---Cloaked In Skin

“It is normal to not want to acknowledge someone's presence, but the least you could do is be nice and say 'hi'. It wouldn't hurt, but whatever, I still sincerely think we should talk.”

He’d been there when I'd sat and I had, stuck in the silence around me, forgotten about him, had faded him into the background, and fallen into a state bereft of sound. I acted as though I hadn’t seen him, it was a risk to speak to people whom you knew nothing about, especially when at Mbammiri.

Nnanyi said a lot about Mbammiri but one in particular stuck, and it was that all things affiliated with the gods of our ancestors, always had demons guarding them, cloaked in the skin of humans, and ever watching. It was hard to tell them apart, but if you could look into their eyes you would see it, the absolute lack of emotion, dead. Dead eyes, blank yet murderous, blood thirsty. I was a coward and I knew it, so I would never ever dare to look into the eyes of a stranger, a demon at that, just to confirm something I was unsure of. So I acted as though I had not seen, for I was not sure and if he thought himself invisible, I’d rather not destroy his illusion.