My husband brings twelve strangers to dinner every month, but I am forbidden from ever looking at their faces.
This month… curiosity finally broke me. And what I saw… I’ll never forget.
When I married Chisom, I knew he was a secretive man.
The kind of man with three phones—but only one answered when I was around 💔.
The kind of man who could vanish for a weekend to attend a “meeting” in Ogun and return on Monday with a new Lexus for me, smelling of expensive cologne and something darker—an unease I couldn’t name.
I never complained. In Lagos, as long as the money flows and he doesn’t strike you, you learn to survive.
But there was one rule I never understood.
Every first Friday of the month, Chisom hosts a private dinner in our main hall in Victoria Island.
The rules are simple… and terrifying:
I must cook a feast: fried rice, Afang soup, goat meat, the finest wines.
I must serve the meal myself. No help is allowed near the main building.
I must keep my head bowed while serving.
I must never—ever—look at their faces 😭😭.
For two years, I obeyed.
I would hear them arrive: heavy footsteps, the shuffle of expensive shoes, the scent of earth and decaying flowers. They never spoke. Not a word. Only the metallic clink of cutlery against plates.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Chisom would sit at the head of the table, laughing, speaking to them as if they were old friends, debating politics or business. But the guests never answered.
Last Friday, my curiosity betrayed me 😌.
I was serving the last guest, a man at the far end of the table. My hands shook. The room was ice-cold, even though the AC was off.
As I bent to place a bowl of pepper soup in front of him, the spoon slipped from my sweaty fingers.
Clang.
It hit the floor.
Instinctively, I looked up to apologize.
“I’m so sor—”
The words froze. The tray fell.
The man sitting there… wasn’t a stranger.
He wore a faded Ankara suit—the same one we buried him in three years ago.
It was my father. My late father.
His skin was gray, waxy, like melted candle. His eyes were rolled completely back. No breath. Just sitting there… stiff… with a piece of goat meat frozen halfway to his mouth.
I screamed.
I turned to the other guests.
To my left: Chisom’s former business partner, dead in a car crash in 2021.
To my right: the young gateman we fired last year—rumor said he had returned to his village. And here he was, sitting silently, like a shadow of the past.
“Ifunanya!” Chisom’s voice thundered.
He rose from the head of the table, eyes blazing red.
“You’ve broken the circle! I told you never to look!”
The lights flickered… and died.
In the suffocating darkness, twelve chairs scraped across the floor at once. They were standing. Watching. Waiting.
I ran. Barefoot, over the fence, into the neighbor’s compound like a common thief.
I’ve been hiding in a hotel in Ikoyi since that night.
Chisom has called nonstop. This morning, a text:
"Come back, Nne. They are angry. If you don’t finish serving the food, someone else will take the empty seat. Do you want it to be our son?"
My son is in boarding school in Banana Island. Chisom has picked him up.
If I go back… will they kill me?
If I stay… will he hurt my child?
I am shaking as I type this. Terrified. Confused. Desperate.
I don’t know what to do.
