27/10/2025
The Thing Under Skirt
By Nduka McCollins
Adesuwa Obayemi always walked as though she carried glass within her bones. Every step was measured, deliberate, almost rehearsed. Her colleagues at the school called it poise. Her students called it mystery. The truth was that Adesuwa had learned early that control could be armor. She smiled sparingly, taught with precision, and lived like a woman who owed the world nothing but her silence.
On most mornings she dressed before sunrise, her movements quiet against the echo of her narrow flat on Aderinto Street. The power supply was rarely stable, so she moved by the dim flicker of a rechargeable lamp. Lavender soap lingered on her skin. Her skirts were always long, her blouses buttoned to the throat. She would smooth the fabric over her legs as if ensuring a secret stayed buried.
Outside, Lagos was already awake. The sound of generators hummed through the air like a restless choir. Vendors shouted the price of bread and plantain. Somewhere beyond the rooftops, a bus conductor cursed into the morning wind. Adesuwa locked her door, adjusted her handbag, and began her walk toward the main road where the danfo buses groaned into motion. She preferred walking to calling okadas. The movement steadied her thoughts.
At school, she became someone else. Miss Obayemi, the one who made literature sound like scripture. Her voice filled the classroom like slow music. She quoted Soyinka, Baldwin, Morrison. Her students, most of them restless teenagers, found themselves listening even when they did not understand every word. She was not warm, but she was magnetic.
One of those students was Tega Orimogunje, a boy of fifteen with eyes too sharp for his own peace. He had transferred from another school after a disciplinary issue, and he carried the sly curiosity of someone who distrusted authority. On his first week, he noticed her immediately. There was something about the way her skirt moved when she walked, the stillness in her posture, the quiet weight she seemed to carry that made him watch her longer than he should have.
It began innocently enough. He dropped his pen one afternoon and bent to pick it up just as she leaned forward to adjust a pile of essays on her desk. For a fraction of a second, the hem of her skirt shifted. What he saw made him freeze. He would later struggle to describe it. Not fabric. Not leg. Something else, something alive beneath the folds, as if her shadow had grown muscle.
His breath caught. When she straightened and met his eyes, he looked away, but the image remained. That night he told two classmates what he had seen. They laughed, teased him, and dared him to prove it. The next day, a rumor began to form, spreading through corridors and whispers like smoke. By the end of the week, even the janitor had heard of the thing under Miss Adesuwa’s skirt.
The gossip took shape like a fever. Some said she was possessed. Others said she belonged to a secret cult. One girl swore that she heard a sound under the teacher’s desk, a faint slithering noise that vanished when she looked up. The school, built on discipline and reputation, began to tremble with speculation.
Adesuwa felt it before she heard it. The glances that lingered too long. The muffled laughter behind her back. The sudden quiet when she entered the staff room. At first, she ignored it. She had learned long ago that silence could starve a rumor. But silence can also feed fear. Soon, the whispers became voices, and the voices became complaints.
One morning, the principal called her into his office. He was a large man with a tired face and a tone that tried to sound kind. He told her that some parents had expressed concern about her conduct. He did not use the word “rumor.” He used “concern.” He asked if there was anything she wished to explain. She met his gaze calmly and said no. There was nothing to explain. When she left his office, she could feel his uncertainty following her like a shadow.
That night, at home, she stood before her mirror for a long time. The small room was lit only by the orange glow of a candle. Her reflection stared back at her, patient and unforgiving. Slowly, she lifted her skirt. The air grew still. There it was—what she had hidden since childhood. A coiled limb, glistening faintly beneath her skin, half flesh and half memory. It stirred once, sensing her touch, then grew quiet again. She lowered the skirt and blew out the candle.
She thought of her mother. Efe Obayemi, the midwife who knew things Lagos had chosen to forget. Her mother used to speak in riddles. “Every woman carries her truth somewhere in her body,” she would say. “Some in their eyes, some in their blood. Ours is just closer to the surface.” When Adesuwa was thirteen, her mother died after a fever that came without warning. Her father, a fisherman, was swallowed by the lagoon three years later. She learned to live alone with what they had left her—half a story and a full inheritance of silence.
In the weeks that followed, the school’s atmosphere thickened with unease. Parents threatened to withdraw their children. The principal, pressured by the board, contacted the local authorities. That was how Inspector Chuka Nwandu entered her life.
He arrived at the school on a Tuesday morning, dressed in plain clothes, with the look of a man who had seen too many strange cases and believed none of them. He spoke to the staff, the students, even the janitor who claimed to have seen her reflection move differently from her body. When he finally met Adesuwa, it was in the empty staff room during lunch break.
She stood by the window, her hands resting lightly on the frame. Outside, the sky was heavy with the promise of rain. Chuka introduced himself and asked if she knew why he was there. She nodded once. He told her it was routine, that he did not believe in rumors, that he only wanted to understand what had caused such panic. She listened, her expression unreadable.
“Do you believe in logic, Inspector?” she asked after a pause.
“I make a living out of it,” he said.
She smiled faintly. “Then you may not find what you’re looking for.”
There was something in her voice that unsettled him—not fear, but certainty. He left that day with more questions than he came with.
The investigation continued, though there was little to prove. No evidence, only stories. But stories have power in Lagos. One evening, as Chuka walked toward his car after another unfruitful interview, he saw her across the courtyard, speaking to a student who was crying. Her posture was calm, her voice low. The girl’s sobbing softened, then stopped entirely. When Adesuwa looked up, their eyes met. For a second, he forgot his skepticism. There was something in her stillness that felt ancient, like a secret older than belief.
That night, he dreamed of water.
Days passed, and the rumor refused to die. One afternoon, Tega and a few friends stayed behind after class, hiding behind the laboratory windows. They wanted proof. They whispered and waited as Adesuwa arranged books at her desk. When she bent slightly, Tega leaned forward too quickly, his phone camera ready. The moment he clicked the button, the window creaked. Adesuwa turned sharply. Her eyes found his through the glass. He froze, his hand trembling. For a split second, her skirt moved as if something beneath had responded to his fear. The boys screamed and ran. The phone fell and shattered. That night, Tega did not sleep. He told his mother he wanted to change schools again.
The next morning, chaos erupted. Parents stormed the principal’s office demanding answers. Teachers avoided eye contact. Adesuwa arrived as usual, calm, composed, her books pressed to her chest. By midday, she was asked to take a leave of absence. She agreed without protest.
When she returned home, she sat on her bed and listened to the hum of the city. A neighbor’s generator roared to life. Somewhere, a child was reciting multiplication tables. The air was thick, the heat unrelenting. She felt a pulse beneath her skin, faint but insistent, like a heart that did not belong entirely to her.
Two days later, Chuka came to her flat. He said it was unofficial, just a visit. The light was dim, filtered through a curtain patterned with small roses. She offered him water. He asked why she never defended herself. She said the truth would not fit into their language. He studied her face, her eyes clear and tired, and realized she was not lying. He also realized he was no longer investigating her. He was listening.
“Do you ever get frightened?” he asked quietly.
She looked at him, then said, “Only of forgetting who I am.”
The rain began to fall outside, soft at first, then harder. The sound filled the small flat. She walked to the mirror again, as though drawn by habit. He followed her reflection rather than her body. When she lifted her skirt, the room seemed to contract. What he saw was neither monstrous nor human. It was something between, something that defied description—a movement under flesh that pulsed with its own rhythm, as natural as breath. He did not recoil. He only stared, stunned by the impossible intimacy of it. She lowered the fabric again, turned to him, and said, “Now you know.”
He left without a word. The rain had eased by then, leaving the streets wet and shining under the streetlights. He drove for a long time without destination, replaying what he had seen, unsure if it belonged to reality or imagination. In his report, he wrote only that the case lacked evidence. But that night, he dreamed again of water, and of a woman walking across it without sinking.
Weeks turned to months. The rumor faded, replaced by new scandals, new distractions. Lagos moved on, as it always did. Adesuwa’s leave became permanent. She sold most of her furniture and began teaching private lessons from home. Sometimes, children from the neighborhood came to her window, curious, whispering her name like an incantation. She ignored them.
One evening, she received a letter without a return address. It was from Chuka. He wrote that he had been transferred to Port Harcourt. He thanked her for teaching him that not every truth is meant to be proved. She read the letter twice, folded it carefully, and placed it in a drawer beside her mother’s old comb.
That night, she dreamed of her father’s boat, drifting silently on the lagoon. When she woke, dawn was breaking. The first light touched the floor like a confession. She stood before the mirror once more, the familiar ritual. Her reflection looked back with quiet defiance. She lifted her skirt, not to hide, not to check, but to acknowledge. The thing beneath stirred faintly, neither curse nor miracle, only part of her. She smiled, the first genuine smile in years.
Outside, Lagos was waking again. Children ran toward school. Vendors arranged their stalls. The city pulsed with a rhythm she no longer feared. She stepped out into the morning, her skirt moving gently with the breeze. People glanced, then looked away. To them, she was just another woman walking to work.
But within her, something had changed. The silence was no longer heavy. It was a kind of music.
As she crossed the street toward the bus stop, she felt the world watching, though no one really was. She adjusted her blouse, straightened her posture, and walked on. Behind her, the noise of the city swelled and then dissolved into distance. Ahead, the light grew stronger, and for the first time, she did not shrink from it.
Her truth walked with her, quiet and alive.
