Chapter Five: Silence Tastes Like Dust
709 Words
The funeral home had never felt this quiet.
It wasn’t the good kind — not the incense-scented, cedar-soaked quiet that felt sacred. No. This was the kind that crawled under Ade’s skin and settled there, whispering questions he couldn’t answer.
Efe hadn’t come in for three days.
He had texted her once. Just once.
“You alright?”
No reply.
He stared at his phone more than he wanted to admit. Switched it on and off like the signal was the problem.
It wasn’t.
She was gone.
Not permanently, not yet — but Ade had met enough grieving families to know the signs. When someone made peace with their own ending, they didn’t throw a party. They simply... disappeared.
He tried not to think about it.
But he did.
Even while arranging a new set of budget-friendly caskets.
Even while arguing with the carpenter over delivery delays.
Even while drinking two-day-old coffee that tasted like rust and regret.
By the fourth day, the quiet had teeth.
And it dragged him back—not by force, but the way silence sometimes does, pulling open old doors he thought were sealed.
1990. Nasarawa State.
He was six.
It was the dry season. The kind of heat that made metal fences burn skin and water evaporate before it touched the ground.
Their house sat close to the road. Dust always found its way in — under the doors, through the windows, into his throat.
He’d been playing with his brother, using bottle caps as soldiers, arranging a full-blown war across the veranda floor.
Then came the sound.
Low chanting.
Rhythmic.
Male voices.
He stood and walked to the gate.
His brother followed, then hesitated.
“Come back,” the older boy had warned.
But Ade had already pressed his face through the metal bars, peering down the road.
A group of men were walking. Slow. Measured.
They carried something wrapped in white cloth.
A body.
It was long. Too still. The cloth was clean but heavy, like it held more than its weight. It held finality.
Ade didn’t know the word for death then.
But he knew what he was seeing was different. Sacred. Unreachable.
His mother’s hands came fast, pulling him away from the gate.
“Don’t look!” she hissed, covering his eyes. “Eh-eh! You want them to carry you, too?”
He didn’t understand what she meant.
But the image stayed. Burned into him.
The white cloth.
The dust curled around their feet.
The way the men didn’t talk. Didn’t cry. Just walked.
He never forgot it.
And as he grew, the fascination only deepened — not out of darkness, but out of longing.
A longing to understand why life could end so suddenly, why people vanished into silence, and why no one ever really seemed ready.
The memory faded slowly, like incense smoke in an empty room.
But the feeling it left behind stayed. Heavy. Familiar.
Ade now stood in the same position he had that day as a child, by the window, staring out at an empty road.
Waiting.
Not for a body this time.
But for a girl who spoke of death like it was a house she had already rented.
Where was she?
What if she had really gone?
He hated how that thought twisted something in his chest. He told himself it was a professional concern.
She was a client, after all. She had paid a deposit.
She was... lying.
To everyone but him.
He had seen it in her eyes.
That exhaustion.
That calm that didn’t come from peace, but from surrender.
The worst kind.
He ran a hand over his face, then moved to the guestbook. The last signature was hers. Neat cursive. Efe.
He closed the book gently, like slamming it would scare her farther away.
If she didn’t return by the seventh day...
He didn’t finish the thought.
Instead, he swept the front steps.
Rearranged the coffin catalogues.
Burned a stick of incense that made his eyes sting.
And he waited.
Even if he wouldn’t admit it out loud — even if a part of him was angry that her silence mattered so much — he waited.
And somewhere deep in that silence, he hoped she was still alive.
- Writer
