MY BEST FRIEND HUSBAND

Anna's fever began just before dawn.

Her breath came shallow. Her lips trembled. Sweat pooled at the base of her neck, even as her body shivered like it had been dropped in ice. Her aunt found her curled in the corner of the bridal room, clinging to the hem of her wrapper, whispering Idris's name like a prayer.

Idris was rushed in.

"What happened?!" he cried, kneeling beside her.

Her eyes fluttered open.

"Something's… wrong," she murmured. "Something's in me…"

The room was cleared, am emergency nurse was called from the next town, her vitals were taken, her pulse faint, her temperature sky high, but there was no clear cause.

No malaria, no infection, no logical explanation.

Just decline.

As if something unseen was sapping her life away.

Outside, under the mango trees, Bela sat alone watching a trail of red ants climb a cracked stone.

She hummed a low lullaby from their NYSC days,the one Anna loved,the one they sang while painting their camp walls.

Her lips curled.

"You said you trusted easily," she whispered.

Then her phone buzzed.

It was a message from a hidden number one she herself had used through an encrypted app. She always replied to herself that way. To build the illusion,to distance her actions from her name.

She opened the message.

"Stage one complete.

Stage two begins at sunset."

She smiled, a code to herself, a ritual of obsession.

In her purse, wrapped in velvet, lay the charm the seer had given her: a tiny carved wooden doll filled with ash and powdered root,

It was warm now unnaturally warm.

That evening, as drums prepared to announce Day Three The Joining Day Idris sat by Anna's bedside, holding her hand.

Her skin had gone pale, her smile was faint.

"I think someone wants to stop this wedding," she whispered.

"I won't let them," Idris said, eyes burning with quiet fire.

"I saw something… in my dream," she continued. "A woman... standing in the dark. Wearing red, her eyes were black, she held a knife made of fire."

Idris swallowed hard,"It's just fever dreams."

But deep down… he wasn't sure.

Because earlier, he had found something behind the main house.

A chicken, headless it's body tied with white thread, buried shallowly behind the banana trees.

Someone had performed a ritual.

And the wedding was no longer just a celebration.

It had become a spiritual battlefield.

Later that night, under the cloak of darkness, a plan began to form.

Anna's cousin Isioma had long suspected Bela's strange behavior, she did seen the way Bela stared too long, the way she always seemed present, yet never emotionally involved.

Isioma knocked quietly on Idris's door.

"I think I can help," she whispered. "But you'll need to trust me."

He did.

And so, that night, Isioma planted a small, hidden audio recorder beneath the canopy where Bela would spend the evening sipping wine and updating her social media followers about the "beautiful wedding she's helping coordinate."

At 11:47 PM, the recorder clicked on.

Footsteps. Laughter. Glass clinking.

Then, a voice low, smug, slurring slightly.

Bela.

"She's too weak now… One more night and she won't make it to the fourth day, then everything will be over, Idris will be mine…. Like he should've been."

Another voice, male, uncertain.

"But if she dies… it'll bring trouble."

Bela laughed coldly.

"I won't kill her just ruin her, that is her punishment for being a betrayal, After all… people forget sick brides,but they remember second chances."

At 1:13 AM, the recorder clicked off.

Idris listened to the playback in silence.

He felt his heart grow still.

And in that stillness, something dark moved inside him not fear, but resolve.

He stood.

"Tomorrow," he whispered, "she'll be exposed."