The dead don't stay buried when they're hungry.
The shadow prison didn't have walls.
It had Odhiambo.
He stood everywhere at once, a man-shaped hole in the air that swallowed light. His smile was the same one from our wedding photo, the one Mom framed and hung by the TV. Except this smile had too many teeth.
"Atieno," he said, and his voice was termites chewing through wood. "You've been busy."
I tried to stand. My legs were gone. Not missing — gone. From the knee down, there was just cold floor and the feeling of being eaten.
Paul wasn't here. The last thing I remembered was his hand in mine as we ran from the school, the bell still screaming. Then black. Then this.
"Where is he?" My voice came out small. Fourteen again, hiding when Dad came home drunk.
Odhiambo tilted his head. The movement made the room tilt with him. The ceiling became the floor for a second and my stomach dropped.
"The boy?" He tasted the word like it was rotten. "Paul wants to be a hero. Heroes die first in my stories, Atieno. You know this."
The hunger stirred. It had been quiet since Brian. Since I watched him turn to paper and ash in the school toilet, his last scream still stuck in my teeth. The hunger didn't care about Odhiambo. The hunger cared that it had been three hours since it fed.
Choose, it whispered. Not words. A feeling. Like missing a step in the dark.
I looked down at my missing legs. They weren't bleeding. They were unraveling, thread by thread, like a bad sweater. Each thread was a memory — Mom braiding my hair, Brian's laugh, the smell of rain on Kibera iron sheets.
Odhiambo was eating my life. Slow.
"You took my name," I said. "You took my dad. Now you take my legs?"
"I take what's mine." He crouched. Without legs, he was suddenly eye-level. His breath smelled like the day they buried him — dirt and cheap gin and something sweet underneath. "You're mine, Atieno. Daughter. Vessel. You carry the hunger because I put it there."
"No."
The word surprised me. It surprised him too. His smile slipped for half a second and I saw the rot underneath. The real Odhiambo. The one who beat Mom when dinner was cold. The one who sold my textbooks for chang'aa.
"No?" He laughed. The sound made my ears bleed. Actual blood, hot and running down my neck. "You think you have a choice? Look at you. Half-eaten. The boy will be next. Then your mother. Then—"
"I said no."
The hunger surged. Not for him. Through him.
For one second, I wasn't prey. I was the trap.
I reached for the threads of my legs unraveling into his mouth. Grabbed them. Pulled.
Odhiambo screamed. It wasn't a human sound. It was the sound a house makes when the foundation cracks.
The shadow prison shuddered. Cracks appeared in the air, like black glass splitting. Through the cracks: school hallway. Fluorescent lights. And Paul, pounding on nothing, shouting my name.
"Atieno! I can hear you! Follow my voice!"
I pulled harder. My legs hurt. No — they existed again, and existing hurt worse than gone. Muscle knitting. Bone remembering how to be bone.
"You can't—" Odhiambo choked. "You're not strong enough—"
"I'm not," I agreed. Blood in my mouth. My blood. "But I'm mad enough."
I thought of Brian. Of his mother who would wake up tomorrow and find a pile of ash where her son's bed should be. I thought of Mom, probably sitting in our shack right now, wondering why I didn't come home. I thought of Paul, who saw me eat a boy and still came back.
The hunger roared. Not at me. With me.
I ripped my legs free.
The shadow prison exploded.
---
I woke up coughing on tile. School toilet. The one where Brian —
Don't think about Brian.
Paul was there, his hands on my shoulders, his face white under the flickering light. "You were gone. You just — you collapsed and then you were gone for six minutes. I timed it."
Six minutes. Felt like years.
"My legs," I gasped, looking down. They were there. Shaking. Covered in my own blood and something black that smelled like burnt hair.
"They're here," Paul said. "You're here. What happened?"
I told him. About the shadow prison. About Odhiambo eating my memories. About pulling myself back.
When I finished, Paul was quiet for a long time. Then: "So he can pull you in. Anytime."
"Yeah."
"And the hunger... it helped you?"
"I think..." I swallowed. The taste of copper and ash. "I think it doesn't want me dead. Not yet. It wants to feed. If I die, it dies."
Paul nodded, like that made sense. Like any of this made sense. "Okay. Then we use that."
"We?"
"You and me. And the hunger, I guess." He tried to smile. It didn't reach his eyes. "You said Odhiambo takes what's his. Time we take something back."
The bell rang. Not the school bell. A deeper sound. Coming from the walls. Coming from everywhere.
Midnight.
The hunger sat up inside me, alert. Hungry.
Choose, it said again. But this time, it pointed.
Through the toilet door. Down the hall. To the teachers' lounge.
Where Mrs. Kamau was working late. Alone.
Paul saw my face. "No. Atieno, no. We're not—"
"I know," I said. "I know."
But my legs were already standing. Already walking.
And the door was already opening.
---
Author Note: Daily updates till 30k. Cliffhanger duty done. Comment if you think Atieno can resist. KSh 25k loading...