Prologue
Dupe's killers were not ordinary men. They were fiends - fiends with fiery arms and stale breaths that smelled of charred flesh. I had seen them- they were fiends whose ages ranged from a thousand years to a few millennia. They had been here forever, silent, until Dupe chose to ruffle their nest and let them loose and I would not have been able to discover all of this had I not realized shortly after an accident I had on the factory floor, that I had psychic abilities.

The end
They had found her body at the site of the onslaught, unmoving but with facial features that spoke of determination- not fear. Her face was set and even with closed eyes, were brave; her fists were curled into a ball seeming to hold something and no matter how hard the technicians tried, no one could prise her fingers open to reveal their contents- yet her finger tips were darkened from holding on too long to the fiery robes of the fiends. It was a rather strange phenomenon because the dead were not supposed to retain the power of muscular control and I could tell she was dead simply by looking at her now. Notwithstanding the unusual circumstance, the item in Dupe's clasp remained a mystery. Second, was the scar on her forehead that looked like an ancient symbol long born before words were breathed to life. To the other 'techs' it would look like just a scar but up close I trembled at the mystery such a scar held. None of the bystanders could tell as I could surmise from their crying and fidgeting and obvious confusion as they simply stood in a cluster waiting, while one of them who had tried unsuccessfully to discover what Dupe held on to, lingered on, kneeling, wondering what to do. I knew they were waiting for answers- answers that would make mockery of mystery by revealing its deepest secrets. Most puzzling to me was the total absence of blood at the site of the struggle. Though there were numerous evidences of a serious scuffle- scattered hair, finger imprints and torn clothing, there was no blood as Dupe lay still, very much alive only that she was not breathing.

It had not been so for me.

In my own case, I had also been in that same position, lying still, not moving and not being able to feel my back but there had been a lot of blood. It was many years ago and I had been working on the crane above the boiler when the winch cable cut and I fell thirty feet to the hard grease stained floor. For minutes I just stood there staring at the ceiling, listening to the voices of the other technicians as they called out over my head which was pounding from the fall and the thudding of their footfalls. I could feel blood seeping from my head, warm and wet at first, then turning sticky as it drenched the collar of my overalls. It was a miracle I survived that fall because I was back on my feet not long after I closed my eyes and I never worked the winches again.

Most of the technicians on the floor now, including Dupe were not there at the time. Most of them had been hired a few years after my fall. The only ones that still remained were Tani, Henry and two other Ibo techs I never seemed to know their names. Along with the newer techs, except for Tani, who was had not been around for a few days, they all stood in a cluster away from the boiler and away from her body, murmuring among themselves while I watched them from a distance, specifically the person who had found her first- one of the ibo techs, he seemed to be the most shaken. Determinedly, I walked to where she lay and knelt by her wondering if the next step was the right thing to do.

I placed my hands on her forehead, closed my eyes and waited.

The beginning
After my experience with the fall, I had found out that I could sense past experiences of people simply by touching them - the connection portal for me were their scars. Scars were gateways, they never leave and even when they fade they still hold memories of our gravest pains. The first time had been serendipitous. I had been working the floors when a little child ran out of the store and headed for the exits. I called after him but he had kept running. So I gave chase until I caught up with him in the open air of the assembly yard. As I grabbed his shirt, my hands grazed a deep scar on his neck and for a second, I thought I saw memories of years long gone through the eyes of the child - running from an assailant and then darkness - . I had let him go almost as quickly as I had caught up with him. The borrowed memories had scared me so much so that I never dared to read scars again at least not till now.

As I shut my mind from the factory floor, images started to saunter into my consciousness and memories began to rise from the spot on her forehead where the scar was embossed and all of a sudden I could see through her eyes. There she had been. Close to the boiler plate trying to loosen something - then the unusual latch at the back of the boiler plate - she had seen something - I could not see clearly - she moves closer to the space behind the boiler plate in the half light - then - dizziness - then a flash! - fiends starting to emerge behind the boiler plates in quick succession - a frenetic struggle - her arms lash out in front of me while the fiends shake the fighting woman in successive spasms of grab and hold as they struggled to overpower her - she fights to stay alive - the frenzy dance continuing behind the boiler. Then all of a sudden the visions vanish and I am back there on the floor where we had both started, my fingers still on Dupe's forehead.

As I look around the familiar surroundings waking from the after effects of my trance, I realize how much my entire life seemed to rotate around the factory. I almost had no memories outside its four walls. I had started here as a kid mopping floors after I ran away from the orphanage and grew to work the winches until my accident. When we had started out, there were only a few technicians, no women- only men and little boys like me back then that did idle work around the machines. Faces came and went while some remained. There had been Luwa the giant- over six feet in height and he weighed more than a hundred pounds. He could heave or shove any of the incredibly heavy machine parts. He was my childhood version of Superman. There were others too who left quite an impression upon me. As I grew, most either retired from the factory or simply vanished. There were other technicians, some of the new ones who were impressionable too. Mabo, whose big paunch was a chiding target among other technicians on the floor and who was crying uncontrollably at the moment; Durueke- the quiet, tall and skinny janitor who never seemed to notice me any time I walked past him and had a dog, the only animal within the factory walls. In fact most of the other technicians ignored me except Tanioroja. On more than one occasion I had tried approaching some of them but they were so snobbish they acted like I wasn't there. Tanioroja, the oldest of the technicians and the only friend I had had complained too about the attitudes of the younger techs but later concluded that it was because we were the oldest set and sort of on pension consideration by management; "It is sort of like a generational thing" he had finally concluded. Tani customarily wore a sling and our age on the floor was not the only thing we had in common. He too had had a minor accident before, though not on the factory floor, but which had claimed his arm and he had been fired from the factory because as a machine operator he could not work without arms. He had left dejectedly and did not return until many years. When he came back and I asked him where he had been, he simply told me 'everywhere'- he said he had to come back because he had had no place to go. Like me, his life began and hopefully would end on the factory floor. The factory owners did not seem to mind his returning- in fact they merely ignored him and simply left him to roam, confined to a lifetime of dependence upon the factory. He lived there, slept there and rarely mixed with others- except me. We talked often about our past lives and our seemingly similar circumstances. He had also been the only person I had told about my psychic abilities and the way and manner in which I had discovered it. Tani, as I had come to call him had told me of seeing that child once or twice before but had not bothered to accost him like I had done. He told me to stop seeing things because in his words, there were spirits in the factory and they did not like to be seen or disturbed. He told me of the strange things he had witnessed in times past on the factory floor and many other stories we shared in the twilight before the engines gunned to life and work resumed.

There was a problem we also shared- Durueke's dog, which was usually leashed in the rear yard and always barked loudly when it saw me or Tani- I was really scared of that dog. We always complained to ourselves about the aggressiveness of the dog when it saw us but had not bothered to alert management as pets responsibility were part of the policy for staff- they'd simply ask us to bring our pets too and we did not have any.

Dupe was one of the 'new generation' technicians. Though not a friend of mine, she was a very good friend of Mabo's and a rather pleasant personality that sang as she did her job, combined with the fact that she was the only woman on the floor. She was pleasant but a bit of a loner too. Except for occasional chiding with Mabo she did not seem to mix with the other men- and certainly not me or Tani. I always watched her as she hummed happily to herself while working the boilers. She seemed a deep recess that held shadows and memories and I longed to know what those memories were. I could have walked up to her during time outs but I never had the guts to- not that I mattered anyway. So watching her immobile, lying there felt like a victory for me in a selfish sort of way. She was lying at my bidding and I could touch her forehead without asking for her permission. More importantly, I longed to read the memories she had always concealed in her quiet humming and solitary work. It was this desire that prompted me to walk to the place where she was lying and it was what gave me the boldness to try to read the thoughts that led me to finding the fiends that were her killers. I felt I needed to find out, more out of duty than compulsion and more thought than unsaid, from a feeling that I could not place my finger upon but that I knew I had for the woman whose unblinking eyes hid silent thoughts that I longed to find out.

She was still lying on her side contorted in the manner in which I had met her, her palms still clammed shut and neither my psychic readings nor intuition gave me a clue to what was in her grasp. Maybe she had torn something from the fiends that they wanted back or maybe she had been trying to protect something from them. I was still guessing when she opened her eyes; partly open, partly shut but staring at me through the slits. I stood back quickly because I had been caught unawares- like a thief stealing her thoughts and privacy. I had thought all along that she was dead. I stood back, my eyes fixated on hers. They were staring widely at me, almost like she was seeing me for the first time. I tried to empathize with the shock she must have been feeling for being immobile for so long and taken for dead. As I moved closer, her eyes dilated the more, boring through me and I thought I saw fear.

She kept staring at me, her eyes seeming to say something I could not read into yet she did not speak a word- she was so afraid. I stood there unsure of what to do. If Tani had been around we might have rallied to get her off the floor to the reception which was airier and had more light but he was not. As much as I hated to ask the other technicians for help, I started to yell across the floor to the cluster, calling on Mabo whom I knew would be quick to come once he found out his friend was not dead after all.

"Mabo!" I started to yell, as sirens tore the air in banshee wailing, screaming off the walls in defeaning crescendohs of echoes and throes, as it rose and fell in unending waves. Mabo had not heard me call out as the ambulance made its way across the factory floor tearing in through the service entrance and screeching to a halt by the boiler pipes. They could not back up to the boiler compartment where Dupe was lying so paramedics bounded out of the ambulance with a stretcher and other paraphernalia and rushed to where we were. I took a few more steps back to give way to the charging sentinels. They simply pushed past me as I tried to tell them they need not worry as she was still alive and I had seen her open her eyes. In the milieu, I noticed Dupe's eyes again as they put up stethoscopes and other things I did not see, to assess her condition. She looked beyond me to the space above my head and her eyes shut. Turning quickly, I scanned the steel rafters and exposed roof lights for a sign but did not find any. Had she seen the fiends again? As I looked back to her I could not see her face as the paramedics had crowded her, one of them shouting "Defib! Defib" ripping open her overalls while one of them prepped the defibrillators.

"One, two, three - Shock!"

As they administered each shock, I could see her body heave but she seemed to have slipped back into unconsciousness.

"One, two, three - Shock! The paramedic charged the shock pads again. Hanging limply and poking out from between the cluster was her left hand, still folded- twitching crazily.

"Wait!" the lead medic yelled then slowly began to unclasp the hands which were much easier to unclasp now as I watched them peel her fingers off much easily. I imagined it was from anaesthesia shooting through her veins but I knew no better- I could only imagine.

The paramedics then ran right round to where the lead medic was working on uncovering what she was holding leaving me only enough space to see her face- Her eyes were now shut as if sleeping.

"Pulse rate is stabilizing - " I heard one of the other paramedics who stood by a machine on four wheels farther from the cluster yell above the noise of the still wailing sirens. The other technicians whom had moved closer but were being herded away from the stretcher covered their mouths with their hands as they watched the scene. The medic who was probing her clenched fist had finally uncovered the object she had been holding on to for so long. It was a short piece of wire that had burnt a deep line on her palm. I could not help but wince at the sight as I was the closest to where she lay on the stretcher.

"Make way!" the paramedic who made a comment on the pulse rate yelled at the other technicians as he pushed the four wheeler while some of his other colleagues hoisted the stretcher to carrying height and headed for the ambulance as the lead medic on the team turned to the other technicians.

"It was a rather fatal shock but thank God she is stabilizing. You almost lost her you know! One of you could have performed a CPR instead of watching her like that. That is standard emergency procedure.", the lead medic was addressing Mabo in particular. "She must have died for a few minutes because when we got here her heart had stopped."

Mabo burst out crying at this pronouncement by the medic as the medic said some other things to pacify him before getting into the ambulance that started to make its way out of the factory, "Wait!" I called out to the medic who had not even bothered to ask me any questions. I needed to let him know that Dupe had been alive for a few minutes while I knelt by her, but he did not hear me, he had slammed the door shut before I could get to him. Neither did the other techs, they were too preoccupied rejoicing that Dupe's killers had not claimed her life. As the ambulance reached the huge sliding gate entrance of the factory, Durueke's dog's poked its head into the space and started to bark loudly creating staccato echoes as it strained on its leash by the door of the factory barking hard in my direction, ignoring the passing ambulance and jolting me in the process. I was used to its aggressiveness but still had not gotten used to the fact that one day it could cut the leash and start chasing me across the floor. I saw Durueke look back at the yelling bitch while the techs cluster was busy with discussing the events of the day. I summed up all the boldness I could, bolstered by the reality of Dupe's near death and walked up to his face. "You had better get this dog of yours before I kill it". I screamed louder than I had ever done on the floor as the dog barked harder.

Epilogue
The boiler stood just as it had always been under the beam from the skylight, and there did not seem to be anything unusual there except for the many shoe imprints in the grease around the spot where Dupe's body had been. Durueke looked at the empty space beyond the spot and kept wondering what his dog was always barking at. Just last night as he shut the gates he thought he saw a child lurking in the corners. He had called out beaming his flashlight but had not found anything. The factory floor was turning out to be an unsafe place he thought to himself. He might have to change jobs.

For Dupe Killa whose name inspired this story; and for Tokunbo Akanni, P.C, Egunjobi Malaolu, Seun Koya, Fola Omotade, Amire Funto and the rest of the W15 crew who were there when this story happened.