Battered Wife

16

"What do you think? Is this evidence enough to ensure that I get full custody of my daughter?" I asked, staring nervously at the lawyer assigned to handle my case by my company.

"With this evidence, we can surely do a lot, Mrs. Popoola. There is an 80% probability that you will get full custody of your daughter, especially with the recording of her grandmother's...speech. You can just sit back and I'll do the rest." He said, pushing his gold-rimmed glasses up his nose.

I nodded, "Thank you very much, Mr. Ademola. Ehm, can I ask how to close the gap of the remaining 20%?"

"Oh that. I'm not sure that's possible because 10% is attributed to the possibility that your husband has something or some kind of information he could use to counter your request for full custody and the remaining 10% is based on the judge's prejudice, bias or belief which may make them opt for some kind of joint custody allowing your husband to see your daughter occasionally. It's most likely not going to happen as long as we make the court understand how much your husband ignores his daughter. Don't worry about it, Mrs. Popoola. When I see the judge assigned to the case, I'll be able to tell you of whatever risks may arise from the judge's side. However, for your husband, you'll need to be the one to think about if he has anything on you."

"Alright, thank you very much Mr. Ademola." I said, standing up to shake hands with him.

As I walked back to Station B and my workspace, I thought carefully about the possibility of Remi having anything on me but I couldn't think of anything.

When I sat in my workspace, I shook my head and started focusing on my work. The company was paying for not just my legal fees but they were also working on providing me with a suitable house as well as a car and a driver. I felt more obligated than usual to do my very best and go out of my way to make sure my work was perfectly completed. The first reason was because I didn't want to lose my job and the second reason was because I was very grateful to the company.

I started working at NBA Monitoring Company [XXX - Search for a good name for the Company] after I graduated. At the start, my job was mainly to look through CCTV footage to make sure that the algorithm hadn't missed anything during its search for criminal activity. Now, my job was mostly to monitor and optimize the algorithm that studied the CCTV footage and to check the footage it highlighted before forwarding them to the relevant departments in the company. As for what was done with the footage, I had no idea.

I was pretty good at my job and I'd worked my way up from Station K to B with my attention to details and my skilled understanding of the algorithm and the necessary tweaks to make to it. It was due to that that I'd risen in rank to Station B in only six years, despite taking a maternity leave to bear Adesewa.

Another reason I thought was the reason for my promotion was how much I loved combing through both footage and the company's mass-developed algorithm, making changes in my sandbox, testing the changes and then taking the changes to my supervisor if they were innovative and useful. And unlike other companies I'd heard of, I even got bonuses for the innovative changes I made to the algorithm.

I was looking through the footages hand-picked by the algorithms when I stumbled upon one that stood out.

A man and another man were arguing and suddenly they started fighting, punching each other. However, what caught my attention was not the fighting. There were a lot of fight scenes in the footage picked by the algorithms. This one was strange because the footage seemed to glitch several times and when the glitch stopped, I thought I saw the head on the shoulder of the man with the advantage in the fight change to something dark and twisted before disappearing again.

Before I could even do anything again, the man's face turned to look directly in the CCTV camera. My arms felt chilly under my coat as our eyes met through the camera and that dark and twisted face with strange symbols carved upon it reappeared again and the weird demon-like man licked him lips with an inhumanly long tongue that made goosebumps rise up my arms.

In that moment when we locked gazes, I couldn't help holding my breath and my eyes seemed to be bound to the screen. I wanted to look away, I wanted to call for help from my colleagues working in the booths close by but I couldn't. Everything around me felt heavy and my head hurt.

It was the sound of a colleague typing rapidly on their keyboard that released me from whatever strange hold I was locked to. I looked away from the screen immediately but couldn't help looking back to the screen while breathing hard as I finally released my breath.

The screen was normal. The men were still fighting but there was no strange dark inhuman face with symbols on it.

I rewound the film and slowed the video's speed for the part where the man's head changed again but this time, there was nothing. There was no glitch and the man's face remained the same. Seeing this, I released the breath I'd been holding as I sat back in my chair, struggling to avoid scowling like I really wanted to.

I was seeing things again. I hadn't seen things for several months so I'd thought my prayers had been answered. I'd thought that other than having the bizarre dreams of Elijah, I was finally going back to normal but what happened again proved me wrong.

I sighed, shook my head and slapped my cheeks to wake myself up. I wanted to go make myself some tea but I decided against wasting that much time because I had set a goal for the tasks I needed to complete before I left work today and I wanted to leave work early today so I could pick Adesewa up from school and we could go see the new house that a human resource representative had handed to me when I got to work.

With pursed lips, I sat upright and returned to my work, rewatching the video, making notes and categorizing it into the gang fights folder with some notes of what I could hear in the audio.