A West African—extremely resilient. Adaptable to any environment - Finale

Feb 14, 2025

“It had started during our last call. Matt’s tone had shifted, his usual camaraderie replaced with something else.”

Time seemed to move differently here. Days melted into nights, nights into days, each indistinguishable from the last. Perhaps it was the quiet—something I hadn’t experienced in years. True, the peace wasn’t perfect. My room, a sparse space on the far end of the psych ward’s east wing, bordered the mechanical room. The machines inside rattled, banged, and gurgled at predictable intervals—every half-hour for thirteen minutes, by my count. Their rhythm became my constant companion. At night, their noise acted as a lullaby, an ironic twist given the chaos I’d endured before. Here, the predictability of sound was almost soothing.

For the past three days, I’d followed the same strict routine: escorted by a chaperone—a short, wiry black man with patchy bald spots who always seemed to grumble about something—to meals, medication, and brief walks within the confines of the ward. His scrubs hung on him like a secondhand afterthought. The nametag read “Terrance,” though he hadn’t bothered to introduce himself. Our first interaction had been memorable enough.

“So, they just putting everybody in here now?” he muttered when I told him I was a lawyer. The comment didn’t bother me; I knew he was used to dealing with volatile patients. My calm demeanor probably threw him off.

Matt was the only person I talked to. He called before I was committed here, checked in throughout the case, and even now, promised that this wasn’t the end. “We’ll beat this,” he said on our last call. “I’m working every angle.”

Matt’s determination was galvanizing. He’d tapped into his network, contacted top defense attorneys, and even enlisted a private investigator, a cousin of his, to track down our wannabe 90s rapper and his girlfriend. Yet, despite his loyalty, a nagging unease crept into my chest.

It had started during our last call. Matt’s tone had shifted, his usual camaraderie replaced with something else.

“Did you cheat on her?” he asked all of a sudden.

“What?” I was caught off guard.

“Destiny,” he said, his breaths quickening. “I’m asking, brother to brother. Did you cheat on Destiny?”

“No,” I said firmly. “Matt, you know me. Do I look like the type to sneak around? Especially on Destiny? I would rather give up both arms. You already know how much I love that girl.”

“I know,” he said with a sigh. Then, after a pause, he dropped another bombshell: Destiny and Angie had reconciled. Their rekindled friendship left Matt in a precarious position, especially since Angie no longer wanted him speaking to me.

The revelation stung. This was Destiny’s doing: they felt calculated like an attempt to sever my last connection to our friends or to the people who mattered most. I wanted to tell Matt the truth about her PTSD, to explain how she was not well and was seeing a therapist. But I held my tongue. I wouldn’t stoop to the same level, no matter what she did to me.

I still loved Destiny—deeply. Despite everything, she remained at the center of everything in my life. After this ordeal, I was determined to win it all back: her love, her trust, her parents including Mr. Johnson’s approval. It might sound delusional, but I believed it was possible. I clung to that possibility, silently, unwilling to share it with Matt, or anyone for that matter.

As our conversation wound down, I heard a door creak open on Matt’s end. “That’s Angie,” he said abruptly. “Call me when you can. I’ll keep working on my end.” The line went dead.

Now, lying on my bed, I stared at the orange streaks of the setting sun through the narrow window. Tomorrow, I’d been granted permission to make an hour-long call due to my good behavior. The first call would be to my younger brother. He deserved to know what had happened, though I’d downplay it. I’d tell him the charges were baseless, the psych ward a temporary setback. No need to alarm our mother or the rest of the family, Pastor Samuel and friends. He’d simply have to explain that I’d be tied up for a while—calls would rarely be answered, let alone returned. And as for the paperwork for his college, he’d need to adjust his expectations for now. A delay was unavoidable.

The second call would be to Matt. I planned to give him power of attorney, authorizing him to manage my financial affairs and ensure my family’s monthly allowance continued. It was the least I could do from here.

Afterward, it would be back to work. In this quiet, sterile room, I resolved to construct an ironclad defense. No internet access? No pen or paper? It didn’t matter. I’d outline every detail in my head, examining the prosecutor’s arguments from every angle and crafting counterpoints as fortified as castle walls. By the time I met with the defense attorney, I’d hand them a strategy so precise it could be a blueprint for my instant exoneration. This was what I lived for—case prep, analysis, strategic planning, tearing apart an opponent’s arguments. Criminal law wasn’t a specialty, but preparation? That was universal in all fields.

As I closed my eyes, the mechanical room next door hummed to life with its signature rattle and gurgle. The sound was steady, predictable. I let it lull me to sleep, the fleeting comfort of order in a world that felt increasingly tumultuous.

Tomorrow was another day. Another day to fight:

as long as I was breathing.

Time froze as the caws dragged me out of a restless slumber, my eyes snapping open to the inky darkness of the psych ward. My pulse raced, and the rhythmic, almost deliberate cawing from outside my window filled the silence like a twisted serenade. Rubbing my eyes, I muttered under my breath, “Nincompoops,” and dragged myself out of bed.

The floor was cold under my feet as I trudged toward the window. The sound was sharp, persistent—until it wasn’t. The moment I reached the glass, the caws ceased, swallowed by an unnatural stillness that pressed against my ears like a physical weight. A sudden and deafening silence.

“Stupid birds,” I grumbled, turning back toward my bed. But the moment I slid beneath the covers, a shrill, mechanical grinding pierced the air above me. It was unmistakable: the furious scrape of a vacuum being dragged across the floor. My body tensed as I stared at the ceiling. My room was on the top floor—there was no floor above me.

“It’s just the meds,” I said. But then came the stomping—loud, deliberate, heavy boots pounding just overhead. A thought flickered in my mind like a dying bulb: Is there an attic?

But it was a voice that answered: a voice that was not my own. It was a hive of whispers, overlapping and discordant, each word jagged and inhuman: “You are a smart boy than that.”

The voice slithered through my mind like a parasite. I froze, my breath catching in my throat. A deep, hacking laugh erupted inside my head—a cacophony of grating, wet coughs, each more grotesque than the last. My skin crawled. Every hair on my body stood on end like pointed needles. Hair that I never knew existed, the dormant follicles deep inside my bald scalp.

Above, the scraping and stomping continued, joined by a sound I knew too well: “Ooooooooo! Rrrrrrrr! Ooooooo! Rrrrrrrr!”

My heart pounded as the guttural laughter morphed into vile mockery. My fists clenched, my nails biting into my palms. “This isn’t real,” I mumbled, slapping myself. The sting did nothing to pull me from this waking nightmare.

Another voice joined the others above. “If I’d known they were causing such a ruckus, I never would’ve allowed it.”

“N-n-no,” I said, barely able to get the words out. “No-not possible.”

The hive spoke again, mocking and gleeful: “Not so smart boy, after all. Let us help.”

A sharp pain lanced through my skull as memories began furiously flipping through my mind like reels of a cursed View-Master. The images blurred together, jarring and chaotic: Destiny’s note, Ms. Walton’s kind face, my fist colliding with the wannabe rapper, the old building of our first apartment—then something new, something foreign.

A blonde girl appeared in my mind’s eye, her green-highlighted hair tangled and filthy. Arcane symbols tattooed her arms, and piercings marred her face. She sat cross-legged on a grimy apartment floor, chanting in a language that grated against my ears. The scene twisted and shifted. Her chanting grew louder, more frenzied. Her eyes rolled back as she began clawing at the walls, leaving bloody smears mixed with feces. The police came, battering down the door. Her wild, guttural screams echoed as they dragged her away.

“Warmer, boy?” the hive said, its laughter rolling. “But not enough. Let us show you.”

More images forced their way into my mind. The renovated apartment. Destiny and I, wide-eyed and naive, admiring its shiny facade of white paint covering all that blood, feces and inexplicable markings. The agent’s forced smile. The lease signing.

My stomach twisted as the pieces fell into place. That apartment wasn’t just haunted—it was cursed, a portal for something ancient and malevolent unleashed by that foolish girl. My life, full of promise, was too hard for them to pass up, like a fat pig walking into a den of ravenous hyenas.

They’d followed us, poisoned everything, torn the love of my life from me, turned the world against me—and still, it wasn’t enough.

“What do you want from me?” I asked helplessly, though the answer was already taking shape in my mind before the words even left my lips. My gaze flickered toward the bedroom window, the locked door, the fragile safety of my bed covers. Each offered grim possibilities. The staff didn’t consider me a danger to myself, which meant little oversight—Terrence rarely checked on me. One option would be quick and brutal; another, slow and agonizing. And if I wanted to avoid pain altogether? A careless mental slip—their sinster doing—by the nurse administering my medication could hand me a bottle of forever escape.

“You don’t have to suffer, boy,” the hive voice purred, its tone sickly sweet, almost enticing. “Why stay and fight? Come to us. Be like the girl. You’re a smart boy. You’re always a smart boy.”

An image flooded my mind, sharp and unbidden. A little boy hunched over a book inside a rusted zinc shack, the faint flicker of a kerosene lantern barely keeping the oppressive darkness at bay. I knew that boy—I was that boy.

His stomach growled, his arms raw and ashy from the dry, biting air of the Harmattan. He gnawed on the end of a pencil, his teeth scraping the worn rubber, a poor substitute for the fat, glistening drumstick he’d seen earlier. A man in a navy blue three-piece suit had eaten it, seated in the back of a chauffeured car—an image of effortless ease that had burned itself into the boy’s mind.

The hive’s voice broke through, seeping into my thoughts like oil in water. “We not wait for you, two-leg,” it hissed, irritated.

“Shut the fuck up!” came a guttural scream from below, snapping the memory apart. Furious blows rattled the floor. “I’ll fucking kill you!”

Another voice joined in, this one from the mechanical room next door. “Oh, so we’re allowed to fuck now, huh?” Walls shuddered under the force of pounding fists.

Of course, I wasn’t alone here. My fellow patients were being twisted, manipulated by the same force. This ward, far from being a sanctuary, was a playground for the malevolence that had followed me. Here, surrounded by fractured minds, I was the perfect prey.

Tears spilled down my cheeks, salty stings brushing the corners of my lips. Even if I escaped, I knew they would follow. Timbuktu, Antarctica—it didn’t matter. There would be no peace.

I thought of Destiny. Her smile, her laugh, her warmth. But now I knew, I would never see her again—and the fact was she hated me. That knowledge clawed at my chest.

“Shut the fuck up! I swear, I’ll kill you!” the voice below screamed again, punctuated by another crash.

This was what it felt like to lose everything.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” the hive voice crooned. “Such a smart boy, you are. You know the way out.”

I closed my eyes tight against the tears, but the memory returned. I was back in that rusted zinc shack. The boy hunched over the book, his gangly frame swallowed by a too-small school uniform. The kerosene’s stifling fumes burned his watery eyes and tickled his nose, but he kept reading.

The boy paused, and for the first time, looked directly at me. A wide grin stretched across his face. I felt that grin pulling at my own lips, sharp and defiant. How could I have forgotten this? That grin wasn’t just a smile—it was a spark. It was an idea, audacious and searing, born in that soul-sucking slum.

I was going to be like that man in the chauffeured car—wear a suit like his, walk through life with the same ease. Eat three full meals a day. Take care of my mother and siblings. Lift them out of that cramped, stifling poverty into a real home—spacious, fully furnished, with electricity humming through every room. And I did it. Every last bit of it.

The flowing tears felt ticklish on my cheeks. My chest heaved, but not from despair—from a feeling deeper, unyielding. I unclenched my fists. The image of my past—the smiling boy in that shack—flared like a bonfire in my mind.

“Fuck you!” I shouted, the words tearing from me, raw and primal.

The emotion surged, more potent than all the happiest moments of my life combined. The hive’s laughter clawed at my ears, but it didn’t matter. The feeling inside me burned brighter, fiercer, consuming their noise like dry kindling. It drowned out the pounding walls, the stomping and moaning above, the chaos that had once dominated.

“You think this is funny?” the patient below screamed in fury. “I’ll fuck you up!”

The blows raged harder, but they were distant now. These demons, this ward, did not know who they were dealing with. I wasn’t just anyone. A West African—extremely resilient.

Adaptable to any environment!

“My left breast keeps itching.”

“Mama, stop your worrying. He is fine.”

“My Emmie always call me back. And he never miss calling me every month. Were you able to reach him?”

“I tried Messenger and WhatsApp but he did not pick up…He should have called by now to give me the code to pick up the money.”

“You see! This is not like Emmie. Something is wr—”

“Mama, Mama, please calm down. I already spoke with the landlord. We’ve never been late before, so he understands. Stop worrying. Remember, the doctor said stress isn’t good for your health.”

“I can feel it, Moses. A mother knows. Something—”

“Mama, remember when he was in college. We called him many times and texted him. He did not pick up. And what happened? He was on break, bought a ticket and showed up right at our door with gifts. Surprising you, the twins, all of us. Especially you. You almost fainted.”

“That was my best Christmas. He looked so grown up.”

“And now, he is more grown up, a man with a wife and maybe a child on the way. Don’t forget now, they’re coming next month. You are going to see your son and daughter-in-law. Knowing Emmie, he might surprise us and come sooner.”

“Yeah…you right, my son…You right.”

“So, stop hurting your head. Don’t worry.”

The End

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-Josephine Dean