When I got home from school, I went straight to bed. I awoke late in the evening, darkness already took over the . I scanned through my wardrobe, took out some really good clothes, wore them and then headed to the sitting room downstairs. When I got to the sitting room, the lights were off I couldn’t see anything at all. “Surprise!!” Voices in the seating room screamed, then the light flickered on and revealed their faces. The all had smiles on their faces so I smiled back, ear to ear, even though it was not much of a surprise to me. When you repeat the same thing every single year it becomes more of a routine, nothing surprising about that,besidesI knew less than one quarter of the people in front of me. They all started chanting the usual birthday song in unison, I stood on the stairs looking trying to locate Susan and Kelvin. After some minutes they were done with the song, the time was enough for me to locate Kelvin and Susan. The stood by the corner of the room, I smiled and waved at them, Susan ran to me and wrapped her arms around me, she then sank her face into my chest. I threw my hands around her and squeezed a little. I always loved her hugs, deep and warm, the kind of hug you’ll never want to let go of. “Happy birthday” Susan said still snuggled on to me. “Happy birthday man” Kelvin said as he handed me two wrapped gifts. “Thank you” I said as I collected the gifts from him. Susan unwrapped her hands from me, held her hand behind her back and took few steps back while looking into my eyes. I didn’t break eye contact because her blue was always alluring to look at. “Let’s go outside, it’s very noisy here" Kelvin suggested. “Okay” I replied. “You two go first, I need to pee, I will be right behind you.” Susan said, “sure” Kelvin replied. Susan headed for the toilet upstairs, while me and Kelvin walked out of the sitting room. The full moon hung in the sky, illuminating the whole environment, me and Kelvin walked through the field of my compound. Getting to the middle of the field, Kelvin sat on the grass while I lay down on my back. I watched the clouds move, the singing crickets added their own kind of melody to the environment.

“Andrew, I like Susan" Kelvin said to me 

“You are telling the wrong person” 

“Huh?”

“You should be telling Susan this not me, I already know.”

“You knew?!” Kelvin was both shocked and surprised by my words.

“I knew, it’s kinda very obvious bro”

There was this small store right beside our main house, the store was always locked, my parents banned me and my sister from ever setting foot in that house. From where I lay in the field, I could see the door of the small store, for the first time ever, it was wide open. I got to my feet “I’ll be right back, I want to check something” I said to Kelvin hoping he will stay behind, he didn’t, I wish he did.

The darkness in the house was so heavy, that we couldn’t even see our own hands right in front us. We took out our phones and turned on the torchlight, there was thick cobwebs in every corner of the room, then there was so many carton boxes sitting on the floor. Pointing the torchlight to the wall revealed the writings on it, the words were in Arabic so we couldn’t comprehend the meaning of the words. Only one out of the dozens of carton boxes in the room was open. “This is a very weird place” Kelvin said as he dipped his hand into that open box. He took out a piece of paper, although it was dusty we could still see what was written on it. Your parents are killers.Kelvin dropped the paper on the ground after reading those words aloud. He then dipped his hand into the box again, this time he took out a large brown file. “A file?” Kelvin used his palm to beat some dust particles off the file. “This is some sort of a lair, it’s like umm” I took the file from Kelvin cutting his sentence short. I opened the file and took out a picture, I flashed the light on the figure in the picture, it was the face of a boy who would about my age. “Do you know him?” Kelvin whispered, “no” I replied. At the back of the picture, the name ‘Alexander’was written. “What  are you two doing here?” Said a very familiar from right behind us. I turned and flashed my phone’storchlight on the person's face, it was Susan. She stood right behind us with her hands folded “Nothing" I replied and slid the picture back into the file. “Let’s get out of here" I said right after I dropped the picture right back into the box. “Take a look at this" Kelvin said Pointing at a framed picture hanging on the wall. I used my palm to wipe off the dust on the picture revealing the people in the picture. It was a family of five, the mother and father stood side by side while two kids, a boy and a girl stood side by side in front of the parents. The mother also had a baby in her arms. “They look familiar” Kelvin said, “Of course it looks familiar! That’s Andrew's mom and dad! This picture looks so old and your parents look so young” Susan said with a big smile on her face. “Bro, your sister looks so cute here, she’s like two in this picture. Wait.. who’s this person” Kelvin said as he pointed at the boy standing right beside my sister. “He looks like Andrew, but Andrew should be younger than his sister..” Susan added. I just kept gawking at the picture, that was the first time I was seeing that picture in my entire life. Taking a closer look at the boy, he looked like the boy in the picture inside the brown envelope I opened earlier.

   Pop poppoppoppopan applause from right behind us, we turned to the direction the clap came from. It was my dad, standing right in front of the door with his two palms rubbing on the other. He also had this smile on his face, it was like the smile of a clown, my father wasn’t the humorous type, he’s never made a face like that before. “I will like to lock this place up, you kids should leave" My dad said still rubbing his palms against the other.The three of us walked out of the house, my dad walked out to and shut the door, he also had a padlock in his hand. “Sir, who is Alexander?” Kelvin asked. My dad hooked the key on to the door and pressed on it, it locked. “You kids saw that too” My dad said with a smile on his face. The smile vanished from his face the moment he turned his back against us, he clenched his fists as he walked towards the main house. Even though I really wanted to hear the answer to Kelvin's question that day, I still wish he never asked that question.