Kolade's Point of View – Flashback to 2019
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The house smells like palm oil and something rotting.
I push open the front door, still slightly ajar from the knock that wasn't answered. There's no sound except the slow creak of the hinge and the quiet buzz of a ceiling fan struggling against the weight of the still air.
"Sunday?" I call out.
Nothing.
It was supposed to be a quick meeting. He'd texted the night before, told me he had work. Big work. One of those hush hush courier jobs he always somehow landed very dangerous, but it was clean. He didn't say much else. Sunday never did.
The sitting room is dark. Curtains drawn. I take another step in.
Then I see it.
A foot.
Half-sticking out from behind the arm of the couch.
"Sunday" I call out this time My voice cracks.
I move closer and round the corner.
He's there. On the floor.
His eyes wide open.
A pool of blood soaked deep into the threadbare carpet, darker where it's dried near his torso. A knife no, a broken bottle juts out from his ribs.
I stumble back and I hit the wall.
My mind blanks. My chest tightens. I bend down beside him, shaking, reaching to feel for a pulse which I somehow already know isn't there.
His body already cold, meaning he'd been dead for a while
The sound that escapes my throat is animal.
For ten seconds, maybe more, I just kneel there beside his lifeless body, trembling.
Then I stand. Slowly, too shocked by the sight before me . I look around the room scattered receipts, open drawers, his phone smashed beside the television. The front door hadn't been forced. There was no sign of struggle, but the chaos was very intentional.
I'm about to reach for my own phone when I hear the sirens blare.
Two minutes later, I'm face down on the concrete outside, surrounded by so many police officers.
Handcuffs bite into my wrists.
"Suspect was still inside the premises," a voice says.
"I didn't do this," I croak, dust filling my mouth as soon as I open it .
"Sure," another officer mutters. "You just came to say goodbye."
"Oh you were just crossing the road" another added.
+++
The police cell is just a bit bigger than the POS kiosks.
Kirikiri smells like wet socks, stale food sweat and cheap soap. The kind of place where names vanish and time crawls. I'm shoved into a corner cell with four other men one sleeps all day, two never speak, the fourth just stares.
I barely sleep the first week. The mattress is moldy. The water brown. My face swells from the beatings. Not from the guards though they're not gentle but from other inmates. The second night, a man tries to take my shoes. I attempt to fight back and I lose a tooth in the process.
No one believes I'm innocent.
I'm a man with no alibi no video footage to backup my claims.
A man found at the scene.
A man who knew the victim well enough to be expected.
The worst part? Sunday's death wasn't high-profile enough for real lawyers to care. No reporters. No hashtags. No place cards demanding justice for Sunday. Just another case file stamped, shelved and forgotten. His family never showed. No one came looking for me either.
My parents died years ago. My sister had just moved to Ghana few weeks before the incidence. So technically I had no one.
I spend my days working in the kitchen, peeling yams with a spoon. The blade is too dangerous for a man like me, they said. Too angry. Too unpredictable.
But I'm not angry.
I'm hollow.
I remember the way Sunday used to laugh, loud and contagious. He didn't deserve that ending.
I write letters to no one in particular. Just documenting my thoughts in case I loose my sanity in this hell I now find myself.
I read old newspapers passed around like contraband.
I learn to time my breathing to the shift change so I can catch two minutes of breeze through the small window.
One day, a guard old, tired tosses a file on my bunk. "Your next hearing's postponed again," he says without looking at me.
I nod, too used to it by now to even feel disappointment.
In prison, the calendar doesn't matter. Only survival does.
My cellmates change. Some get transferred. Others vanish without a trace. Once, the quiet one dies in his sleep. No one notices for hours. When they do, the body is dragged out like trash.
I ask myself every day: why didn't I leave when I saw the door open? Why did I step in?
But I know why.
Because I cared. Because I believed Sunday was a friend. Because he had helped me once, long ago, when I had nothing, when I truly was guilty of a crime .
Now, he's gone.
And I'm here.
Trapped in a story I didn't write.
And I don't know yet that this chapter won't end for a long, long time.
I don't know yet how deep the cracks will go.
I just know that somewhere in the dark, I'll need to decide: disappear or become something new.
But not yet.
Not tonight.
Tonight, I sleep on cold concrete with a towel for a blanket and cardboards for bed.
And I dream of the blood on Sunday's carpet.
And waking up with my own name still bruised in someone else's mouth.