Nikita’s POV

I stopped talking for the first three weeks of the accident. I wish I had a cool reason for my selective mutism, like the accident caused physical trauma to my brain and now I have forgotten to speak. Or the emotional trauma has affected me so much that hearing my own voice would break the little of what I had left of the sanity.

The truth was I just did not see the need to for various stupid reasons, one of which included incredible fatigue. It was either from the insane amount of painkillers that was pumped into my veins to deal with the broken ribs, concussion and torn flesh, or from the incessant fussing of my dad and brother or the icy gaze my mother seemed to have tattooed on her face whenever she came to see me. The doctors and nurses would not stop asking me how I was doing which I thought was stupid because how am I supposed to know how I am doing? It’s not like I am a doctor or in control of my life anyway and somehow Mike suddenly knew exactly what I wanted and what I was thinking.

Normally, I would’ve freaked out and asked many questions like how did this happen? What was going on? Are aliens real and why did they replace my brother? But now, I just could not care bring myself to care anymore. I was, and this is to put it bluntly, I was terrified. I hadn’t done anything to anyone yet here I was in the hospital in unsurmountable and every time I closed my eyes, I saw the boy with obsidian eyes and felt his weight on my chest until I couldn’t breathe. I had thought that science and technology had not advanced to the point where mental attacks were possible but it seems the spiritual already had that aspect covered. Although I literally spent my life in church, I did not believe in what they did at church. This was due to the exaggerations and the dumb rules that seemed to come literally from the air. Believe me, I combed the bible to figure out where “if your clothes are above your knee and they show your arms, God will not be happy with you” was or where “as a woman our duty is to serve and sacrifice” was but it wasn’t there. It was a shame; it took me 1 year of wasting the time I could’ve used to complete the Harry Potter series. Unfortunately, now I had to believe because the spiritual attacked me and left me vulnerable and weak.

I woke up in the hospital with Mike furiously clutching my hands. I found out from my father that he found the two of us on the dirt road leading to the roundabout that led to the school with a crying Mike cradling my head on his lap. It wasn’t something I actively asked around trying to know, it was just told to me and in answer I nodded or just stared.

There were also strangle marks around my neck and when my dad suggested we went to the police, it was no surprise Mike said he didn’t think it was a good idea since, for reasons that still evade me, he knew everything. However, when my mum said no, I knew something was amiss. She had no idea what transpired on that dirt road and as a concerned parent, should she not want to know what happened to her daughter? Perhaps she did not want a brush with the legal system of Ghana, or did not want the church members to be aware of the accident and related circumstances that will obviously make her look bad and if there was anything my mum loved more than God, it would be her self-image. Even as I gave excuses for her, it broke my heart to know that I meant so little to her that how people thought of her and the family meant more than my health and well-being.

My father however did not share my sentiment asked her the reason almost immediately she said she did not think we should involve the police. This was surprising because my dad is a pacifist. He literally went out of his way to avoid and prevent strife and confrontation and now here he was, actively pursuing strife and confrontation. My mother is normally the instigator at home, the fire that burned and consumed everything, while my dad was the water that put out the fire, but now my dad was the bigger fire that swallowed the smaller petty fire, and she had no choice but to give her reason.

She told him that she had spoken to Mrs. Appiah -one of the church’s women’s leaders and one of my mum’s acquaintances whose house was along the road I had the accident- and she said that no one came near me. I hit the tree, fell and didn’t move and Mike came about thirty minutes later with my parents following his arrival a little after that.

“If Mrs. Appiah saw Nikita get hurt, why didn’t she help her?” my dad asked.

“I don’t know but at least she called me” And so that’s how my parents found me.

My father also made a mental note to never speak to Mrs. Appiah too, and told my mum to consider taking his stance. She simply hummed in reply.

The doctors examined me and said apart from the damage caused by my accident I was fine. My father, reveling in his new fiery identity, was really bent on figuring out where the marks on my neck came from and they suggested it was part of the accident and my neck probably brushed on something, which is medical jargon for ‘We don’t know what the hell happened and if you want a more thorough analysis, you have to pay’. Advised by Mrs. Appiah’s witness account, he decided to let it go for now and wait for me to talk. For my selective mutism the doctors recommended a psychiatrist.

My parents, being the Africans that that they were who only believed in the supremacy of Jesus Christ and of witches, refused to listen to the doctors and told them to focus on my physical injuries and leave the rest to God.

I was discharged about 2 weeks later.

I spent most of my days with Mike curled up reading a book, or listening to music. He didn’t give me pressure to speak, unlike my parents who did everything in their power to get me to be normal again. One time, my mum decided that the best course of action was to refuse to give me food and somehow the hunger would enter my brain and fix my trauma and I would speak again. In response, Mike gave her the verbal thrashing of a lifetime.

I wondered how it would have gone down if it were Mike who was mute. I would have kept quiet in her face and then snuck him food anytime I could, not because I was a coward, but because my mum has had nothing for complaints for me and hated my guts. Even if I had stood up for Mike, she would’ve found a way to involve me in this hunger strike. I wondered why I was bothering myself; she would’ve made it her lifelong mission to be by Mike’s side and nurse him to heath personally. A little part of me was glad about this though, at least my twin would be in safe hands if anything happened to him.

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Mike, feeling that the verbal thrashing was not enough, informed our father like this. He told her to not come near me again and all she had to do was give me food. I was glad the fire in my dad had fizzled, there was a balance about things. Fire and Water, Earth and Air, White and Black; too much of one could bring chaos and put me in much trouble with my mother than I already was.

Since then, she left me alone only visiting me at nights and staring at me through the doorway. I would awaken from feeling her reproachful eyes and I would wake up and stare at her right back, making sure I did not wake Mike who had pushed his bed close to mine, so that he could be closer to me. I think she hated that, she hated that Mike loved me so much, but I wondered what she expected, he was my twin, cut from the same hateful cloth. There was nothing she could do to make Mike hate me. There was however something that I could do, and I considered Mike my security net and would not do anything to remove it from me. So, I would stare right back, feeling secure and safe exactly where I was, then she would adjust her night gown to cover her torso then she would leave. I went back to sleeping, feeling content that although I was growing increasingly distressed from the treatment I was receiving from my own mother, I had won a staring contest.

The first time I truly saw myself in the mirror, I freaked out. The whites of my eyes were red, my lips taken this sickly gray color, my eyes had sunken and there were these huge bags I had never seen on my face before under my eyes. My skin color had lost its rich dark chocolate color and now it looked like dark chocolate that had been refrigerated for a long time. All of this was terrible, but what drove me to tears was my neck. There were red finger marks going around my neck as though a large rough rope had been tied about my neck. I knew there were strangle marks, but I hadn’t really seen it and thus I didn’t really pay heed to it. Seeing it, what had been done to me made everything too real pretty fast. It felt like I was dreaming at first, but facing myself like this, it broke me. In my surprise, I tried to gasp, but it came out rough and difficult, like how the tap at home sounded when there were plumbing difficulties. I slid unto the floor crying and Mike had rushed in right before I begun to scream. That was my first panic attack, and I would have many soon after. I had to be sedated, then after that, I became aloof, I couldn’t be bothered by anything, except Mike who gave me no reason to be bothered.

My dreams were not pretty either, I did not dream specifically of the accident but I just dream of other dreadful things. I dreamt of ants and insects crawling towards my lips, using their limbs to sew my lips shut. I also dreamt of a snake, which bit my lips, then slithered through my nose into my throat. No matter what I dreamed of, it was about my lips. I would wake up in a sweat shaking in fear and Mike, who now slept my me, held me till I slept again and when he did, I would sleep well, with no bad dreams whatsoever. However, no matter how scary it was, I never uttered a sound. It was like when the boy with obsidian eyes strangled me, he crushed my voice box, so that I won’t speak again, nor have the energy to do so.

I tried hard not to think about that day but it came to me anyways like a parasite crawling about my brain and hitting spots that triggered the memory. With the thoughts came migraines that would render me crawling into a ball and pressing my hands against my skull, hoping that crushing it would help it go away. It didn’t. I had to take powerful medicines that made me drowsy and even if I wanted to talk, I couldn’t have.

Surprisingly, Mike was my rock. Normally he would mind his own business and avoid putting himself into arguments that did not involve him. He basically didn’t do much, except for himself but now, he involved himself with me. He would read to me, encourage me to bath or draw and laughed when I did silly things, like sticky out my tongue when he said my drawings were terrible. He acted like nothing had changed and I was the same old me but I just needed a little help with getting back in my feet. My parents tried to push to get me into what they considered normal behavior but Mike refused to let them to that to me, he told them it would only make me worse and when they asked him how he knew that, he told them to ask any psychiatrist then lead me by my hand to our room. I recalled how I wished Mike was more supportive and now that my wish had come true, I wasn’t even mentally awake for the most part of it.

I couldn’t go to school and because I couldn’t, so did Mike. We had literally become like those twins who didn’t go anywhere without the other. This disturbed my parents but they couldn’t do anything about it because I wouldn’t talk about it and every time they brought the topic up, I would stare out the window and look at the birds and the trees and Mike would protest and give good reasons why they should not do so-so and so they were thinking about doing. Things became better when they finally left us alone and to prove to them that they had made the right choice, we homeschooled ourselves by reading and studying the textbooks we had at home. My dad had noticed how much of an effort we were putting in and decided to give us his support. He went to the school and brought us back tips on what to learn for exams and even took us out to the beach, the park and even had a tree house built for us. He bought us lots of books, since he realized we didn’t enjoy the other toys much and even bought us electronic tablets. There were no sim cards inside and we didn’t have a router because “the internet was invented by the devil” -so said my mother, the one who knew everything about the devil and his work- but there were eBooks and games on it which occupied us anyway.

We expected our mum to interject and try to make things her way, but she didn’t. She kept her distance and never spoke to me for a long while. We would overhear my parents arguing, mostly about me. My dad would blame her for my getting hurt and she would blame anyone but herself, she blamed me most of all and I couldn’t help but feel guilty that everything happening in my parents’ marriage was my fault. It made me cry frequently and Mike knew exactly what to do and at which time. After a while, it got suspicious, it was like he had aged mentally in a few weeks and in addition to that, it was like he knew exactly what I wanted. He brought me food before I was hungry, gave us a break when I was beginning to get overwhelmed with school and put me to bed when I didn’t even know I was tired.

“What’s going on?” I asked, my voice sounding like a black female Darth Vader. That particular afternoon we were in the clubhouse reading the Harry Potter book series -again- and drinking soda we stole from the fridge. Mike looked at me completely surprised and I did not blame him, this was the first time I had spoken in a few weeks. His mouth was open in complete astonishment and the flies were buzzing around his face and I wouldn’t have been surprised if one had entered his mouth. I tried to stop myself from smiling, I wanted it to not be such a big deal but a smile played at the corner of my lips.

“Well, if you didn’t want it to be a big deal, gimme a heads-up next time!”. Now it was my turn to be surprised. I could’ve sworn I did not say the part about me not wanting my speaking to be a big deal out loud. Something had definitely changed since the accident, and it seemed to only affect Mike, my mother and I, whom if I turned my head towards the window facing the house was looking intently at me and reciting verses from the bible open on her lap. “Yeah, she’s been doing that a lot”.

“Mike, you’re scaring me” my throat hurt whenever I spoke from days and days of no use. Mike could read minds and mum was reciting the bible against me. What exactly had happened that Sunday? All I know is I was attacked and now weird things were happening to me and around me.

“Drink this,” Mike said handing me a glass bottle of coke from the ice chest “what I’m going to tell you is going to blow your mind”