“Kendrick?” The muffled enquiry nudges me to my senses. That’s me, that’s my name. I’m Kendrick aren’t I?

“Oh God, what kind of thing is this?” The voice squirms with distress. The words are rapid yet heavy, as if they’re speaking with their tongue stuck to the floor of their mouth. I try to stir, but I can’t seem to move. Or rather, there isn’t anything to move. Where is my body? This lack of restriction soon becomes haunting, as if I could float fearfully away at any moment. But then, to where? Where am I? It’s warm, too warm—I am sweating, I feel the perspiration bead and trickle beads down the groove of my spine where my back should be.

​

A choked sob spills out. It echoes through my dwelling. Are they crying? I wonder if I can reach them. Suddenly, I hear another voice. This one is a clearer, more refined English. 

​

“Mum, please. How about you go sit in the reception? There’s a cafe down the hall, you haven’t eaten since yesterday.” The voice is dark, as smooth and as final as a death knell. “Mum?” A mother and a son speak from above, and they seem to know I’m here. I need to reach them. I attempt to call out, but my jaw has dissipated with the rest of my body. I gag on my non-existent tongue, but my spluttering is over before it begins. The choking sensation is strangely grounding.

​

“Abiola, you had betta’ leave me alone.” The first voice’s reply is sharp, and it startles me. I quiet my thoughts to listen. Abiola? A worryingly familiar name.

​

“Mum—”

“You were home. You were home when Kendrick—”

​

“Mum, you can not seriously blame me for this. Didn’t he tell you when he first got sent home, after what those boys did to him? Do you remember what you said?”

​

There is a swift, blunt clap, like a collision of hand to skin. 

​

“Shut up! You don’t talk to your mother like that, got it?”

​

The first voice has grown large and agile. It appears her language only improves under the hand of anger. After what seems like several uncomfortable moments of silence, there is an incredulous scoff from Abiola. Heavy footsteps rumble through the void, and what sounds like a gate or a door slams ferociously shut. There is then silence for what must be an hour.

​

I am still searching for my body. I feel my heart pulsing throughout the space—or lack thereof. Its beat rumbles in my eardrums, and its pace is the only sense of consciousness I can cling to. The space is a dirty maroon color, but pixelated and swims into several different psychedelic patterns, as if I had rubbed my eyes too hard and pulled away. 

The soft tip-tapping of rubber soles flattens the quiet and a third voice rises. This voice is rich with a feminine assurance—she pours out her patient syllables like liquid gold. "Mum, you should eat something.”

​

The first voice retaliates sharply once more. "You people had betta just—”

"I know, Mum. But starving yourself isn't going to make him wake up any quicker. The cafe is really just down the hall, I'll let you know if he wakes up. Please?”

​

Another silence, but this one concludes with a hummed grunt of surrender. Then starts the squelch of rubber sandals slapping the floor, and the door clicks shut again. Who is this? Gradually, her scent diffuses in the air. She smells like honey, and coffee grounds. I hear the creaking of a spring loaded surface, and her sugary scent curls around me.

“Kendrick? Why do I feel like you can hear me?" Blossoms bloom and flourish with the tender lilt of her tongue. Because I can, I want her to hear my thoughts. I wish you’d let me out.

​

“Phoebe keeps asking why Uncle Kendrick isn't at home. She wanted to come see you, actually. Wanted to know why she couldn't go into nursery today, with Don being in the U.S and everything. There was no one to take her." Who are these people? Why should I care? I need you to let me out. “Funnily enough, he hasn't called me today, even though he knows what happened. I mean, I can't expect him to drop everything while he's on vacation, you know... ruin his trip. It wouldn’t be fair."

​

Something I've done has ruined things, I noted. Okay, so nothing new. 

​

Her voice wavers, fluttering like an injured butterfly. “To be honest, Ken, I'm kind of praying you wake up today, ’cus I really shouldn't use up any more annual leave before the summer. It sounds bad, I know but, at least if you wake up now, you could talk to me. About what happened. I know you've been trying to tell us about the boys at school. I’m sorry no one listened.” A sorrowful laugh. “But it’s a bit late for all that now, isn’t it? We always have to wait till it’s too late.”

​

Then, I feel it. A hand on mine. My hand materializes in the darkness, and so does hers. Her fingers are slim and long, and looked wrong beside mine—rough, ugly things that lay limp in her clutch. Her nails were pointed and white. Wonderful, I thought. They suited her, Femi had always loved painting her nails bright colors. Femi?

The void, as abruptly as the deliverance of this epiphany, burst with blinding white light, its contrast to its previous deep soullessness sent kaleidoscopes of color to sting my eyes. My grimy hands gripped Femi’s. I blinked, and this time, the gray of my own eyelids welcomed me. There was a sharp gasp in my left ear. My hand was still clasping Femi's tightly, and as I found the strength to peel my eyes open.

​

I made an effort to evaluate  the vague, blurred room around me. Beneath my stomach, the sheets were cold and starched to an industrialized crispness. As I breathed, there was an echo to it—a fitted oxygen mask I dragged down my chin with a labored hand, the oxygen escaping from my lips into the air like an odorless steam. My hand involuntarily trails up to my neck, feeling the brittle, rash-like skin that had formed a ring along my Adam's apple. My head was heavy, with a large adhesive bandage on my right temple. The distant beeping of a heart monitor replicated the pulsing from the inside of my cave. A hospital room, I pieced together. I tilted my head, and squinted at my sister, Oluwanifemi, who was kneeling by my bedside, her lips slightly parted. Her eyes were glassy, and suddenly her gentle hand began to shake. 

​

My jaw has returned and my tongue cooperates. “Femi?" A tear rolls down her marble skin, and her other hand claps across her month. "Kendrick?'' Her voice is a concoction of agony and relief. "Femi, where am I? What happened? "My throat is violently dry. This sentence takes me a while to spell out. As I swallow it aches, and I wince with the pain as the dry straining feeling bubbles from my throat to my chest. Femi shoots up, and lets go of me. I had no energy to face my hand down, and I missed the assurance of her clutch, so it stayed  molded in position. Femi runs to the door, yanking it open with a fresh urgency. "Mum! Nurse! Is there a nurse around?" She cries, her whole body tremouring. Femi is wearing cornrows, I notice. Femi hasn't worn cornrows outside since she was in primary, and I wasn't even alive back then. They are haphazard and flare out at the tips like the tassels on a carpet. That's not like her at all—if nothing else, Femi’s perpetual immaculacy was a virtue she had no choice but to absorb as the eldest of five (or six?). If her standards had dropped for the occasion, then there just might be a problem after all. 

​

An object scrapes the floor in the hallway, and the mother from the void runs in. Her large build crushes Femi between the door frame and spits her out into the hallway, stumbling. The mother seizes my wrist - her hands are slick and hot, and my heart is now racing as she yanks my arm, pulling me forward from the bed. The sudden movement disorients me - the cold blue lights torture my senses and I let out a irritated  groan. The mother seizes my shoulders and shakes them with a familiar harshness. "Kendrick! Kendrick! What is this, now? What is this? Is this revenge? Hey! Kendrick. Chai!"

​

She is ridiculously loud. With Femi gone, there is suddenly nothing stopping me from preferring the cave. I miss its depth, its lack of urgency, where I had no shoulder to grip and no wrist to snatch. It's tenderness beckons to me. But I decline, just for a little while longer.

​

"Ma'am, can you please place his back against the bed? He’s still fragile!" A woman in a short ponytail and a navy uniform dashes to my bedside and props me up herself, the mother lets go of me with a push. I just sat there panting for a while, the mother, the nurse, and Femi watching me. Femi is on the phone, her voice a whisper. “…Abs, but he's awake now. You can't be that far away... Man, just ignore her! This isn't about you two...Okay, thank you. Bye.” 

‘Abs’. Abiola, my older brother. He was home from college for the week. I mean to ask after him, but I croak "Need water" instead. The nurse immediately puts a bottle at my lips, I take it from her and swallow greedily until it crinkles and twists with the empty suction.

​

"Kendrick, do you remember why you're here?" The nurse asks me. The mother is staring wide-eyed beside her. Her small eyebrows are furrowed in what I believe to be contempt. This left me uneasy and I failed to answer.

Abs appears at the door, panting lightly as he briefly clutches the doorframe, catching his breath. I watch him enter the room and glide to the other side of the bed. Abiola has the manish stench of cologne and coke. I turn to face him. Abs is the strong one, but his face is crumbling. He has his twists pulled back with a rubber band, His earlobes have a curved fold where his studs should be.

​

"Abs, what happened to me?" I tilt my head. My voice still has a raspy edge, but it is at least a fraction less painful to speak. Abiola’s grief morphs into confusion.

​

"You don't remember?"

​

“…No."

​

Abiola sighs, and his eyes wander elsewhere. "Ken, you came home on Friday, those boys were out to kill you. Five of them stormed the house after you were out." His voice slackened. "You took almost every pill in the medicine cabinet and bashed your head off the kitchen table when you collapsed."

​

"Ah. Right.”

​

"Do you remember now?"

​

I am still recalling the tranquility of the cave. I pick at my neck's rigid skin.

​

“Um, a little.”

​

“Abiola, what boys are this? His friends?" The mother asks from across the bed. Abiola's nose wrinkles with disgust, and the death knell chimes again.

​

"Who takes every pill in the house before their friends come to visit? No, Mum. Those boys have been harassing Ken for like two years now. Haven’t you been getting the letters about his attendance at school? Don’t you read them?”

And suddenly, I remember it. The memories each immediately delivered themselves like a punch to my bleeding skull. The rotten smell from my locker. As I sit, I can feel the scar around my neck. The frantic pressing of 9s and 1s and 2s while I stumbled like a drunkard away into the dead of night, groping around in the pitch black for lampposts and keys. The death sentence I received over the phone the morning after. I hadn't written a letter as I fumbled through the cabinet, jars bottles shattering on the floor. I scooped whatever was in reach into my mouth with tear clogged vision, the message screaming in my head again and again and again.

​

"You better run. You’re done if we catch you."

​

The call dropped before I had a chance to beg for my life.

​

I remember the rope, the smiles, the sensation of my soul trickling through my bared teeth, my eyes popping, legs kicking, scraping the concrete. The redness of the evening enhanced my horror as my limp gargling was drowned out by their laughter. I groped for Femi’s hand in vain. “Lynch the ni—!"

​

I am screaming. My hands claw my ears, then my throat, then my ears again. I can't think, all I can feel are the arms on my torso and the rope, the rope, the rope. The redness of evening, no one will hear us here. You're done if we catch you.

​

“Kendrick! What’s wrong!?”

​

I hear footsteps, but whose? Where am I? Who is this? I am exploding, my mind is cracking and bursting from excruciating memories and vicious realities, and I am back there in the kitchen, on my knees, pooling the tablets into my bloodied mouth, spitting out the glass. I feel the same blood melt from my teeth as I started to wheeze and cough, grabbing my chest, still unable to stop the horror from escaping me.

​

"Oh my God! Kendrick!”

​

“Someone call a doctor!"

​

Someone grabs my shoulder again. Someone is seizing my wrists. I just wish the wrong people would quit touching me. Nevermind, I thought. The cave was lovely. 

​

“Kendrick! Kendrick!”

​

An agonized shriek wishes me farewell. That's me, I thought. I was Kendrick, wasn’t I?