We are finally here, guys. Here it is, the final chapter of Too Many Broken Things BOOK ONE!🥺❤️

Can I get a Hallelujah??

We've come so far and I am so happy for everyone who has stayed here till the end. Comment down below what got you into reading TMBT real quick; we have an entire Q and A Conspiracy theory test for you at the end of the chapter, but spare me a few seconds of your time to humor me. What was the reason you decided to give this book a chance?🥺❤️

Nonetheless, this chapter is a tear jerker. I am actually terrified about it. You will cry your eyes out but on the bright side, you will probably take a few from this chapter. We will have a section at the end for your 2 cents thoughts, lol.

And guys, we go LIVE on the 18th of December, 2023, Monday (7pm) on my TIKTOK account. If I cannot get that account to a thousand followers by then, we may not be able to do this live. At least not on Tiktok. I know I have a lot of readers and each chapter of TMBT gets a thousand reads in about one week, so please, please let's all just cooperate and support that page and follow, so that we can go live. 🥺 Instagram is VERY limiting with Lives and on Tiktok, I can invite over ten people with me to duet, abi, co-live with me, and we all can properly discuss. We will have LOTS to talk about and it's all in a debate format, so it'll be VERY fun.

Unfortunately, I don't think I can have more than one person co-live with me on Instagram, but Tiktok can do this. If I am not able to reach the goal by 17th, we may have to manage Instagram, but that means I can only invite one person at a time and it won't be as fun.🥲 Oh well. My Tiktok Handle, strictly for my writing account is Lovetori_xo.

The song for this chapter is the same as the one from the chapter before last. Monster by Shawn Mendez and Justin Beiber. The media is above. Listen/Watch and be blessed.

Now, without much further ado,

I present to you,

TMBT Book One's Chapter Finale.

⎯⎯ ୨ ୧ ⎯⎯

ACHA

I vividly remember my first day of Castron High.

Dad drove a Lamborghini Venono at the time, a car that I knew cost somewhere between eight to ten million dollars, an entire fortune if converted to own legal tender in Naira. It hurt my little Jss1 brain at the time to do the math.

He barely said a word to me, but the entire ride through the large red gates of the magnificent school, I was the subject of discussion that bubbled at his tongue. I rarely listened, anyway, but when I did, I managed to pick one or two. My memory, of course, is a bit foggy, but I recalled Dad being eagerly excited for me to break my brother's record by getting into the senior school team in my first year.

For emphasis, this has NEVER happened before in Castron High.

Even Justice Acha, an athletic legend in CH, had never achieved such a feat. The Main Sports Team was mostly made up of Ss3 boys. The possibilities for an Ss2 to make it in was about 1 to 0.09%, and if you were in Ss1 and dreaming of getting in, you might as well start working on learning to shape-shift because that was an easier goal to attain in life.

It didn't mean records were never set. While guys like Ivandor beat me during probation and managed to be one of the first ever to make it in Ss1, my own brother, Justice, already bagged his spot on the Main Team in Jss3. Maybe this was the reason why father was confident enough to think that it was possible for me to beat his older son's bloody record.

Surprisingly, at the time, I was hardly fazed.

Not by my father's delusional expectations of me. Not even by his multi billion naira car that paraded me round the entire school compound on my first day, inciting eyes of awe, gasps of pleasant surprise, and a spotlighted attention on me.

I didn't care.

Sincerely. Initially, I genuinely hardly cared about these many things.

Not until I saw the kind of Love and Adoration that Castron High students could shower upon you if they found you 'worthy' of it.

At the time, Love and Adoration were two things that I rarely knew. Not when my father spent his entire life doing anything to bring me down, to wreck my spirit and my confidence. To shatter my soul as a person.

So a taste of this Love and Adoration... A taste of it was like a naive beginner tasting the euphoric, but deathly dangerous sweetness of sex for the first time. A novice on their first high from their first pill. There are no better ways to explain the dangerous, yet addicting feeling that came with it. That first day alone, my entire set and even seniors towered over me, showering me with validation and acceptance.

Acceptance.

All just because my father drove me to school on my first day with a rare and expensive car.

It was that easy to win hearts over. I soon realized how the littlest things, the most vain things, were enough to incite me into feeling significance from them. It started with me, basking and riling up the rumors about my father's numerous expensive cars, saying things that made them happier, made them praise me more. It was a subtle bragging right, a minute way to gladden myself after Home wrecked me. And like a pill, I needed more and more of it. Until it became something I couldn't live without.

It became the only thing that mattered.

My classmates picked up this corrupt social standard until it became a popularity contest, a survival of the worthiest. Soon, this dynamic of power and twisted school hierarchy became everyone's biggest terror and controlling factor; being at the top of the food chain was more relieving than satisfying, like escaping death. However, not finding a spot in the ranks was the most terrifying and dreadful nightmare. Something no one would have wished against their worst enemy.

And when I noticed the importance of affluence in influencing the ranks, it was a powerful weapon for me to use. Money was the basics, after all, and any kid who had no money had no business being visible in the ranks.

Unfortunately, I soon discovered it wasn't enough.

So, I needed more...

Every kid in Castron High had wealthy parents, so if I needed to retain that importance, that love and admiration, adoration that I needed, showing off money was not enough.

I needed more...

Finding a niche was not difficult. Granted I was never a tiny kid and had always been athletic, I had an advantage with the Pre-Team of the School – the preparation team for the Main Sports Team, where 50/50 of us could stand a chance to be a part of, in our senior years.

It wasn't difficult to get in. At twelve, I was already about 5'9 in height and courtesy of my father training me and Justice like we were in a military camp, I could lift a full sack bag of sand, a feat that impressed my seniors so much that it was easy for me to gain a reputation as a fit and strong kid with a very bright future on the Main Team – possibly even the best. It was a huge flex, and for the longest time – having that Ivandor Fejaun was not even in Castron High till Jss2 – I basked in the high of being the sports star of my set.

After all, in CH, to get to the top of the school social hierarchy, you either had to be a raging, bullying asshole or find your golden, first class fame in the niche of the Sports Stars or be amongst the perfect A grade students in Academics field.

Unfortunately, I never ever fully attained that number one spot. No matter how much I tried.

I never had the set at the extension of my fingers, acting the role of an autocrat and alpha like Giwa Falade. Never did I even dominate the sector of Academics or heavily influence the school authorities like she did either.

Never used duress, dangerous gangs, and deadly threats to force my authority over people and secure my spot in the ranks, like Kaniru George.

Unlike Nova Igwe, my pure and natural charisma was not enough to get me at the top either. And I could never compete with the wits and humor of Aaron Godson and Casper Bassey, so I never secured my spot at the top on those grounds either. In fact, with all the people that had their free tickets at the very needle-eye top of the hierarchy, from Yure Adediji to Hassana Alfa who were raised on a pedestal for their remarkable talent and jaw dropping beauty, respectively, to names like Shade Onam that revolved around the entire set and country, and other praised personas like Prissy Waje and Kridana Moe, most of them had something I had. Beauty. Brains. Unspeakable talent. And more. Yet, I never seemed to get there, like them.

Not even in my own niche. Not when I had obstructions like Ivandor Fejaun, taking every spot that I had a chance in. Especially Sports. As much as it pained me for the longest time, I had come to the personal consolation that even if I couldn't make it to the top, past the skies, I was still relevant in the ranks. Still had an impressive footing. I still settled amongst the stars, at least.

And having my brother's reputation rubbing off on me – something I hated to admit – it took me a while to actually realize that, all in all, I was the sets' golden boy.

There was something about this spot. Being the golden kid. You were not at the Alpha nor were you at the peak of the top, yet somehow everything seemed to be about you. The things you said went viral, the things you did caused an uproar. It was like you were the entertainment factor of the set.

Many times, I noticed no one dragged attention to what they wore, for example, more than I did. Something about me always made headlines and topics of unverified gossip. My littlest actions created a raucous, and I was constantly the subject and object of rumors – good ones, bad ones, relevant and irrelevant, same. It was like the entire set revolved around my existence and the chaos that the union between me and Dabeluchi caused within these few months was more than enough to prove that fact.

Unfortunately, there was something dangerous about being the golden boy.

It was easy to get everything to be about you, to command the waves of attention, adoration and worship to come your way at your will, to make tongues wag and sing your praises whenever you wanted it. But when you made one mistake.

Just one.

One that was enough to do the opposite of this and cause you to become of abject of a detestable person, cause mouths to spit in distaste and disgust at you and make everyone who ever praised you hate your more than they ever loved you,

then, there was no going back.

It was game over. You have lost everything.

And, frankly, never did I think – even for one second – that the Ss3 students of Castron High would be witnessing the fall of the golden boy all too soon.

That was not what shocked me the most...

It was the fact that even in that state, even in the midst of those repulsed eyes that glared daggers at me from EVERY angle of the Living Room,

I couldn't bring myself to give a fuck.

Just like my first day of Castron High.

I just couldn't care.

Not when all I could see in the heat of that moment was a blinding shade of RED.

"Sean?"

Over the years, I had seen my best friend in many forms, progress from many phases, watched him grow from that seven year old weakling who cried at the smallest challenge life threw at him, bawled his eyes out at the most subtle critiques you gave him, fall into the deadliest and most heartbreaking-to-watch mental breakdown at the littlest insults howled at him. How he would crawl into a ball and cry his eyes out to me every night until he convulsed with hiccups and month-lasting cough and catarrh just because the other neighborhood kids called him 'short'.

No one knew Sean Ayomide more than I did. 

Not a single soul had witnessed him grow from that cry-baby he used to be into this unfeeling, hardened shell that he coated over himself now in his late teens. I had seen his many sides, his numerous phases, from the fragility that came with his childhood, his softness, his empathy, his unreal sensitivity to the dark, heavy aura he had allowed to overwhelm him, changing him into a fucking degenerate. A wicked, scheming mastermind. The devil's spurn. A seething, vengeful beast. An unforgiving brute. A diabolical monster.

I had seen Sean Ayomide as many things.

Many, many things.

However, over my years, I had never seen him as a dead man.

"One more thing before you go."

I watched all the confidence disappear from his eyes like it was a spell that timed out. It zapped out. Varnished with a speed faster than light.

Watching Sean through a vision of red, my head was filling up with the kind of vile thoughts that a person should never entertain. Horrid things that you should never wish against your worst enemy. The kind of foul and graphic things that you would block a child from seeing on television. It seldom took a thing to get me to this point. Even Sean knew. And I was certain that was the cause of the sudden regret that I could see in his eyes.

However, it was too late to take anything back now.

He had won. Sean had won. He had gotten his 'revenge' and I was the one that was left to suffer the repercussions of everything he had done, the set up he had put me in, the lies he had to tell in order to attain his goals, the way he had to make sure that Dabeluchi was so hurt, broken by something she thought I did. Something I knew she knew I would never truly do to her. He had had succeeded in turning the love she had for me, the safeness she felt in my arms, the trust that she took so long to build in me into nothing but hate, fear, and just clear and vile repulsion against me.

Everything that had become my happiness had come crashing down, all because Sean was adamant in ruining everything that had to do with me over my 'betrayal'. My 'betrayal'. If only he knew how easy it was for me to say a few words to destabilize him and all he thought he knew... If only. However, I couldn't stoop that low, irrespective of the fact that he had already stooped low himself. I had never been one to fight my battles with words, anyway.

It was left for me to do it the way that I have always known best.

Marching towards him, I felt the vibration all around my body, my head hot and heavy with an incomprehensible rage, and every ounce of empathy and feeling in me, numb. Dead. All I knew was the loathing feeling I felt against Sean, the tear-triggering, eye-reddening, and blood-curling anger that controlled my entire body in that instant.

"Fuck you, Ayomide."

And before I knew it, Sean was thrown into the air like a lightweight and diving into the speakers. I think I pushed him.

"Fuck you and fuck your Daddy too."

The screams of the entire room didn't faze me, as I headed for Sean who was buried beneath the speakers, wailing in obvious pain. I wasn't sure who and who I hit, but a series of blows connected from my fists into the faces and bodies of multiple guys whose hands latched around me, in a bid to stop me, all of them collecting solid hooks, crosses, and uppercuts one after the other as their hands touched me.

After all, none of these guys tried to stop Sean when he was coming at me earlier.

"Acha! Calm down!—"

A mean left hook smashed into the cheekbone of the guy who tried to come in front of me, and Casper, after he absolutely ate that terrible punch, stepped back and away from me, leaving me the opportunity to shove through the other guys in my way before latching onto Sean's shirt in a vice grip.

Taken over by a spirit that could only have summoned itself from the pits of Hell, I absolutely mauled my best friend.

It was like I was descending all my frustration on him, the emotional wreck that came with the helplessness I felt when he stood there and spewed lies and misconceptions about me to the belief of everyone, the helplessness I felt when I looked into Dabeluchi's eyes and all I saw was vagueness, the pain and desperation I felt when I tried to speak, tried to explain to her, tried to defend myself to everyone, especially her, and no matter what I said, no matter how much I bled through my words, no one believed me. Dabeluchi didn't believe me. I poured all that frustration, desperation, pain, tears, every fucking thing I felt into the beating I gave Sean.

Frankly, I didn't hurt him more than he hurt me. The pain that nudged in me emotionally equated to the physical laceration and savagery that Sean was taking from my hands.

Each second that I reanalyzed it in my head, how low that he had to go, that video he used against me – a video that was far from what he was painting to everyone and Dabeluchi. The way he influenced JJ into lying against me too, talking about a bet that I had NEVER done with Dabeluchi. Ever. How he singlehandedly turned the entire crowd against me, inciting disgust from them for me, and most painfully, how much he had hurt Dabeluchi with his false impressions, using the very thing that he knew would break her the most – that is me – to demolish her spirit completely. How he had to even insult my Aurora in all of this...

Each second that the visuals replayed in my head, his words, his cackles, his wicked grinning eyes replayed in my head, I was uncontrollable. Dragging him. Throwing. Punching. Kicking. Stomping. Mangling. Strangling. Mutilating every skin and bone in Sean's body for all this pain inside me was worth.

Crazy.

Crazy how everything could fall apart in one second of making one awful decision.

And, no, it was not the screaming and shrieking of the girls in the living room who now definitely saw me as a brooding, vicious monster. A treacherous creature. A menacing evil. And, it wasn't guys who had collected their fair share of aggression, either. Whom I was almost certain hated me now too. Neither was it Sean who was laying there in a pile of his own blood and slime, on the brink between life and death. No. It wasn't any of them.

It was the immediate emptiness I felt the second that I knew she had left.

I can't explain it. There was a sudden surge of breeze that whooshed past me, like a part of my being, my soul that detached from me. Not just emotionally. Physically, too. How, just how could you feel a person leave a presence?

But, I did.

I did.

I felt it, the second that Dabeluchi had picked on her heels and ran out of this Living Room, leaving this scene.

It weakened me. Instantly. I felt all my fight leave me, all the strength that I had varnish into nothingness. The fact that immediately, I was overpowered by my set boys was proof of that. Instantly, I was on the ground, pinned down by a multitude of boys who didn't let up, holding me down and pulling me far away from anything that was even remotely close to Sean.

I didn't even struggle. I watched there as everything was a variety of chaos, from the Igbo Sisters running after Dabeluchi through the opened exit, classmates helping Sean off, freaking out about yet the second emergency of the night after Ghadafi, and the boys who were on me, making it difficult to even breathe, talk less of move or struggle. What these guys did not know was that Sean was suddenly hardly my concern at that moment. Not when I was desperately trying to latch onto the little to inexistent hopes of Dabeluchi hearing me out.

"Free me," I threw my shoulders away from the grip that latched onto it, a barrage of boys rushing around and behind me as though they didn't trust that I was not on a mission to get my hands back on Sean again.

The entire place was a mess, with bodies all around me and at the door that Dabeluchi had ran from, eyes peering desperately into it as my steps leveled up. I had managed to brush past obstructing bodies until I was a close proximity to the exit when someone nearly collided into me in obvious urgency.

"A-Acha! Wait!—"

Due to the familiarity that hit me with the voice, along with the pang of a sharp, stinging venom, my head shot up to catch a view of JJ, who was now standing in front of me, staring at me with all the color drained off of his face.

It was the audacity of the nigga to think that he would stand more than two seconds in front of me after the stunt that he had joined Sean to pull, the conspiracy that he had set me up against with my former best friend.

"Two seconds," I looked JJ dead in the eye, warning him, "You have two seconds to walk away from me. One. Tw—"

"Okay, okay!" His hands raised in a panic gesture of surrender as he literally dashed away from my front, nearly getting knocked down when my shoulders brushed aggressively past him in my bid to storm off.

I had one too many things to deal with already, and he was not any of them at the moment.

"We will 'chat' next year, Jeffery Jarah Jarah."

Those were my last words to him, a brooding threat laid to him as I spoke over my shoulders and watched the sheer horror creep onto his face as I knew he was trying to analyze everything that that statement – no, warning – meant.

As much as the inside of me thrashed over what Sean and JJ had done, my heart pounded even faster at the implications that it had brought upon me.

I was a hopeless person at the moment, fighting for a lost cause, fighting for a girl that I was almost certain that I had lost, and no matter how angry I was at my friends, nothing beat the fear that lingered in the streams of my blood, the sheer terror that I felt having to come to terms with the harsh reality that I was not ready to come to terms with.

The truth remained that I couldn't stand it. The thought of actually losing Dabeluchi, the thought of having her leave me because of all these mess destroyed me in more ways that words that could explain. The mere thought of losing that string of hope that I was holding onto made me feel like there was a dull ache, an empty hole deep down in the pit of my gut. The kind of fear that made your blood freeze over so hard until you could feel shock on your fingers. I have had so many experiences in life, from the pressure from my father to the feeling of walking on eggshells under his roof, but frankly, nothing, and I mean nothing had made me more afraid like this moment.

Losing Dabeluchi Orji is the scariest thing that I have ever had to face.

A thought that I was not strong enough to endure.

"God, please help me," I muttered a silent prayer as I stepped outside, the harmattan wind slapping into my face and concentrating the already thick air that I had been suffocating with all these while.

I sniffed, the brewing catarrh from the dry air mixed in with the phlegm that was triggering from the tears that started to form at the lids of my eyes choking me somewhere in my throat. My eyes were hot, and I knew it wasn't the air.

"God, please..." I said again, burying my face into my hands, shaky breaths heaving into my trembling palms, "Help me, please. I'm begging you, Lord. I don't remember the last time I prayed and I'm sorry. I promise I will be more serious with you after this trying moments, but if you still are interested in me, your son, please hear me out. Please, please don't let me lose this girl..."

Wiping the stain of tear on my cheek, I sighed into the night, looking around the empty and quiet streets outside of Chambers Estate.

Dabeluchi was nowhere to be seen.

She was nowhere to be seen.

I was torn between sitting on the tarred road to bawl my eyes out and running into the streets, screaming and ripping off my clothes like a madman.

"Fuck," I cursed, as it dawned on me that I may have been on an endless and hopeless journey, looking all around me at every nook and cranny of the street that was void of Dabeluchi or anything that even looked like her. "Oh, fuck."

For God's sake, if there was anything that scared me more than losing her, it was having her get hurt.

I wasn't afraid to lose Dabeluchi just for myself alone, and the fact that she was somewhere, anywhere, roaming. A teenage girl roaming the streets of Lagos in the thick of midnight. That terrified me even more. Anything could happen. She could be anywhere. Chambers was a relatively safe space, but there was no guarantee that she was even in the Estate. What if, just what if Dabeluchi had actually exited the estate?

Who knew the things that she was up to at the moment? The thoughts that were running through her mind? The missions she was up to? Fuck it, what if Dabeluchi had ran off to take matters into her hands and go on a search for her Mum and brother? Casper had carefully told me the consequences if she did this, and if I remembered clearly, her friends had gone after her and yet, the Igbo Sisters were not even anywhere to be found either.

"God. God. God, abeg..."

Frantic, I got my phone out of my pockets and started dialing the only person that I knew and trusted could help me at a time like this, my heart beating so erratically that I feared I was at the verge of dropping onto the streets anytime soon from an alarming high blood pressure.

With shaky hands, I brought the phone to my ears, hoping that she would pick up.

"Mummy...?" I called amidst the ringing, "Mummy, please pick... I need help."

She didn't pick up.

Not even after I called an extra seven times.

"Argh!" I growled in pain, fighting the urge to throw my phone into the air in a fit of frustration. "Why the fuck is she not answering her phone?" Groans of frustration elicited from me as I sunk onto the ground in defeat, hoping that somehow, it would open and swallow me whole. Any unreal action, any bizarre happening, anything to make me become aware that this was no reality and it was all just one big, fucked up nightmare.

But, no.

No.

It felt as real as it could get. Every single fucking sensation. I could feel everything, from the cold tarred ground beneath me where I sat and curled myself into a ball, shaking in my own wrap, trembling as I tried to hold myself together in a hug.

I could feel the knot in my chest as it tightened the more I deeply inhaled and exhaled the cold, dry air, heaving out shaky painful breaths. Physically painful breaths that mixed with the excruciating acidity in the air. Damn it, I could FEEL every damn thing here! Could feel my entire body, soul and spirit freezing to death, so cold to the point that my teeth was chattering, hands jittering, and yet my eyes burned with the hotness of my tears. So hot. As if I was crying blood.

As though what poured down from my face was blood and not tears.

I just sat there, in the witches' hour, having yet the worst mental breakdown I had ever had all my life, a kid all alone on the empty streets of Chambers Estate.

God knows how long I had been there, how long I had been crying, but I knew myself to be the most strong-willed person I knew. My girl was out there, god knows where, and if she managed to be safe and sound, there was no guarantee that I would not lose her still anyway. No one could help me, I was alone in this, and if I sat here crying, then nothing would be fixed tonight. I had to do something.

"Even if it means touring the city of Lagos by this time," I made the resolve, standing up to my feet with that decision.

I had gone a few distances away from my house, but it was not too late. If I took one of my father's cars, he may kill me when he found out, but I would have tried at least. I would have tried to find Dabeluchi. I would have driven round the entire city and found my girl and tried to make things right.

Dying afterwards did not seem so scary.

***

It took me an hour and a half driving through every street I knew in Lekki Crown until the gods of common sense bestowed their grace upon my head.

I knew Dabeluchi more that she would give me credit, and through observation and some level of observation, if she was not busy running away at the slightest threat that shot its ugly face at her, she was interested in two things: finding a cloak to hide herself, the way that she had practically done her entire life, shielding her potential from the world, hiding out away from the public, preferring to stay in the secrecy of her privacy. Just like how she had preferred to keep us a secret when we first started. And, two, she needed a shelter, a space she trusted, a safe space to hide that cloak that carried all her baggage, good and bad.

It was so stupid for me to not have figured it out earlier, I blamed my slowness on the migraines that was torturing me from the frustration of the night. As I reversed the car towards the road that I was almost a hundred percent sure that I would find her, eyes never moving away from the dark, hooded shadow of the hut that was a few distance away from me.

That same hut that I had met up with her in the day we first went to WonderCoast together.

The same hut that I had picked her up from, that evening she had ran away from home, crying as she clung onto me – her last hope.

The same hut where I had picked her up from when we also went to GreenLand together, where I poured out my heart to her and told her things about my father that I had never told anyone all my life.

We had subconsciously made it our spot. Many times before our classmates had known we were dating, when me and Dabeluchi were pretending to not know each other in public while seeing in private, that was the place we always ran to. After all the toxicity from our classmates and from home, the suffocation that came with shutting each other out during the day while dreaming of the euphoria of seeing again and basking on the what-if imaginations of the world accepting us; after all that, this hut was our get together. Our safe space. Our spot.

It was indeed stupid for Dabeluchi to think that I would not find her here...

Made me wonder. Maybe she did want me to find her. The thought that a part of her wanted me to still come to her, even after everything warmed my heart, filling it with a hope that I tried to tame down, just in case I was ending up deceiving myself and overthinking everything.

I could never know with Dabeluchi Orji.

Nonetheless, I was grateful to God for helping me find her at least.

"Thank you, Lord," I whispered, a silent prayer for the remaining success of all my plans tonight following that gratitude as I parked the car at the side of the road. "Show your grace on me with this girl. You know that my intentions for her are pure and not evil, Lord..."

With that, I stepped out of the car.

Having that I had the vision of an eagle, I expected to look out into the hut and spot anything that looked like her. Unfortunately, it was hard to make out much in the thick of the darkness around the area. All I saw were deceiving shadows in the dimness of the lights.

"Aurora?"

I took a further step back, my heart beating harder than normal all of a sudden.

"Aurora?"

And, another step. I had never been more nervous, never because of a girl all my life. Ever.

"Aurora, are you there?"

At this point, my heart was in my throat. I could feel it thick in there, suffocating me more than the dry air could ever do. With each step I took, no obvious inclination to her presence and most definitely, no answers to my call of her name either.

"Aurora."

I saw her.

Jesus.

I saw Dabeluchi.

Or at least, a silhouette of the girl.

Sitting right there in the darkness, like nothing but a shadow of herself, a mere ghost, cold, pale, and unfeeling, there she was. There was Dabeluchi. There was my Aurora.

"Aurora..."

I called again, stepping in closer to get a second sight of her, a clearer one. And I didn't even need to shine a torch light on her face to see all that was her in that darkness, the dim lights were enough to capture her: from the emptiness that lingered in her eyes, the lack of soul in it, the smeared makeup from supposed crying. I knew she was crying. Her mascara was drained, from the lids and down to her chin, the glitter smeared everywhere around her eyes yet doing nothing to hide the deadness in her eyes. Her face was a scattered disarray of colors and tears and grief. Like she was dying and mourning her own soul. It looked like a canvas of pain, an aesthetic of dysphoria, was painted on her face.

All the way, she was not even looking at me.

It was as though she had not even noticed yet that I was even here.

"Aurora, it's me," I said, approaching softly, stopping three feet in front of the entrance of the hut. "It's me, Clyde."

It had been forever that I had called myself that. And needless to say, it seemed to do the trick.

The Dabeluchi I knew, the reaction I expected was screaming and jumping. Desperation to be anywhere, but near or around me. She would kick and writhe and jump and shout, pulling her hair out and scratching her own skin to try to run away from me, if I dared to approach at a time that she wanted to be nowhere around me. But, she shocked me this time...

She shocked me with her reaction.

The moment she heard 'Clyde', I saw the way something awakened in her eyes, like a flash of light – or life – in her glassy pupils. It was for a nano second. Disappeared faster than it appeared. And calmly, her eyes lingered for two seconds, carefully searching for something on the ground, before it slowly travelled up, her gaze resting when those soulless eyes landed on me.

On 'Clyde'.

"Hi."

It was me, to her.

She didn't respond.

"Aurora, I have been driving around the entire Lekki Crown to find you," I said to her, continuing my speech even in her silence, "It's dangerous out here. I'm worried about you..."

Not a single word.

She just sat there, arms hugging her body and knees pressing onto her chest, staring at me with the most empty stare that I had ever seen in her eyes all my life.

Dabeluchi had never looked at me like that before.

Ever.

I always saw some emotion. Before I got to know her, it was fear. After I got to know her, it was Love. Occasionally, submission. At regular intervals, it was trust. Obsession. Addiction. I could name it over and over. When all had fallen apart earlier, it was betrayal I saw in her eyes. Hurt. Disappointment. A little anger. But, now... Now... Nothing. Just nothing. No single emotion.

It terrified me.

"For the first time in my life, I can't read you, Aurora..." I said to her, trying to keep my voice tame as I literally felt the world fall apart at my feet, on her awfully punishing silence, "Dabi, please, say something to me. Anything."

Nothing.

"Everything you saw in that video is not what it looks like," I tried to explain, nonetheless, and I knew that my desperation was clear and oozing from every pore on my skin, "That video was made before I even got to know you. Before I even came to you for the first time in Dance Class. A-And, I only said all that because at the time, I didn't think that you would even give me a chance. Not because I felt embarrassed to be associated with you, like you may think. Not even close. Between you and me, I have been the one always feeling that I was not deserving of your time or your love or your attention. I never thought you could give me a chance, even if I was the last man alive. You were the price, the standard, not me. And, I never EVER bet on you. Never, Aurora. N-Not even for one second. Those were lies, I swear. And for the life of me, I still can't wrap my head around the fact that my friends could have stooped so low to the point of lies, just to break you enough to leave me...

But, remember what we used to say, Aurora. It's me and you against the world. The world has never been in support of us, not even tonight. But we have never cared. We have been able to move past the obstacles it has thrown at us, up until this point. Please, hang on, this one last time. Trust me, this one last time, Aurora. Let me fix this. Let me fix us, please. You have always had faith in me, in my words, in us, please don't let it wean in these trying times. Let the world lose again to us, like it always has been doing in the past. Aurora, please, please, you have no idea how terrifying it is for me to even fathom the thought of losing you. I can't feel my heart, babe. I-I can't f-feel my f-fucking heart, Dabeluchi Orji—"

I stopped, when my words choked me, the sobs that I had been building up in me the entire time coming up to latch a hold around my throat, my eyes burning again from tears I threatened not to dare fall. Tears that I didn't seem to know how to even control anymore.

Placing a hand against my chest, I pressed against the spot by the left that pulsated with pain. Breathing hard, in and out, as I watched an unfeeling Dabeluchi through a tear-blurred vision.

"Don't do this, babe," I said to her, my tone pleading with a sickening despair, a pitiful hopelessness, "Please don't do this to me. To us... Dabeluchi, have I ever asked you for anything before? Have I ever begged you to do anything else for me? Please. Please, open your heart to me one last time. J-Just one, please."

She blinked, the closest thing to a reaction. She did it again. And again. Before she took a stand, getting up on her feet. I couldn't read her, couldn't tell what she was thinking, but I wasn't going to back down on possibilities.

"Come," I said to her, extending a shaky hand towards her, "Come. Let's just go home and forget all these. Hm? Babe? Come..."

Dabeluchi didn't take my hand. Just stared blankly at it for what seemed like an eternity.

Then, she walked around it.

Before my eyes, she took a turn around the curve of me, walking away from my hand. Away from the hut. Away from me. Dabeluchi was leaving. Leaving me...

"Aurora!" I ran after her, refusing to give up, following her with my heart in my hands, "Aurora, wait. Wait, please!—"

"— I am done with you, Marcus Acha."

Her words, the first of them that came out of her mouth slapped me. It was not just what she said, it was the doneness that came with it. The note of finality. The certainty. The lack of emotion, like making such a decision like that did nothing to her. Meant nothing to her. Nothing. Unlike with the way that it felt like the entire world had come crashing down on me, the fragments of the hope I felt, falling down at my feet, its pieces piercing into me like  bits of broken glass. A painful wake of realization.

"A-Aurora—"

"You crashed every bit of faith I had in you tonight," her voice, emotionless, wounded me. "Every single one. Where do I start? First, Marc, I find out tonight that while I was crying to you about how helpless and scarred I was by the person who ousted my family to the public, you knew about it and indulged me and my fear. Refusing to tell me that you knew. You knew what the Sisters did, but you lied to me that you didn't. You knew about Chika's diary, but you refused to tell me. You knew everything, every detail, but you kept your mouth shut and preferred to lie to my face each time that I asked you.—"

"—I didn't want to—"

"—But you did, anyway," she easily cut me off, calm as a bird, relaxed as a sage, "You did, Marc. It hurt me." She said these with the most emotionless look in her eyes. "It hurt me very deeply, Marcus. It did. Only to make matters worse when all these while you left me in the dark, you were sharing secrets with Kelechi Uwa. Kelechi of all people. Even after knowing all I feel about her. Against her.—"

"— She came to me," I tried to explain, again, "I wish she didn't. I hated to keep things away from you. I hated myself every second of it.—"

"—And, of course, the best way to go about things was setting me up to find out for myself in the most gruesome way that I could," she spoke, her voice still as she did.

My words were died down in my throat, all my defenses suddenly empty.

"The scariest part in all of these was the fact that you looked me in the eyes while lying through your teeth and I couldn't tell," she said to me, "Do you know how scary it is for you to trust someone so much to the point that you can't even detect a lie off them. How many lies have I failed to detect off you, Marc?"

I grimaced, shaking my head as the pain in my chest got fiercer. "No, Aurora, no..."

"Then, I am still battling how to come to terms with the fact that I am so gullible with you to the point that I can't know when a lie comes out of your mouth, and then, I see a video of you expressing your distaste against me," she said, and for the first time in our conversation, I sensed some emotion in her demeanor.

Frankly, I wasn't sure if it was a good thing because the hurt, the sheer pain in her eyes, in her words when she said that. Every detail in that second, from the twitch on her bottom lip to the brokenness in her irises, it tore me to absolute shreds.

"I hear all you said that day, whatever day it was, and you stand before me, beating your chest that it is a misunderstanding and swearing that you love me and I am expected to believe you—" Her words broke, her last words cracking painfully as her eyes started to moisten with what I supposed were tears.

With the deadness she had managed to put over her demeanor, it shocked me that she still had the ability to even produce tears. To cry.

"I am supposed to believe you, Marc," she said, her voice a breathy haze, "I am supposed to believe you. When I can't even tell what is the truth and what is a lie with you? How the fuck do I do that, Marcus fucking Acha?!"

Her words injured something deep in me, my lack of words wounded me even more. I hated to see her like this, I hated to be the one to have her so damaged right now. So broken. I hated myself now more than I hated this damned situation.

"Every image I have of you is stuck in uncertainty, Marcus," she said to me, spitting words of acid point blank, "Everything I thought I knew about you feels like some kind of altered memory in my head now. I don't know what you are anymore, I don't know what to believe and what not to believe with you anymore.—"

"— I am still me, Aurora. It's me, Marcus—"

"— But the Marcus I know never lies," she said to me, moist eyes following mine as her voice came off in broken whispers, a messed up camcorder sound, "The Marcus I know doesn't lie. He doesn't hurt. He doesn't betray. He never does anything wrong. He is always there for me, he is perfect. Clyde is perfect.—"

"Aurora, nobody can be perfect. Not even me. I–I am still a human being. I appreciate that you put me on a pedestal, I appreciate that in your eyes, I am as perfect as you think I am. But, I can make mistakes. I will make mistakes.  And I made mistakes too with you, and I admit that. I am sorry, babe. I am mad sorry. I can't say how sorry I am enough. You can't cancel me out just because I failed to meet your expectations of perfection..."

"You beat up your best friend like a man gone mad," She still insisted, adamantly, "Marc, I have never seen you like that before. I can't even tell what I know about you anymore, I feel like I don't even know you anymore. I always saw you as someone who could never hurt a fly, but you–Marc, you showed me too many sides of you tonight that I can't wrap my head around them. I can't. I don't think I ever will."

I stared at her, eyes darting in growing panic."Ever?"

"You reminded me of my father when I saw you beating up your friend like that," she said to me, and it looked like something in her died again when she said that, "Only a man like Chief Ugochukwu Orji hits a man even when he is on the ground. When he is helpless. Dying. Begging for mercy. Without courtesy of any bond they must have shared in the past—"

"Am I really that bad in your eyes now, Aurora?" I had to ask her, my heart breaking by the second, "To compare me to your father?"

"No," she responded, "And that's what scares me with you now. The fact that I don't have a clear perception anymore. The fact that I don't even think I can anymore. Marc, you really hurt me. Y-You really did.—"

"How many times should I say I am sorry?" I asked her, it was an earnest question.

"It doesn't change anything," she said, a finality in her voice, that emotionlessness slowly coming back to take over her again. She stared at me with eyes that said nothing, makeup draining and demeanor, defeated. "Marc, I don't know why you came here. Go back to your car and drive away now. I am not even demanding. I'm begging at this point. Leave me alone. Forever."

No...

"You know?" she said before she turned her back on me, "When I thought you actually fell for a girl like me, I kept asking myself 'why me?' and it j-just–It all makes sense now. Can't believe I was so damn stupid. This is not even on you, Marc."

With that, she turned around and started to walk away to God-knows-where.

I watched behind her as she walked away, pulling away from me for the one thousandth time in a space of twenty-four hours. My vision was a dark, hazy field, and with each step she took further away from me, I felt the slit inside my chest, tearing deeper and deeper into my core. Dabeluchi was leaving and she was leaving with my soul and spirit. Not just a half of me, but the bulk of me.

Expectedly, I lost my mind.

I lost it. I lost my fucking mind.

"Dabeluchi Aurora Orji, you must be joking with yourself if you think I am going to stand here and watch you walk out of my life! Never! I will never let this happen! Not after EVERYTHING we have shared! For God's sake, do you think I am bluffing when I say I love you?! I LOVE you, Dabeluchi Aurora Orji!—"

I only stopped talking when she stopped walking, pausing on her feet with her back turned against me in an abrupt stop. If I didn't know any better, I would say that my words jad hit her like a train-wreck. I guess I didn't know any better, then.

She stood with her back faced to me, and I wasn't even done yet.

"I love you, Aurora," I said to her, "More than I have ever loved anyone or anything all my life. Knowing you has been one of the best things that have ever happened to me, and I cannot feel complete if you're apart. You stand six feet away from me, but fuck it, it feels like six feet under. I feel unalive when you're not here..."

Silence.

Just me, the air, and Dabeluchi's back, unmoving.

Silence and more silence.

"Dabeluchi, won't you say anything?" I asked her back that faced me, "Tell me you never felt the same way and I promise I will walk away. I will leave you and find a way to battle unrequited love and be okay. I just need a solid affirmation from you."

There was more silence, but I waited.

I waited for her response.

Waited.

And kept waiting.

Until Dabeluchi finally spoke, back still turned against me.

"When I was eight, I drowned for the first time in my life..."

Her voice was low, but clear. Wavering, but precise. However, nothing succeeded its calmness. Her entire demeanor was relaxed again, her body still as she spoke in a mellowed, unbothered tone.

I stood there, slightly lost with where this was going, but listened anyway.

"I remember it," she said, "I remember drowning. I remember what it was like to be under water, suffocating, crying out for air, for life. Literally and figuratively. I remember the feeling of drowning to be the worst feeling ever. I have the memory living rent free in my head..."

I still listened, attentively.

"I also remember," she said, "that same day, literally seconds after I had suffered drowning, my brother was hospitalized. And I remember going with my Mum to the hospital to see him and when the doctor asked what happened to Stephen, Mum told him that she caught me drowning my twin brother in the bath tub. Stephen was wet with tub water and he had passed out. And guess what, Marc... I was dry and unhurt."

Chills passed through me, as I started to understand where this was going...

"Only one of us drowned that day, according to Mum," she told me, "And despite my certainty and memories of the event, it was not me."

"Dabelu—"

She turned around, eyes blank and categorial.

"So? Do you still love me?"

I stared at her, understanding what she was trying to do. How she seemed to be desperate to give me every reason why she was unlovable. Every reason why I shouldn't love her.

Unfortunately for her, my feelings hadn't changed.

I answered Dabeluchi. "Yes. I do."

She hardly fazed. Barely moved a muscle. And without missing a beat, she continued.

"I hear voices in my head," she said to me, "They tell me to do things. They tell me to feel things. They talk to me, about me, against me. And growing up, people who found out were certain that I was possessed with demons. Demons in me. Do you still love me, Marc?"

I stared at her, standing there and certain she wouldn't like the answer I was about to give her.

"Yes."

She nodded, took a step further towards me.

"Okay, then," she said, "What if I told you that I know the taste of blood. Not just figuratively. Literally. I mean this literally. I have tasted blood, Marc, and it is sweet. Do you say you still fucking love me?"

There was no easier way for me to put this for Dabeluchi...

"Yes," I said, nodding.

She stood there, hiding the fact that she was bamboozled by my answer. However, the last thing she did was give up. She had more up her sleeve.

"I never told you the full truth about why I ran away from Home, did I?" She said, and I hated to admit that those words hit me more than I wished they did. "Do you want to know what I did, Marc? To see if you would still 'love' me, then, Marc?"

Unsure of what to expect, I stared at her, waiting for whatever bombshell she had to throw at me.

"I burned my father's mistress with a hot, pressing iron," she told me, a revelation that threw me a little off guard. Involuntarily, I stepped back. "Yeah. I don't just drown people. Or stab people with mathset compasses when I am provoked. Sometimes, I also use hot irons on their faces and make sure to press down on their faces with it as hard as I can. What about that, Marc?"

"Why didn't you tell me that happened, Aurora?—"

"— So, you don't still love me, do you, Marc?" She asked me instead, averting the question I just asked her as she stepped up, a subtle frustration in her question, "Do you STILL love me now, Marcus?! Do you still love me after everything that I just fucking told you?!"

I just kept staring at her, hoping she would calm down. Waiting for her to calm down. She needed to be calm to hear the answer that I was about to give her. Dabeluchi had to be calm to take all of this all in...

She stared at me, eyes now blazing, lips quivering as she waited for my answer.

And, I gave it to her.

Bluntly.

"Yes."

Dabeluchi lost her fucking mind.

"Why the FUCK do you like a girl like ME, Marcus Acha?!" She screamed out, her voice in a screeching shrek as she lost every bit of cool her demeanor had been covering the whole entire time. "Why, Marcus Acha?! What the fuck about me would a guy like you like?! You have it all, Marc! You are good looking, you are talented, you are a fucking star in Castron High! Any girl would worship at your fucking feet for a chance. Just ONE chance! You have it all! You have everything it takes to go out there and find a beautiful girl to love you and reciprocate everything you do for her! You give so much fucking love and I CAN'T DO THAT! I am not capable of loving the way YOU do! And yet, you have options, and you choose to settle for me?! Me?!

I am MESSED UP! In more ways you could NEVER imagine! I am sick, Marcus! It plays with me, my head, my living! I was diagnosed with Schizophrenia at the age of TEN, Marc. Ten years old! For the last seven years, I have been ANYTHING but sane! What the FUCK are you doing with a girl who is unstable in the head, who can will herself to alter memories of you at any time! At will! I can make myself forget you ever existed in my life, throw away everything we ever had into thin air like it never mattered to me! That's NOT what you need. To love a girl like Dabeluchi Aurora Orji!

Your friends said it in that video, I AM NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU! Not physically and definitely not even emotionally! I don't throw myself under the bus or on rail tracks for someone because I am in love, not like the way you do! If push comes to shove, I would throw YOU on the tracks! I can't love the way you do, Marc! Not even for the life of me! You don't need me! And I know you know that! You don't need me in any fucking way, so why me?! Marcus Acha, why the FUCK did you choose me?! WHY ME?!"

"Why you, Dabeluchi?" I said, stepping up to her, an appall in my undertone, "Babe, you have some nerve belittling yourself like that. And, comparing yourself to people you shouldn't be comparing yourself too. What girls do I choose over you, Dabeluchi? Girls with no substance? No depth, like you have? Girls whose heads are only filled with frivolities and materialism? And how dare you say such things about yourself? It's not anybody's fault that life hit you with things that made you not know how to love, how the fuck is that your fault? You have schizophrenia, you said, a disorder I know little about but enough to know that it would have been difficult to find a passion in that situation. But you found yours in Dance, your potential and your talent. You opened me up to Dance too, something I was sure I gave up on a long time ago! You did that! And that's what you do when I'm with you! You open me up to things that I shut down: my long lost passions, a new priority asides the vanity with school that I once allowed myself to lose in. You did that! And you made yourself the source of my joy, the last ray of hope I had in this life! And you dare ask me why you?

It is you, Dabeluchi, and it will ALWAYS be you. It will never not be you. Till the day I die. You will hate to hear me say this, but I love you, Aurora. You. You. You. I love you."

Dabeluchi stared at me, her eyes wet with the tears she had been holding in for so long. Her body quaking as she cried, her lips, eyes, hands, twitching as she stood there, choking and overwhelmed with everything I just said.

I said nothing more than that. No matter how much I wanted to hug her so bad.

It was all up to her at this point.

"No..." she said, shaking her head adamantly, tears pouring all over her pretty face. "No, Marc, no...."

What was she saying? The thought of it, figuring her out, scared me all the more. I had done all I could do, said all I could say. Every goddamn things. So what was she trying to say? What was the negation all about?

She pretty much made it clear with her words, words that I knew that even she didn't believe.

"I don't believe you, Marcus Acha."

⎯⎯ ୨ ୧ ⎯⎯

A/N: Damn, that was terrible.😪
Nonetheless, we aren't done just yet. Almost there. Almost. It gets a bit worse, but hang on. It also gets better in a way. Hopefully, you can pick up how.

DABELUCHI

It had been about forty minutes since I officially broke up with Marcus Bruno Acha.

And, without sugarcoating anything, I felt like dying.

"I don't believe you," I had said to him, four words that shit him down in an instant. But frankly, whatever he felt, I knew I felt it more.

Saying that to Marcus, seeing love in his eyes for me, and having to shut it down so brutally. Over my own uncertainties, my insecurities. It was the most painful thing that I had ever had to do. He was someone that I knew would give his life for me, someone who had put his entire life on hold just for me, many times. Countless times. But he was also someone whom at the back of my mind, those sniggering voices were telling me he was screaming deceit.

How could you see love as big and unconditional as the type Marc had to give me, Love that only a supernatural being could give, and still have your doubts?

I wanted him to give me reasons to justify my uncertainties about him, but no matter what I said, no matter how I talked down on myself, Marc still thought of me as gold. Or at least said he did. He looked sincere, but he also looked sincere that night we talked and he told me he knew nothing about my friends betraying me. If his lying face and his genuine face were so identical, then what was the truth with him? How could I have been able to tell?

This shit hurt. Bad. I felt gutted, empty, like my entire soul was crushed and that doom of darkness and clouds over my head were so heavy that it pressed down against my shoulders. But I was so wrapped, wrapped and hung up on a guy who was possibly lying to my face about everything he felt for me.

I was a walking, devastating and pathetic burden. On myself. On everyone around me.

He refused to leave, even after I told him we had to quit things. To break up. Truth be told, I never wanted to see Marc again, and no matter how much I made it clear, he insisted on staying in his car that was hanging around the hut, just to make sure that I was safe for the night. That was how he put it. I couldn't tell if he meant this from genuine care in his heart. Or if it was just a scheme.

I just didn't know what to think about him.

And the fact that everyone around me had given me a reason to doubt them, the more that I thought about how the people who meant the most to me had forsaken me made me feel like there was nothing I had to cling onto anymore. As I stood there, staring at the car that belonged to Marc, I almost couldn't even stand the sight of him. Or anything that had him in it.

Was it anger? I couldn't tell. I couldn't decipher a single emotion when I felt so many in a span of a second.

"Leave here."

I wasn't sure who spoke, but I obeyed.

The car didn't budge when I left the hut. Marcus didn't come out of it either. I figured that either he had fallen asleep, unwillingly, or I was just in a proximity that was impossible for him to see. If he made a move to come at me, nonetheless, I knew that the next thing I would have done was run. As fast as I could.

But he never did.

No matter how further I walked away from that location. Not even after I had walked a distance that I was certain that was a stretch from the hut. The quietness of the night was intoxicating, but not in a good way. Whatever road I was on, only God knew. From a distance, I was hearing the carol of the bells – a song that reminded me how Christmas was near.

Christmas that I barely even knew anything about. A holiday I had never celebrated, but could clearly hear from a family house in whatever distance from here, playing at the top of their speakers, in preparation for Christmas.

A happy family.

In that instant, it felt like everything that I never had was coming back to me. Every thing that I lacked. A family. Friends. Marcus Acha. Staggering onto the streets of the empty city that had lights of Christmas dancing around the streets and soft sweet sounds of carols soothing in the air, tears poured down my face, a knot thickening in my chest and making in difficult for me to breathe.

Granted, standing was a feat. Soon, I was falling onto the middle of the cold tarred ground, quaking with tears that didn't finish and gradually feeling the quietness in the atmosphere get altered by the noise that started to form in my head. The voices in my head had many answers to questions I asked, unfavorable ones. My head felt as heavy as it was noisy, the voices so loud that I had to press my hands to my ears, in a failed and desperate to block all the noise out as my eyes blinded with hot, stinging tears.

"Stop," I cried, tasting salty liquid on my lips as I sat there on the road, shaking and trembling with the fear that was starting to creep onto me from the distorted voices that got louder, singing the most sardonic tones and laughing with the most sadistic cackles I had ever heard. "Please, stop... Stop. Stop. Stop! STOP!—"

"— Dabeluchi?"

I jumped up, startled at the new sound that was far different from the demonic sounds that played with me in my head.

Nothing could have even prepared me for the shock I got when I turned around to see the person that I could have least expected, standing there before me with the most concerned and kindest eyes that I had ever seen.

"Kelechi?"

It is her.

Kelechi Uwa, my biggest enemy stood there in front of me, shining bright in darkness, like she was light. Her eyes glowing a color I had never seen before alongside that fine, flowing yellow dress that contrasted her dark skin, blowing gloriously in the night. For the first time ever, I didn't feel a threat seeing her. Not even a little. Even when I knew I should have.

Was she real?

That was all I could ask myself. It felt like I was dead and Kelechi was my angel, an eerie comfort swimming deep within me.

"How did you find me?" I had to ask her.

She looked a bit surprised that I didn't attack her. Or do anything rash at the sight of her. I was also a bit surprised. It felt like Kelechi came with something, spiritual forces that I couldn't see.

"Forgive me for springing up on you unanticipatedly," she started off, her voice eloquently warm as she spoke to me, hesitant too, "But, I knew that Marc would come after you after you ran away... So, I followed him."

I stared at her, she knew how that reeked of stalkish tendencies that I was surprised I hadn't attacked her for yet. Verbally nor physically.

"I apologize for not minding my business," she said to me, her eyes apologetic and kind, "But, Dabi, since the beginning of the term, my spirit has been going to you, over and over. I wasn't sure why, but it was so much that I started to invest so much in things about you that were not my business at all—"

I started walking away from her mid sentence.

Kelechi jumped, rushing to stand in front of me again, a new urgency in her tone, her eyes lost and wandering everywhere but directly in my eyes.

"Please don't go," she said to me, pleading with sincerity, "I think I understand why God has been pulling me back to you, no matter how much I resisted. He wants to help you, he wants to save you. All through out the Christmas party, I was failing to understand why I kept hearing it in me that you could NOT find out about what happened with your friends. I guess it was a butterfly effect, there were so many things that would follow the unfortunate event of you finding out your friends betrayed you. And they've all happened. One after the other. Until you have gotten to this point. And yet, God is not done with pushing you into my mind, and I think I know why now. I think it is finally clear to me now, it's so clear. Dabeluchi, don't do it. Please, don't do that thing you are thinking in your head. God LOVES you!—"

"I am SICK and tired of hearing about Love!" I screamed in frustration at Kelechi, body blazing with a fiery fire all of a sudden. "I'm tired of this kind of Love that hurts me, Kelechi! What good is Love when all it does is bring you pain that you can't contain?! My friends said they loved me and they lied to me for years! They betrayed me! Marcus swore he loved me and yet, he hurt me the way that did! He hurt me!—"

"— Dabeluchi, you cannot compare the love of God to Man—"

"— I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUR GOD!" I screamed at Kelechi Uwa, getting even more triggered. "I don't care, Kelechi. Do you fucking understand?! I DON'T care about God! Has he ever cared about me?! Why should I care about a God who has NEVER cared about me then?! I have lived in the terror that comes with my father's hands for seventeen years, Kelechi! Seventeen whole years! And what was God doing in those seventeen years?! Does he do this, pick his favorites? And have the rest of us who are unworthy to suffer?! Is that the kind of God you are saying cares?!

Every time that my father beat my mother to a pulp, where the FUCK was he?! When she was crying as he pummeled her, where was he? When he would cheat on her and make her feel like scum of the earth, make his children suffer, eating scraps from him and his bloody mistress, where was God?! And why didn't he stop any of these?!

Why didn't he ever hear my Mum every time that she cried to him?! That woman has gone through SHIT. I have never seen anyone who still trusts in God after all they have gone through. Mum has NEVER given up on him, on a God that gave up on her! And what about Stephen? My brother hasn't spoken in ten years and no matter how much we have suffered with his silence, he is mute. Mute! So tell me, where the fuck is this God?! And why does he like to watch us suffer? What have we done to deserve all these? Why did he bring us into the world, if the bulk of our lives was going to be suffering?! I don't believe in God, but MANY times, desperation has brought me back to him; many times, I-I have cried and begged God to do something, ANYTHING! But he never listens to me! I cry and suffer and cry and suffer and when I pray to him, as he says we should, he is suddenly on holiday?! And you tell me he loves me?! To HELL with your God, Kelechi Uwa! I hate him!—"

I choked on my own sobs, coughing, coughing up a feat that could have killed me.

"Where was your God the last twenty-four hours that have passed, Kelechi?" I asked her, my voice hoarse and sore from all the shouting, eyes burning with tears that had started pouring a long time ago. "Leave me alone, abeg. Just leave me alone, please."

She didn't.

Kelechi's hands latched onto mine, instead, her eyes filled with sympathy that words couldn't describe. It almost touched me. Almost.

"I understand your pain, Dabeluchi; believe me, I do. And trust me when I say that he will show himself to you, Dabeluchi. I promise you, God will show himself to you.—"

I pushed her.

It was an action done with impulsive reflex, an anger that suddenly sprung up in me. All I know is that I shoved Kelechi off me, watching her fall over onto the tiled road with absolutely no regret or remorse for what I just did. Not when I was already fuming through the ears and pouring out a river through my eyes.

She grimaced in pain, latching hands onto her ankle as I supposed she sprained it in her fall. I still couldn't care. Couldn't bring myself to. With a fury, I dashed out, walking away from the scene and leaving Kelechi Uwa on the ground shouting out to me in futile calls.

Wherever I had dashed into from there, I had no idea. I was a cursing, angry, tear-spilling mess on the streets and with every car that dashed past me on the streets, I cursed at it for not knocking me down and ending all of these. Never had the voices been so deadly before, the fury inside me instigating them more and more.

"Stop!" I screamed, holding onto what felt like a protector, shrieking at the voices that told me I was pathetic. That I was a burden. Repeating every word that my classmates had ever trolled me with, from calling me useless to disgusting. Of what use was a person without use in the world? Wasn't the world a less horrible place if 'disgusting' people weren't in it? What was the use of living a life that was so pathetic that even people around you were not afraid to point it out, how fucked up both your life and you in general were. What was the fucking use?

"Stop!" I shouted again, hating the thoughts that were filling my head from the voices in it. My mother once told me that these voices only knew how to lie, but if they were lies, why were they so convincing? Why were they so true? Not a single word they said was a lie!

Fall on your knees... 🎶

Oh, hear the angel voices...🎶

Oh, night divine...🎶

Oh, night when Christ was born...🎶

"SHUT UP!" I screamed at the song from nowhere, somewhere in some stupid happy family that I could never have, celebrating their own Christmas early. "Just shut up! Shut up, please!—" I choked on my sobs again, shaking as I crouched onto the protector, resting against its dusty cold metal as my tears poured on it, breath shaking. "God, if you are here, please do what Kelechi said. Show yourself..."

But he didn't answer. He never answered. The voices in my head were louder, getting louder each second that I waited for 'God' to respond to me. But no response. It aggravated me. Riled up the voices even more.

"It would be better if you just jumped."

It was harder to differentiate the voices in my head as they sounded too real, too fucking real. I hadn't even realized it then, not until I had heard those words did I realize where I was all these while. I looked around me, shocked that it took me this long to tell my surroundings...

It was a bridge.

A bridge.

My eyes went to the 'protector' I had been clinging onto, it was the railing of the bridge. Instinctively, I looked down, getting a longing overview at the sea beneath the bridge that was over three hundred feet from the railing.

For some reason, my heart beat so hard as I stared down at it for what seemed like an eternity.

Tracing my gaze back up to the skies, ignoring the impulsive voices in my head, I waited for him to say something. Anything. I was desperate, so desperate to hear from him.

"Show yourself,"

I asked the first time, my heart beating faster as no response came. My throat felt clogged, painful as I squeezed the railings of the bridge.

"Show yourself!" I shrieked this time, screaming at the top of my lungs, my whole body shaking with vigor, fear, frustration, desperation and the worst heartbreak I had ever felt all my life. "SHOW YOURSELF TO ME, GOD! SHOW YOURSELF TO ME!"

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

It tore me to pieces, absolutely wrecking me to shits. My hands were shaking on the railing, eyes blurring with hot tears.

My body moved before my brain could react.

It was like my body was doing things by itself, tactically climbing the railing carefully until I felt the breeze whoosh past me as I got to the other side of it. The only thing keeping me away from dropping into the deep waters below was my tight grip against the bridge railing.

The wind blew my entire body, rocking me like a rag doll, swaying my hair from left to right as I hung from there and picked up the last of my strength to shout one. more. time.

"SHOW YOURSELF TO ME, GOD!"

Still, no thunder. No lightening. No flashing light. Nothing out of the ordinary that would prove to me that he cared to listen to me. All that filled my head was words of pain and anguish from those voices that were now the loudest they had ever been before, so loud that they deafened me. Feeling forsaken, the tears wouldn't stop. My grip on the railing was shaking; if I dropped from here, I'd be dead before I even reached the sea.

"Show yourself..." The last plea was a broken whisper, a croaked sound, and just as I expected, nothing again.

And that was it...

I let go of the railing.

Falling was nothing like in my dreams. That was what I thought as I felt my body lose balance, gravity becoming a mere myth. I was both heavy and light, the pressure in the air pulling me down onto the sea beneath me as fast as it could as my tears dried against my face, my dread and instant regret suddenly hitting me a little too late.

All the way, those eight words were recited over and over in my heart;

"I pray the Lord my soul to keep."

TO BE CONTINUED...

***

Damn.

Breathe, one, two, three...

Please, if you are having thoughts that are borderline suicidal, seek help. Ending your life is never the answer. Never.

I let this ending happen for a reason. Before I say anything, what do you think an ending like this is me trying to show you? I want your own thoughts.

Personally, what I would chip in, irrespective of what you want to say is this: God never ignores. It may seem like this sometimes, but it is the devil doing this. Haven't you noticed that when you have mental breakdowns, that is the time that you don't want to hear about God the most? Ever wondered why? It's because the devil wants to fill your head with every reason why God is ignoring you. So even when he is speaking, the devil gets louder. The 'voices' get louder. Get it? I think you do.

Dabi cried for God to show himself to her, but is certain God didn't answer. What greater way is it for God to show himself to you after you fall off a 200 plus height bridge and come back again to feature as the female lead in the part two (TMBT BOOK II) of your life? You fall from that height and miraculously survive it? Think about it.

In case anyone wants to hear this, the way you want God to show himself to you or intervene in your situation may not be the way he plans to do it.❤️

And, on side note, how do you think Marcus will take this?🥲 What about her friends? Her classmates? Even Sean, do you think he will feel any form of guilt in this matter? Humor me in the comments.

Don't forget our LIVE on the 18th 7pm! Be there or be square! We have a LOT to talk about. While we anticipate Book 2 and all the juicy things that will come with it, let me hear your TMBT conspiracies below!👇🏾

I DARE YOU TO ALSO PUT DOWN TMBT BOOK TWO CONSPIRACY THEORIES TOO!😂👇🏾 (Additional 2k – dey play my fans – for people who will easily guess the name of the Second Book below)

Until next year, my angels.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in advance. ❤️

I officially declare TMBT Book One completed.😌👏