The Hidden Toxin ✔(#6 in the Our Side of The Dice Series)

Chapter 8: Demanding Curriculums

Ebun

Ebun failed all her mid-term tests.

It wasn't because of detention of some sort. One must have thought that trouble awaited her since someone tapped her shoulders and asked her what she was watching in the I.C.T room but it was by sheer luck that it wasn't a teacher who had caught her and the person wasn't able to figure it out quickly that she was watching pornography so she narrowly escaped that casualty.

Nothing shocking happened in the past couple of weeks that must have been an attributing factor to her woeful failures. She didn't feel anyone following her, neither could she observe any strange things. It was just that inevitable feeling of weightlessness. The more she fought to avoid it, the more exhausting it was.

Did she have to fight so hard to be a bit sane? She masturbated excessively every single day that it was even a surprise that no one had caught her. But the guilt and self-hatred that came after the act were unavoidable. It didn't make the activity worth it.

For how long was she going to continue putting so much effort into something that only made her feel sane and happy while she was doing it? Why wasn't there an euphoric after effect? One particular day, she'd bled from using a relatively sharp object to please herself. She wasn't even aware till the object stung her like hot metal; sweet but discomforting pain. All for what? A few seconds of pleasure and the fact that she didn't want to think about revenge.

She was losing focus in everything if she had any before. A week before she realized that masturbation wasn't helping her in the long run, she figured that maybe reading her school books would be a better means of escape for her. She wasn't so sure because generally, reading required a lot of concentration but she decided to try it nevertheless because she didn't know what she could do with her body till she roamed her hands around it.

Maybe reading could be the solution I've always sought for. She thought.

So she tried it.

She was intentional about the venue and the time she chose to read. She avoided the library because of the eerie feeling that shelves and demarcated tables gave her. It made her feel paranoid instead of safe and secured. Like someone was watching her secretly and could easily attack her without anybody noticing.

Hence, she chose an open space; a wooden bench in a park located close to the school premises where people passed by very often so it wasn't an extremely quiet avenue neither was it a noisy one. She chose the hours close to twilight as a conducive time-space to concentrate properly.

She decided to read her history note. Ten minutes into her reading, she was glad to have understood the little she read until the image of a white, fading mask appeared in the firewall of her mind like a holograph. She shook her head in an attempt to dismiss the image and gazed harder in between the lines scribbled in her note.

History of Nigeria

The history of Nigeria can be traced to settlers trading across the Middle East and Africa as early as 1100 BC...

She tried to read the lines out loud. She knew the information in her notebook was not so hard to memorize and assimilate but she found herself reading the same lines five to ten times and even when she assured herself that she understood what that paragraph was saying and felt it was okay for her to move to the next line, it came to her mind again.

The mask. The cutleries scattered on the kitchen floor. The nail on the wood piercing a hole in her forehead. Her screams for help. The murderous, sinister laughter that filled the room. The blood that dripped from the center of her head to her chest. The squeaky sound that her body made from being dragged against the tiled floor.

The sound was incredibly pristine and louder than ever before like there was some invisible, wireless amplifier in her head. Then those words. Deep, mocking, and dangerous: "Catch me if you can."

Those images and sounds knew exactly when to chip in between intervals - especially when sis was at the brink of understanding what she was reading. She knew she had had enough when the trees around her started to produce white masks hidden between its branches and trunks.

Freaked out and frustrated by the fact that she could not control her train of thoughts and hallucinations and was unable to concentrate desire the conduciveness of the atmosphere, she packed her books and ran back to school.

Quickly, she rushed to the toilet to clear her mind in the way she knew best. She knew she was going to feel ashamed but the momentary euphoria? The cloud nine feelings? She needed it like dopamine so she did a quick one with her fingers, washed her hands when she felt better, and headed back to her class.

The class was rowdy. There were so much murmuring and incessant chatting between the boys and girls. Some were seated in groups, starting at a white booklet filled with black ink. When she looked around, everyone else was holding a similar booklet too.

What was going on? She'd barely got to wonder any further when she heard someone complain: "The test was so hard! Mr. Theodore didn't have mercy on us."

Test? What test? When did that happen?

Alarmed and scared, she tapped the shoulders of one of them when she originally would never have a reason to do so. The girl turned towards her.

"Yes? What is it?" she snapped.

"Was there a test? What test was it?" she knew the answer to the former question but anxiety made her ask twice.

"What kind of question is that? You weren't in class?" she frowned. "Oh...you weren't!" she exclaimed after taking a second good look at her. "The teacher marked you absent before the test commenced but...but you weren't? Why?"

Because you were busy rubbing yourself. Her subconscious answered without a filter and she felt her heart pound with embarrassment at the sound of that.

"What test was it?" Ebun asked again, annoyed that the girl was making remarks that she didn't care to listen to.

"It was history test and it was forty marks."

Ebun couldn't believe her ears. How could the subject she was trying to read for be the test she had missed? And it was forty whole marks?!
She wanted to cry but her tears failed her. She tried so hard to read for this test she didn't even know she was supposed to have and battled with her memories for several minutes only for that to happen.

She concluded from that day on that reading wasn't the way out. So she didn't bother to read throughout that week as she had more mid-term tests to write. She didn't touch herself either because it was futile and a waste of her time, energy, and effort.

So she simply existed. Weightless yet burdened at the same time with cruel images flooding the walls of her mind and spirit till her heart palpitated painfully and her pillow, wet with her ocular fluids.

She concluded that dying would be the peace she needed and would have to find a way to get to that phase soon enough.