The Prisoners Brew
1882 Words
Episode 2
The slam of the heavy iron door echoed through the cold, tiled room like a death knell. I lay there, my skin pressed against the freezing metal table, the scent of chemicals and decay stinging my nostrils. My mind was screaming, but my muscles were like lead.
Move, I told myself. If you don’t move, you’ll be a collection of jars on an altar by midnight.
I began with my fingers. I wiggled them, slow, agonisingly small movements. Then my toes. The sensation of the cold air hitting my skin helped sharpen my focus. Every breath I took was a shallow, silent victory.
I managed to roll onto my side. The world spun. I fell off the table, hitting the concrete floor with a dull thud. The pain was a blessing; it meant I was still alive. I crawled toward a stack of discarded hospital gowns and shrouded myself in one, shivering uncontrollably.
Near the back of the room, I saw a small window high up on the wall, meant for ventilation. Beside it was a stainless steel trolley filled with rusted surgical tools. I pushed the trolley, it creaked, a sound that felt like a gunshot in the silence, and climbed onto it.
With the last of my strength, I shattered the glass with a heavy kidney dish and pulled myself through the frame, the shards cutting into my palms. I didn't care. I dropped into the mud outside and ran into the darkness of the night
I couldn't go to the police. Not yet. Chibueze had money, and in this city, money bought the law. He had likely already filed a death certificate. If I showed up now, I’d be "silenced" before I could give a statement.
I found shelter in an abandoned construction site three miles away. For two weeks, I lived like an animal, scavenging and healing. My best friend and my husband were likely already picking out wedding flowers. The thought burned hotter than the poison in my veins.
I remembered the one person Chibueze feared: Odogwu, an old business rival he had cheated years ago. Odogwu wasn't a good man, but he was a man who hated Chibueze more than he loved life.
Three months later, Chibueze’s mansion was glowing with lights. It was the night of his engagement party to Judy. I stood in the shadows of the garden, my face hidden by a silk veil. I wasn't the woman he poisoned; I was a ghost he had invited in.
I had spent my time well. I had intercepted the catering delivery, replacing their expensive wine with a "special" vintage—the same slow-acting toxin he had used on me, but in a much more calculated dose.
I watched from the servant’s entrance as they raised their glasses.
"To a life without obstacles," Judy toasted, her diamonds glittering, the same diamonds I had helped Chibueze buy when we were struggling.
"To us," Chibueze replied, his smile arrogant and wide.
They drank. Deeply.
I stepped into the light of the ballroom. The music didn't stop, but the air seemed to freeze. I pulled back my veil.
Judy’s glass hit the floor, shattering just like mine had that night. A thin trail of blood began to leak from her nose. Chibueze gripped the table, his face turning a sickly shade of grey.
"You look like you've seen a ghost, Chibueze," I said, my voice as cold as the mortuary slab. "But don't worry. I won't kill you. Not yet. I've already called the 'Alhaji' you mentioned to the mortuary attendant. He’s very upset that you tried to sell him organs from a living woman. He’s outside now, and he wants his deposit back... in flesh."
Chibueze tried to speak, but his tongue was heavy.
"I've also sent the video of your confession to one of the mortuary attendants who recorded it to blackmail you, to the police, and your investors," I whispered, leaning into his ear. "You wanted a ladder to climb out of poverty? Well, I’m the one kicking it away."
Episodes 3
As the sirens wailed in the distance and the "business associates" he had crossed began to surround the house, I walked out the front door. I didn't look back. The fire I had started would burn everything he loved to ashes.
The sirens were getting louder, but the men entering from the back of the ballroom weren't wearing uniforms. They were dressed in flowing, dark kaftans, their faces set in grim masks of redirected fury.
Leading them was Alhaji, a man whose reputation for "business" was whispered in the darkest corners of the city. He wasn't interested in the law; he was interested in his investment.
"Chibueze," Alhaji’s voice boomed over the fading party music. "I paid for a delivery that never arrived. I paid for quality, and you gave me a scandal. You tried to sell me a woman who wasn't even dead."
Chibueze tried to stand, his legs buckling under the weight of the toxin. "Alhaji... wait... I can explain... the mortuary men—"
"The mortuary men have already spoken," Alhaji interrupted, gesturing to a man in the shadows. It was the same attendant from the night I woke up. He looked terrified, his hands shaking as he held a recording device. "They told me you instructed them to kill a living soul on my behalf. That brings heat to my door. Heat I do not like."
I stood by the grand mahogany doors, watching as Judy crawled toward Chibueze, her face pale. She looked at me, her eyes wide with a desperate, pathetic hope. "Please," she whimpered. "I was just following his lead. I loved you, didn't I?"
"You loved my life," I replied, stepping over a discarded silk ribbon. "And now you can share his end."
As Alhaji’s men began to "escort" Chibueze and Judy toward the basement—the very place Chibueze had hidden the money he stole from our joint accounts—I realised I wasn't finished.
I walked to the safe hidden behind the portrait of his "success." I punched in the code. It was my birthday, the one thing he never bothered to change because he thought I was too dead to matter.
Inside wasn't just money. There was a folder labelled "JUDY - PRIVATE."
I opened it and began to laugh. It was a cold, jagged sound that stopped Chibueze in his tracks as he was being dragged away.
"Oh, Chibueze," I said, holding up a stack of documents. "You said you were killing me so you could marry the 'love of your life'?"
He looked back, his eyes bloodshot.
"According to these bank statements and travel logs, Judy has been working for your biggest competitor for the last two years. She wasn't waiting for you to be free. She was funneling your 'new riches' into an offshore account in her name only. She was going to poison you three months after the wedding."
The silence that followed was absolute. Chibueze turned his head slowly toward Judy. The "love" in his eyes vanished, replaced by a raw, primal hatred that surpassed even what he felt for me.
"You... you witch," he hissed at her.
"I learned from the best!" Judy screamed back, her mask finally shattering.
I didn't stay to watch the rest. I didn't need to. I had handed Chibueze to Alhaji, and I had handed Judy to Chibueze’s own paranoia. They would tear each other apart long before the police arrived to sift through the wreckage of their "empire."
I walked out of the mansion and into the cool night air. For the first time in years, my lungs didn't feel tight. The "warm blood" and the "shattered glass" were memories now, scars that had turned into armour.
I reached the gate where a black sedan was waiting. The driver opened the door.
"Where to, Madam?" he asked.
"To the bank," I said, looking at the sunrise. "I have a lot of my own money to reclaim. And then, perhaps, a long vacation to a place where nobody knows the name Chibueze."
I had paid him back in his own coins. And I made sure he felt the weight of every single one as he sank.
The cool morning air felt different on my skin, not the sterile chill of the mortuary, but the crisp, sharp breeze of a woman reborn.
I sat in the back of the sedan, watching the iron gates of the mansion shrink in the distance. The screams were faint now, drowned out by the smooth hum of the engine. But I had one last stop to make before the past was truly buried.
We pulled up to a dilapidated shack on the outskirts of the city, not far from the cemetery grounds. A man was sitting on a plastic crate, nursing a bottle of cheap gin. It was the first mortuary attendant, the one who had held the syringe over my eyes.
When he saw the car, he froze. When he saw me step out, dressed in a tailored black suit and dark glasses, he dropped the bottle. It shattered, a sound that no longer made me flinch.
"G-ghost," he stammered, falling to his knees. "I swear, I no do am! I tell Alhaji the truth! I no kill you!"
I walked up to him, the heels of my boots clicking against the dry earth. I didn't feel anger toward him anymore; he was just a tool, a small cog in a machine of cruelty.
"You didn't kill me," I said, my voice steady. "But you were going to. You were going to harvest my heart for a man who didn't even know my name."
I signalled to my driver, who handed me a heavy envelope. I tossed it at the man’s feet. He looked at it, confused.
"There is enough in there to get you out of this city," I told him. "But there is a condition. If I ever hear that you’ve touched a surgical blade again—if I even hear your name mentioned in the same breath as 'Alhaji', I will make sure the police find the recordings of every 'operation' you’ve done in that basement."
He clutched the envelope to his chest, nodding frantically. "I'm going to leave tonight, Madam! I swear! I go back to my village, I'll start farming! I no go ever look back!"
"Good," I said. "Because ghosts have long memories."
Six Months Later.
The Mediterranean sun was golden, reflecting off the turquoise waters of the French Riviera. I sat at a small cafe, a glass of chilled sparkling water in front of me. On the table lay a new passport.
The name on the cover wasn't the name of the woman who had been poisoned. That woman died on a metal table in a dark room. This woman—Elena Vance—was someone entirely new.
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