The Absent Guest

Have you ever been among people celebrating you and wished you were anywhere but there? Sounds sad right? That’s exactly how I feel right now. My annoyingly large family is gathered in my father’s cramped living room to celebrate my recent graduation from university. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family. Well, I love them most of the time, and were the circumstances different, I would be having the time of my life gossiping with my cousins and making fun of my old aunty Edith who also has a ridiculous story to match every situation. But today is not normal. Starting with the horrible heat that can easily frustrate a person to madness. I can feel my makeup melting and smudging from all the sweat. The dress my mum practically wrestled me into this morning is so itchy, I think the tailor used the most uncomfortable fabric she could find just to spite me. I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case, considering she once heard me say that she would be better suited as a carpenter than a tailor. In my defense though I was talking to my younger sister and I had no idea that the tailor was standing behind me.

I’m not usually this prickly. The normal me would still be in a good, celebratory mood despite all these nuisances. The real reason I’ve been fighting tears and faking a smile for the past hour runs much deeper. I’ve been trying not to have a breakdown in the presence of my entire family because Kelechi should be here getting celebrated as well but she’s not. Instead, my best friend since diapers is lying lifeless, six feet under the ground at St. Vincent memorial.

Kelechi was the kind of person you could only describe as a radiant light. Many people have cute, funny stories of how they met their best friend but that is not Kelechi and I. She has just always been there, even in my earliest memories. She had the most beautiful dark skin. Her slender, hourglass figure has been a head-turner since we hit puberty. She had very beautiful, dainty facial features. At 5’7 she used to always make fun of my 5’1 frame, calling me her personal elf. ‘Kele’s little helper’, she would always call me. We were extensions of each other and her death felt like half of me was buried alongside her.

Depressing as it may sound, I think it should have been me in that casket instead of my sweet, kindhearted friend. Of the both of us, I have always been the much more rascally one. Kele was polite to anyone and everyone, she was so rule-abiding, that it used to make me get so frustrated at her. Kele had no issues going hungry if it meant someone else wouldn’t have to. She had a smile for everybody. I used to think she was too good for this world though I realized how foolish that thought is now that I know what it feels like to no longer have her here.

An old classmate once said that our duo was like Mickey Mouse and Goofy from the Disney cartoon. Kelechi was Mickey, of course. Strait-laced and rule-abiding. I was Goofy, the annoying albeit lovable troublemaker. The comparison was spot on. I get into more trouble in a week than Kelechi would get into in a complete year. Class clown, most frequent visitor in Mr. Peter, the school disciplinarian’s office. That was all me. You would think that I would eventually outgrow all of that but I never did. I am still every bit as troublesome as I used to be. Age only made me a lot more daring. So much so that if some sort of fortune teller had predicted that one of us would die the way Kelechi did, we both would have thought it would be me. Anyone would have thought so. As painful as it is to go over the events that led to Kelechi’s death, it won’t be fair to leave you hanging after I have strung you along this far. So, I’ll just brave it.

Kelechi and I always attended the same schools. At age 17, we both got admission to study physiotherapy at Wellington University. Everything was as normal as it gets with us until our third year. We were 20 and Kele finally decided that she was old enough to date. Unlike me who had had countless, careless flings, Kele firmly believed that she was too young to date and that relationships that wouldn’t lead to marriage were completely unnecessary anyway. She used to sound just like our Pastor’s wife whenever she gave that speech.

I was very shocked when she met Seun and he became all she could talk about. Like many other universities, ours has a matriculation service for new students every year. There would be tents everywhere, filled with families who had come to celebrate their children. Kele and I used to take a stroll on the field during this ceremony rating outfits, and cars and laughing at people’s ridiculous makeups and wigs.

We had just barely gotten back to our room when Kele started gashing about the handsome young man she met. While we were out, we had gotten separated for a short while when I went to say hi to a friend and go distracted. It was then Kele met Seun. She was going on and on about how handsome and charming he was. Somehow, within the short time they spoke, Seun managed to convince my friend that he was responsible, hardworking, and ambitious. It was amusing to see my goody two shoes, ‘I see men like trees’ best friend be so fascinated by a man. Seun had attended the matriculation service for his younger sister, Tope who was one of the matriculating students.

After about a month of trying, and failing, to get used to this version of my best friend who giggles at texts and gushes about a particular young man all the time, Seun finally asked Kele to be his girlfriend. My best friend was happy and so I was too. Their relationship was so peaceful and wholesome, the only fight I recalled them having was over Kele rejecting Seun’s expensive gifts. Seun’s family comes from old, generational wealth but Kelechi was still not comfortable with accepting his expensive gifts. Classic Kelechi.

About a year into their relationship, Kelechi was practically engaged. According to my best friend, they had discussed marriage, life goals, and many other serious stuff that made my head spin. But my Kele was so happy and content, that it made me consider getting a serious boyfriend too. I was so happy for my friend. Seun and Kelechi made so many plans having no idea that she wouldn’t live to see any of it.

The 20th of May 2019 was a very gloomy day, it was a week before our fourth-year first-semester exams. I went out with a couple of friends and when I got back, Kele wasn’t in the room. I saw a note stating that she had gone to see Seun. It was late already and it would have stood out to me that Kelechi wasn’t back yet if I hadn’t been drunk. Kelechi never stays out late. I just went to bed immediately. Because of how much I drank that day, I woke up by 1 pm the next day with a severe headache. Kelechi still wasn’t back. I called Seun to ask if Kelechi was with him and when he said she wasn’t, I started panicking. I called all our mutual friends to ask about Kelechi’s whereabouts but they said no. That evening, I contacted the Student Union Government [SUG] and reported her missing since it was 24 hours already. They contacted the police and a search began after I gave them the note Kelechi left and Seun was put into custody. Her parents were also contacted.

After two very long days of searching, Kelechi was found battered and almost unrecognizable in an abandoned construction site. Upon hearing the news, I got dressed and headed to the morgue in a daze. It was when I saw Kelechi’s lifeless body that I snapped out of it. All I remember is hearing a shrill sound and then I blacked out. I was later told that the sound I heard was my scream and it took two attendants to hold me and stop me from hurting myself. Her body had been cleaned but I could still see all the gashes. An autopsy had revealed that she had been ganged raped and sliced open in several places during the act. That news broke my heart. I had hoped that the wounds were post-mortem but they had just told me that Kelechi was murdered in the most brutal way possible and she had felt every bit of it. I didn’t know how to act. I had just lost my better half and in the most devastating way too. Do I cry, scream, or laugh? I felt like I was losing my mind.

I was distraught but for some reason, only my therapist can explain, I didn’t shed a single tear. I just felt dead inside. Her case would have been dismissed as a hookup gone wrong if not for the involvement of Seun’s family. Because of Seun’s parent’s affluence, the police managed to put aside their usual incompetence and carry out some investigations to find out what caused Kelechi’s death. After about two weeks, the police revealed that Seun was innocent and that Kelechi didn’t get to his house that day. It turned out that Kelechi had been ambushed on her way to Seun’s house and taken to an abandoned construction site where she was gang raped and beaten to death by a group of cultists. We all thought that Kele had been a victim of the increasingly rampant cultist attacks until one of the cultists in police custody became desperate to reduce his sentence. He confessed that the attack on Kelechi wasn’t random, it was an ordered hit.

Seun’s younger sister, Tope, the one whose matriculation Seun met Kelechi at, was the one who ordered the hit. She was taken for questioning and she confessed that she indeed sent them to kill Kelechi. She did it because she felt like Seun’s attention and love had been shifted towards Kelechi. The police had her go through a series of mental health examinations as a part of the investigation and she turned out to be diagnosed with psychopathy and severe attachment issues. It was then that her parents admitted that she had been showing signs of mental instability but they attributed it all to childishness and immaturity. They believed stripping her of all her privileges and sending her to a ‘non-luxurious’ university would force her to grow up. Needless to say, they were wrong. Instead of helping their sick child to grow up, their insane method of discipline cost my friend her life.

Seun’s parents got an expensive lawyer who argued that Tope was not in her right mind and therefore shouldn’t be charged to prison. He won the case. While my gold-hearted Kelechi is rotting 6 feet under, her killer is sitting pretty in a very expensive, super-comfortable psychiatrist home.

It’s been almost two years now, and I still have my therapist on speed dial. I have struggled with severe depression, addiction to painkillers, and anxiety amongst many other diagnoses. I feel like a walking dead and therapy is not helping. I only go because it was court-ordered when I started self-harming. I couldn’t recover from losing Kelechi. It has been a downward spiral since she died and it is even a miracle that I was able to graduate. Now, sitting in this place full of people who are more elated than the celebrant, I can’t stop thinking of how unfair it is that Kelechi’s life was cut short by a spoilt, mad child who is not even facing the consequences for her actions. Life is very cruel.