Chapter 10: The Spark
1017 Words
The house has grown colder in recent months. Not because of the weather, but because of the silence. That unnatural quietness that settled over everything after his mother’s death. No footsteps down the hallway. No humming in the kitchen. No warm scent of her perfume to calm his nerves. Just silence, thick and suffocating, like a shroud that wrapped itself around his chest and refused to let go.
Chuka no longer cried. His tears had dried the day they lowered her body into the ground. Since then, he had mastered the art of blank stares and quiet nods, of swallowing pain without making a sound. He lived as a ghost in a house full of monsters as he viewed it.
Sandra had started walking freely around the house again, her footsteps confident, her voice louder. It was as if Chuka’s mother had been the only obstacle in her path. The woman who once whispered her filth behind closed doors now roamed openly, smiling, laughing, sometimes even tossing her arm across Chuka’s shoulders as if nothing had ever happened with no shame. The audacity sent bile up his throat.
Aisha, Bella, and Mira visited more often now. They would sit in the parlor, sipping drinks, giggling, sometimes glancing at Chuka like a piece of meat still fresh on the table. They had resumed their evil deeds, quiet, dark, and vile. He knew better now. He noticed their patterns, their signals, the way they moved, like wolves marking territory. But he was no longer prey.
Not anymore.
At school, Chuka barely spoke. His teachers noticed the difference. He was sharp, precise, unnervingly calm. He never smiled. He didn’t laugh. He did what was expected and nothing more. But when he sat alone during the break, his mind was never empty. He had begun to draw maps, mental ones. Where they went. When they were most vulnerable. Who knew them. Who didn’t. He was always calculating and observing everything.
Nobody knew what he was thinking. That made him powerful.
Sometimes, he would sit beneath the mango tree beside the school's fence and whisper to the wind, "I miss you, Mum." He didn’t need an answer because his mind was already projected. He believed she was somewhere close, watching. He kept her promise alive by breathing. By surviving. By remembering.
One afternoon, Chuka returned home to find Sandra sleeping in the living room, snoring gently, her legs sprawled on the couch like she owned the whole world. He stood for a long time just watching her. She looked peaceful, ordinary. But the evil monster inside her was always awake.
A surge of hatred crawled up his spine like fire.
He turned and walked to his room, locking the door behind him. He pulled out the red notebook and opened it. The four circles were still there:
Sandra. Aisha. Bella. Mira.
He’d stared at those names for so long they’d become carved into his mind and stuck in his heart.
But today, something new joined the page.
A list.
Sandra: Weakness – Arrogance
Aisha: Weakness – Impulse
Bella: Weakness – Greed
Mira: Weakness – Vanity
He began documenting everything. Times they left the house. The friends they no longer had. Their hidden secrets. Their slipping masks.
He was building a case, not for the police, but for himself. Every note he wrote was a brick in the wall of his vengeance. He didn’t want justice and wasn't ready to forgive them. He wanted reckoning.
A dark resolve had taken root in him, growing each day like a shadow stretching under the sun. The boy they once toyed with was slowly becoming something else, something dangerous.
That night, he dreamt of fire.
He was standing in the middle of a forest, surrounded by smoke. The four women stood at the edge, their faces pale with fear, their clothes catching flames. But Chuka didn’t move. He didn’t run. He just stood there, calm, letting the fire consume everything behind him. It wasn’t the fear he felt. It was freedom.
He awoke with a strange peace. The dream didn’t scare him, it reminded him.
Time was a loyal ally to those who knew how to wait.
Years passed.
He grew taller and more handsome. His voice deepened. His eyes sharpened.
The women aged too. Their laughter had become duller, their skin less smooth, but they still carried their wickedness like perfume, strong and suffocating.
They thought the past was buried, gone and long forgotten.
They had no idea what was coming.
On the evening of his twenty-first birthday, Chuka sat alone in the same room they once violated him in. The lights were off. The air was still. On the wall, he had pinned photos and photos he had taken in secret over the years. Sandra buying pills at a roadside stall. Aisha sneaking into a hotel with a married politician. Bella arguing with a woman over stolen money. Mira staring into the mirror, whispering affirmations to a face that had begun to crack.
He’d watched them fall apart, bit by bit, and they didn’t even notice. It all made him smile, and he kept on smirking while looking at the photos.
A knock sounded at the door. It was Sandra. Older now, slower. But the voice still dripped with that mocking sweetness.
"Chuka, open up. I made jollof rice. Your favourite."
He didn’t reply. Just sat there, still, calm, listening.
"Chuka?"
He stood and walked to the mirror. Looked at himself for a long while.
No more fear.
No more silence.
No more waiting.
He turned back to the table, picked up the notebook, and beneath the names, he wrote two words:
"It begins".
Now it has all begun to settle in. He processed everything, every move, his build-up plans to finally achieve his goal. There was nothing more important to Chuka at that moment than destroying each and every member of the Hinge.
Then he walked to the door, hand on the knob, but not to open it. Not yet. Not tonight.
The clock ticked.
The shadows thickened.
Chuka smiled.
To be continued.
- Writer
