21/10/2025
THE MORTICIAN’S SECRET
EPISODE ONE
The air inside the mortuary was always cold, but tonight, it felt colder than usual.
Not because of the temperature—Ebuka had grown used to that—but because of what lay before him on the steel table.
The body of a young woman, no more than twenty-five. Her skin was pale under the harsh fluorescent lights, her mouth slightly open, as though frozen mid-sentence.
The tag on her toe read: “Nwadiuto, Adaora – 24 – Car Accident.”
Ebuka swallowed hard.
He hadn’t expected her.
She wasn’t just another body.
She was once the girl who sold roasted plantains at the junction of his street.
Her laughter had danced on the wind—loud, carefree, teasing. She had once given him an extra portion without charge, whispering, “Because you’re always too serious.”
But now, she was silent. Cold. Stiff.
And he had a job to do.
---
By daylight, Ebuka Okafor was a respected man.
Tall, soft-spoken, and always neatly dressed in dark trousers and clean shirts.
In the small southeastern town of Ogidi, he was known as the man who gives the dead dignity.
He was a mortician—one who prepared the departed for their final journey. A man people feared, but also respected.
But by night…
He was something else.
Something darker.
---
He reached for his gloves, pulling them over his fingers like a ritual he had mastered over the years.
He clicked the overhead lamp closer to Adaora’s torso, letting the light flood her still body.
There was a deep gash across her forehead, and her left arm hung broken at the elbow.
The doctors had done their best to stitch her up, but she hadn’t survived the crash.
He stared at her chest for a long moment.
He didn’t want to do it.
Not this one.
But the message he received that morning was clear:
> “24-year-old female. Blood Type B+. Lungs and kidneys. High priority. ₦1.3 million. Tonight.”
The buyers didn’t care about names or histories.
They cared about organs—fresh, healthy ones.
And Ebuka, the quiet mortician, was their supplier.
He gritted his teeth and whispered, “I’m sorry, Adaora.”
Then, he picked up the scalpel.
---
Fifteen years earlier, Ebuka had been a completely different man.
He had once dreamed of becoming a surgeon.
Bright, ambitious, and compassionate, he was the pride of his village when he got admitted into the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
But in his second year, everything changed.
His younger brother, Chigozie, fell terribly ill.
Diagnosis: renal failure.
The doctors said he needed a kidney transplant urgently, but there was no match in the family.
The hospital kept delaying.
Ebuka watched his brother weaken day by day until one night, he simply stopped breathing.
Ebuka never forgave the system.
Never forgave the world.
In his grief, he dropped out of school.
He couldn’t bring himself to cut open another human being in a world where the rich could afford organs and the poor died in silence.
He wandered aimlessly for years.
Until he met Doctor Mathias.
To be continued...
