GLITCH

CHAPTER FOUR

I couldn't stop my mouth hanging open like a door unhinged. I wanted to laugh, cry, sing, whatever. At what point does a person journey into madness? I have no idea, but I could understand why people went mad. Seeing Xera framed in that doorway made me forget everything else, including my name. There was no explanation for it, my brain shut down completely.

"Uh-eh?" I tried to speak but what came out was pure gibberish. My eyes were bulging yet she just stood there, staring at me as though it were the most natural thing in the world. The eyes that always seemed to shine with light seemed dead somehow, as though she'd gone through something unspeakable. I always used to tease her about the spec of gray in her eyes, giving her some sort of look that could not be recreated. Looking at her though, her eyes were blacker than the darkness of the night.

"Won't you say hi?" Xera said, that expression of indifference still on her face. I couldn't believe it. She'd been alive all these while and I had no idea.

"Say hi? To who? The girl whose arm was all that was found? Yet she's standing before me, hale and hearty? I don't know, how exactly do you think I supposed to react?" I had no idea when I flared up, my words rushing out of me in torrents. I didn't even care what was going on, I was a cacophony of emotion—scattered with no place to go. Anger raged in my body, it seemed like the beginning of the end. Frustration ran through me, it seemed to pierce my innards and turn them to ice. I was going through the phases while she just stared pointedly at me, as though I'd gone senile.

"Don't overreact. It's unsightly. You must have been tired." She said, trying to make small talks but I was not having it at all. The detached way she spoke make it seem as though she was mainly doing it out of some sense of responsibility or some other stuff I didn't want to hear about.

"Don't give me that. Tired? I was abducted and tied up like an animal! I wasn't even given food to eat. Just thrown on the floor till whenever I wake up. That seems like just being tired to you?"

I knew I was practically screaming but I couldn't help it. The voices in my head were chanting bloody murder. I knew it was Xera, I just couldn't help the emotions welling inside of me.

"I knew we should have killed her when we had the chance. Now, can you see?" Femi spoke from where he stood, the nonchalant way he spoke about death pissed me off to no end. He didn't have to be an outright doofus but apparently, whoever they all were, they'd never heard anything about emotional intelligence. Probably never learnt anything concerning emotions either.

"Femi, stop. It's not always a joke. And Mavery, you've become feisty, haven't you? It's understandable, you thought I was dead." Xera continued speaking in that robotic voice that did nothing to quell the anger burning bright and hot within me.

"Yes, that's right. Be the robot. You need to practice your robotic acts a lot more. I swear, I might hate you right now. Did all I said skip past your head? I SAID YOU ABDUCTED ME!!" I hated the state I was in, a voice kept whispering in my ears that I was being pathetic but I paid it no heed. Only my anger mattered.

"Now now, why do we bother about minute details? You're fine, isn't that all that matters? I don't understand why you're being so angry all of a sudden. Do you want me to leave?" Her eyes flared up for a second and I could see that spec of gray I'd always loved. She was losing the whole indifference façade. I didn't know if I should keep pushing the buttons but I realized that we had an audience. Evie was staring straight at me, not bothering to mask the curiosity on her face. I didn't want to become some sort of spectacle. I'd never dealt with attention the right way.

"Why? Why?" I could hear my voice breaking but I didn't care, the pain seeped into the core of my being like a parasite into an open wound. I couldn't get rid of it, I couldn't accept it either. It was a gift wrapped catastrophe. A unnatural disaster that wrecked everything in me.