Chapter Seven: When the Storm Walks In
530 Words
The smell of formaldehyde still lingered in the cool room.
Ade stood hunched over the table, gloved hands steady as he closed the boy’s eyelids.
The mother had claimed her child was killed spiritually.
There were no visible wounds, but something in the boy’s face — tight, frozen in an expression that should never belong to someone so young — told a story Ade couldn’t ignore, a story that left him with the unsettling feeling that something was off.
Children didn’t just go like that.
Life wasn’t that merciful.
He sighed, peeled off his gloves, and turned to clean the instruments when he heard it.
A bang.
Then another.
Then the door burst open.
“Efe?”
She stumbled in like a storm.
Her eyes were wild, swollen.
Her lips quivered.
For a moment, she couldn’t find the words — she just stood there in the middle of the funeral home, panting like she had outrun something unspeakable.
Then she broke.
Ade rushed to her.
Her whole body collapsed into his chest, her shoulders trembling.
“I—I didn’t know where else to go,” she whispered.
He didn’t ask.
He didn’t need to.
He gently led her away from the harsh white lights of the embalming room into the smaller space where he kept a cot for nights he didn’t want to go home.
As she sat, her jacket slipped open.
Ade’s breath caught.
Her arms. Her sides. Her back — lined with fresh welts.
He knelt in front of her.
“Who did this to you?”
She didn’t answer.
She just broke.
Right there, in his arms.
Tears burst from her eyes like they’d been waiting too long.
Deep, shaking sobs tore through her chest.
Ade held her close, his arms strong and still, but inside he was shaking too.
“I tried to be okay,” she said finally, in a hoarse whisper. “I really did.”
She slid to the floor.
He didn’t ask again.
Instead, he fetched a clean towel, a bowl of hot water, and balm.
He pressed the warm cloth against her skin, slow and careful.
She winced but didn’t flinch.
It wasn’t just physical pain.
It was deeper.
He saw it when he looked at her again — beneath the bruises, beyond the pain.
She looked… tired.
Not just of this moment, but of life itself.
Worn out.
Hollowed.
She tried to speak, but nothing came out.
Her lips trembled, her eyes were glossy with tears, and she had no strength left to cry.
Ade helped her to the small mattress in the backroom.
It was where he sometimes napped between long hours.
That night, it became hers.
She lay on her side, curled in like a child.
He sat beside her, unsure of what to say.
Just before she drifted off, she whispered,
“It’s eating me from the inside.”
Ade froze.
“What is?”
But she was already asleep.
He watched her chest rise and fall, his hand resting near hers.
And for the first time in a long time, he was afraid — not of death, but of losing someone who was still breathing.
- Writer
