Prologue

Fear, a very powerful emotion, devoid of love joy and comfort. A primal instinct when caught unawares or startled, but to me, gear was a major part of my life. It made me hate coming back to the house, it made me accept the fate of being abused by my stepfather day in and day out and now, it made me leave home.

My life up till this point has been a mystery to me , whether in the clothes I now put on which were ragged beyond identification or the shoes which had a material sole or maybe the bag I hung over my shoulder which contained everything I have ever called my own

What is it to fear?, People would tell you that fear is the minds way of evading precarious situations or maybe, fear is what enables us to proceed with caution, but to me fear had only one definition and only one projection and his name was Jack.

Jack... Such a common name with it's bearers constituting the nice and easy going faction of society or so I thought. Jack was the name of my stepdad, the blight who almost drove me to take my life as my mother had done. Jack the man whom for the entirety of my stay made me regard the fears people had about snakes as a luxury.

Enough of Jack, he is in the past, unto more pressing and immediate matters

Well I am currently standing in an alleyway or rather my new house, with a tall man in my immediate view and a bluish portal ahead of him.

Yes, a portal, the kind that takes you to other places. Well? should I resist... I probably should.... But no what was I to do..... I knew what to do, but I wasn't sure I wanted to do it.

Here was a man forcing me into a portal, trying to take me away. But then again, who would miss or even ask of me. Here, in this hot, sunny alley situated in maybe avenue, a few blocks to the Main Acre Filling station, Calabar, Nigeria I was the definition of alone. Maybe he is taking me to somewhere safe, my heart screamed, the mind mind screamed back – Maybe he is trying to kill you!

But would death really be a bad thing, maybe this was my fate, to die in this way, by what I could only presume to be magic.

Well at least this way my death would at least have some flare.

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What really was magic?.

As a Nigerian, we were thought to believe that magic, or 'juju' as we called it were dark arts from the pit of hell, outside that, I really didn't have a cant to leave you bleeding through your varginal processes. If I even knew what processes meant. Also, a surprise isn't supposed to leave you

gasping for air, clutching your body in terror and writhing in pain afterwards

So, No.... It wasn't because my whole childhood was a surprise. I'n fact I didn't know why I felt nothing towards the fair heavily built man with dreds along his head, starry blue eyes, a round chin shrowded by what he claims to be a beard, but to me it was just an unkept bush I would have loved to burn, and watvh burn

So in my final moments, as I am being dragged into the GOC, I am faced with a locust of identity, not of who I am, because I damm well know who I am, rather it is of what others- if there are any , know about me

Well, to me, I am simply Faith Maxwell Chioma, daughter to Late. Mr Gerald Maxwell Uche, Future student of GOC and the "smartest teen in the world" if you took my mother's words into account.

But to others, I am a common plague upon which to give thanks after I have passed. So with my hands bound to his and his head turned away from mine, I believe I did feel something in my last few seconds in the mortal world.

I felt the need for a bath...