back in the past, I would have still gone the extra mile for you and hope my sacrifice doesn't become the end of you. I'm not a loser for wanting to give my all for you and the family. I send you to the grave where you belong now, Sindara. When I die and meet up with you, I will redeem myself and love you better, but as long as there's still breath in my lungs, I will let go of you. I won't be dwelling on my mistakes toward you anymore. I let go of you."

Tears were cascading down David's eyes as he spoke. Surprisingly, Sindara's expression was bland all the while that he talked. There was no sneering, teasing, or eye-rolling. As soon as he told her to go, she started to fade away. Her three-dimensional and seemingly human form began to dissolve like speckles of sand until she vanished completely. It was as if all those illusions had never occurred, even in his mind.

It was as though her words had been the hidden remote control that could manipulate her entire existence. The discovery was liberating for David. If only he'd known how much power his words held, if only he'd used them correctly, how much damage would he have been able to prevent?

David realized then that the demons that tormented him had limits and were subject to his decisions concerning his life. Those devils weren't masters over him. It was the other way around.

And Sindara was gone, forever, just like that. David exhaled. He breathed out all the load he'd been bearing for over a decade, and fresh air entered his nostrils. The oxygen intake refreshed his insides like a cold bath on a hot day. He'd never felt that light before. Oh, the horrid things captivity could do to a person, that they could not see and appreciate air for what it was.

It was as though the strange voices that rambled relentlessly in his head had taken up space in his lungs and throat and sapped energy, causing great depreciation in the quality of air he inhaled and exhaled. Now that they were gone, his breathing did great good to him. It no longer felt laborious to simply breathe.

As David ate the rest of his meal amid the puzzled and befuddled looks of his fellow lunchmates, he decided to book an appointment with the phone service after eating. He would call Yemisi to inform her of his intentions to attend Sindara's memorial service.

The End.