Episode 1

The Blood Was Never Stopped
They say a woman’s body is a temple. Mine became a prison.
My name is Mmesoma, and for the last two years, I have been bleeding. Not once a month, not for a few days like other women. But twenty-five days out of every thirty. Twenty-five nights of sleepless agony, soaked bedsheets, tissue rolls, and whispers behind my back. It started gently—at first, just spotting between periods. Then came heavier flows. Then clots. Then silence from doctors who couldn’t explain why.

They said it was hormonal imbalance.

They said it was stress.

They said to “rest more,” to “eat better,” to “pray harder.”

But no matter how many pills I swallowed, no matter how many scans I took, the bleeding continued.

It ruined everything. My marriage. My friendships. My job. My pride.

My husband, Ebuka, was supportive at first. He would hold me when I cried in the bathroom. He would go to the market when I was too dizzy to stand. But eventually… the support turned to distance. Then to frustration. Then to silence. He stopped touching me. Then he stopped looking at me. Until one night he whispered, “Maybe this is spiritual, Mmesoma. Maybe it’s not medical anymore.”

That night, I cried until my pillow turned red.

I stopped going to church. Every time I sat for long, I stained something—chair covers, dresses, bus seats. My coworkers stopped sitting near me. My friends stopped inviting me out. The world moved on without me while I bled in corners.

But everything changed the day I fainted in front of a barefoot woman in white, outside the hospital gate.

She wasn’t a nurse.

She wasn’t a beggar.

She was just there—watching me as I stumbled with my hospital file clutched to my chest, my vision blurred, my breath short. I collapsed near her feet. The last thing I remember was the smell of hibiscus.

When I woke up, I was inside a one-room hut.

She was boiling herbs.

“You see your blood every day because you carry a curse not meant for you,” she said, without me asking.

I blinked. “What?”

She didn’t look at me. She poured the dark, steaming liquid into a calabash and placed it near my lips.

“Your grandmother was supposed to pay a bride price to the river… but she refused. So now, the debt is falling on you.”

I would’ve laughed if I wasn’t so weak.

“What do you mean? What river? What bride price?”

She finally looked at me. Her eyes were white. Completely white.

“You were born with a mark, Mmesoma. Did they never tell you?”

I didn’t know whether to believe her. But that night, after drinking her herbs, the bleeding stopped.

For the first time in twenty-five months… I woke up dry.

But what happened next?

The dreams.

The snakes.

The voice in the mirror.

And the secret my mother had buried long ago… was about to be uncovered.

Episode 2

I woke up dry.

That morning felt like a miracle and a warning wrapped in one. For the first time in two years, there was no blood between my thighs. No soggy bedsheets. No dizzy spell. No shame.

I looked at my wrapper. Clean.

I looked at the mat she laid me on. Dry.

I touched my belly. No cramps. No heaviness.

The woman in white, who called herself Ezimora, was already sweeping outside the hut, her bare feet silent against the dust. I stepped out slowly, almost afraid the blood would return the moment I moved too quickly. But it didn’t. I walked, and for once, my body felt like mine again.

She didn’t say much. Just handed me a small calabash of cold leaves soaked in something sour and smoky.

“Drink it for seven nights,” she said. “And when the moon is full, ask your mother what she buried on the day you were born.”

“What did she bury?” I asked, confused.

Ezimora didn’t answer.

She looked up at the sun and said, “If she lies, the blood will return.”

I left that hut feeling more fear than hope.

By the time I returned home, Ebuka was pacing. His eyes were wild.

“Where have you been?” he snapped. “I called your phone a hundred times!”

I told him everything—from the fainting to the strange woman, to the herbs. He didn’t believe me. He called it bush magic. He said I was desperate. He said it wouldn’t last.

But it did.

Day one. Dry.

Day two. Dry.

Day three. Still no blood.

That night, I sat in the corner of the room and wept. Not from pain. From peace.

On the sixth day, I called my mother.

“Please come,” I begged. “I need to talk to you.”

She arrived with her Bible and bottle of anointing oil, muttering prayers the whole way.

I didn’t waste time.

I asked her, “What did you bury the day I was born?”

Her hands froze mid-prayer. Her lips stopped moving.

She blinked.

“What?”

“I said what did you bury—because someone said you did.”

She didn’t speak for almost a minute. Then, like a deflated balloon, she sat down and whispered something I never expected.

“I buried your umbilical cord with broken clay and a cursed cloth.”

I stared at her, unable to breathe.

She continued, “It wasn’t supposed to be you. It was your twin. The one who never cried. The one I was told to sacrifice.”

My heart dropped.

“Twin?” I echoed. “I had a twin?”

She nodded slowly, tears pouring down her cheeks.

“I was warned by a priestess—one of the children came with a river gift. A gift that must be returned. I was too afraid to sacrifice a child, so I buried the sign instead. I thought it was enough. I didn’t know the curse would follow the living one.”

I felt cold.

So cold.

“So… I’ve been bleeding for a sacrifice you refused to make?”

She wept into her wrapper.

“I was trying to protect you.”

But the curse didn’t want protection.

It wanted payment.

That night, I had a dream.

A river. A girl who looked exactly like me, standing in the water. She held something—my wedding ring.

“If you want peace,” she said, “give me a name.”

When I woke up, the bleeding had returned.

Not a drop.

But a flood.

Blood soaked through the mattress.

I screamed.

Ebuka rushed in.

We drove to the hospital.

The doctors were confused. Again.

But I wasn’t.

I knew what I had to do.

The name. The truth. The twin.

Episode 3

I returned to the river at dawn.

Not because I believed in spirits. But because the doctors had no answers, my mother buried a secret, and my body was bleeding out more than just blood—it was crying for truth.

Wrapped in a white cloth stained by the night’s flood of blood, I stood at the banks of the water, shivering from fear and fever. The same river my mother once stood by, holding the bodies of two newborns—one silent, one crying. She buried one in silence and carried one home in guilt.

Me.

The crying one.

But the curse didn’t care who lived—it only wanted what it was owed.

I closed my eyes, listening to the soft gurgling of the river. My mind flashed back to the dream again—the girl in the water, my mirror image, holding out my wedding ring and saying: “Give me a name.”

So I did.

I stepped closer to the edge, opened my palm to the river, and said, “Your name… is Chimamanda.”

The wind blew.

The water shifted.

Then I screamed, “You were never forgotten! I didn’t even know you existed, but I carry your pain! I carry it in my womb! I give you your name! I give you peace!”

The wind went still.

The river went quiet.

And suddenly, everything went dark.

When I woke up, I was in Ezimora’s hut again.

But this time, I wasn’t bleeding.

She was sitting beside me, smiling for the first time. “The name has set you free,” she said. “You acknowledged her. You gave her a place in the world she never had. That was all she wanted.”

“But why me?” I whispered. “Why did it have to be my body?”

She looked at me gently. “Because your mother feared death more than the truth. And the truth always demands a witness.”

That morning, when I stepped out of the hut, I felt lighter. For the first time in years, my stomach didn’t feel like a war zone. My thighs weren’t soaked. My skin wasn’t pale.

I went home and told Ebuka everything.

He wept.

He held me.

We prayed.

And from that day on, the bleeding stopped.

No hospital visit could explain it.

But I didn’t need one.

I knew the truth now.

And sometimes, truth is the strongest healing of all.

THE END