Quote:
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." – Mark Twain
The laptop's glow was a cold, blue beacon in the dim room, illuminating the frantic pulse in Thembi's throat. Her finger, hovering over the enter key, felt like it weighed a hundred kilos. This was the threshold. On the other side of this password was the ghost of her last night—the digital footprint of the person she was before the world ended. Did she really want to meet that ghost?
Taking a shuddering breath that did nothing to calm her, she pressed the key.
The desktop bloomed into existence, a familiar mosaic of lecture notes folders, a photo of her and Lerato at the beach in Durban, and the Spotify icon. For a moment, everything looked heartbreakingly normal. It was the desk of a student, a young woman with a future. The dissonance between that image and the reality of her apartment made her stomach lurch.
Her first instinct was to check her messages. Her fingers, clumsy and cold, clicked on the WhatsApp web icon. The window loaded, conversations stacking up. Lerato: 23 unread messages. Sbu: 12 unread messages. Mom: 5 unread messages. A group chat for her Law class was buzzing about a Monday tutorial.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She scrolled, her eyes scanning the timeline from last night.
Her (to Lerato), 22:47: Almost at Vudu! Shots on me!
Lerato, 22:48: Yasss queen! Saved us a spot near the DJ.
Her (to Sbu), 23:15: Where are you?
Sbu, 23:20: Parking now. Don't start without me.
Then, the tone shifted. The messages became fewer, the timestamps stretching out.
Her (to Lerato), 00:55: I can't believe him. I can't fcking believe him.*
Lerato, 00:56: Thembs, just breathe. Come to the bathroom with me.
Her (to Lerato), 00:57: NO. I'm leaving. I'm done with this sht.*
Then, nothing. No more sent messages after 00:57. That was around the time she'd stormed out. Her last known, sober-ish act.
But it was the received messages that turned her blood to slush. She clicked on Sbu's thread, scrolling past his worried morning messages to the ones from last night.
Sbu, 01:02: Thembi, where did you go? Please answer.
Sbu, 01:15: Lerato says you left alone. That's not safe. Please let me know you're getting home okay.
Sbu, 01:30: Kagiso just left. She's really upset. She said you threatened to fck her up if she ever talked to me again. What is going on with you?*
Thembi stared at the words. She said you threatened to fck her up.* The language was crude, violent. Had she said that? In the heat of the fight, blurry with tequila and rage, it was possible. Probable, even. It fit the narrative everyone was building: the unhinged, jealous rival.
But there was another message, one that made her breath catch.
Sbu, 01:45: Fine. Don't answer. I'm coming over. We need to sort this out NOW.
He had intended to come over last night. Her eyes flicked to the front door, then to the bathroom. Had he? Had he come over during the Forgotten Hour? Was he here? The thought was a vortex, sucking all other reasoning into it. If Sbu had been here, then he knew about Kagiso. He was part of this. Or… he was a witness.
But he'd just been at the door, acting worried. Was it an act? A cold, calculated performance to check on his handiwork or to implicate her further?
Shaking her head to clear the spiraling paranoia, she opened her browser. The history was a chaotic journey through her state of mind. Notes on constitutional law. A fashion blog. The website for Club Vudu. Then, later, a search at 00:48: "symptoms of alcohol poisoning." She had a vague memory of feeling dizzy, of Lerato asking if she was okay.
Then, the last entry. A search at 01:10: "how to get rid of a bad memory."
Thembi recoiled from the screen as if it had bitten her. The banality of the phrase was utterly at odds with the horrific context. Had she been trying to forget the fight? Or had it been a darker, more literal query, typed in a fugue state after… after everything?
She had to know more. She opened her photo gallery, scrolling to last night. There were the usual pre-drinks selfies with Lerato, their faces pressed together, smiles too wide, eyes already gleaming with anticipation. A blurry video of the dance floor. Then, a gap. The next photo was timestamped 01:05. It was a close-up, dark and grainy, taken with the flash. It was of a hand—her hand, she recognized the chipped black polish on her thumb—holding a silver Zippo lighter, its flame a bright, defiant tear in the darkness.
The flame.
Her memory supplied the sensation: the cool metal of the lighter, the flick of her thumb on the striker wheel, the sudden bloom of heat. But where was she? Why did she take a picture?
She zoomed in, her face inches from the screen, searching the background of the photo for clues. It was too dark. Just vague shapes, possibly the fabric of a car seat, or her own jeans. Nothing identifiable.
Frustration boiled over into a simmering panic. The digital trail was just as fragmented as her memory, offering tantalizing clues that only led to deeper shadows.
Then she saw it. In her downloads folder, a single file, downloaded at 01:22 AM. A file she had no memory of accessing. It was an audio file, simply named: "NOTE.m4a"
Her blood ran cold. An audio note? From who? To who? Had she recorded something?
With a trembling hand, she moved the cursor over the file and double-clicked.
A media player opened. The timeline was short, only about ten seconds long. She clicked play.
For a moment, there was nothing but the muffled sound of movement, fabric rustling, and heavy, labored breathing. Her own breathing? Then, a voice. Her voice, thick with alcohol and something else—terror?—whispering a single, choked sentence into the recorder:
"I think... I think I didn't come home alone."
The file ended. The silence that followed was more deafening than any sound she had ever heard.
The words echoed in the room, in her mind, a confession from the past to the present. I didn't come home alone. Kagiso. She had brought Kagiso here. Or someone had come with her.
Before the full weight of the revelation could crush her, a new sound sliced through the silence, sharp and immediate. It wasn't a knock. It wasn't her phone.
It was the distinct, metallic scrape of a key being inserted into the lock of her front door.
Thembi's head snapped up, her eyes wide with pure, undiluted terror. The laptop was forgotten. Sbu had a key. He had said he was coming over last night. He had just been here. Was he back, done with asking for permission?
The lock turned with a definitive, heavy clunk.
The door began to swing open.