“Is that his car?” Her face turned to the sound of an engine roaring down the road. It had to be him. They’d been waiting so long for him. He was never like this, and after all, the military embraces the culture of punctuality and order. The war couldn’t have changed that fact.

“For the last time, Teri, I’ll tell you when it’s him. You asked me 18 times already.” He growled from beneath her. He was sitting on his suitcase, tired of waiting for him. He wasn’t looking forward to this meeting. He knew things had changed since he left.

“I thought you’d be more excited Ken! We haven’t seen Father in over 5 years!” Teri was bouncing with excitement, guide stick clicking as she did.

“It’d be nice if he wasn’t over 2 hours late,” Ken mumbled. Teri knew that Ken hated waiting, ever the impatient boy. Mother said it’s the reason he pulled her back in the womb to come out first.

“Maybe there’s traffic.” She tried to be hopeful. She always had to be hopeful. Or else everything would fall apart.

“It’s Sunday evening. In Enugu. The roads are empty. Hell, the bloody airport is almost empty.”

He didn’t have to tell her; she could hear the emptiness of the waiting area as the last of the patrons scrambled on to their homes. She tapped her guide stick against the smooth tile to better feel the echoes of the dead open space. There had to be a good reason he was late, even if Ken didn't want to believe it. And that’s the nature of their familial relation; Teri the blind optimist and Ken the alert skeptic.

The sound of another engine came up, coughing along the small strip of road. Teri heard Ken jump up suddenly and she followed suit. She could hear his breath hitch in excitement and the ends of her lips tugged in. Her smile grew wider when the sound stopped in front of her, the heat and smell so close to her body. The car door open, and familiar steps clicked onto the pavement, though not the ones she was expecting.

"Oh, Mother!" Teri reached out and held her mother in a strong embrace. She took in the smell of her mother's blazer, a smell that she had come to recognize as the very essence of her mother; lavender and Cayenne pepper.

"Wait, where's Father?" Teri didn't miss the beat of disappointment in her brother's voice as he dragged their bags to the boot of the car.

"He-um.." Teri felt her mother's hand slack for only a fraction of an instant. Then it gripped her shoulder tight to compensate.

"He got caught up with something back at home." Teri thumbed over the fabric of her mother's blazer. She drove straight from work instead of Father, she thought to herself. But why?

"But don't worry! You'll see him at home, and with a treat. White Soup and pounded Yam!"

"Hell yeah!" Ken whooped as he loaded another box into the trunk.

"Language."

"Sorry."

The drive back was filled with the usual small talk; catching up on the changes in the neighborhood (The Obinna family got another dog again. And, yes they still don't clean up after their dogs), plans for the summer holiday (I think the woods would be a great idea next week! We can see the carnival then, right Mother?), and avoiding the question about the last term's grade (They're fine, mother. We did...pretty good!). They got home in good time, with enough sunlight to light up their street. When they get to the door, however, Teri's ears picked up on a dreadful sound that stopped her feet in their tracks and made her blood run cold. It sounded like the cry of a banshee. And it was coming from behind the front door.

"What was that?" She asked.

"What was what, dear?" Mother said in the voice she uses when she pretends she’s not listening.

"That scream coming from the house," Ken said beside her. If he could hear it too, then it wasn't my auditory processing crapping out.

"Oh, I'm sure it's nothing." Mother's voice sounded tense and strained. Teri could feel her breath pick up speed, could hear her throat move as she swallowed. She is lying.

A loud crash came from the house followed by more of those horrid screams.

Ken opened the front door without warning before Mother could even warn him not to. He and Teri rushed through the hallway and into the living room, where they beheld a scene they could not believe.

Stools were overturned, and pots were scattered on the ground in the dining area. There were pieces of the dining table on the floor, along with broken plates and glass cups. The air in the room was heavy with sweat and spice and something....sterile, like a tense hospital visit. Later that evening, Ken would tell Teri that the combination of soup splattered on the wall and skid marks on the floor looked like an abstract painting he'd seen when they went to France in the spring.

To their left, a man was perched atop one of the cushioned couches, shaking in fear. He cowered so greatly that Teri could feel the shaking through the floor beneath her. It was as if he had been haunted by the darkest of evils; as if he had been pursued by a great villain. And in front of the man lay his pursuer; a small cockroach. It’s thin spindly legs swept slowly across the floor, paying no mind to the presence or state of mind of the humans in the near vicinity. It crawled slowly and aimlessly towards the couch and the man shrieked

"Stay away from me, you fiend!" He screamed, pushing himself as far into the wall as he could. He waved his arm and a liquid splashed on the ground. It seemed to be where the hospital smell was coming from. The cockroach seemed to recoil at the liquid slightly

Ken rushed forward and smashed the cockroach with two swift stomps. Teri could hear the odd crunch of the insect’s frame under his leather school shoe. It sounded like stepping on tin foil, a sound that Teri was an expert in recognizing because she had done just that in a silly game many years ago. The man jumped down from the couch and shook Ken, screaming bloody murder as he did.

"Do you have any idea what you have done, boy?!" The man shook Ken violently as he yelled at him. Teri was frozen in fear. She could hear Ken crying in pain. Should she help Ken? Should she run away? Before she could answer any of those questions, she felt Mother rush up and wrestle the man.

"Richard, let him go! That is your son!!" She wrestled to pry Ken from the man's grasp. Ken held onto Mother, shaking and sobbing.

"My son just doomed us all! Oh my God!" His hands shot up to his head in complete despair. Teri could hear his muffled weeping under his hands.

"Enough of this nonsense, Richard!!" Mother screamed. She held a sobbing Ken in her arms.

The whole time, Teri stood in shock. Father? That's him? Surely this was a trick they were all playing on her? Everything about this man was wrong. His walk, his breath, his voice... There was no conceivable way.

"For the last time, woman, this isn't nonsense! It came for me! Because I told the truth to the world! And now that the boy smashed it, they'll all come from their hiding space. And we'll all die!"

She heard a loud thwack as Mother slapped him across the face. The ringing in her ears stayed long after Mother lead Ken up the stairs, long after Father's double slumped into the couch he had been perched on, rocking back and forth with his head in his hands.

Teri moved towards the folded figure of a man. His body didn't register her presence, even as she put a hand on him.

"Father it's me, Theresa." She felt his face turn towards her, she smelt the sharp tang on his lips as he opened them, felt scars on his hands as they rested on her face.

"You need to run. Run before they come." He whispered softly before resuming his rocking motion. As Mother came down to drag her away, her mind fixed itself to the smell of the man's lips. They smelled of memories full of panic, an emergency room visit and bloodstains.

***

It was bedtime. Teri sat on her bed as Mother helped her weave back her hair. Mother complained it had gotten more tangled than the last time, which was the reason why the tugs of torment persisted about 20 minutes more than what was normal. Teri hated it; she hated people touching her hair. It left her with a slimy aftertouch that she couldn't get rid of for hours, no matter how many times she wiped it away. Mother knew about this and yet

"About what happened with your father," Mother's hands continued steadily weaving as she began "He just needs time to adjust back to normal life. He's been given his medicine to calm down."

"Is he going to be okay?"

"Yes, he should be better soon. Just..the war had a lasting impression on him."

The hair tugging and braiding continued in silence.

"Is that really Father?"

"What do you mean? Of course, it's him!" She yanked the comb a bit harder through Teri's hair. Teri winced at the pain and made a note to cut off all her hair when she finished secondary school.

"That's not him. Father didn't have scars on his hands, Father wasn't afraid of snakes, let alone a stupid insect, and he sure as hell never drank. He couldn't. It made him sick to smell it." Teri counted off her fingers as she made her case against the man claiming to be her father. Mother put the comb down on the bedside table and sighed. Teri felt her hand rest on her shoulder.

"Teri, dear, when...well, when people are surrounded by fighting all the time, it changes them. It doesn't matter if they fought or not, any war-zone can change a person."

"Like make them a completely different person? Because of stress?"

"Sometimes." There was a spark of hope that her father could return to his jovial stable self. This hope brought an idea to Teri's mind.

"Why don't we make the place less stressful, so he can come back to himself?"

She felt mother pause as if to say "What do you mean?"

"I mean, cockroaches seem to stress him, right? Maybe if we got rid of them in the house, he'll be his normal self."

"That was the first roach I've seen in years at this house. You know I fumigated last month already, right? Besides, we can't shift things around for his inconvenient conspiracy theory-"

"Do you want Father to return to normal or not?" Teri whipped around to face her mother. A surge of anger rose through her, something that she hadn't felt towards her mother in a very, very, long time. Maybe the braiding was really starting to get on her nerves. Maybe it was the fact that she'd had this kind of conversation before. Why wouldn't she try to help him? It's not like it would cost her so much money or time?

"He just has to get used to the way things are. Most of the men and women who came back from the war are fine. He has a choice, he can live with seeing a cockroach now and then, or he can leave and get checked into a hospital. This isn't a psych ward-"

"What is it with you and everything being just right? Why doe" Teri had jumped up at this point, angry with her mother's insistence on her way. Why cant she be nice about things being different? Why does everything have to be her way?

"Teri, you're not a child anymore you can't have your tantrums, they're "

"Stop ignoring me! Try to at least care about what I'm saying-"

"After everything I've done for you! I've fed and bathed you when you struggled to do it yourself! I cleaned after you when you should have been doing it by yourself. And you have the audacity to say that I don't care? "

Before she could stop herself, Teri screamed. It was louder than the kind she used to make whenever the crushing weight of a meltdown was too hard to bear. She was very fortunate that the house blocked out her screams

Ken burst through the doors at the sound of his sister's scream.

"What's going on?"

"She's not listening to me!" Teri cried. She heard her Mother's hand whizz through the air, before it smacked her temple

"Your sister is having one of her tantrums again!" Ken moved towards his sister and tried to comfort her.

"Why can't you just listen to-"

"Are you okay?" Teri could feel Ken moving away from the man at the sound of his calm and rather tired-sounding voice. He made a low whimpering sound, as if he was in pain again, and climbed into Teri's bed. Mother put her arms around Ken protectively.

"We're fine, Richard, go back to bed." Mother spat coldly.

"Ken, I-I'm so sorry for what happened. I just- those bugs- they put me in a bad place. I would never want to hurt you like that."

Teri could hear the sincerity in his words and the steadiness of his heart. He really doesn't want to hurt us, she thought to herself. Ken must've have noticed too because she felt some of his tense muscles loosen up just slightly.

But he still doesn't feel like Father.

The man moved a step closer to Ken. If Teri could see, she would have thought Ken curled closer to mother at that moment. But instead, she felt him try to move closer to the man but was pulled back.

"Maybe if we fumigate, we'll be fine! The cockroaches will be poisoned and go away!"

"I don't know if the poison would work. it'd need to be very strong for them."

"I think it's worth a shot, right Mom?"

Ken was facing his mother expectantly.

"Fine, we'll fumigate! If it will settle all of you down, so be it!"

Mother flung the comb in fury and it slid under Teri's bed. Teri winced when the door slammed and shook its frame.

"I think I'll be going to bed. Goodnight Ken, goodnight Teri. Welcome back, and I'm sorry for the mess I made." The man opened the door but was in no hurry to leave.

"Goodnight, Father," Ken said as he rushed out the room past the man.

"Goodnight." Teri had turned her back to the door and didn't close her eyes till she heard the soft click of the door and the receding sound of steps.

As she felt sleep tugging on her consciousness, Teri's senses gave her the feeling of tiny hairy extensions, scratching the space underneath her bed. She chose to ignore it as her brain trying to fill in the blanks for things she had heard about earlier, despite an alarm ringing in her head to run.