The Prey 3

⚠️ Trigger Warning: This post contains sensitive content that may be distressing to some readers. Proceed with caution.

The next day, I followed his instructions. 

Not because I wanted to, not because I felt like I had to either. After his outburst last night, I wasn’t even certain he’d want to see me again. I obeyed his instructions because the only alternative was disobeying them.

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So, I stood outside the cafeteria, waiting.

It was breakfast time, and the noise from the dining hall spilled out through the open doors—spoons scraping against plates, muffled conversations, the occasional laughter. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, staring at the dull tiles, ignoring occasional stares and scowls as people walked by. My presence here felt like a mistake, but waking up early just to stand outside and wait for him was far easier than coming late and walking all the way to meet him in the SS3 section of the cafeteria. 

Then, I saw him.

Senior Abraham walked toward the cafeteria entrance, flanked by some of his friends. They carried themselves with that same quiet arrogance, that same effortless confidence that belonged to academic stars—the ones who scored the highest in competitions, the ones the teachers and principal paraded like prized trophies.

His eyes flicked to me for half a second before he looked away, as if pretending he hadn’t seen me at all. But I saw it—that slight shift in his shoulders, the tension in his jaw. Guilt. Discomfort. Maybe from reacting like a madman last night, but he said nothing.

He just kept walking.

I hesitated for a beat, then fell into step beside him. Nobody stopped me. The moment we walked into the cafeteria together, eyes followed. The conversations didn’t exactly stop, but they slowed—like people were watching, wondering.

Senior prefects always had lackeys. I heard the last one had four flanking him everywhere he went. But Abraham had never kept one.

So why now?

I stood awkwardly beside the senior prefects’ table, heat creeping up my neck. If I sat, it would feel like I was claiming something I didn’t understand. If I didn’t, I’d just be standing there like an idiot.

Senior Abraham finally stared at me seconds after he sat down. He exhaled sharply, then shifted to the side, making space. An unspoken command. I sat beside him.

His friends said nothing, but the tension in the air loosened slightly, and just like that, it became normal—New Girl, Abraham’s lackey.

That’s how it happened—how I ended up sitting at the senior prefects’ table, the only SS1 student among the academic stars of SS3. Just like that, I was his lackey.

His friends didn’t understand at first. They just watched me silently, like they understood I was now his lackey but didn’t understand the why or the how, and Senior Abraham didn’t explain. He just served my food without a word. And that’s when I noticed it.

The food was different.

Not just bigger portions or more protein. It tasted better—richer, spiced differently. I didn’t know if it was because the table was reserved for the school’s best minds or because food just tasted better the higher your grade. 

Either way, I didn’t ask.

And true to his word, after lunch, I was a free woman again.

The next day, he took me to meet someone.

The chemistry lab smelled like burnt chemicals and formalin, a sharp contrast to the orderly rows of labeled bottles on the shelves. But the real stash wasn’t in plain sight.

I watched in silence as Senior Abraham exchanged a glance with the lab technician—a man too old to be bothered by teenage politics. Then the technician reached for a shelf that seemed unremarkable and pressed his hand against the backboard.

A click. A shift. A hidden compartment.

Inside were tiny brown bags, neatly arranged and labeled. I already knew what they were before anyone said a word.

“Watch carefully,” Senior Abraham murmured.

The technician pulled out a fresh batch and began to demonstrate:

Pouring the heroin into tiny brown bags, folding and sealing them tightly.

Carefully opening up sanitary pad wrappers and sealing the drugs inside.

Cutting thin strips of foil, placing them in the panty liners, and resealing them as if untouched.

By the time he was done, there was no evidence.

“This is your job now,” Senior Abraham told me. “I told you, you’ll handle my deliveries on Wednesdays and Saturdays.”

I swallowed, nodding.

It wasn’t fear that settled in my chest. It wasn’t even disgust. It was understanding.

This was bigger than I’d thought.

I started seeing it everywhere.

Some teachers knew. Most non academic staff knew. All hostel managers knew. They didn’t stop it. They never would. Because it wasn’t just about the drugs—it was about who was taking them.

The academic stars.

The ones who were groomed for success, for national competitions, for scholarships abroad. The ones who brought prestige to this school, gave high ranking to this school. They weren’t just students; they were investments. And investments had to perform.

So, they got help.

Enhancements to help them focus for hours, to push their bodies past exhaustion, to keep them reading until dawn. Nobody said it out loud, but it was obvious—every male academic star was on something. I discovered it could be as simple as laced weed or as complex as heroin.

It made sense now. The way they could function on two hours of sleep and still dominate in class. The way their minds always seemed razor-sharp even when they should have been burning out. How they could all get A's to the point A's weren't even a hallmark for intelligence, the exact scores were. 

The school didn’t just allow it. It protected it. The school's involvement gave it a skeleton and the prefects gave it its nervous system with the senior prefect as its figurehead brain. 

I discovered with time the system ran deeper than I could have ever guessed, like a parallel universe coexisting in the same time. A person could pass a pen to another, but inside the pen, instead of there being ink, there could be wrapped marijuana. It was a system so precise and secretive that the more I stayed around Senior Abraham and heard conversations, the more I found myself amazed by the intricacies.

I understood why if you didn't know about it, you wouldn't know about it. 

I found out the last person who attempted an exposé on the system was immediately expelled. In a school as prestigious as Lux et Gloria Academy, there was no greater disgrace. It was like falling from grace into the mud—an irreversible stain. No respectable institution would ever admit a Lux et Gloria outcast.

For a while, I didn’t see much of Tochi. And when I did, she had bruises. Faint, but there. A darkening near her elbow. A shadow just below her collarbone.

She never explained. I never asked. We weren't friends before she threw me to the wolves and we certainly weren't friends after. 

But still I wondered, if, even as she sacrificed me, she still had these on her body. What would have happened to her if she didn’t?

Soon enough, we finally spent the night prep in Senior Abraham’s provision room, the Saturday before when I delivered the trafficked drugs I'd packed myself he didn't ask me to get him anything from the tuck shop, instead he sent me off with his keys to fetch us soup and swallow from the cafeteria, but on Wednesday, after I delivered the pads, he announced we were heading to the tuck shop.

I found out when I visited last, the room hadn’t even been restocked because suddenly there were sardines, sausages, varieties of bread, sweet corn, and baked beans tins everywhere, things the tuck shop didn't even sell, and the best part of it all—Senior Abraham allowed me free access to anything I wanted.

So there I was with a tub of ice cream in between my crossed legs, nibbling on beef rolls while swiping at my note book in front of me when, someone knocked on the door and Senior Abraham had to step outside. He returned, opened a drawer attached to the tall cupboard, grabbed something, then left without closing the drawer, and something red stood out.

I don’t know why I squinted my eyes to see it properly, but it didn’t help. So, I dropped the notebook I was reading and moved closer to the cupboard.

Maybe I was just curious—curious about him, about this new world I had been pulled into, about the things I wasn’t supposed to see.

I leaned towards the cupboard and saw the word “Durex,” and I gasped. Condoms.

My hand reached for the pack, and I rubbed my fingers around it, wondering if I could dare to open it and look inside. I’d never seen one before; not even in movies had they come in packs, and here I was holding one.

Senior Abraham was sexually active?

I stared at them, my mind turning. Sex. The word felt far away from my reality, something that existed only in whispers and rumors.

What did it feel like?

Would I ever—

“What are you doing?”

I froze.

His voice came from the doorway, and I knew I had been caught. Why did I forget where I was in the first place? Would he be angry? Annoyed I was touching his personal item?

Slowly, I turned, still holding the pack. Senior Abraham was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, expression unreadable.

“Do you even know what those are?” he asked.

I swallowed. “Yes.”

His eyes didn’t move from mine, but he stepped closer towards me and stretched his arm. “You ever used them?”

The air between us felt different now.

I hesitated. “No,” then handed him his pack of protection.

His gaze sharpened. “No, as in you do it unprotected? Or no, as in—” His voice dropped slightly. “You’re a virgin?”

I didn’t answer.

Something in his face immediately changed. "Of fucking course."

His jaw tensed, his fingers curled into fists, and then—he groaned. A low, frustrated sound. Then, without another word, he dropped the pack, turned, and walked out, leaving me standing there, utterly confused.

I stared after him.

What the hell was that?

I hurried after him in fear because I could handle it when he was yelling and kicking tables like a madman, but his psychopathic silence sent shivers down my spine.

“Senior Abraham!”

He didn’t stop.

I had to jog to catch up, nearly stumbling as I reached for his arm. He yanked it away before I could touch him. We were standing right in front of the tuck shop gate, and the older lady was staring at us like two crazy people.

“What did I do?” I asked, breathless. “What’s wrong?”

He finally stopped, stared at the lady, and she immediately stood up, opened the tuck shop gate, and walked away. Senior Abraham’s back was stiff, hands clenched at his sides. “Go back.”

I blinked. “Back where?”

“Wherever the hell you came from, wherever the hell you were before you walked into my classroom.” he muttered, rubbing a hand over his face.

I folded my arms. “I’m so sorry I picked it up.”

His jaw tightened. He exhaled harshly and turned to face me. “Stop apologizing. God, all you ever do is say thank you and I’m sorry. Fuck.”

“But—” I haven't even said thank you again since the last outburst, and this was the first time I was even apologizing to him?

“Why were you touching my stuff?” His voice was quieter now, but that didn’t make it any less sharp.

“I wasn’t—I mean, I was just looking.”

His eyes flicked to mine. “And?”

And what? I didn’t even know what I was looking for. My gaze dropped to the floor, frustration curling in my stomach. “I don’t know,” I admitted.

Senior Abraham exhaled, like he wanted to say something but thought better of it. I saw the moment he made his decision. His shoulders squared. His expression went blank.

“You don’t need to know,” he said finally. “Just—don't touch my shit.”

Something about that irritated me, I could touch heroin, I could touch the items he made me deliver to seniors, but I could not touch a pack of condoms. 

I said nothing. Silence stretched between us.

Then, finally, Senior Abraham sighed.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, voice low. “I just—I can’t talk about this with you.”

“Why?”

“Because.” He looked at me then, blue eyes dark, unreadable. “You’re not supposed to be involved in things like this.”

Things like what?

The words pressed against my tongue, but I didn’t ask. Because I already knew what he meant.

He was right. I wasn’t supposed to be involved in this world at all. But I was.

And so was he.

I didn’t realize how close we were standing until he stepped back. “Go, Adaukwu.”

I watched him turn and walk away, disappearing down the hall.

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