They told Kachi she was born on the night of a full moon just shy of one minute to midnight. That she was born with a head full of hair clutching a tiny red bead in her little hand. They also said that this wasn't her first time coming into the world only to leave suddenly. 

  First she came as a boy only to die before clocking one year old, then as a girl who didn't even take her first breath, she died in the womb. The most recent was a girl who just lived two weeks.They said she was a child sent to torment her parents. An “Ogbanje’, a spirit child who is born just to die at a tender age and be born again.       It is said that the child belongs to the spirit world and whenever they are born into the world, their people who  have an unbreakable hold on them, tug on that link until they succeed in bringing them back to the spirit world.

  Kachi started her life with the indifference of her mother. Her mother Nneka, in bid to save herself from the heartache of losing another child, distanced herself from her child. She didn't breastfeed kachi, she didn't even carry her at birth. When the nurses smiled at Nneka and told her “it's a girl” she simply turned her face towards the wall. "What was the use of loving the child, when she would still end up losing her".

  When Kachi lived up to two years, four, seven,ten, Nneka was surprised but she still guarded her heart and kept her child at a distance. 

Kachi as a young girl was termed  "odd' because she was always alone and talking to herself. But she wasn't actually talking to herself, she was talking to the voices in head. The voices of her kin. Those voices beckoning on her to come back home. The voices that become louder whenever she sat in the kitchen peeling yam with a sharp knife or when her mother puts out a mixture of bread, crayfish and rat poison. The voices telling her repeatedly to end her life and come home to them or the consequences would be dire.

    Kachi wanted to live, not because she particularly found life interesting but because she wanted to prove to her mother that she made  grave mistake pushing her away and to those people who would come to their house and looked at her parents with eyes that say “sorry for your loss” that was going to be no loss. When the voices of her kin became loud and almost unbearable Kachi would block off every noise in an out of body experience. She would will herself to exist outside of her body.

When she met Femi, that was the first time Kachi knew that she really wanted to live. He was the most beautiful man she ever saw, soft spoken and the best part was that he was interested in her. Soon she was in love with Femi and everything concerning him.

  The voices were easier to ignore because she was happy. She brushed off the warnings of dangerous consequences they chanted in her head every night.

  On the day Femi died, the voices were oddly quiet. When the call came in, the worst call of her entire life, telling her that her Femi was crushed by a trailer. The voices became a roar. A horrid sound of laughter .

The ugly echo of the laughter of her kin in her head was terrifying. They chuckled as they chanted, “we told you that the consequences would be dire”. Kachi screamed and cried herself hoarse.

Maybe, just maybe if she hadn't tried to live so badly. If she just let those voices in her head take over she wouldn't be the cause of the death of the only man she loved.