The cleaner who found Tejiri’s body was trembling as we waited for the police to arrive. Her face, raw and flushed from years of cheap bleaching creams, looked even redder now. Yellow blotches marked her cheeks, giving her a sickly, malnourished appearance. When she raised her hands to her mouth to quiet her chattering teeth, the green veins beneath her skin clashed horribly with the crimson of her face.

“Someone give her water to calm down,” said a fat woman from Treasury, patting the cleaner gently on the back.

One of the staff ran inside to fetch a cup from the dispenser.

“It’s not water she needs; she needs warm blankets. Nigerians are so weird. They use water for everything,” one of the interns muttered, rolling her eyes.

“Don’t mind them,” the girl beside her said. “Someone faints,”

“Water” the intern replied.

“Gets hit by a car,”

“Pour water!”

“Sick child”

“Dunk them in water!”

They would have laughed, but the seriousness of the moment weighed on everyone. Tejiri, svelte, pretty, and always sharply dressed, was found dead in the office toilet.

Tejiri was so nice and personable. Her best friends, Sandra and Alice, were inconsolable. She was always smiling and had twice been voted ‘Miss Charming’ at the office’s end-of-year party. She, Alice, and Sandra were fondly called aro meta, the 3 Musketeers. They went on lunch breaks together, often wore complementary outfits, and attended every office event side by side.

A rumour once spread like wildfire about Tejiri dating a client of the company. Alice and Sandra had marched straight to Aunty Ireti’s desk in Admin to rain insults and curses on her for spreading the rumour. HR got involved, and the story eventually died down. Still, people sniggered and whispered about how Tejiri was their Queen Bee, and how Sandra and Alice would always do her dirty work and bidding like spineless followers.

Tejiri lived up to the Queen Bee tag. She was the only one with a car. She was light-skinned, which worked greatly in her favour.

Her death was bizarre. Her eyes looked terrified—wide and staring—and her mouth was frozen in an expression of shock, an ‘oh’ that never escaped. The cleaner said she had found her lying on the toilet floor, her hands and face wet.

“Be like she dey wash her face or her hand, I no know” the woman said, shaking her head. “But her eyes? As her eyes be… e make my head swell.”

At that moment, the ambulance arrived, just ahead of the police.

Everyone stirred, murmuring and whispering. For once, no one had their phone out to record.

The officers, meanwhile, made a theatrical show of examining the crime scene, peering into people’s faces suspiciously as though that would make the killer blurt out a confession.

“Who found de bodi?” barked a police officer whose bloodshot eyes were filled with resentment and something darker asked.

He scanned the faces in the crowd until someone quietly pointed at the cleaner.

“Madam, you will have to follow us.”

“Ha! Modaran!” the cleaner wailed, throwing herself to the ground and beating her chest.

The officer yelled at her to get up. Voices rose from every corner.

“Let her be!”

“She didn’t do anything!”

“This is not how to go about things!”

“Oga, abeg nah!”

But he wasn’t listening. “Madam, move it!” he snapped, gesturing towards the police van.

Everyone watched helplessly as she was marched away. A few people clapped their hands in despair, calling out for Mr Emma, the office lawyer. He arrived minutes later, and followed the van.

After the customary one-minute silence the next morning, life in the office resumed. Still, Tejiri’s name lingered on everyone’s lips for weeks. People avoided that particular toilet. Some claimed to hear odd sounds in there. Others swore they could smell her perfume in the hallways.

Eventually, though, everyone moved on. Few even remembered the cleaner or wondered what had happened to her.

Then came Sandra.

She was found in the pantry, eyes wide open.

Dead.

“Jeeeeeeeeeesus!” Mr Olopade screamed. The food he was about to put inside the microwave fell from his hands as turned on his heels and sprinted into his office. In minutes, the entire office had gathered in the pantry, whispering and pressing forward to see.

Alice, Sandra’s office bestie, was already on the floor wailing.

“Check her! Check her! Maybe she just fainted!”

Mrs Bose from Procurement shuffled forward, adjusting her glasses. She bent over Sandra’s still body and shook her head slowly. A sad, knowing smile curled at the corner of her lips as she stood back up.

Alice wailed louder. Someone went to call HR. The news spread like wildfire. From Admin to Legal, people poured in.

Another person was dead.

Management was thrown into confusion. The cameras showed nothing. Both deaths had happened in the office blind spots. They considered shutting down for a while, but it was argued against. That wouldn’t prevent another death. Phones rang off the hook from journalists and bloggers trying to get a statement. Eventually, they settled on a prayer session as directed by the CEO.

The following Monday, a pastor and an imam were on the premises. There was a four-hour prayer session with intense prayers against death. Everybody fearfully went into their offices. Some had already resigned, while others who were on leave refused to return.

“I am a single mother of two. If I die, who will take care of my daughters?” Eki said as she cleared out her desk.

Alice and the other colleagues watched as she waddled out of the office, the fabric of her dowdy skirt getting caught between her buttocks.

“Alice, I want to invite you for a seven-day Fire for Fire prayer session in my church,” Aunty Deborah, a forceful, fire-breathing SU woman, said as she arranged some files.

Alice stared at her in confusion.

“I can sense the spirit of death against you. The devil cannot win,” Aunty Deborah said. “And you, you can roll your eyes, but I know what I’m saying. Just because you’re Gen Z doesn’t mean you know more than God!” she snapped at the intern sneering disrespectfully at her.

Alice sighed deeply and went back to her work, her eyes swollen from endless tears. She had struggled to concentrate since the deaths of her two best friends, but she had staunchly refused to stay back at home.

“I might just die of depression. And it wont look good for you. Another staff’s death? Please let me be,” she had retorted when she was advised to go on leave.

She worked now with mildly trembling fingers as she tried to push away the last images of her best friends. Her hands trembled harder. She stood up shortly after and headed to the toilet, where she turned on the wash hand basin tap and began to pour water on her face.

The water was calming. She felt better. Her head felt clearer, and she could finally silence the thoughts in her head.

Alice stood in front of the mirror, watching the water sit on top of her pimpled face. Her eyes were red and dark circles told the story of sleep she hadn’t known in days.  She reached for the tissue, trying to dabble her face when she felt a presence. The lights flickered and then steadied.

Then she saw her.

And froze.

There was someone standing behind her.

Her heart missed a beat as she slowly turned, but the space behind her was empty. The stall doors were closed. The air was still.

She looked back at the mirror.

She was still there and so was the person.

The girl behind her was Alice but also not Alice. She had Alice’s face, yes, but her cheekbones were sharper, her lips fuller, skin darker and glowing with a ferocious kind of beauty. Her eyes blazed as they bore into Alice’s cool black eyes.

“Hello, Alice,” she said as she smiled baring a dark gum-less smile.

“What is it?” Alice demanded harshly as recognition dawned on her.

The other Alice laughed softly, stepping closer.

“Oh, darling,” she cooed. “Why so harsh? When all I have done is to be nice.”

“I didn’t ask you to.” Alice said firmly.

“Oh, but you went me to!’” Her voice hardened. “Tejiri and Sandra. They laughed at you, didn’t they? Tejiri with her perfect car and yellow skin she mocked your pimpled face! And Sandra? your so-called friend whom you met before Tejiri, laughing along when Tejiri said your legs looked like yams from all the trekking.”

“I didn’t tell you that…”

“You didn’t have to.” The grin returned. “I see everything you carry. The anger. The shame. The loneliness. I see it all. And I fixed it for you. I fixed Uncle Ladi didn’t I? The tears of a 7-year-old kid. The trauma of a 17-year-old girl. The torture of a 27-year-old woman”

Alice’s knees buckled slightly. “You could have told me”

“You knew,” she said, almost gently. “We did it all together.”

Alice gripped the sink and made a guttural noise.

“Yes! The rage you have buried! You only have to cry and I will answer. You only have to suffer, and I will avenge.”

There was a long silence. The only sound was the low drone of the electricity.

“Will it happen again?” Alice asked.

The Alice in the mirror smiled in response.

Alice stared for a long time. Her reflection slowly blinked.

Then she straightened her shoulders sniffling slightly, and faced the second Alice. She could see her now and she could smell her. She smelled ancient, the smell of rotting wood, metals and skinned flesh.

“Do I feel sorry for them?” Alice said, her voice cool and clear. “No. They got what they deserved.”

And with that, she stepped out of the toilet and into the world again.