Chapter Seven: The Last Call
1001 Words
It started with a whisper, a quiet pulse in Chuka’s chest that grew louder with each passing hour. He had stared at his mother’s number on his small, worn-out phone for nearly three days now, never pressing the green button.
But that morning, something shifted.
Maybe it was the way the light poured through the curtains. Maybe it was the memory of her voice echoing again in his sleep. “I will always be with you.” Or maybe it was the weight of silence pressing too hard on his young chest. Whatever it was, Chuka finally gathered the courage to speak.
His hands trembled as he dialed the number. His thumb hovered above the call button before finally pressing it.
Ring!
Ring!
Ring!
No answer.
He bit his lip and tried again. Once. Twice. Three times.
Still no answer.
“Please, Mum…” he whispered under his breath, clutching the phone close to his ear like a lifeline. “Please pick it up.”
But the call went straight to voicemail.
“Hi, this is Sophia. I’m away right now. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”
He didn’t leave a message. What would he even say? Hi Mum, I’ve been r***d by the women taking care of me. He threw the phone across the bed and buried his face in the pillow. The tears didn’t come this time. Just silence, again.
Later that afternoon, the door creaked open.
Chuka was still lying on the bed, numb, when Sandra stepped in. Her eyes looked tired, her face unusually pale. No snide remarks. No cruel smiles. Just… silence.
“Chuka,” she said softly.
He didn’t move.
She stepped closer, kneeling beside the bed. “I need to tell you something.”
Still, he said nothing.
Sandra paused, exhaled. “It’s your mother. There was… an accident this morning. A tanker lost control. She didn’t make it.”
Silence.
The room felt like it had swallowed all the air. Chuka sat up slowly, looking at her like she’d just spoken in a language he couldn’t understand.
“No,” he said.
Sandra blinked. “I’m so...”
“No,” he repeated, firmer this time. “That’s not true. She just didn’t pick up. That’s all. You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“She promised me.” Chuka’s voice cracked. “She said she’d always be with me!”
Sandra didn’t reply. She simply placed a folded piece of cloth on the edge of the bed, his mother’s scarf.
Chuka stared at it for a long time. Then he picked it up, trembling. It no longer smelled like her. Just dust, and distance.
“I’m sorry,” Sandra said, standing up and walking out.
He sat there for hours. No tears. No movement.
It wasn’t real.
Couldn’t be.
He replayed the last week over and over. He had waited too long. He should have called her earlier. Maybe she would’ve told him to come home. Maybe she wouldn’t have taken that road. Maybe… maybe she’d still be alive.
By nightfall, it sunk in.
She was gone.
He was alone.
For real, this time.
The days that followed were a blur.
People came and went. There was a brief funeral, a framed picture, hollow words of comfort from strangers. Chuka wasn’t allowed to travel for the burial. They said it was “too much for him to bear.”
No one asked what was already breaking him.
Sandra returned to normal too quickly. She no longer whispered or caressed like before, at least not yet. The Hinge had gone silent, probably lying low for a while. But Chuka could feel it, the storm wasn’t over. Just paused.
He stayed quiet. But something inside him had changed completely.
Each morning, he stared longer in the mirror.
Not at his reflection, but at the boy inside it.
That boy truly had nothing else to lose.
No mother.
No allies.
No safety.
Only memory and silence.
And rage.
Real rage.
But it was quiet for now, slow-burning, patient.
At school, the teachers noticed a change. He didn’t cry. He didn’t laugh. He just did what he was told, moved where he was told, like someone operating on wires. Some called it maturity. Others said he was in shock.
But none of them knew the truth nor understood what he was going through.
They didn’t know he’d screamed into his pillow at night until he couldn’t breathe.
They didn’t know he started sleeping with the scarf wrapped around his fist, like a weapon or a shield.
They didn’t know he had begun writing again, but this time, not in his notebook.
This time, he wrote names.
Just four.
Sandra.
Aisha.
Bella.
Mira.
The Hinge.
Chuka was no longer afraid. He changed, a new focus, the same boy with the lion's vision and heart.
Something had frozen inside him the day he got the news. And in that icy silence, he made a vow, not to the world, not even to his mother.
He made a vow to himself.
“They will pay.”
It wasn’t a childish thought. It wasn’t fantasy or desperation. It was a promise, carved from suffering.
For now, he would pretend.
Pretend to heal.
Pretend to move on.
Pretend to be fine.
Because he knew time would pass, and when it did, he would be ready. He would grow. He would watch. He would learn.
And one day, when they least expected it, the same silence that surrounded him now would return to them in screams, in justice, in pain.
But for now, Chuka walked back into the house like a ghost.
Sandra greeted him with false warmth. “How was school?”
He nodded. “Fine.”
She smiled, satisfied.
He smiled back.
But his eyes no longer held the fear she once fed on.
Now, they held something else.
A storm.
One day, it will come.
And when it did…
None of them would survive it.
- Writer
