My daughter looked up at me from the place on the floor where she was kneeling and smiled. It was the same as her old familiar smile but… wrong somehow. Twisted. Like her face had been removed from her skull and then reattached by someone who wasn’t exactly sure how. I frowned, uncomfortable at the sight.

His eyes swelled with expanding fluid, red and bulging; and then they popped, spewing a geyser of clear fluid and blood onto the thing around his neck, drinking his blood. He was in pain, so much pain.

Ejike woke up with a start. Something had disturbed his sleep. He’d dreamt he was running from something, but it had been dark, and he couldn’t see. All he knew was that he’d felt like he would die if the thing that had been chasing him had caught him. He sat up in his bed, the blanket pooling around his thighs.

Today, I can feel Oba’s lecherous eyes on my buttocks as I work the grinding stone, pureeing beans for Iyalode’s allele. I exaggerate my moves, jiggle my bottom and thighs a little more. I can see Oba’s trouser rise through his reflection in the silver tray I used to pick the beans and it makes me smile.