THE MURDER OF FARIDAH UMAR ABDULLAHI (A BOARDING SCHOOL STORY)

‘I feel trapped. I feel suffocated. My classmates want to kill me.’

If you’re reading this statement, then I am already dead. Because my classmates have killed me.

My name is Faridah Umar Abdullahi and I am a ghost.

Don’t get too scared because you will be like me one day. But you will not die a miserable death like me.

You may wonder why have I not vanished to Jannah (Paradise) yet? Why am I still here writing my story instead of enjoying Paradise like the good dead people do?

Because… I am here to tell you the truth. After I do, then I can rest in peace.

Anaconda Girls College. Even the name of the school makes my spirit shudder.

Anaconda. Snake. The perfect description of my secondary school.

Do you know where my dead body is? Buried under the cleaner’s pit toilet behind the junior girls’ hostel. No one can find me. No one will find me. The building has been demolished and my flesh and bones are long gone in the maggots’ belly.

Anaconda Girls College has already convinced my family that I ran away from school with my imaginary boyfriend. My roommates have convinced some people that Madam Koi Koi carried me away. Others believed that Bush Baby was my child and we’ve disappeared into our witchcraft kingdom together. 

After all my nickname in that school was Ferey (Faridah + Werey (mad man) = Ferey) because nobody believed I was normal. How could I be?

And oh, my murder did not begin the moment my heart stopped beating. It began long before I took my last breath. It began the moment I ratted out the most vicious snake in Anaconda Girls College.

Georgina Mbah.

Georgina was my senior bunkmate, aka the devil’s pant aka Jezebel’s lashes.

Why she was that evil? I don’t know.

As the new JSS2 student I was, not knowing the “laws” of this school, I ratted out senior Georgina to the principal for all the wicked things she did to me. Turns out the principal was her mother. From frying pan to a burning house.

The principal only gave her a “don’t do it again” warning and a hug. Ah.

I did not return to hostel that night. I slept in my classroom because I was afraid of senior Georgina.

Early the next morning, like around 2am, I went back to the hostel to grab my school uniform and just do “rub and shine”. No shower. 

Shivering in fear, I got to my corner of the room. Luckily, senior Georgina wasn’t there. As I picked up my clothes and turned around, there she was, with 5, 6, 7 – about 11 of her classmates.

She dragged me to the middle of the room and threw me on the ground. Mind you, the lights were still out by then. She brought out her iron hanger from her locker and came to stand in front of me. I panicked at the sight of it because I knew what was going to happen next.

First, she shouted,

 “One ju!”, short form for ‘one junior’, “The last person to come here will join her!”

All the juniors in my room rushed down from their beds and ran to the centre of the room where I was. It was a massacre. It was all planned before I returned back to the hostel.

They beat me till I could no longer feel my bones. They didn’t have a choice, it was an order from senior Georgina herself. Even those that I considered “friends” were part of my massacre.  

After the juniors were done with me, senior Georgina and her 11 girl bandits beat me with their iron hangers. One even used hot iron to heat her hanger and continue flogging me with it. The scars on my body were so bad that you can even see it on my dead spirit.

It did not end there. Senior Georgina proceeded to lock me up inside my iron locker until siesta time that evening. I was imprisoned for 12 hours against my will.

I thought I was going to die in that locker. I wanted to die. I needed to die so that I wouldn’t face senior Georgina again. I could not survive another day in this school.

Even after senior Georgina had dragged me out of the locker, I could not escape her evil plans. When I was being treated in the clinic for my wounds, the nurses and everybody looked at me in disapproval. 

Apparently, Georgina told everybody I stole all her pocket money and jumped the fence to buy sweet things for myself and that is why I was absent in class that day. She planted evidence in my locker for it. All her contrabands locked in my locker.

After I got treated in clinic, I still served punishment for stealing and jumping fence. I wish they had suspended me like they normally do. I wanted a day out of this hell, no, even a minute to spare.

Senior Georgina was the “law” in Anaconda Girls College. Nobody could go against her command.

After all was said and done, there came those evil classmates of mine. Jss2 D Demons. Apparently, Georgina’s sister was my classmate. I will call her Medusa. Because the snakes did not grow out of her hair, it came out of her mouth.

Medusa and the other members of satan’s kingdom called my classmates finished everything senior Georgina started with me. Medusa was the leader of the clan. She made sure every breathing moment in that classroom was hell fire for me. 

The worst part was that I could not escape them. I had to attend classes to graduate.

Every day, I felt irritation, anger and confusion, confusion as to why everybody was against me. Even the ones that did not need to bully me bullied me. I hated it here.

Eyes were watching me everywhere in that school. If I should report, or even attempt to, someone will know. There was no escape for me.

On visiting day, my mother did not say anything about my scars. It was normal for junior students to have scars since flogging was tolerated in the school.

 I tried to tell my mother that the flogging wasn’t from the teachers. But before I could, senior Georgina greeted my mother and introduced herself as my bunkmate. She appeared as this sweet perfect senior every parent would want their daughters to have as a school mother. My mother fell for her trick and believed I was being taken care of.

Even when I tried to tell my mother that senior Georgina was a pretender and wicked, she brushed it off. She said that it is normal for juniors to hate their seniors and that everybody experiences the hells of “seniority” in boarding school. It was in that moment that I knew I was done for.

My entire first term in Anaconda Girls College was my burial ground. And just a day before we closed for Christmas holiday, when I was about to finally have a taste of freedom, this happened…

On the night before Christmas break, I woke up in the middle of the night to pee. I never did that my entire three months of staying in this school. But for some weird reason, I had the urge to pee.

Ever since senior Georgina and her sister’s bullying got worse, I secretly slept in the mosque next to the junior girls’ hostel. I could not share a bunk with senior Georgina anymore.

And so, that night, I went to pee in the abandoned cleaners’ restroom behind the junior girls’ hostel.

While I was using the pit toilet in one of the stalls in the cleaners’ toilet, I heard movements in the toilet. Right in front of my toilet stall. Why would anyone come here in the middle of the night? 

That is what you are about to find out.

I started hearing strange noises. I held my breath and kept quiet in fear. Maybe Bush Baby did exist. Or was it Madam Koi Koi?

No. The noise wasn’t a koi koi shoe sound or a baby’s cry. It was a girl’s soft cry, a moan.

The moaning sounds kept getting louder and louder with each passing minute. Was somebody crying?

I gently opened my stall door to see two girls resting by the sink. I recognized them immediately. It was senior Georgina and Medusa.

Senior Georgina stood at the side with her fingers underneath her sister’s nightgown. Medusa was moaning in pain with each thrust her sister made with her fingers in between her legs. I was pressed. I was angry. How dare she torture her sister too?

I pushed the stall door wide open and they both jumped at the sight of me. Panic flooded their faces as they saw standing me there, fuming with anger.

I ran and pushed senior Georgina away from her sister. Senior Georgina tripped and fell to the ground.

“Are you okay?” I asked Medusa, searching for any injury on her body. But Medusa pushed me in anger and slammed my head against the toilet door.

“How dare you touch my sister!” She began kicking me.

I was confused. Very confused. Wasn’t she in need of rescue?

Senior Georgina came on top of me and yanked my hair back.

“What did you see?” She asked out of concern. I could see the anxiety in her face. And the anxiety began to appear on Medusa’s face as well.

Senior Georgina wasn’t torturing Medusa. They were in on it together. Wait. Were the two sisters…?

Before I could think of the word, the toilet door opened. Two of my classmates barged in and were shocked to see me there. They were on the lookout for any teacher or matron outside. 

They were all in this together. And I was the sole ranger.

“What should we do? She’s going to tell everybody what she saw! She has a big mouth!” Medusa panicked.

“No, I won’t!” I shook my head and begged them, “Let me go. I won’t tell anybody, I swear!”

But they did not believe me. They even recounted a time a cleaner caught the two sisters in the “act” last term and reported to the principal—their mother. But their mother covered up for them and somehow somehow, the cleaner was found dead in a car accident the next day.

I got more scared by that story and tried to fight them off and run away. But I got grabbed from behind and next thing I knew, my head was slammed against the mirror. 

They said once a snitch, always a snitch. 

One of my classmates fetched water inside the dirty mop bucket while the other one held me against the mirror so that I wouldn’t run away.

They brought the bucket of water to the ground and held my head inside it. I struggled to breathe under the water and fought for my life, but they all held onto me until I stopped breathing. And that was the last of Faridah Umar Abdullahi. 

I died that night. A worthless death. Over the fears of my oppressors. A fear that none of them could prove. I was going to take their dirty secret to my grave but they were deep in their hatred for me that they wasted my not-so-precious life away.

When my mother came to pick me up from school, they lied to her. The principal told her I had already gone home with an older uncle. Her daughters and my classmates added fuel to the lie. First, they cleared all my items from my locker to look like I had left school. Then they told my mother that the man was probably my boyfriend and I ran away from school with him. They said he grabbed my bum bum in public and I was giggling like a goat.

Till this day, my mother is in search of this mystery “boyfriend”. She is still trying to find me. But she never will.

My body is buried beneath the pit toilet of the cleaners’ restroom. Never to be found again.

The only part of my existence left is the note I wrote behind my Basic Science notebook:

‘I feel trapped. I feel suffocated. My classmates want to kill me.’

If anyone finds it, maybe they will discover the truth. But until then, I will allow the world to keep turning their backs like they always do.

So why did I share my story when no one can see me, or hear me?

Well, it is not intended to bring me back to life… or to expose Anaconda Girls College for their evil. 

It is for you.

It is so that when next you see another Faridah Umar Abdullahi on the leash, you will notice her. You will protect her.

Or else, she might get killed too.

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. All characters, locations, organizations and incidents appearing in this article are fictitious.

For Sylvester🕊, Karen -Happuch🕊 and Nuhu 🕊.

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