The beat was still unfinished.
Four bars looped endlessly. Kick, snare, hat, ghost. No drop. No hook. Just the tired swing of something alive but unbirthed — a pulse with no heart.
Khaleed had been staring at the FL Studio grid for an hour now. The light from his cracked Dell laptop washed his face in ghost-blue. He leaned in slightly, pupils dilated like he was trying to crawl into the screen.
82 BPM. The tempo of a heartbeat that's trying not to care.
A baby cried somewhere in the floor below. A generator sputtered. A car honked like someone was being born in the street. Life carried on.
Khaleed didn't move.
A single headphone dangled from his ear. The other side was busted — had been since March. He didn't mind. Half-hearing things helped. Full hearing was too real.
He minimized FL Studio and reached for his phone. It was dead. So he picked up his old Blackberry Bold instead — faded casing, screen held together with muscle memory. It came on with effort. No chats. No missed calls. Just a silent, flickering world of curated lies and unread messages.
*ZapChat: 0
*Threadr: 0
*GhostLoop: notifications disabled
He scrolled. Out of reflex. Out of hope. A drawing caught his eye: a digital sketch of a woman towering over a kneeling man, her boot on his neck. His eyes weren't in pain. He looked... peaceful. Her fingers clutched a leash.
He saved it. Then stared at the empty chat screen. His throat felt like it was closing again.
He hadn't spoken to anyone in two days.
His mum had banged on his door earlier, yelling something about "useless art" and "wasting electricity." He hadn't replied. If you didn't speak, you couldn't lie.
She thought he was studying for his software engineering exam. She thought the boy she raised — Kade — still existed.
But that name had started to feel more like a skin he unzipped.
The clock hit 2:43 AM.
He wasn't tired. But he was hollow. Like sleep had left and grief hadn't arrived.
He clicked play on the loop again.
Still no soul. Still him.
His back ached from the plastic chair. He rubbed his eyes and turned off the loop. Maybe he could write something instead. Something... about her. Not a name, not yet. Just the idea. The She that came to him in half-sleep and horny spiral.
The woman with control.
The woman who saw him.
The woman who might not even exist.
He opened a new text file. Typed two words: "She came."
Paused. Deleted them. Typed: "She saw me."
That was worse. He closed the file.
Khaleed stood from the chair and walked toward the small mirror nailed into the wall. His reflection was crooked, warped at the corners like even it didn't want to be honest.
His hair had grown out again. His eyes looked sunken, but alert. Like he'd been watching himself for weeks.
He touched the barely healing cut on his wrist. Not deep. Just enough to remind himself he could still feel something.
He turned away from the mirror.
He lay on the mattress, arms spread like wings, staring at the ceiling fan. It wasn't on. NEPA* had done their usual magic. But he imagined it spinning. Turning. Ripping through air like time.
A small voice crept into his skull:
"You're wasting your life. Why don't you just be normal. You're broken."
Another voice:
"You are not broken. You're becoming."
He swallowed.
He remembered something from childhood — a sermon, maybe — about how the Devil used beautiful things to trap you. That sin was seductive. That your urges were proof you needed saving.
But what if... the Devil was just the name they gave people like him?
Suddenly, a sound.
He sat up, heart jolting. His phone buzzed.
ZapChat — 1 message.
From a user he didn't know. Name: Unmasked. No profile pic.
"Is this yours?"
A link: "Obey_002.wav"
He hesitated. Clicked it.
It opened to a beat — his beat. The one he thought was unfinished. But now, layered with vocals he'd never recorded. A female voice, low and velvet-smooth, singing his pain back to him.
"You want to kneel, don't you? Not out of shame.
But to be chosen.
To be seen."
Khaleed's breath caught.
He stared at the screen. Then outside his window. Then round his room as if looking for a hidden camera. Then closed the curtains..
He didn't know what this was. A hallucination? A hack? A stalker?
But he knew one thing:
He wasn't alone anymore.
And maybe — just maybe — the story was finally starting.
*ZapChat: SnapChat
*Threadr: Twitter
*GhostLoop: Facebook
* NEPA: Refers to Nigeria's former national power company. It's become slang for sudden power outages.