Who is this Mád Woman? Why is she asking me to return her face back to her?” Amelia asked within herself
Who is this Mád Woman? Why is she asking me to return her face back to her?” Amelia asked within herself. She had just met a very strange encounter when she went to the market. A Mád Woman in rags and bottles came to meet her and was embarrassing her, saying that she should return her stolen face. Amelia hasn’t met her before, or even known her. Her husband said she should ignore her, but she just can’t.
The woman’s eyes were too intense. They looked sane, even if her words were crazy. Amelia tried to clean the house, but she was slow. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the woman’s ragged hair and heard her scream: Return my beauty! “Amelia, you are thinking too much,” she told herself. She decided to go back to the market. She wanted to talk to the tomato seller. Maybe someone knew who the woman used to be. As she was about going to the market the next day to look for that strange Mad Woman, her concerned husband, David, stopped her near the car. “Amelia, what are you doing?” David asked. He looked worried. “I’m going to the market, honey. We need fruits.” David shook his head.
“Have you forgotten that you were embarrassed yesterday by a random Màd Woman? Please stay at home. I don’t want anything to happen to you. That woman might result to stabbing you if she sees you. Mad people can be dangerous.” Amelia nodded slowly. David was right. Mad people are often violent. She remembered the bottles in the woman’s hands. “Okay, David,” she said softly. “I will stay home. You are right.” David smiled and kissed her cheek. “Good girl. I love you. I will buy the fruits on my way back. Bye.” He drove out. Amelia went back inside.
She felt trapped, but she was also safe. She started listening to music to forget her troubles. Around noon, she heard a loud sound from the front. The heavy noise came from the big black gate. “Oh my god,” Amelia jumped. It sounded like someone was trying to break the gate. She quickly walked to the verandah. Her two gatemen, Musa and John, were already near the gate. They picked up big wooden sticks.
“Who is there?” Musa shouted. There was no answer, just another loud BANG! Musa cautiously opened the small pedestrian door of the gate to peep outside. His face immediately changed to fear. He quickly closed it back and locked the iron bar. The two gatemen went to meet Amelia on the verandah. “Ma,” Musa said, his voice shaking. “One dirty Mad Woman is standing at the gate.”
“Are you looking for her?” John asked. Amelia felt her stomach turn. “Are you sick? Looking for her as how? Have you seen me book appointment with Mad people? Lock that gate, don’t open it!!” “Okay ma,” Musa said. “We will not open it. She is just banging and crying. But...” “But what?” Amelia snapped. “She keeps shouting,” John explained. “She is saying that you should return her beauty to her!! She says you stole her face.” Amelia’s eyes was widened as she heard that statement. She felt a cold sweat on her back. The Mad Woman had found her. She had found where she was living. How did she do that? The market was very far from Amelia’s house. Did she foIIow the car? What exactly did the woman want? It wasn’t just crazy talk. This felt like a thréat. “Madam,” Musa asked, seeing Amelia’s scared face. “Should we call the police?” “No,” Amelia said quickly. If the police came, they might lock the woman up, but they might also ask Amelia questions she couldn't answer. Questions about why a random crazy person thinks she stole her face. “Just... just leave her,” Amelia whispered. “She will get tired and go away. Don’t open that gate for anybody. Not even a visitor.
” Musa and John went back to sit near the gate, holding their sticks tightly. The banging continued. Amelia slowly put her hands up to her own cheeks in her room, “Who exactly is this Mad Woman?!!” How did she find where I’m staying? … My Love, as we start this New Story, let’s Iike the Story, please, please 🙏😔😭😭😭, I don’t coIIect anything from anyone, it’s just the Éngagement and Iikes that éncourages me, to be honest, it won’t take anything from is to just place our hand and Iike this Amazing Novel
The banging did not stop.
It wasn’t wild.
It wasn’t random.
It was rhythmic.
Three hard hits.
Pause.
Three more.
Like a code.
Amelia pressed her back against her bedroom door and tried to steady her breathing.
Return my beauty.
Return my face.
The words didn’t sound insane anymore.
They sounded… specific.
By evening, the banging finally stopped.
David came home just before sunset, carrying grocery bags and wearing concern like a tailored suit.
“I heard from Musa,” he said, pulling Amelia into his arms. “That woman came here?”
Amelia nodded against his chest. “She found the house.”
His jaw tightened. “I told you she was dangerous.”
“She keeps saying I stole her face,” Amelia whispered.
David pulled back slightly.
“That’s nonsense,” he said quickly. “You’ve never seen her before.”
“Never,” Amelia replied.
But as she said it, something flickered at the edge of her memory.
A hospital corridor.
Bright lights.
A bandage across her own face.
Pain.
So much pain.
She pulled away slightly.
“David,” she asked slowly, “when we had that accident three years ago… what exactly happened to the other driver?”
David froze.
Just for a second.
Then he smiled.
“Why are you thinking about that now?”
“Just answer me.”
He sighed. “It was a drunk woman. She ran a red light. She died on impact.”
Amelia’s stomach twisted.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” he snapped—too fast. Then he softened his voice. “Why would I lie about something like that?”
He kissed her forehead.
“Stop letting a mad stranger get into your head.”
That night, Amelia could not sleep.
At 2:17 a.m., she slipped out of bed quietly and walked into David’s study.
He always locked it.
Tonight, he hadn’t.
His laptop sat on the desk.
She hesitated.
Then opened it.
No password.
Her heart pounded.
She searched one word:
Accident.
Hundreds of files.
Insurance documents.
Medical records.
Legal settlements.
And then—
A photo.
Amelia clicked it.
The air left her lungs.
It was a woman.
Beautiful.
Radiant.
Long thick hair.
High cheekbones.
Sharp jawline.
The same cheekbones Amelia now had.
The same jawline.
The same slightly tilted smile.
The file name read:
Pre-op reference – donor reconstruction.
Her hands began to shake.
Another file.
Surgical consent transfer – confidential.
Recipient: Amelia Okoye.
Donor: Unknown Female – severe craniofacial trauma.
Status: brain dead.
Not deceased on impact.
Brain dead.
Alive when they harvested.
Alive.
A sound escaped Amelia’s throat—small and broken.
Return my face.
The market.
The eyes.
Those eyes had looked sane.
Because they were.
The next morning, before David woke, Amelia went to the gate herself.
Musa and John stared in shock.
“Madam?”
“Open it,” she said.
The Mad Woman stood across the road.
She wasn’t screaming now.
She was just watching.
Up close, she looked older than Amelia had first thought. Her hair was matted, yes—but beneath the dirt, there were scars.
Across her scalp.
Around her ears.
Crude surgical lines.
Her face—uneven, pulled tight in some places, collapsed in others.
But her eyes.
They were the same shape as the woman in the photo.
The woman whose face Amelia now wore.
The Mad Woman stepped forward slowly.
“You came,” she said quietly.
Her voice was not wild.
It was tired.
Amelia felt tears spill down her cheeks.
“What happened to you?” she whispered.
The woman gave a hollow laugh.
“They said I was lucky to survive.”
Survive.
“They said a rich man paid for everything.”
David.
“They said my face was too damaged to save.”
Her voice trembled.
“But I saw him. I saw your husband in the hospital hallway. He told the doctor, ‘Use whatever you can. My wife deserves to be beautiful again.’”
Amelia’s knees nearly gave out.
The accident.
She had been driving.
She had run the red light.
David told everyone the other driver was drunk.
But the truth—
Amelia had been texting.
She remembered now.
The flash of headlights.
The scream.
Darkness.
David had rewritten the story.
Rewritten everything.
The Mad Woman stepped closer.
“I didn’t die,” she said. “But they took my face. They told me I should be grateful to be alive.”
Amelia touched her own cheeks slowly.
The symmetry.
The perfection.
David had always said after the accident, “You’re even more beautiful now.”
Because she was wearing someone else.
“I didn’t know,” Amelia whispered.
The woman’s eyes filled with tears.
“I know,” she said.
That was the part that broke Amelia completely.
She knew.
Behind them, a car door slammed.
David.
He stood frozen at the gate, having heard enough.
His face drained of color.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he told the woman sharply.
“She found me,” the woman replied calmly.
Amelia turned slowly to her husband.
“How much did you pay?” she asked.
“Amelia—”
“How much was her face worth?”
“It was legal,” he snapped. “Her family signed—”
“She has no family,” the woman said quietly. “I was alone.”
Silence.
David’s mask finally slipped.
“You were disfigured!” he shouted at Amelia. “You would’ve hated yourself! I fixed it! I fixed everything!”
Amelia stared at him.
“You didn’t fix anything,” she said softly.
“You stole.”
Weeks later, the investigation began.
Illegal surgical shortcuts.
Coerced consent.
Financial manipulation.
David’s empire cracked under scrutiny.
Amelia testified.
So did the woman whose name she finally learned—
Grace.
Amelia paid for Grace’s reconstructive surgeries—not to “restore” what was lost, but to give her choice.
Grace chose something simple.
Not her old face.
Not a copy of Amelia’s.
Just something that felt like hers.
And Amelia?
She asked surgeons to soften the changes David had forced.
Not to erase Grace.
But to stop wearing a lie.
Healing took time.
For both of them.
They were not enemies.
They were survivors of the same man.
One afternoon, months later, Amelia and Grace sat together at a café.
People stared sometimes.
But not the way they used to.
Grace smiled gently.
“You don’t owe me your face,” she said.
Amelia shook her head.
“No,” she replied. “But I owe you the truth.”
And for the first time since the market—
There was no banging.
No screaming.
Just two women, reclaiming their lives.
Because the real theft had never been beauty.
It had been consent.
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And once the truth came out—
Neither of them would ever be silenced again.
