Ebube Anochili's blog

The days usually went by fast, but since the police discovered Simi’s body, the days wriggled slowly like an earthworm. With every waking hour filled with dread for Phoebe. She counted the seconds each day and felt at any minute she would be hurled out like a criminal. She couldn’t concentrate at work. She was a bag of nerves.                                                                   *** The police had taken Simi’s body and kept in their own morgue for the moment. What they had deduced from the death scene was that she probably fell and hit her head. A terrible accident! At least that’s what they thought, they would investigate a little more. But they hadn’t sensed any foul play. Except Sergeant Tiwa. The whole thing was fishy, a brother and an ex husband report a lady missing without knowing where she wa...

Monday nights weren’t totally bad. The thrill that the day’s work had ended was enough reason to be happy, if you weren't  stuck in traffic. This Monday night however, was a little gloomy. The only flicker of happiness Cheta had was that he had his daughter. Someone was missing and had to be found. Cheta had gone to pick Gbenga as planned. On their way to the police station, they did not say much to each other. Gbenga tried to remember all the details of his last conversation with Simi. Where could she be? They got to the station soon enough but making their complaints was taking forever. “We are here to file a missing person’s report”, said Cheta, once it got to their turn. “What makes you think he/she is missing?” asked Sergeant Tiwa, the policeman on duty. “I never see her since Saturday”, Gbenga replied, “she suppose come back yesterday but she no come, she no dey pick calls too.” “Did she say where she was going?” asked Sergeant Tiwa. Gbenga thought for a while before re...

Phoebe looked at the ceiling as it started to rain and hot wrenching tears flowed freely from her eyes. She had to get out of there immediately. She went into the house to know if she was alone and realized there was a kitchen, another room and a bathroom which had a bath tub and she was alone. An idea quickly formed in her head as she saw the bath tub. She had to stage Simi’s death. Adrenaline flowed through her as she managed to drag, lift and drag Simi’s body to the bathroom. She kept her body in such a way that her head was at the edge of the bath tub while the rest of her body was on the floor. She turned on the tap and sprinkled water close to Simi’s feet and around. She found a cloth and a bucket which she filled with water and went to the living room to scrub off the blood on the floor and the table. She went on her knees and scrubbed till her hands hurt and no trace of blood was found. She went back to the bathroom, poured the water in the toilet and flushed it. For the fi...

Lightning flashed, thunder struck, rain poured. One would think she would be dragged out of her thoughts. But she wasn’t. She stayed, glued to the ground as the scenes of the night danced in her head, like she was seeing a movie. But it wasn’t a movie, it was her pathetic life. Cheta had called her practically all day, she didn’t know how she’d face him with what she had done. She prayed to be struck by lightning, but of course, it only struck people who still wanted to live. She looked at her hands, the blood stains had been washed by the rain, but it hadn’t washed her guilt.                                                     ***                                               6 hours ago Simi took out the last stick of cigarette from the ...

The rain didn’t stop. It poured like a child crying for its mother’s breast. It pounded on roof tops so fiercely, threatening to bore holes in them. The wind complemented it, the leaves on the trees kept whispering sweet nothings in the cold, dark night. The sound of running water couldn’t be left out, as the gutters overflowed with it. Still, the rain didn’t stop. Not that it mattered, she could care less. She didn’t mind the rain drenching her, soaking her clothes and the cold sinking dangerously into her bones. She clenched her teeth and stared at nothing. If people died of frostbite like this, she’d gladly die. She was standing all alone in the middle of the night hoping that the rain would wash off her guilt. What had she done? She cried silently, without tears, for even her own tears had deserted her. What had she done? Normally, she would have watched the dark clouds gather, she would have gasped at the flashes of lightning and shuddered at the sound of thunder. She would hav...

What comes to your mind when you hear the word “memory”? To some, it’s the ability to recall, to others it’s the ability to record. Ok, so I got this definition from a dictionary, permit me to not say the name;         “… the ability of an organism to record information about things           Or events with the facility of recalling them later at will…” Notice the two words in the definition, “record” and “recall”. So, it’s not enough to record these things, if you can’t recall them, whatever you think you have is useless. Growing up, I guess I was blessed with “good” memory. I had the dates of events in my head, I remembered the exact words people. My mum once told me that I got the gift from my dad, she said it was a gift. I was pleased, anything I got from my dad, I cherished. The “good” memory was a blessing in my academics, I always aced my papers and graduated with a wonderful CGPA. My memory isn’t all that eidetic, heck, I don’t...

She was floating. She couldn’t feel anything solid around her. She couldn’t recognize anything around her. She couldn’t even feel herself. She was floating in air; not water. Then the voices came, some tortured, some happy but all were distant. She didn’t want to be wherever she was alone, so she imagined moving towards the voices, it wasn’t difficult moving, she was part of space now. The first face she saw was her mother’s. “Come to me child, it’s over now, we can be together again”, came the voice from her mother. It sounded like nothing she remembered of how her mother’s voice sounded. But still, she wanted to embrace her so much, it’d been too long since she saw her, since she “died”, she thought. It struck her, her mother was dead, how could she see her? “Daberechi, we’ve been waiting for you.” She spun in the direction of the voice, it came from her father but sounded nothing like him. She longed to be in both their arms, though she thought something wasn’t right. As she mov...