Flashes of Vice

The Pause

2025-12-03T17:53:00.000+03:00

image courtesy: singulart

I sneak a glance across the room at him. In the harsh overhead light, his eyes catch mine, and they’re wild. Hungry. Something in the way his pupils dilate, and the slight parting of his lips. My breath catches. My heart skips. I know what usually follows. And I want that pull. Fiercely. But there’s that other part of me, the one that whispers: run.

When he steps closer, the air shifts. His cologne, dark, warm, a little reckless, wraps around me like a dare. My skin tightens. And then his hand, feather‑light at first, slides along my forearm, makes a path of heat, and I shiver. Not from cold. My body remembers. Every curve, every flicker of want, every moan that’s already burned itself into memory.

Even before we touch for real, I feel it, that familiar pang, the pull of flesh, the knit of skin and breath and sound. I shift closer, eyes half‑lidded. My pulse pounds and I can almost taste his lips, almost feel the press of him. I close my eyes. I could let it happen. I could melt into want and heat and rawness.

Then...smooth, slow, he says it: “Let’s pause.”

Pause. Two syllables. Simple. But it hits me like ice. My body clenches. My mind jolts awake. Because he’s good. Too good. Attentive. Precise. He knows me. Knows what I like. Knows where to slide his fingers, when to whisper my name, when to push me over the edge... and I hush. Not because I’m embarrassed. Because I’m scared. Scared of what comes after all that heat. Scared of wanting, needing, craving....more than just this moment.

I lean back. Breathe. Let his fingers drift away slowly. We don’t speak. The silence is heavy, intimate. He watches me like I’m fragile glass, like I might shatter at any second. And somewhere deep inside I know: That’s exactly what he’s protecting me from. Protecting us from.

We don’t go through with it. But we stay close. Laughter spills, soft and nervous, as I brush my fingers against his hand, almost accidental, but electric. The air between us crackles with everything unsaid: want, restraint, danger, delight.

And in that pause I feel something strange: power. Not from him. From me. From the quiet thrum inside my chest. I taste my control. I taste the ache of held‑back desire. I feel the pulse of memories, of fast, hungry nights, whispered names, shared heat, and I realize: it’s not gone. The fire isn’t gone. It’s just held, biding time.

Then I picture the nights to come: soft smiles, lingering glances, fingertips brushing thighs under the table, laughter just a breath away from moans. All the electricity, without the crash. I think about boundaries, about what I want, and what I’m not ready for. I think about attachment, about trust, about whether I want the wild heat to settle into something deeper. Because sex is easy. Trust isn’t.

His eyes find mine. Again. That same wild glint. I stand up slowly, brushing off a lock of hair from my face. I keep a half smile. I lean in, press a light kiss near his ear, not a promise, but a tease. A soft warning.

I walk away. My pulse still racing. My mind humming. The room stays still, heavy with what could have been. And underneath it all, I carry the heat, the pang, and the choice.

Because I paused. Because I want to write this story in my own way: on my own terms.

On Being Loved Gently

2025-12-02T14:16:00.000+03:00

image courtesy: etsy.com

I used to think nice men were forgettable.

The kind you meet when you are younger and too busy mistaking chaos for chemistry. The kind whose calls you don’t return because something about their gentleness feels… insufficient. Soft men felt like shadows beside the blazing silhouettes of the ones who hurt loud and loved selfishly.

I told myself I liked dangerous men because they were exciting.

Truth is, I liked them because they were familiar.

Then I met him.

He did nothing spectacular the way broken men do. No dramatic confessions. No wild unpredictability. No grand gestures that hide small intentions. He didn’t perform intensity; he practiced presence.

He cooked for me.

Not the kind of cooking that impresses. The kind that feeds. The kind that says, stay. The kind that does not rush you into gratitude.

He looked at me without undressing me in his eyes.

And somehow, that felt more intimate than lust ever had.

When we were together, my body did not prepare for abandonment. My mind did not rehearse disappointment. There was no need to become interesting to be kept. I was already enough without auditioning.

He was gentle in ways I did not know how to receive.

And when we became intimate, for the first time in my life, I did not feel used.

I felt chosen.

Not in the way men choose women as mirrors for their hunger. But with certain agency; I wanted him. I went to him. I said yes without bargaining with myself.

I left that day feeling… clean.

Not holy. Not healed. Just… un-bruised. Un-used. Un-drained.

And that’s when the panic came.

Not because he hurt me,
but because he didn’t.

My body could not recognize safety as desire. My chest tightened in confusion. My instincts whispered, something is wrong. Run. Retreat. Withdraw.

My therapist once called it “avoidant activation.”

I call it grief disguised as fear.

Because when your past has trained you to love men who leave, kindness feels like a threat. When your blueprint is built on abandonment, consistency feels suffocating. When your heart was taught to mistake volatility for voltage, peace reads as disinterest.

He had a softness that scared me.

Not weakness.

Depth.

He wasn’t loud. He was attentive.
He wasn’t dominating. He was deliberate.
He wasn’t cold. He was calm.

I realize now how many men I loved because they would never love me back.

It felt safer to chase affection that could not stay.

This man stayed.

And something in me did not know what to do with that.

He would ask nothing of me and I would panic.
He would offer tenderness and my instincts would search for the cost.
He would talk of tomorrow and my body would look for exits.

It is easier to survive longing than to survive closeness.

It is easier to ache than to receive.

There is a strange shame that comes with being cared for when you’ve been starved.

A voice in my head kept asking,
what if you hurt him?
what if you waste him?
what if you are not enough for this kind of good?

And that voice did not belong to logic,
it belonged to the past.

That voice was raised by men who loved recklessly and left clean.

So I sat with my fear.

Not to conquer it.
Just to listen.

And what it said beneath the noise was this:

I am not afraid of him.

I am afraid of what happens if I let him matter.

I am afraid of the day softness stops feeling awkward and starts feeling like home.

I don’t know what we are yet.

But I know this:
something in me has begun to loosen.
Something in me has stopped bracing.
Something in me is quietly learning that love does not have to arrive with wreckage.

Not all desire needs to leave you empty-handed.
Not all men will haunt you.
Not all affection comes with eviction notices.

Some men cook.

Some men stay.

Some men touch you like you are not temporary.

And when they do,
it changes the way you begin to remember yourself.

Shadows in the Wake

2025-10-24T17:15:00.002+03:00

image courtesy:iStock

I met him at a bar that smelled of spilt whiskey and smoke, the kind of place where the shadows moved thicker than the patrons. He was tall, effortlessly handsome, the sort of man who seemed to absorb the light around him and bend it subtly in his favour. His smile was easy, his laugh low, carrying a hint of something older, deeper, that pricked at my awareness like a distant warning. Those days, I loved the danger.

We talked, drank, and moved through the evening like dancers on separate rhythms slowly finding synchrony. I told myself it was the charm, the alcohol, and the music vibrating through the floor. I wasn’t expecting anything beyond a fleeting connection. But when he drew closer, something inside me shivered.

The moment our lips met, the air around us shifted. It wasn’t sound or smell, it was deeper, a vibration in the marrow. I saw him. Not the man, but what lay beneath: a shadow coiled and alive, wings unfurling like some sort of an ancient beast, with a tail twisting around the warmth of my chest. It was insidious, subtle, like a predator hiding in plain sight. The hunger radiated from it, deep and insistent, curling tendrils around my awareness.

I recoiled, my heart stuttering, and moved back against the pillow of the couch, eyes wide and unblinking. Always open, because when I closed them, I felt the pull, the draining of my energy, the siphoning of my being into something that was not human. But something old. I told herself it was just a hallucination, a trick of light, and an overactive imagination. He smiled, ordinary again, unaware. Again, I convinced myself he was just a man.

Days passed, and the sensation lingered. My energy thinned, mornings heavier than nights, limbs dragging against the world as if gravity had doubled. I told herself it was fatigue, imagination, and coincidence, but the pattern was undeniable. Every encounter, every proximity to him, left me depleted. I was losing myself quietly, gradually, until the truth could no longer be ignored.

When I finally allowed myself to see, fully, it was a revelation. Shadows existed. They moved beneath the skin of people, feeding, lurking, and brushing against the unobservant. Some were small, almost imperceptible; others vast, ancient, and predatory. Some brushed against me in passing, some reached for my warmth, and some lingered, watching, spying, observing.

I learned to withdraw from the shadows that threatened me, to flinch from the ones that clawed at my sanity, and to dance with the ones I could study, the ones whose hunger could be observed without surrender. I no longer pretended the darkness wasn’t real. No longer fought it or denied it.

It changed me. My perception sharpened. I realised I had never been crazy. I had always seen too much, felt too much, and known too much. No matter how detached and oblivious I pretended to be. People’s energy, their hidden cravings, their inner demons, and their actual demons. All of it had always been visible, and impossible to ignore.

And in accepting it, I discovered a new kind of power. Quiet, steady, and uncompromising. Eyes open, always. No longer blind to what crawled beneath the surface, I move through the world like a prism, reflecting back every shadow that tries to cling to me.

I sees them all.
I flinch at some, withdraw from others, dance with a few, but never again deny their existence. I see. I always see.

The Hair Braider

2025-10-21T23:09:00.000+03:00

image courtesy:freepik

Anna found the salon by mistake. A narrow room squeezed between a hardware store and a kiosk that sold forgotten things. The sign above the door was fading, letters curling like burnt paper: “Sifa’s Touch Salon.”

Inside, the air smelled of coconut oil and something strange, like smoke caught in hair. Mirrors filled the walls, each reflecting her at slightly different angles.

Mama Sifa didn’t ask what she wanted. She only said, “Sit.” And began to hum an old tune.

The chair felt cold. The radio in the corner played an old taarab tune, slow and sad, the kind that clings to a memory long after it dies.

Sifa’s fingers moved quickly, faster than thought, parting, twisting, and weaving. Each braid felt like a thread pulled from her skull and tied to something unseen. She tried to speak, but her tongue felt heavy.

“You’ll look different,” Sifa murmured. And the humming grew louder.

When it was done, the mirror showed someone beautiful; too beautiful, as if every flaw had been brushed away and replaced with someone else’s calm. She smiled without meaning to. Her reflection smiled a beat later.

That night, she dreamt of fingers in her hair. A woman behind her, humming that same song, combing her with something. When she woke, a braid lay coiled around her neck.

She told herself it was nothing. That sleep does strange things. But the next day, people called her ‘Aisha.’

At the office, a man she didn’t know greeted her with a grin too familiar. “You changed your hair again,” he said. She laughed. She’d never met him.

By evening, her scalp ached. The radio in her apartment played that same taarab tune, though it hadn’t worked in years. When she looked into the mirror, her braids shimmered, alive.

She went back to the salon.

The hardware store was gone. The kiosk too. Only Sifa’s light flickered in the dark, steady as breath.

Inside, three women sat still, eyes closed, lips moving soundlessly to the rhythm of the hum. Their braids gleamed like wet rope.

Mama Sifa looked up and smiled.
“You came back,” she said.
“You always do.”

Her voice filled the room like smoke. The mirrors trembled. Each reflection blinked at a different time.

“I don’t know who I am,” she whispered.

Sifa’s eyes softened.
“That’s the point.”

A braid slid across her shoulder and rested over her heart. She touched it. It pulsed once.

In the mirror, Aisha smiled.
Behind her, Mama Sifa hummed.
The song did not end.

The Girl I Didn’t Touch (II)

2025-10-11T01:25:00.000+03:00

She came too close, and I didn’t flinch. Her laughter spilled like honey, careless and soft, the kind that warms a room before you realise it’s melting something inside you. She brushed my sleeve once, not deliberate, I think, and I felt it like a verse recited wrong, trembling at the edges of my skin.

It’s strange how temptation isn’t loud. It’s quiet, and observant. It sits beside you, folds its legs, and asks, “Would it really be so wrong?”

I smiled at her, all composure and control. My hijab framed the decision before I even made it. I remembered who I am, a woman who promised her Lord she’d honour the veil, not just wear it. But still, the moment stayed, like sunlight through lace, fleeting, forbidden, and beautiful.

Later, when I prayed, I didn’t ask for forgiveness. I hadn’t sinned. I only asked to forget the way her perfume clung to the air when she left.

Because I didn’t touch her.
But that night, I dreamt of hands I never raised, and warmth I never claimed.

And in the quiet after dawn, I realised, sometimes faith isn’t about turning away. It’s about standing still, trembling, and still choosing not to move.

The Ink of the Damned

2025-10-10T09:58:00.000+03:00

They told me writing was a safe escape. They told me fiction was shelter, a place where I could spill my fears without consequence. They lied.

It began with small things. I wrote my first horror story, about a woman trapped in a house that breathed, that wanted her. I thought it was imagination, a harmless exercise. Days later, I recognised that breathing in my own home. The walls exhaled, and the floor sighed. I told myself it was faulty plumbing. But it wasn’t.

Then came the footsteps. Soft and deliberate. Always behind me. Never when I was awake, always in dreams.

My next story was darker. A girl who wrote her nightmares into reality. I laughed at the idea, until I found myself writing without remembering it. My words were not mine. They came in fits of fevered trance. My fingers felt like conduits, and my desk became an altar.

One morning, I woke with ink in my palm and a fresh story in front of me, a story I swore I hadn’t written. It described a burning house, and a victim trapped inside. The news later confirmed it. Every detail. Every word. I began to believe it wasn’t me writing. It was her.

And then she appeared. At first, in dreams. Later, in mirrors. She looks exactly like me, but her eyes are hollow, black wells, and her smile is too wide. She holds a pen. She is writing something.

Now I understand that my stories were not escapes. They were invitations. The veil has been shattered.

I have a new idea. A final story. Where the writer becomes the story. Where the page bleeds into reality. Where there is no difference between me and her.

I will finish it. Because she’s already here. And she is me.

I write the last line. My pen scratches, bleeding black ink across the page. The words twist, rearrange themselves. I read them aloud.

They are my confession. My surrender. My end.

And then I vanish.

The pen still moves.

And she begins to write.

They Don’t Talk About the 6th Floor

2025-10-10T09:19:00.000+03:00

Hofu House was old, the kind of building that had learned to breathe. At night, the walls exhaled; the lights buzzed as though they were thinking. It was a tired, pre-colonial building in Nairobi, half-forgotten, half-possessed, and everyone who worked there had a story about the sixth floor.

Ama never believed them. She worked the late shift, scrubbing floors, collecting trash, moving from office to office with her small caddy of soap and bleach. The city outside pulsed with traffic and sirens, but up there, only the thrum of the elevator filled the silence. It was always the elevator, the way its lights flickered, how it sometimes stopped between floors, how people swore they heard footsteps even when they were alone.

She used to laugh at that. Until she started riding it alone.

The first time she saw him, it was past midnight. The building had emptied, the corridors still, and when she stepped into the elevator, she noticed a shadow standing at the corner. A man. Tall, slim, dreadlocks falling into his face, and he hadn’t pressed a button.

She thought he might be security. “Good evening,” she said.

He didn’t answer. His head tilted, as if listening to something deeper than her voice. She pressed “6.” The doors shut, the whirr deepened, and when they opened again, he was gone. The air was colder.

Ama told herself she was tired. People saw things when their minds grew soft with exhaustion. She went back to work, but every night after that, the elevator felt more… aware.

Sometimes, it opened on floors she hadn’t pressed. Sometimes, the doors stayed shut for too long, trapping her in stale air. Once, when the lights blinked off for a second, she swore she heard breathing behind her, soft, amused, like someone trying not to laugh.

One night, she turned around. He was there again.

“Do you live here?” she asked, heart beating in her throat.

His lips curved slightly, not quite a smile. “I’ve always been here.” His voice was low, like a whisper pulled from the bottom of a well.

Her thumb hit the “G” button repeatedly. The elevator moved, slow and uncertain. When it stopped, she bolted out before the doors could finish opening. Behind her, faint laughter slipped into the air.

After that, she started using the stairs, even when her legs trembled. But somehow, she always found herself back before the metal doors. It was as if the building was guiding her there.

That evening, she told herself she wouldn’t be afraid. She stepped in, stood tall. “I know you’re here,” she said into the silence.

The reflection on the metal wall wavered. A figure appeared behind her, closer this time. His face was pale, eyes black as night, skin glistening like wet charcoal.

“Why do you come back?” he murmured.

Ama’s pulse pounded in her ears. “Because this is where I work.”

He leaned forward until she could almost feel his breath on her neck. “Then we work together.”

She turned sharply. “Don’t touch me.”

He laughed, soft and almost kind. “I don’t know where I end and you begin.”

The elevator dinged, sixth floor. She stumbled out, breath catching, her hands were trembling.

That was the night she packed her things. She told the manager she was quitting, left her keys on the desk, and took the stairs all the way down. As she reached the lobby, she looked back one last time.

The elevator doors were open, waiting. Inside, she saw herself reflected in the metal, and behind her reflection, the faint shape of dreadlocks, smiling, hand raised in a small wave.

The doors closed.

Later, the night guard swore he saw the elevator rise again. The light stopped at the sixth floor, opened, and closed. No one came out.

Now, when new cleaners arrive, they talk about the elevator that whirrs even when unplugged. They say sometimes you’ll smell bleach and soap long after the building closes, as if someone’s still working.

And sometimes, if you’re foolish enough to ride it past midnight, you might catch a glimpse of a woman’s reflection in the glass, looking terrified, with a man’s smile shining right over her shoulder.

The Dwelling That Took a Bride

2025-10-09T06:07:00.000+03:00

The cabin was supposed to be empty. That’s what the woman on the phone had promised: No neighbours, no interruptions, and no ghosts but your own.

Lena arrived at dusk, carrying only a travel bag and a body that still remembered the man who had left her. The house stood in a clearing, wooden bones bleached by time and windows glowing faintly, as though it had been expecting her.

Inside, the air was warm, too warm for June. Dust shimmered in the lamplight like spores. The caretaker had left her a single note on the table:

The house likes to be wanted. Keep the windows shut after dark.

Lena laughed softly. People always said strange things in lonely places. She unpacked, made tea, and walked through the rooms. The wood creaked like a heartbeat underfoot. In the mirror by the corridor, her reflection looked feverish, her skin somehow pallid. When she touched her forehead, it was cool.

That night, she dreamt the house was breathing. The walls swelled and fell, inhaling her scent. When she woke, her nightdress clung to her body, damp with sweat, and the air had grown hotter. She cracked a window; the fog outside pressed against the glass, refusing to part.

By the third day, she’d stopped keeping time. The house seemed to pulse with her moods; heat when she felt lonely, cool when she read aloud, and still when she cried. Sometimes, she heard something moving beneath the floorboards: slow, shifting, like fabric dragged across wood.

She began to talk to the house. Small things, at first, “Do you like the quiet?”, until the silences between her words felt like replies. The air around her carried warmth that bordered on human. It soothed her, almost like arms.

At night, she dreamed of him, or something wearing his face. The house trembled when she woke, as though jealous. She found herself whispering to the walls. “You’re all I need,” she said once, half-asleep. The ceiling dripped condensation that rolled down onto her lips like sweat. It tasted faintly sweet.

By the fifth night, her body burned. She lay in bed, breath shallow, heart racing as if someone were beside her. The lamp flickered, dimmed, and flared again. Then, she felt it, a touch, light as air, fingers tracing the curve of her throat.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

The floorboards answered with a groan that sounded almost like her name.

When the caretaker returned the next morning to deliver fresh beddings, she found the windows fogged from inside. The key was still in the door, but the handle was hot to the touch.

She knocked. No answer. She pushed the door open, and stopped.

The air hit her like breath from an oven. The walls dripped moisture, the curtains hung limp and wet, and the entire house throbbed faintly, as if alive.

On the bed lay Lena, perfectly still, eyes open and glassy. Her skin gleamed as though lit from within, a soft glow spreading down her collarbones, into the sheets.

The caretaker whispered her name. The glow pulsed once, and the house exhaled. The temperature dropped, and the walls went still.

The caretaker stepped back, trembling. “The house likes to be wanted,” she murmured again, her voice breaking. “But it doesn’t like to be left.”

Outside, the fog folded over the clearing, sealing it whole. Through the window, Lena’s body looked almost peaceful, except for the faint movement under her ribs, as though something beneath the skin had begun to breathe for her.

How to Seduce Your Therapist

2025-10-08T01:43:00.000+03:00

She started therapy because everyone said she should. People said she was too calm, too cold, and too untouched by things that would have broken other women. She smiled and booked an appointment. She wanted to see if a man paid to understand her could tell the difference between stillness and emptiness.

He was older and controlled. His voice had that polished steadiness that made people trust him. She liked watching him try to maintain it. She sat across from him, legs crossed, voice soft, and said she felt numb. He leaned in, nodded, and asked about her childhood. She watched him watching her.

By the third session, she began to feed him little pieces of herself, half-truths. A dream about drowning. A memory of her father’s abuse. The way men made her feel both powerful and invisible.

“Sometimes,” she said, tracing the rim of her teacup, “I fantasize about men I shouldn’t.”

His pen stopped mid-air. A flicker, tiny, but there. She caught it. Filed it away.

He started calling her brave. Insightful. Honest. She started crossing her legs more slowly. The room grew warmer.

By the fifth session, she stopped pretending to cry. He didn’t ask why.

Their affair began the night she stayed after hours. She said she wanted to talk about shame.
He said, softly, “You don’t have to feel guilty for wanting comfort.” His hand brushed her knee. It lingered.

When he kissed her, he told himself it was human. That he cared. That he understood her better than anyone.

After that, everything blurred; his desk, the couch, and the taste of ginger tea and guilt. He began to text her things no therapist should. She began to log them all.

Each night she wrote her notes: Subject response escalating, boundary degradation accelerating. She was meticulous and precise.

Sometimes, when he was inside her, she’d whisper,

“Do you still think I’m your patient?”

He’d groan, “You’re mine.” She’d smile in the dark.

When she disappeared, he thought it was his fault. That he’d broken her. That she’d relapsed, fled, and crumbled.

Two weeks later, an envelope arrived at his office, it had no return address.

Inside: photocopies of his notes, his messages, photos of his hands on her waist, his face bent over her crotch.

At the top of the file:

Case Study 47: Male Therapist, Age 41.
Subject demonstrates deteriorating boundaries when exposed to simulated vulnerability. Displays confusion between empathy and arousal.

At the bottom:

Diagnosis: predictable.
Treatment complete. Patient discharged.

He sat there, staring at the words, the scent of her perfume still clinging to the pages.
For the first time in his career, he understood what it meant to be studied.

Beloved by One Who Never Lived

2025-10-07T22:36:00.004+03:00

One evening, his name found her in the obituaries.

Ethan Mwendazake, aged 34. Died suddenly. Beloved son, brother, friend.

Something in the photo; the smirk, the lazy confidence in his eyes, made her stop breathing for a moment. She traced the outline of his jaw with her fingertip, smudging the ink. It felt like touching skin through glass.

That night, she wrote her first letter.

Dear Ethan,
I don’t know you, but I wish I did. I hope your death was soft. I hope someone kissed your forehead before they let you go.

She signed it with lipstick and left it at Lang’ata Cemetery, among fresh graves that still smelled of damp soil and loss.

The next morning, she woke to find a red petal on her nightstand, wet, fragrant, trembling as though freshly plucked.

By the third letter, there were footprints in the corridor outside her apartment. Bare. Dusty. Too heavy to belong to a dream.

Dear Ethan,
I felt you last night. The air moved when I breathed your name. If this is madness, I don’t want to be cured.

She started dressing for him. Red lips. Black silk. No underwear. Each night she sat by the window and whispered his name until her voice rasped into silence. The room grew colder when she did.

By the fifth letter, the petals had become roses, whole, bleeding scent onto her sheets. By the sixth, the roses turned into notes.

You looked beautiful in red last night.

She began to lock her door. Then double lock it. Then stopped sleeping altogether. Still, she’d wake to find the bed indented beside her, as though someone had lain there, face turned toward her throat.

On the seventh night, someone knocked. Three times. Slow. Patient. She opened the door with trembling hands.

No one. Just the day’s newspaper on her doormat.
The obituaries section circled in red.

At the top:

The Woman Who Reads Obituaries; Died Suddenly.

Her photo stared back, lips red, eyes half-closed, as if she’d just exhaled her last.

Beneath it, a single line in neat black type:

Beloved by one who never lived.

The candle flickered.
And from somewhere deep in the corridor, a man’s voice whispered,

“I missed you too.”

Hell Hath No Fury…

2025-10-06T00:55:00.000+03:00

I sent his soul straight to purgatory, and the only one praying is me; that he never finds escape.

He had catalogued me with a single, cheap word: whore. My nappy dreadlocks, my gothic ink, the way I wore my lipstick like a dare, each thing was filed into his tidy little boxes until I became nothing more than a label he could point to and mock. He practiced small cruelties like a man polishing a trophy: the shove, the laugh that used my name, the staged “accident” meant to test whether I would break. When he crossed the Rubicon, the thing he expected was noise; screams, bargaining, begging, teary eyes, the kind of public spectacle that feeds weak men.

I did not give him that. I folded the moment into myself and walked away. I kept living. I read. I wrote. I laughed. I ate supper on stoops. I let ordinary days be the camouflage for the work I was doing: counting, timing, cataloguing the exact moment his arrogance made him careless. Patience, for me, is not peace. It is a weapon tempered with boredom.

When the hour came, it was short and surgical. No fanfare. No witness framed in the wrong light. I moved like someone who had learned the economy of consequence: one decisive action, then the world rearranging itself in the aftermath. He fell apart in that space between action and reaction, the man who had practiced cruelty now met a blade to his jugular. And he could not lawfully rehearse his way out of. He crumpled, not because of spectacle but because his scaffolding, his fleshy tough exterior, had been quietly obliterated. I drank his blood like a witches’ ritual during the red moon.

People later said the scene was monstrous; they said it was sudden, that the town’s air tilted in a way that made even ducks hush. They spoke about the sound that hung after; about the way the gate seemed smaller. Redder. Macabre. They whispered that whatever happened had not been performed for onlookers but executed with a surgeon’s coldness, swift, efficient, and final.

I never took applause. I walked away with the same suitcase of small life I had carried before: supper in a plastic bag, my arms bare and inked, the kind of calm that does not explain itself. He lay there, annihilated, broken as a thing that had been exposed as useless. And the only prayer that mattered was the one I muttered in the dark: may he never find escape from the hereafter.

There is a cruelty to that prayer that is simple and absolute. It is not the spectacle he wanted. It is the slow collapsing of a man into the space he had carved out for himself, the grave he had dug by his own bare hands, and found dark and cold.

The Girl I Didn’t Touch

2025-10-04T20:22:00.000+03:00

I saw her first in the mirror between two sets of weights. She wasn’t doing anything grand, just adjusting her wrist wraps, but the light caught her in that cruel way light does when it wants to expose you to yourself. Her skin was deep and even, like evening coffee cooling in its cup. Every motion she made had purpose, a quiet authority, as though her body had long learned its own language and refused translation.

She was small, compact, gravity gathered her in, held her close. When she smiled at someone across the room, it landed softly, like the sudden warmth of sunlight through cloud. My heart, that disciplined muscle I keep under lock and verse, startled awake. Desire didn’t ask permission; it simply entered, took a seat, and began to hum.

I told myself it was harmless admiration, aesthetic, a writer’s eye at work. But there was something more, an ache that felt older than thought. It reminded me of another woman from another lifetime, the one who carved her initials into my spirit and left me searching for the right prayer to erase her. Even now, a decade later, I can recall the scent of that memory, the slow unravelling of self that loving her cost me.

Women are not gentle creatures, no matter how soft their voices sound. We are tender the way fire is tender, beautiful until you get too close. Femininity is the original chaos; nature learned her moods from us. Men are simple weather systems; you can chart their storms. But a woman’s heart, her layered grace and hidden violence, is a galaxy in motion.

I fear women, and I love them for the same reason. They see too much. They mirror the parts of me I keep chained. They can build and break in the same breath, and somehow both acts feel sacred.

So I watched this girl with the careful distance of someone observing a flame. I wanted to step closer, to speak, to ask about her playlist, her day, her story, but I also wanted to keep her perfect, untouched by my hunger. Some lights are meant only to be witnessed, never held.

My fingers ached to reach for her. My tongue, traitorous and curious, curled against the taste of a thought I could never act on.

I walked my faith quietly that evening, covered up, whispering verses and du'as that steadied my pulse. The gym emptied, music dimmed, and she left, leaving the scent of warm air and motion behind her. I stayed a little longer, lifting, breathing, reminding myself that sometimes reverence is stronger than desire.

There are women who awaken something wild in you. You don’t need to touch them to be changed. You just need to survive the moment of seeing them.

When the Cradle Stays Empty

2025-10-03T13:42:00.000+03:00

I was holding her. Her breath was faint against my chest, a fragile rise and fall I clung to like a prayer. And then… she breathed her last.

It happened quietly, without warning. No dramatic cry, no tearful scene. Just a gentle letting go, as if she was slipping into a dream I could not follow.

I never blamed myself. I have been taught, that life and death are not ours to command. I never blamed God. I know He prepared a good place for her; a home of peace beyond my understanding.

So I say to myself, She is still here. Even when the truth of the empty cradle hits me with its full weight. Even when silence in that room screams louder than any words.

When I can no longer shield myself, I say she is with her dad. That brings me comfort. It keeps the grief from swallowing me whole. It lets me hold on to her presence in some way, even if the cradle beside me stays forever empty.

I hate missing her. It cripples me. I was raised to hate weakness. So I hit the gym. I throw myself into every rep, every drop of sweat, and every moment of exertion. I bitch around. I turn anger into strength. I tell myself sadness is weakness, and strength is resistance.

Grief is strange. It does not pass neatly, nor follow the neat stages people speak of. Mine became conscious denial. A choice. Not because I wished to erase her memory, but because speaking the truth aloud would shatter me. I chose to carry her quietly, in a cradle no one else could see.

And then there was him, the man who put dying flesh inside me. I had walked away from him long before she took her last breath, but his shadow stayed. I hold him now in my mind only as a name and a wound. His memory is nothing but death. He is the grim reaper I would rather pluck my eyes than gaze upon. I do not wish to turn my grief into his possession. I walk away. Always away. Away.

Walking away was not weakness. It was the fiercest act of love I could give myself. Because I have learnt the hardest lesson, grief is not only about the child who died, but also about the self I lose when I stay where I am not respected. And cherished. I will not give my grief over to someone who cannot bear it.

Denial is my armour. Not because I wish to forget, but because the truth would shatter me entirely. I carry her quietly, in a cradle no one else can see, and in a grief no one else can name.

This is my story. Not of closure. Not of moving on. But of living beside an emptiness that is mine. And mine alone. A cradle without a child. And a heart that still rocks.

Sometimes, late at night, I stand beside her cradle. I touch its rails softly. I close my eyes. And I rock it.
Not to lull her to sleep, she is beyond needing lullabies.
Not to erase the silence, it is too deep for words.
But to honour her stillness. To hold her absence in motion.
To make my grief an offering, and my strength a prayer.

Every other night. At 3am. I rock an empty cradle.

I rock the empty air.

Who Really Wins When We Call Women ‘Pick Mes’?

2025-10-01T23:54:00.003+03:00

Who Really Wins When We Call Women ‘Pick Mes’?

Spend a little time on TikTok, X, or Instagram reels and one word is bound to pop up: “pick me.” It’s often used with a sneer, contempt, a knowing laugh, or as a caption on a viral clip of a woman declaring, “I’m not like other girls.” What started as slang has become a cultural shorthand; sometimes a joke, sometimes an insult, and sometimes a genuine critique. But what does it actually mean, and what does its rise tell us about women, men, and the complicated dance of approval?

At its simplest, a pick me is a derogatory term that refers to a woman who appears to reject female solidarity in order to gain male attention or validation. She might say things like: “I don’t wear makeup, I’m natural, unlike other women,” or “I don’t really get along with girls, I only have male friends.” The implication is that she is “different,” more appealing, more acceptable; because men will supposedly find her less complicated and more accommodating. Easier to love.

Yet the meaning is slippery. For some, a pick me is any woman who loudly performs traditional femininity; cooking, serving, cleaning, and prioritising men above herself. For others, it’s more about disavowing women’s experiences, say, dismissing complaints about sexism, trivialising period pain, or mocking those who call for equality. The leitmotif here is the suggestion that she wants to be chosen by men at the expense of her welfare or connection to other women.

Pop culture has only magnified the stereotype. From characters in teen dramas who loudly insist they’re “different from other girls,” to celebrities who stress their simplicity over glamour, the figure of the pick me is everywhere. Online, memes capture exaggerated versions: women who allegedly downplay themselves, throw other women under the bus, or perform self-effacement to win male praise. The pick me has become a stock character in today’s theatre of gender politics.

But here’s where things get complicated. If we look closely, the label itself says as much about the women who use it as it does about the women it’s aimed at. Calling someone a pick me can be an act of resistance: a way to name behaviours that uphold patriarchy by pitting women against each other. But it can also be another form of policing, another way women shame one another for choices that don’t align with what is considered “feminist enough” or “modern enough.”

This is where the gender dynamics sharpen. For women, the label touches a nerve because it highlights the tension between solidarity and individuality. On one hand, many women want to stand together, affirming shared struggles and refusing to undermine each other for male approval. On the other hand, women are also individuals, making choices; sometimes traditional, sometimes unconventional; that may not always fit neatly into the collective script. When the label “pick me” is used too broadly, it risks flattening those choices into caricatures.

For men, the pick me phenomenon reinforces the long-standing idea that women must compete for their attention. The very phrase suggests a competition - a line of women waiting to be chosen. In this sense, the term critiques not only the women labelled but also the system that makes being “picked” seem so central to female identity.

And for society at large, pick me shines a light on the double bind women continue to face. Be independent, but not so independent you threaten men. Be nurturing, but not so self-sacrificing you lose yourself. Perform femininity, but don’t overdo it. Refuse to perform, and risk being called difficult. In such a landscape, the term pick me can become yet another impossible line to walk.

So, is it a useful label, or just another insult? On one hand, it gives language to a real social pattern: the ways women sometimes reinforce patriarchy by distancing themselves from one another. On the other, it risks becoming yet another way we divide ourselves; weaponizing words against women instead of questioning the deeper structures that create the competition in the first place.

In the end, perhaps what’s most telling is not the women who get called pick me, but the conversations that follow. Are we critiquing choices, or condemning women? Are we interrogating patriarchy, or recycling old habits of shaming each other? Pick me may be just two little words, but they carry centuries of tension, between tradition and autonomy, solidarity and individual freedom, women defining themselves and being defined by others.

The question remains: does calling someone a pick me help us understand each other better, or does it simply build yet another wall between us?

Confessions of an Indecent Angel

2022-09-28T07:07:00.003+03:00

My mother thinks I live in a secluded rustic-cabin convent in the remotest part of Karen, Nairobi.

She slaughtered a chicken for me when I was awarded a partial scholarship at an obscure Catholic-sponsored university. The fact that even my father was not allowed to escort me to the hostels told her that she had nothing to worry about. I was protected from university corruption and debauchery.

“God answers prayers,” she quipped. “God loves you.”

When I finished high school without a scandal, and scandal here means being spotted with a boy, she recited the rosary, prostrate before the image of the Madonna and the child. She repeated the joyful mysteries in earnest. At times like this, she wished for the virginity of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, but the Lord had blessed her with open legs.

A month later, she still called me for hours in the evening to remind me how much God loved me and that He had told her I would be a nun. It was one of these evenings after she had hung up when the girl next door talked to me for the first time.

“Look at you, wishing mama was here to breastfeed you.”

“Why do you care?” I asked. “Ever heard of ‘mind of your own fucking’ business’?” I used the lines I had wanted to use all my life.

“Oh, she is badass, a bitch! Kumbe it’s all meekness for mama. Do you wanna grab a drink? It’s contraband, I know, but that’s what smugglers are for,” she said.

That night, I met my partner in crime, my confidant. Sharon had seen through my fakeness and called me to it. When we drank all her two six-packs of Guarana, she didn’t complain. When I French-kissed her, she blamed it on the alcohol.

Photo by VICTOR SANTOS

The maximum security Catholic-sponsored university was not as secured as I had thought. Every night we made money exposing fake cleavages and shaking fake asses at Club Seen in downtown Nairobi. We sat on swivel chairs, uncrossing and recrossing our stockinged legs, giving men flashes of black or white G-strings, sometimes the pussy. The drinks would keep flowing, which, on most occasions, we poured when the drunken sods left for the washrooms. In their state of intoxication, the money was easy to get by making them believe they would have the night of their lives only for us to disappear on them or lie we were on menses.

Downtown Nairobi was not ideal for the life I craved. Sharon was just comfortable in the gutter, but I wanted more. When I suggested we try clubs in Westlands, she did not approve or disapprove. Club Galileo’s was the perfect place for the middle class, but I still wanted more. You know the saying, ‘You date whom you interact with?’ I wanted the crème de la crème.

That’s how I found my way to the international franchise Billion Club (B-Club), where the media said champagne washed hands and Lamborghinis dropped guests home. Once, social media was awash with receipt photos of bills of five million Kenya shillings spent on drinks only by the president’s son.

“Sorry, Madam, you can not enter dressed like that,” said a muscular, friendly bouncer. No, scratch that. In these places, they are not bouncers. They are security.

Against Sharon’s advice, whom I had thought had the grit to do what it takes to live this life, I raided my meagre savings and upgraded our wardrobes. Investments are about taking risks. Next time, we were granted entry without a fuss.

When you enter the compound, you would be forgiven for thinking aliens live amongst humans, what with machines and gizmos brimming with futuristic allure you only see in sci-fi movies—a stretch Lincoln limousine, a Tron bike rumoured to cost over 50 million Kenya shillings, Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Rolls Royce Phantom. A long stretching red carpet, which gives a sense of importance to everyone visiting the club, welcomes you.

I, we, felt out of place, like a nun who has stumbled into a brothel. A smartly dressed server spotted us and saved us the embarrassment. She showed us around, asking us whether we had booked in advance.

“That’s the VVIP section,” she said with syllables falling in place like magnets. “Victor Wanyama, and his brother McDonald Mariga, had booked it for a party with family and friends.” The Kenyan international professional football stars were in Kenya to celebrate their signing with Tottenham Hotspurs.

“And that’s the VIP section,” she pointed. “The Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs has booked it for the evening. He will be coming in any time.”

In the regular area, men looked sharp in their designer suits, their women Barbie dolls. I spotted the youths who had made it to the new government, keen on pushing the youth agenda. The just-appointed Youth Fund chairman was at the VIP upper area. Four of the 10 nominated youthful members of parliament were in the regular area. Gawd? The regular section is the VVIP of most clubs in Nairobi. And the buggers were all about representing the youth? Wajinga sisi!

From where we sat, we had an unobstructed view of the guests entering and leaving. Cashless, I, the brains behind this endeavour, was still figuring out how to proceed when the CS for Foreign Affairs entered, accompanied by the grossest man I had only seen on TV. His vast belly swung into the room, draped in a smock-like garment that only extraordinarily talented tailors could make and fail at. Folds swagged over his neck, and his feet seemed forced into his shoes. He scanned the room, and the mottled curtains of his cheeks swished back as he nodded and smiled at us. No, me.

I knew what that meant; he had chosen me. But no, thanks. He was a well-known serial polygamist. Do I look like I could be a seventh wife? I did not move.

“He wants you,” Sharon nudged.

“If he wants me,” I retorted, “he should come for me.” I know beggars are not choosers, but I did not want to appear desperate.

He seemed to read the mood and crossed over to where we were. He thumped down on the banquette opposite us, removed his handkerchief, and mopped his face.

“I suppose you would love someone to buy you a drink,” he said when he had settled.

“Thank you, that would be lovely.” I still had manners.

“What’s the most expensive champagne?” he asked the waiter.

“It’s—” she began to say.

“Just get it,” he said. “For the ladies, and Macallan No.6 for me.”

I avoided his eyes just in case he saw the hunger in my eyes and changed his mind. The Macallan was an obscene six hundred thousand shillings. When our champagne was brought, it was Armand De Brignac Ace of Spades Brut Gold Champagne, a staggering Ksh.70,000. Okay, Uncle Awiti. Wanna spend that National Social Security Fund (NSSF) money, I will help you. I don’t think there is a woman who isn’t prepared to hawk it when she spots a certified billionaire. I wasn’t about to let the womenfolk down.

“Take it to the VIP,” he told the waiter. “Let’s go,” he said, heaved himself up, and waddled ahead.

He was physically repellent, yes, but there was something about his confidence that got to me. He believed in himself, or rather, in what the NSSF squandered money could get him.

When wealth courses through your bloodstream, it becomes poison. It changes you, your posture, your walking style, and the way you talk. From the moment we stepped into the VIP section, there were handsome uniformed men and porcelain-skin beautiful women to do everything for me, even holding a napkin to sneeze in.

All the men, no matter how ugly, fat, foul-smelling, or unsightly, had a beautiful girl by their side, the girls draping their arms around the men’s shoulders or pregnant bellies. It seemed B-Club wasn’t the place men took their wives.

A fast learner, I read the ambience. The girls laughed coquettishly at the men’s humourless jokes, and touched them inappropriately on occasion, but the men didn’t mind the fake public displays of affection, creating a force field around their man so no other girl would penetrate.

I forgot about Sharon. Our moments of complicity belonged to another world, to populous, sweat-drenched, squalid downtown Nairobi nightclubs. At B-Club, we had climbed to the next tier, which meant strategising how to remain in the grace, never to fall to the grass, an intelligent girl’s smart career move—don’t let the accoutrements distract you. I’ll either get a ring on it, I decided, and be the seventh wife to this corrupt yet generous chairman of the NSSF, or I will become his exclusively. After all, business is business, and men are creatures of comfort, so they cherish exclusivity.

That night, when Awiti called it a night, he left me with a wad of cash. ‘You never count your money, when you’re sittin’ at the table, there’ll be time enough for countin’, when the dealin’s done’, Kenny Rodgers sang. Back at our filthy hostels, I found out he had left me with Ksh.100,000. So did he the subsequent nights, without ever asking for the value of his money.

The saying goes, ‘There is nothing like free lunch, especially from men’. I wondered what this old sod wanted with me. He never indicated he wanted to pop my cherry, or perhaps he just wanted someone to talk to, which I was good at as I created my force field around him, so no other girl dared think of attempting to penetrate. The more I received his money, which I used to upgrade my life and save the rest for the inevitable rainy day, the more anxious I became. Why was he not hitting it? Sexual satisfaction was not my concern, but the concern of what he would ask me to do when he came collecting his debts. So, I decided to be upfront with him one day.

I let the alcohol sink in and gave me the guts I needed, then asked, “Awiti, how much would you pay me before you fuck me?”

He was astounded and glimmered with disgust like I was his daughter suggesting incest.

“Stella, I don’t pay for sex.” He said and looked at me.

Instead of asking why he was giving all that money, I apologised. “Sorry for thinking ….”

“It’s okay. I get that a lot,” he said and continued drinking his favourite Macallan, laughing boisterously with his friends, spittle flying all over the place. Before leaving, he asked me how I felt about shopping in Dubai and left a bundle of Ksh.300,000. I will take Sharon with me.

With his signature slob look, he was waiting for us at Dubai International Airport. We went to the upscale DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton Dubai on Jumeirah Beach.

“This is lovely,” I said.

He had booked two separate rooms, with doors opening to balconies overlooking the grand private beach. Whatever he had in mind, I hoped he knew I had no intention of sharing a bed with him.

“Do you like it, my dear?” he said, reaching for my hand.

My dear? Here we go now.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, avoiding being touchy-touchy.

“I bought you this.” He produced a package, which, when I opened, was a sheer negligee. “For later,” he added.

Gawd! No matter.

When I exited the bathroom that night, he was spread out on the bed, looking like an inflated toddler, his weight a challenge for the mattress and bed. For the first time, I had used mchele on him. Sharon had ground eight tablets of Midazolam, just in case his big body did not feel the effect immediately, and I had poured the powder into his drink during dinner when he took a bathroom break. The drugs were taking long to take effect.

I looked at his streaked hairy belly. I’ll have to lift a skirt of flesh to get to his dick. Does he even have it?

“Come to daddy, darlin’,” he said. I forced myself not to chuck.

I removed the negligee and played with the nipples of my tits for him, climbed on the bed, and put my hands on the flaps of fat around his body. I had massaged my vagina with Fatush Miski oil. The perfume wafted like smoke all over the room. I tried to go 69, not for simultaneous cunnilingus and fellatio, but so he could see my pussy split into two by the G-string. His dick was a two-inch stub poking jauntily from a thatched cushion of flesh. Try as he may, there was no way it could get into me.

Hardly had I taken his dick in my mouth when I heard an unmistakable locomotive roar. Thank God. The drugs had taken effect. I dashed to the other bedroom, took a long shower to wash away the memories, and climbed into bed into the arms of Sharon. When she flipped her tongue on the inner lips of my pussy, I screamed.

When Awiti did not appear for breakfast, Sharon looked at me with a wink. “Last night must have been awesome,” she said.

I gave her a disgusted look, and she raised her hands in surrender.

I knew something was wrong when he had not woken up by noon. At 2:00 p.m., I started to worry. What if he was sick and couldn’t get up? I decided to go and check on him.

His body was immobile, with hollow features and no sign of vitality. Though he could have been in slow-wave-sleep (SWS), where you are almost as dead, he didn’t appear as though he was sleeping. He just looked dead. If there are any skills I ignored learning, it’s first aid. But I had watched enough movies to know how to check if someone was dead.

I shook him—nothing. “My love, wake up. Babe, wake up. You have not eaten—”

Nothing.

I placed two fingers, index and middle, on the side of his neck. Nothing.

“Fred,” I hissed, trying to control the thumping of my heart. “Fred!”

Nothing.

And I knew.

I went to the bedside table and picked up the telephone to call reception. Perhaps they have an in-house doctor or medic. No sooner had I thought of it than I stopped in my tracks. He had booked the two rooms in his name, using his passport. He had not mentioned us anywhere. No one knew about us.

I would have to be there, oversee his body shipped back to Kenya, and answer questions from the media and his family. The Kenya government pathologist will conduct a post-mortem and find the mchele we, I, had put in his drink. That’s manslaughter. I will go to prison for a long time. If I’m lucky, my sentence might be commuted; if not, I die in prison.

I froze and sat down at the foot of the bed beside his thick-nailed feet sticking out of the sheets. Think, Stella, think.

Deaths of Right - Part II

2022-05-30T20:17:00.000+03:00

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

Take care of my children. His voice never left me. There were nights that I dreamed in such vivid detail that when I woke, I was confused, forgetting, for a fraction of a second, that I was in my bed. For the minutes that followed, the grief washed over me for the loss of a friend who had had my back, the uselessness of my life fighting for the imperialism of a country that didn’t care for me. Part of me wondered if the dreams would change, if one day they would be the same monochrome shadows of before Somalia.

Wesonga’s widow moved like a clockwork soldier, especially when she made the umpteenth trip to the Unit. She said it was for her children; no one else would follow up on her husband’s benefits if she gave up. Being taken round in circles by the Welfare Office didn’t stop her. I once asked her what they tell her, and her face fell into an expression I had never associated with her features before. Under that resilient personality was a woman more sorrowful and hopeless than I could have guessed. The Fafadun attack had taken more than her husband.

In the half-light of the breaking day, I waited, breathing slowly. My fingers were almost numb, the cold biting, the air acrid with the stench of what I was about to do. I wondered if killing the enemies of the society was enough, if it would right all the wrongs, if I would be taking care of my friend’s children. It was as if the act was abstract, convincing myself that I was doing it for my friend, but how can killing be a solution to corruption?

I squinted through the telescopic sight. The cross-section of the telescopic sight rested on the brigadier’s forehead. My finger coiled around the trigger. Do unto others what you’d like them to do unto you, sir.

My hands became damp. This is the moment.

The dark red blood made its way out of his head. It gushed forth as a rivulet. My vision became blurrier as I watched his shirt turn darker through the scope. Each drop of blood slowly took away the life in him, leaving him motionless on the ground.

I’m taking care of your children, Bro.

***

The senior military officer got off his car and headed toward his house. It was three years, and Wesonga’s benefits were yet to be processed. There was no hope for tomorrow; his widow was full of sorrow.

“Jambo, Sir,” a voice called. “Turn slowly and look at me, General.” The retired one-star general, who was now the Defence Forces Medical Insurance Scheme chairman, was startled. He came to an abrupt halt, befuddled at the security breach in his home.

“When are you planning to process Senior Private Wesonga’s benefits for his family?”

“What’s the meaning of this?”

“I am sending a message to the others. The rot and the corruption in the DEFMIS will end with you if the rest get the message …”

“You won’t get away with this!”

“You have mismanaged the insurance scheme that’s supposed to cushion us when we leave the army. You’ve refused to process my dead friend’s benefits for his family …”

“Son, there is no need for this. Put the gun down.”

The soldier had obeyed every order so far—march, shoot, eat, sleep—but now was not the time. After all the trappings of military command—the authority, the security details—were stripped away, the chairman was vulnerable and insecure like everybody else. The soldier, no matter how corrupt he considered the system to be—and no matter how much he believed killing the corrupt would cleanse the system of the corruption—he had second thoughts sometimes.

The chairman cowered, facing him with hopeless eyes. You think, you die. That’s what they said in the Special Forces. Every time something told him not to pull the trigger, he convinced himself he was doing it for his dead friend, running out of options—shoot his former Brigade Commander, threaten him or scare him. None of them good options: the first would be making him a killer, the second and third equally dangerous. But perhaps the first one was the least awful of the three.

And that’s how the killings started.

Photo by Lacie Slezak on Unsplash

Deaths of Right - Part 1

2022-04-29T22:19:00.000+03:00

Growing up regaled with chronicles of humans who willingly compromise their comfort and stand guard, put their lives on the line, to protect the country, I was not insane to admire the military. I have been a certified military brat ever since I opened my eyes, and I’ve never entertained the silly thought.

My father knew all the faraway lands more than his family as his father did. Once it hit me, I asked them “why”, to which they smiled and replied, “so you could live a better life”, which I did.

The army biscuits, corned beef, the CamelBaks, military rucksacks, Swiss Army knives I stole to show off to kids at school, and the military T-Shirts were the evidence of a better life. Not to mention the truckloads of food Father came home with. Soon, Mother opened a kiosk.

And that was my epiphany, which made me realise the pain behind the good life.

***

The soldier’s face was impassive in the hot afternoon sun, waiting for the light to turn green. When he moved, he was as agile as an Olympic gymnast.

On the rooftop of Sheria House, he had a clear view of the Parliament building. Guarding the MPigs while they loot. He moved into position, looking through the scope. The looters and plunderers of the nation were busy going about their business, passing laws that protected them and increased their perks.

Then the woman stepped out of the building, her horrendous Brazilian ‘human’ hair weave a lion’s mane around her face. ‘Our Members of Parliament earn peanuts’, he mimicked her voice in his mind. Her bodyguards led her to her bullet-proof limo. Bullet-proof my ass.

She fell before entering her car, never aware of what hit her. One minute she was safe; the next, her security detail was scampering for safety, trying to locate the shooter.

***

“The Director of Criminal Investigations is working round the clock to get the killer. Preliminary investigations show that the killer is one of the Administration Police officers who provide security during parliament sessions from atop nearby buildings …” the newscaster said.

Five suspects were already in police custody and were assisting the police with investigations. Another stone that the police were going to turn.

“What do you think, Senator,” the moderator said. “Could the MP’s death be linked to her Bill, which sought to increase salaries for MPs …?”

“It’s too early to say. The investigations are ongoing,” the Senator said.

***

5 Years Ago

Fafadun, Somalia

The muezzin’s adhan for fajr pierces the cold chilly morning silence.

“Do you hear that?” I ask my friend.

“What? You’re always hearing things.”

“Listen, vehicles approaching our defensive position. Al-Shabaab are coming.”

“Mi sisikii kitu.”

“Wesonga wachanga usingizi. You can’t hear the roar of a vehicle driven in low gear? It’s coming here. From the East.”

“Ahmed, it’s not possible to drive in that terrain without lights.”

“I think we should alert the others …”

“Come on, about what? Don’t be an alarmist. Remember what the Platoon Commander said. Ascertain first …”

Out on the skyline, about 500m away, a lance-like ray of orange-white light shoots up into the approaching dawn. Others shoot up from different directions around the camp.

“We’re surrounded,” I shout.

No sooner I say this than a blinding flash, like sheet-lightning, and a massive ball of varicoloured fire, belches 200m upward from our position. The fireball flattens and then spreads to form the mushroom head of a column of incandescent gases.

www.pexels.com

From nowhere, like a stealth fighter jet, the vehicle comes. It’s headed straight at our position. Machine gun fire roars from the next trench. Wesonga grabs the Rocket Propelled Grenade launcher next to him, lifts it to his shoulders, and fires. I can’t hear anything for an instant, but the target is down. The vehicle swerves and falls into the trench 100m from our position. And explodes.

Shrapnel rains like confetti, and the faux overhead protection of the trench cast red dust and projectiles into the dawn air. Everyone in the trench lies on the ground, hoping the anti-grenade/bomb drill works.

Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Shouts emanate from all directions. Gunfire follows. Bullets whiz overhead.

The acrid smell of gunpowder and cordite envelops my nasal cavities. My mind is on the verge of delirium.

Flashbulbs of the Elade attack go on in my mind. We’re all dying. Perhaps it is a good thing. At the very least, I’ll leave this nightmarish dystopia.

War cries rage amid Allahu Akbars, machine-gun fire roars like a raging river, bombs engorge smoke rings as they shoot into the sky, turning to dark smoke in one moment and belching flame and crackling with lightning the next. As I look around, all I see are stray limbs and dead creatures—once fine young men, no longer recognisable—others splayed like rag dolls on the morning dew.

“Ah ... Ahm … Ahmed … tek … take care of … my children …”

“Wesonga, don’t say that. Fight, man …” I say as I reload my rifle.

When I turn to look at my friend, he is slumped to the ground, his brains spattered around him. Kimani, too. I can’t fight alone …

The mujahedeen are almost breaking the defence. I go against all the teachings, the directives, the threats and get out of the trench … and run.

I’m not a super-soldier, I say to myself, yet not a coward. I’m just not ready to die.

I run to where I think safety is. Tracers whiz and swish past me, and muzzle flashes in the centre of the position are the light at the end of the tunnel.

“Ahmed, what are you doing here?” the Company Quartermaster says. “It’s cowardice to abandon your position …”

“I’ve not abandoned my position … I’ve changed cover.”

“Go back to your trench and fight from there. Unafanya nini kwa tent ya Colour? Get out of here …”

The burly man lunges at me. He pushes me out, and I resist.

“Get out, or I will shoot you,” Colour says.

Why does he hate me so? “Sitoki!” I say.

He grabs me and pushes me out of the bunker I helped fortify.

A lump blocks my throat. “You’re afraid of me because I know that you sell ammo and rations to al-Shabaab, and that shop of yours in Garissa ume-stock vitu za Kahawa … you hope I will die today …”

He steps away from me and points his weapon at me. I fire instinctively. The bullet leaves a gaping hole where his right eye used to be. His body plunges to the ground and lies thickly over the dry ground, garish scarlet flowing and congealing around him.

I feel a great weight was lift off my shoulders, and a sense of satisfaction wash over me. I have rid the system of the scumbag.

THE BURIAL WAS a fortnight later. The mourners, drawn from the army’s rank and file, swarmed in numbers to offer their heartfelt condolences. The Unit was mourning the dark days for the army. It was a death worth mourning, the life of a soldier snuffed out too early by the terrorist’s bullet.

Source: tuko.co.ke

The media swarmed like locusts, asking questions they were never going to get answers to, keeping count of the funerals to do their own tallying of how many soldiers had died in the attack.

When the firing party marched from the grave, a dark cloud descended. The family was left with the memories of their deceased and promised to get the compensation within months.

Imara Angani

2022-03-16T20:14:00.001+03:00

The crew room at Laikipia Air Base was a flurry of activity and a cacophony of telephones ringing off the hook. Fighter pilot Major Ahmednasir Ramah sweated copiously inside his flight suit as he waited anxiously beside the telephone, glancing every few seconds at the crew-room clock.

Deep in his bones, he felt that either this mission would pass as a blip in his military career or it would be his last. Ramah held the telephone handset tight, raised it to his ear, and listened.

“Interdiction mission,” the voice on the other end said. The Air Force Commander never issued mission orders to pilots, only through the Chief of Operations and Ops Room. But this was not a regular mission.

“Yes, sir,” he said. Of all the times he had been on ‘Red’ standby, nothing had ever happened for him to respond. He held the receiver with both hands, but still, it shook.

At the cockpit of the F5, he felt trapped, restless, and angry, and it seemed hours between each pre-flight check. When he lowered the canopy over him, he saw a speck of carbon directly in his line of vision. Instead of calling the chief engineer of the crew responsible for cleaning it, he cleaned it himself.

Under full heat up and with the driving thrust of the afterburners hurling him aloft, Ramah informed base, “Simba Moto airborne and climbing.”

Source: warsheekh.com

He established communication with the surveillance mission monitoring the enemy movement inside Somalia.

“No activity at Echo November base; no weapon nest detected.”

He communicated with his escort. “Malaika Two, we are going to initiate attack plan Sungura. Attack plan Sungura called for a low-level stalk. The ground clutter would obscure the enemy radar and conceal their approach until they were in the position to pull up into an attack vector above and behind the target.

They flew low-high-low, lifting and falling over the undulating knolls and vegetated areas, so low that the herds of Somali cattle, goats, and sheep scattered beneath them as they zoomed in on Jilib, al-Shabaab’s strategic base that the AMISOM forces had not been able to capture.

“Approaching the target,” he announced. “Pull up in ten, nine, eight …”

“Leader, this is Malaika One. I have suspicious movement—”

“Malaika One, say again … pulling up now.”

And he pulled the throttle. Above, the sky was a dark, unnatural blue, yet he hadn’t located the target. It was down there, camouflaged.

Source: www.wired.com

“Leader, incoming; surface-to-air, eleven o’clock!”

Ramah eased back on the controls and went up in a brutal climb, the anti-missile alarms screaming, evading the missile.

“Simba Moto, this is Malaika One,” the surveillance command leader shouted in his headphones, rapidly and urgent. “Abort mission! I repeat, abort. Target hostile. Detected three SAM nests all aimed at you.”

“Malaika Two, break off and regroup for an attack,” Ramah ordered his escort. He switched to the closed-command net and spoke to his escort pilot.

“Malaika Two, this is Leader. We approach again for the attack.”

“Negative! I say again, negative! Target too hostile!”

Source: quora.com

“Remember what they did to us, our brothers. They massacred them. This is a revenge mission,” he shouted into his mask. “Conform to me!”

There was a brief silence before his escort said, “Malaika Two conforming.”

“Let’s kill them, buddy,” Ramah yelled.

Al-Shabaab had attacked the Kenya Defence Forces base in Afmadhow at dawn, just like they did in Elade in 2016. This time they were ruthless—no one survived. When the contact report was sent to the Ops Room, they could not respond until the Joint Operations Commander cleared them, who preferred to send in army aviation first. All the helicopters were downed. Not ready to commit more air assets, the air force remained on ‘Red’ standby only. While the authorities debated strategy and played politics, the enemy was escaping. And when they had finally been authorised, it was not to support their fellow soldiers on the ground six hours later. There was no need. Instead, they were to target the enemy’s strategic base, Jilib.

Ramah had heard it in the air force commander’s voice: bomb everything. He intended to decimate the enemy, even if it meant flattening the whole of Jilib.

“Move to Pull-up-Point Mwewe and approach,” Ramah ordered.

On their second approach to the target, the enemy fired at him from three locations. However, he spotted the missiles a little too late. He pulled back with all his strength against his joystick, but he felt himself fighting gravity, the F5 opposing his efforts to control it.

Ramah tensed every muscle in his body, trying to make the F5 resist plummet. He whirled aloft, trying for the advantage of height. His vision narrowed, blurred, and he couldn’t see beyond the cockpit. Oh, shit. I’m hit, and I’m losing blood. He was struggling to hold his right hand on the control.

His throat became dry and parched with agitation, horror, fear, and grief. His efforts to salvage himself was pantomime deceit, and he said to himself: I should have aborted the mission.

Down below, he saw the whole of Jilib coming onto him head-on. He saw another missile rising in his peripheral vision, and he knew that he was a goner. His anger and thirst to avenge his slain brothers had worn his nerves and strained his judgement. Still, he was not going to go down that easily.

He reached for the throttle using his left hand and hurled the F5 into a hard turn, but it got the cockpit canopy. The fighter jet tumbled, and it lost life and flying capability. He groped for the ejector seat handle and hauled it down, blind, but when he pulled it, nothing happened—it did not hurl him free of the doomed F5.

The F5 plummeted with suicidal force, losing height rapidly, the earth swaying through his line of vision. The realisation he was crashing in the enemy territory crashed his heart, for, at that moment, the new reality sank in, the pain of failure and separation from loved ones.

Even as he resigned himself to his fate, he let down the landing gears. Below, he saw where the fighter was headed—a rocky ground, sparse green vegetation, haphazardly laid-out buildings.

He could see men, women, and children stop and look up at him. So close that he could see their shocked and apprehensive looks. He saw armed men emerge from the sparse vegetation and point their rifles and guns upwards.

All fuel corks closed, all switches off, and he braced himself for the final crashing.

When it hit the ground, the F5 sheered through, disintegrating piece by piece. Rocks cut through metal, wings broke away, and the fuselage cartwheeled in the open ground with Ramah trapped inside.

Ramah could not feel his body, but his sense of smell was still strong. He smelled the pervasive reek of JET-A1 fuel, and he knew it was a matter of time before it exploded. He had a decision to make—stay in and be obliterated to nothing, or get out and be captured by al-Ashabaab. However, when death is imminent, only survival instinct rules.

He released the straps that held him to his seat, lifted the steel canopy breaker, and began pounding the perspex dome above his head. He could hear the pinging and tinkling sound made by white-hot metal as fuel fell on it. Summoning his last efforts, he tore an opening in the perspex just as a ruptured fuel-pressure line somewhere in the shattered fuselage sprayed a jet of JET-A1 high in the air. It fell in a heavy drizzle upon the canopy, into his face. It drenched his shoulders and the front of his flight suit. In the distance, he heard voices: one distinct voice was calling him home, and the others were shouting Allahu Akbar.

Source: kahawatungu.com

For the first time in his military career, he knew that dying for his country was not vai. He had lived by the Kenya Air Force motto: Tuko Imara Angani. And to his last breath, he had remained steadfast in the skies, protecting Kenya’s airspace from external aggression by taking the war to the enemy.

***

He was still alive when al-Shabaab dragged him out through the opening in the canopy. Not even his mangled body could hold off the terror that the dastard terrorists intended to rain on him.

Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! They chanted. Allah

They let his body fall face down on the dusty ground, and thousands of feet stepped on him. When he lifted his head, he saw women and children running from all directions to where he was, each carrying a weapon, anything they could lay their hands on. The voices were shrill but faint, and the words were in Somali, Arabic, Somali dialects, and Swahili.

He didn’t know they were singing from Quran 2:91—Kill them wherever you come upon them and drive them out of the places from which they have driven you out. Na wauweni popote mwakutapo, na muwatoe popote walipo kutoeni …

Even Kenyans have come this far in Somalia? Hands grabbed him, each wanting a pound of his flesh.

Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!

Blood and lymph bubbled from his nostrils, his body writhed and spasmed, and unbearable agony hit him as they dragged him.

Oh, no! Killed and my body dragged in the streets of Jilib! He moaned, and he breathed his last.

Kutupwa na System

2022-02-19T02:53:00.000+03:00

Major Stanley Ekuton sat ramrod straight on the senior passenger’s seat in the Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) manoeuvring along the winding motorable track eight kilometres beyond the Kenya-Somalia border, his throat dry with agitation. His Commanding Officer’s last words were still fresh on his mind: OC, do not cross that border!

(Source: intelligencebriefs.com)

Ahead, through the dust, the enemy was escaping.

“We should not be sitting ducks in the camp when al-Shabaab come to attack us,” he had replied. “We, too, should take the battle to them.”

And with that, Officer Commanding Bravo Company, 80 Airborne Battalion of the Kenya Defence Forces, imposed radio silence on his battalion tactical command headquarters.

“We are pursuing the enemy to the depths of hell if we have to,” he had told his platoon commander. “Order the platoon to cross the border—”

“But, Afande, we are not supposed to cross the border. The rules of engagement—”

“Officer, adui ni yule unamwangalia akitoraka. Are we going to follow the rules of engagement without reason?”

“No, sir, but ni vile naona inaweza kuleta shida.”

“In case of anything, I take responsibility, sawa. Na ni mimi naongoza.”

“Yes, sir.” The platoon commander had ordered his platoon to follow the OC.

His warrior spirit was awakened; only the decimation of the enemy mattered. He saw the dust ahead rising, swirling up. He would no longer follow the rules developed by idlers in air-conditioned offices swinging from ergonomic chairs in Nairobi. Ati troops operating along the border should never cross into Somalia!

To kill for his country, to defend his motherland, was his duty. He was not going to let the enemy go.

Al-Shabaab had killed many a soldier from his company, and his not being able to do anything had worn his nerves and strained his command.

“Where are they?” he asked his driver. “I don’t see the dust ahead.”

(Source: jamestown.org)

Hardly had the driver answered when he felt a sense of fatalistic dismay as an RPG projectile appeared in his sight, headed at the senior passenger’s side, aiming at him.

His eyes narrowed to slits, sweat sliding down his face and drenching his face veil.

“Swerve to the right,” he yelled. However, it was a nanosecond too late.

Before hitting the 20mm-thick bulletproof windscreen, he winked, the projectile exploded, and he ducked. The APC lifted off the ground, overturned airborne, hit the ground, rolled, and stopped.

Thousands of shrapnel penetrated his helmet, body armour, and struck off his limbs. Hot wind raged through the infernal war machine as the explosion burned, his skin smeared from his shoulders, and his body disintegrated. He tried to haul himself blind out of the doomed APC, but nothing happened.

(Photo: courtesy)

***

The medivac medics took one look at Major Ekuton’s charred and scorched body and nodded at each other in silent agreement: it was a VIP.

When the Y12 aircraft landed at Moi Air Base in Eastleigh, medics first attended to the injured and wounded—sitting and lying cases—moved them to the waiting ambulances ready to take them to the Base Medical Centre and others to the Defence Forces Memorial Hospital.

When it came to the dead, the VIPs, one medic realised that rigour mortis had not yet set on one of the VIPs.

“I’ve got a pulse,” she shouted. “One of the VIPs.”

Medics swarmed to the plane and loosely swathed his body in blankets, put it on a stretcher, and transferred it to the Huey helicopter that was about to take off for a mission in Mombasa.

The Huey touched down on the helipad at the DFMH, and a medical team was ready for him. Within no time, they took him straight to the burns unit on the hospital’s emergency wing, into a quiet and secluded world where everybody wore masks and long green sterile robes.

However, Major Ekuton sank in a dark bottomless pit, not knowing that morphine was helping him stay there. He only heard the distant, quiet voices of the masked figures as they worked over him.

“It’s third degree, fifty-four per cent—”

“Can’t be cleaned now, not until it stabilises. It will be days before we can clean it.”

“The head surgeon will advise.”

The pain was an endless ocean across which the waves rose and fell, the surf breaking at the shore of his soul. Major Ekuton smelt burning gunpowder, petrol, and skin with the pain. Sometimes he felt the prick of a needle, drugs fighting infection fevers, and a burning thirst no amount of liquids could quench. Whatever he was going through, the pain and hell were twins.

He crawled out of the pit one day and saw eyes peering over white surgical masks.

“He has come out of it,” a voice emanated from one of the masks.

But then, he drifted off again into the slough of nothingness. The next time he opened his eyes, he met friendly, cheerful faces, men and women proud of resurrecting the dead.

“He can now be moved to Elgon Ward,” said a youngish surgeon whom he wished he could know his rank.

“Yes, sir,” a nurse in army uniform beneath her white coat said.

“Ekuton, you are going to be fine. You are out of danger now,” the surgeon told him. All he did was node.

In Elgon Ward, he was assigned his room.

“Sir, I’m Senior Sergeant Wavinya. I am your assigned nurse. You are going to be fine.”

“How long have I been here?” He asked, but he did not recognise his voice.

“Six weeks. But when they brought you in, they thought you were dead. You are fortunate to be alive.”

Major Ekuton glimpsed the depths of her compassion. “Thank you,” he replied.

During ward rounds, the following day, one of the doctors, a brigadier, said to him, “Ekuton, we did our best to save your life. You are once more a viable human being, though you lost a lot. We had to do skin grafts and numerous surgeries to save your eyes, but your ears can be reconstructed. For the face, you will never look the same again, and you will live with some shrapnel in your head. It’s not risky, though.”

“Yes, sir.”

After the ward rounds, Ekuton asked Senior Sergeant Wavinya for a mirror. Despite her protestations, he insisted.

The face that stared back at him did not have eyelashes and brows, the eyes round and startled, with clumsy lids and puffed dead-looking flesh beneath; the scalp was burned away and had a tight lipless mouth. The skin and flesh was a patchwork, joined by seams of scar tissue drawn tightly over his cheekbones; the nose a shapeless blob; and the ears small bulges as though they were fastened haphazardly to the sides of his head.

When he moved his mouth to talk, it twisted briefly in a horrid rictus and then regained its frozen shape.

I can’t talk without straining. He didn’t know he had said that aloud.

“No, sir,” Wavinya said. “You will have to be more of a listener.”

***

The first visitor he got was a military police officer, a lieutenant colonel loathed and infamous for his blind obedience to authority disguised as abiding by the law to the latter. The lieutenant colonel did not bother with niceties; he took the seat beside Major Ekuton’s hospital bed and opened the file he had.

“Major Ekuton, Commander Kenya Army has issued instructions for the formal resignation of your commission,” the senior officer started, and Ekuton stared at him.

“I don’t understand,” Ekuton mumbled.

“This way, you will go home with benefits.”

When he joined the forces, he wanted to defend his motherland; kill, not die, for his country. Resigning his commission was not part of the plan.

“And if I refuse?”

“Then you will be court-martialled for dereliction of duty, breaking the rules of engagement, insubordination, and disobeying your CO’s lawful orders.”

“I see,” Ekuton nodded. “I don’t have a choice.”

“We both know how the court-martial works. You will be found, you are, guilty as charged. Termination of commission without benefits.”

Ekuton did not reply.

“Here are the necessary documents. Please sign here, and here; your CO and Brigade Commander have already signed.”

Ekuton weighed all the options—he was toast. He took the papers and signed.

“Sawa, Officer.” The lieutenant colonel gathered the papers, placed them in the folder, and rose to go.

Ekuton’s heart tightened and sank to the pit of his stomach. “So, system inanitupa sasa juu nime-cock …”

The lieutenant colonel stopped, stared at Major Ekuton, his expression altered, and his cold eyes became portend.

“Officer, you are responsible for the deaths of ten soldiers and destruction of two APCs, weapons, and ammo; disobeyed your Commanding Officer; broke the rules of engagement; and displayed lack of sound judgement as an officer,” he paused and drew a deep breath. “Military Police recommendation was that you be tried by court-martial and that the prosecution is instructed to ask for the death penalty. But thank God uko na wire mrefu, Officer, and these political times are volatile. The Deputy President himself intervened, and that saved you. So, badala ya kuongea mbaya hapa, consider yourself very fortunate.”

And with that, the lieutenant colonel left; his footsteps cracked on the floor and the pathway outside as he left Elgon Ward.

Isolation in Intimacy

2022-01-27T21:30:00.004+03:00

Dear Love(s),

I know you are hurt. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t be writing this.

It is painful not to be loved back. I don’t even love myself.

I am lying in bed drinking in your smell, my nose laments on the scents it is unfamiliar with — lavender; jasmine; and patchouli, earthy and musky smell, sweet yet smoky, a balance of sweetness and romance.

It’s barely two hours since we made love. I took you to the stage. I kissed you amid calls by touts to board their matatu. I watched you settle in, and the matatu leave. I got back to my apartment. It smelled like you. I stripped off my clothes and got under the covers. I am sleeping in your scent.

I am making love to you now, more passionate than when you were here with me. In my fantasies, you’re a goddess. It feels too real, hands on my skin, a hungry mouth, the warmth between your legs.

In my isolation, I love you the most. Not when I am with you. I don’t touch you when we sleep, even when awake, and no cuddling. Only when we make love. At that time, I feel like I don’t need anything else. I love you, I whisper. In the cold silence afterwards, I wish you say it back.

I lied I had to go to work, so you could go back to our children and leave me to love you in isolation. I’m writing letters to you, confessing how I love you when I am alone—surreal, but not when we are so apart together. When you push someone so far away, are they still your love?

Don’t get me wrong, love. I still want us. But I have learnt you can’t force together on the wrong people. They belong where they want to, giving exactly what they want. You don’t ask together. Definitely not demand it. I don’t ask for anything more. Your hands and the warmth between your legs are enough. Because, after the fact, I will get more in my isolation.

When I am angry, I fantasise about your corpse. It suits me then, when I want you dead, for ‘till death’ I vowed. But, I don’t love you alone. Our children do. I need you alive, that’s the fact, for them, but the closest thing to truth is that I want you animated, but not real.

***

I will see my other lover in a few hours. I love her, but not too much. We don’t share continents, which makes it easier for both of us. The distance between makes our love strong and us in love. When I am with her, it’s all cuddles, hungry mouths, explosive orgasms. I don’t fantasise about her when she is away, only you with whom I wish for eternities of golden nights and silver mornings. I touch her like a relic, and her juices anoint me like a king.

I like her because she is a free spirit. I don’t ask about the others with whom we share her because something about it is seductive. When she leaves, the patchouli she leaves behind lasts like a Somali perfume, and that’s what you smelt before leaving.

***

I like to look for new lovers, but not for keeping. Just that moment I crave human touch. Like the one who says I am her demon, her devil to worship. She tells all the boys—angels—no; it makes her feel good. She knows I will never be hers. After all, who wishes for hell, the devil’s abode? Ever since discovering places in her she didn’t know existed, she is single-minded—her face innocent and yearning. Girls fuck like that, desperate when you are their first. They think it is forever. They demand forever.

“I don’t believe in forever,” I tell her.

“I always miss you,” she says. “Will you call me?”

That’s what she asks. To hear the devil’s voice. To keep her demon close.

When we kiss goodbye, I hope never to see her again.

“I miss you,” she texts before she gets to the ground floor. Or bounds the stairs back up for another goodbye kiss.

***

Once upon a lonely time, when Samantha (the sex doll) was a craze in Kenya, I researched male sex dolls, with their almost alive still eyes and soft mouths, beautiful cold faces, and plausible skin. Well, they were above my salary, and I didn’t want to take a loan for a corpse to keep in my house; but I did get a sex toy, Fleshlight Pink Lady, something that I had to dip in hot water to pass as an inanimate human vagina. It makes little difference in the end, though, whether that body/vagina is flesh or silicone. Either way, I’d be alone.

When I was out of the country for work, I met a Somali girl who told me that you are a bitch. You don’t cherish what you have, me. Yes, I told her about us. She moved into the space between my depression and happiness and saved me. With her, I was just me. When I hugged her, I held her too tight I wondered what would become if I crushed her.

“You’re the most beautiful woman I have ever met, had, and I will ever have,” I told her. And I meant it.

When she let me see beneath her beautiful, underneath her burqa, dirac, and shash lay my territory. When I moved inside her, I called out her name: Maimun. Since she left, she has been my moon.

***

Don’t get me wrong, I am not defending my waywardness. When I think of you, them, and the love I have for you, them, my heart unfurls like flower sepals. My heart pumps it around my body. I want to bring you all together and tell you I love you. Truth is, when I am with you, them, all I want is to be alone, reliving. I want to be alone until the next time I crave your touch, which is a few hours later.

Love, I wish you are the one to whom I direct my longing. They make me forget the continents separating us. When I lie naked in bed with you, not touching your body and seeing only the fantasy of them that I’ve created, wishing you were there with me, I imagine them on the scaffold of your flesh. I take a little comfort in the fact that you share bits and pieces of yourself with me from time to time. Even though we are worlds apart, it matters, travelling continents of our bodies with lukewarm fingers.

Instead of being alone together, I prefer this intimacy in isolation. It allows me to have lovers who fill the blank spaces between us. I don’t know about you, but I resurrect when we are apart.

The Dark Night of My Heart

2021-01-05T18:42:00.007+03:00

When the angel of death plotted my death, he convinced me to be patriotic. I sat at a makeshift desk and signed attestation forms and, months later, took the Oath of Allegiance.

In Somalia, the world floated cloud-like upon the billowing smokes of explosions; my eyes stung from the combustion of gunpowder. Scarlet blood seeped into the depths of the earth, and the bodies of my brethren-in-arms lay motionless, eyes eternally focused onto the heavens.

(Source: nairobiwire.com)

In the rain of falling bombs, I crawled for cover beneath a body of a fallen brother, his blood the water I desperately needed.

“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” The cries were more of a benediction than a declaration. The attackers were everywhere, killing the already dead who lay singly or in piles, pitiful fragments of humanity.

Terrible, I thought, and my stomach knotted more as darkness welled up from within me, a resignation to the impending loss of my life. It was like the wings of a heron enclosing around me to snuff all the life out of me.

It is Eid al-Fitr, and life has never been better in Somalia. The last of al-Shabaab strongholds fell a year ago. Jilib is now a bustling city, and our Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) Operations have brought the people closer. We were not infidels after all.

This day, the Commissioner of the Jilib district invited us to celebrate Eid with them. The AMISOM Headquarters in Mogadishu approved.

The garden is decorated with palm leaves and coloured bunting. In the middle is a large marquee worked with national symbols in blue, white, and green, the coat of arms of Jubaland, and two spears and ears of wheat and corn for fertility. Beneath it, the ceremony would take place, a benediction for the new Somalia.

Trestle tables covered with bright cloths and set with bowls of the finest Somali cuisine—a cocktail of Arab, Turkish, Indian, Italian, and Swahili menus; Xalwo, jalaato, basbousa—and other delicacies stand crisp and gay. There is no VIP lounge, only enough space for over five hundred guests, an open room for dancing, and a raised timber stand hanging with Somalia, Jubaland, and AMISOM flags.

The Governor of Middle Jubba is expected, so are the Commissioners of Bu’aale and Sakow districts.

An army of waiters moves around, happy and merry. A platoon of armed Jubaland Security Forces soldiers has been deployed at strategic points for security. Besides these, we have our own security in plainclothes. It was decided that we had to trust JSF and the Somalia National Army to provide security.

I am watching each waiter as they serve. The hairs at the back of my neck go up just as I intercept surreptitious communication between the two of them. The marquee is a cacophony of laughter and applause of the guests, all oblivious.

Without warning, a burst of automatic gunfire quiets everyone, just as a stream of bullets slash through the bellies of whoever is in the line of fire.

“All soldiers are dead,” the voice in my earpiece says.

How do you fight an enemy armed with automatic machine guns with pistols? I ask myself as I drop flat on the ground. A hurricane of screams and shouts and desperate cries joins the roar of the guns.

I see several of my soldiers in plainclothes respond, but they fire only once before heavy gunfire sends them reeling back against a table or another falling body. Bright blood spurts from the wounds, drenching their fine celebratory garments.

Chaos is a constellation of a panic-stricken mob screaming, falling, crawling, and dying beneath the flail of the guns.

I have my pistol in hand, with so many targets to aim at but not sure which one. I see one of the gunmen drop his machine gun, tear his waiter clothes and reach for something inside the clothes he had hidden. He comes up with a grenade in each hand and hurls one towards me and another to another crowd.

The grenades explode simultaneously, a twin blast of white flame and a terrible sweep of shrapnel. Women’s screams cut above the din, and another explosion swallows their screams.

I hit the ground before the grenade explodes, just in time to see the gunman poised to throw his next grenade, right arm extended behind him, both fists filled with the deadly steel balls: Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! His war cry above the screams of his victims.

My body is a caterpillar, senseless, moving without bidding; I am numb, only my elbows willing to crawl me to safety—beneath the dead or the dying.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/

“OC,” a voice said when I came to.

I moaned, breathless, seeing nothing.

“Sir?” I asked, turning to the direction the voice had come from.

“Welcome back; we thought we had lost you.”

“I can’t see.” I commanded the eyelids to split open, but they disobeyed.

I can’t see! I groped for nothing.

“It’ll be alright,” my Commanding Officer said, and my heart shattered.

Elgon Ward at the Defence Forces Memorial was eerily quiet.

“The Governor and the Jilib District commissioner died in the attack,” my CO told me. “Al-Shabaab wanted to kill them for collaborating with AMISOM in liberating Jilib. We lost twenty soldiers, and JSF and SNA fifty. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“And civilians?”

“Over three hundred. Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility; they want the 2020/2021 AMISOM Troops Withdrawal from Somalia Plan effected. They say AMISOM lied to the Somali people, AMISOM presence in Somalia is imperialistic.”

The following day, during his routine checks, the chief surgeon told me that they had removed the bullet that had passed through my lung and lodged between the third and fourth vertebrae.

“My eyes?”

“All your eyes are okay; none was injured ….”

“But …”

“There’s a tiny steel fragment, certainly from a grenade. The optical nerves were affected.”

“Blind?”

“We can’t say yet, we will conduct another surgery ….”

“Permanently? Will I be blind permanently?”

“We will know when we remove the fragment, but as at now, you have no recognition of shape, or colour, of light or darkness.”

My stomach knotted a thousand times. “Does my wife know? Mother?”

“Not yet, they are coming today ….”

“I want to see my CO.”

“We have scheduled a major neurosurgery tomorrow to try to remove the metal fragment, but it’s not a guarantee your sight ….”

“The CO, please.”

A while later, a voice said, “Afande, CO amekuja.”

I heard the CO pull a chair beside my bed.

“The others?” I asked.

“Two succumbed to their injuries last night; the other is out of danger, so are you.” He paused. “But you—”

“I know. They told me,” I stopped, my voice choking. “That’s why I wanted to talk with you.”

“Your wife and parents are coming—”

I struggled up to one elbow, my face heavy underneath the bandages, my bound eyes blindly open.

“You can’t let them see me like this; they can’t see me ….”

“They are your family; you can’t possibly expect me to send them away. They have been informed—”

“Please … They can never know I am alive. I have thought about it well, and this is my decision.”

Mashujaa Home is like a haunted house in a forested section of Embakasi Garrison. Every time I tap my way around, I stumble into someone, and it reminds me that the home was geared to sudden influxes of war on terror casualties.

Most of those maimed in Somalia elect to stay at Mashujaa Home rather than their families. We keep vigil together all our lives in the eerie home till Mashujaa Cemetery, bordering Kayole slums, shall swallow our frail bodies draped in the flag we fought for.

Every now and then, I think of the conversation I had with my CO when I requested him to do all he could, even to fake my death, so my family didn’t know I was permanently blind, useless to them, forever a liability in their lives.

“Sir, you see, it is permanent, final, hopeless. I am, never to see again. I have gone into a dark world of my own where nobody else can follow me. I have thought about it, and I am ready. The sooner I made the decision, the sooner my wife started dating again without feeling tied down to a blind man.”

“I think that’s your wife’s decision to make, not yours.”

“No, sir. This is my decision. I will not see her again, even my parents. For them, I am dead. Tell them I was dead, it was a mistaken identity, but they must remember me when I was alive.”

“I can’t do that, OC.”

“You have to. Swear a solemn oath to me. One soldier to another.”

“If I do that, and that’s a big IF, I will be failing as your CO. There will be boards of inquiry … you will forfeit any salary or allowance you may have. You will be dead; your benefits will go to your family as per the SOPs, the law. You will cut all contact with your family for all days of your life. The care you will receive at Mashujaa is not the same as what your family would give you. Is that want you to want?”

“Yes, sir, that’s what I want.”

“Why, but why?” the CO demanded desperately. “Why do you reject your family? The system is not your family, you know?”

“I know I am altered beyond all hope or promise. I know that what was before can never be again. I know that I can never be to my wife again what she has a right to—she is young, beautiful, she cannot endure; in a month, a year perhaps, she will realise she is trapped, tied to a blind man. I can’t endure that. I can no longer be her husband.”

“What you’re asking of me ….”

“Is mercy.”

There was a long bout of silence, then he murmured: “Very well if that’s what you want, I will see what I can do, though I don’t promise not to try to convince you to change your mind.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said and sunk back in the bed. When I closed my eyes, all I saw was my wife: every trace of the good times we ever had all gone, except for the lingering afterimages of the fights, the distrust, the pain of living together, and the last words she told me before leaving for Somalia: We need more money, go to Somalia like other men—a parting gift.

The words swam and welled misty in my eyes. Her fading voice was all I had left of her.

God Answered My Prayer

2020-04-17T09:07:00.002+03:00

www.christianity.com

Against my better judgement and Mother’s advice, I followed the love of my life to the barracks. Soldiers are never there for their families, she told me. You were never there for me, I retorted, and you’re not a soldier.

Every time he leaves for another mission in Somalia, I pray: God, let him come back alive.

Every time there is news of another ambush, another IED attack, against KDF troops, I pray: God, don’t let my children lose their father, don’t make me a widow.

Today I woke up to a thousand and one WhatsApp messages, Twitter and Facebook notifications, and ‘I-tried-calling-yous’ from family and friends: the worst of al-Shabaab attack on a Kenya Defence Forces’ position in Somalia.

I prayed: If soldiers have to die, let him not be amongst them. Kill others, but not him.

The gunfire goes off, pop! Pop! Pop! in synch.

“Fire!” the commander orders the firing party.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

The casket, draped in the flag of Kenya, lowers into the grave. He’s no more, but God answered my prayer.

A heart-piercing shriek goes off like an alarm. A woman runs to the grave; she wants to be buried with him.

“Mother! No,” I cry and rush to her.

Mother is devastated; her only son—my brother—died so young, without a family; her hope, life, snuffed out by the bullet of the dastard terrorists.

She will never come out of the hole she has sunk.

My brother is dead, but God answered my prayer: God killed others, I’m not a widow, and my children have a father.

Sky Wars

2019-10-04T10:24:00.000+03:00

Planet Spyria,
Spyria Year 4720,
Spyria High Council meeting.

The alien High Command took his seat. He looked at those present through his compound eyes, his mouth a thin line.

“We are the guardians of the galaxies,” his voice boomed. “The Multiverse is safe because of us.”

Every council member nodded in agreement.

“Our artificial intelligence was granted to Earthlings generations ago, a mistake by Her Highness the Most Supreme, I dare say. Humans now have made machines to conquer the Multiverse and beyond. We can’t let them.”

“High Command,” one of the High Council members said. “What does the Most Supreme want of us?”

“We must battle to save the Multiverse from aggressive take-over and annihilation by humans. Everything humans do is detrimental to their Universe and ultimately the Multiverse. Intelligence from the Inter-Galactic Intelligence Agency (IGIA) indicate that prototypes are at advanced stages.”

“Their aircrafts can now move between planets, their spaceplanes between galaxies,” the Inter-Galactic Clandestine Operations Commander said. “We need to send in saboteurs to make sure they crash after take-off.”

“Yes,” the High Command said. “Under the intergalactic law, no species are supposed to move across the Multiverse, no matter how advanced or complex their technologies may be. Yet humans are defying this law.”

It was not a discussion but a joint feeling they arrived at: either humans had to be re-educated or eradicated. In their telepathic manner, they decided that infiltrating aviation and space exploration agencies on Earth was the best course of action.

“Send to Earth the Inter-Galactic Clandestine Ops Squad,” the High Command ordered.

***

Planet Earth,
The Year 2037,
Earth Aviation and Space Council Meeting.

The president of the Earth Aviation and Space Council (EASC) cleared his throat. “Our aviation industry and space programs are the best in the multiverse. It is time we conquered worlds beyond,” he made a sweeping movement with his hand and the wall opposite him came to live.

“This is Galaxtron, Boeing’s 787 MaxSprint Hybrid Spaceplane prototype. The plane has hybrid combined cycle engines that can take off from an airport's landing strip and fly straight into orbit. The engines would use turbofan or turbojet engines to take off horizontally. Once airborne, the engine shifts to ramjet propulsion and, as speed increases, adjusts into a scramjet engine with supersonic airflow. At the scramjet stage, the hybrid spaceplane would enter hypersonic flight in 'near space', the part of the atmosphere between 20km to 100km above sea level. Finally, the spaceplane would use its rocket motors to push out of near space and into orbit …”

He paused. The men and women present looked at the president in awe.

“… What I’m saying is,” he smiled, “we can now go to other galaxies.”

***

Boeing Aerospace & Autonomy Centre,
Kajiado, Kenya.
Friday 13 May, 2050.

The flight engineer took the elevator to Basement 33 where the 10^th Generation Boeing MaxSprint Hybrid Spaceplane was being built. The spaceplane was designed to fly into any galaxy, making stops at multiverses.

When he made sure he was alone, he transformed himself into a grey-skinned humanoid, four feet tall, bald, with black almond-shaped eyes, nostrils without a nose, slit for mouth, no ears, and four fingers ready to make contact with the High Command in planet Spyria.

“Avluk ah Kutak,” he said when he connected to the mother lode.

International Space Station,
Same Day, Same Time;

“Commander Edison,” the young female Science Officer called.

“Yes!” the Commander responded.

“There’s a cryptic transmission from a Boeing Aerospace & Autonomy Centre in Africa.”

“What does it say?”

“The message is ‘IT IS TIME’, nothing else.”

“Destination?”

“Not yet established, but the DeciCode machine is trying to triangulate through the Multiverse.”

***

Earth,
Year of the Lord, 2060
Earth Aviation and Space Council Meeting.

The intergalactic spy chief, Director Earth-Space Intelligence Agency (ESIA) walked up to the podium. He made a sweeping movement with his hand and the wall in front flashed to life. Images of the multiverse filled the mega floor-to-ceiling screen.

“Aliens in the multiverse now know we have what it takes to grow into a multiversal superpower,” he began. “Our aviation and space agencies have developed technologies that would enable us to explore and conquer the multiverse …”

He paused and looked at the men and women who made decisions based on what he told them.

“Intelligence indicate that aliens are wary of the 10^th Generation Boeing MaxSprint Hybrid Spaceplane …”

His hand made another sweeping movement and the screen showed images of humanoid-like creatures gathered round a table.

“They call themselves the Guardians of the Galaxies from Planet Spyria. In 2027, they held a meeting where they resolved to sabotage our aviation and space programs. They activated the Inter-Galactic Clandestine Ops Squad to infiltrate the Earth …”

“Are you saying aliens have infiltrated not only our planet but also our agencies?” asked a diminutive Chinese astrophysicist.

“That’s what intelligence indicates. We believe all the aircraft accidents we have had since the turn of the millennium are caused by the aliens; but just crashing the aircrafts was not enough. They decided to be hijacking the aircrafts to study our technologies and seep our knowledge. That’s why Malaysian airlines Flight 370 was never discovered.”

“Come on Finch, we both know that aliens had nothing to do with that flight’s disappearance. The US of A knows and should tell us—”

“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I’m an intelligence officer. Those aliens who infiltrated Boeing engineered the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) which activates without pilot input and commands the aircraft nose down and can’t be deactivated. That’s why the Indonesia and Ethiopian Airlines crashes happened; and many others after that.”

“What you don’t know about the Boeing MaxSprint Spaceplane is that it’s capable of harvesting energy from distant stars during its stops at multiverses expanding our intergalactic control,” the President chimed in.

The spy continued, “What aliens are worried of is that our harvesting this energy will make the stars fall beyond the cosmic horizon and become unobservable and inaccessible, thus limiting how much energy could one day be extracted from them. These Guardians believe that they were sanctioned by God to protect the multiverses. They don’t want us to get there. They believe that we will destroy the multiverses if not checked.”

All the eyes in the room riveted on him.

“Planet Spyria is one of the most advanced civilizations in the multiverse. They understand the grim reality of universal expansion, and they wouldn't just sit around idle while our spaceplanes made multiverse stops capturing stars from other galaxies, reeling them in and harvesting their energy and rendering them inaccessible forever. Either we be educated, or eradicated. And they chose to eradicate us.

“That explains why Boeing MaxSprint Spaceplanes have been crashing or disappearing since their inception in 2030. Investigations point to sabotage from within or auto-activation of a device that makes it undetectable by the radar shortly after take-off before the aliens hijack it never to be seen.”

UPCOMING RELEASE: NOVEL - Inevitable Desires: First Love

2019-08-24T15:45:00.000+03:00

Lovely People, Readers and Lovers of good stories;

I know I have been a disappointment this year; not writing as much as I am supposed. I'm sorry, I take the blame. But, I never forgot about you, about our unwritten pact that I should give you interesting stories every other day.

I have been busy making another baby, born of first love; and here she is: INEVITABLE DESIRES: First Love. It is a story you don't want to miss.

Hedwig Sanzi Joe, aka Heddie, is an innocent high school girl when she falls in love with a reformed criminal working in the church. When she becomes of age and decided to give the man of her dreams her heart, she doesn't know that she has signed for the greatest hurt, betrayal, and confusion she would ever experience. Skeletons of her boyfriend's past decide to crawl out of the closet and all she ever believed in is shattered. She doesn't know that she is moving from one criminal to another when she makes the mistake of marrying the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance until she learns that her husband is the real criminal, not the boyfriend she let go.

This is Heddie's story, the school girl that Kennedy Maina meets towards the end of Twisted Times: Son of Man.

On 31 October, 2019 - that's when this story gets out and Hedwig spills the beans about her secret life.

PRE-ORDER today to be the first to get the copy on 31 October, 2019. It's only Ksh. 600 (Paybill No. 909534 - Mystery Publishers LTD; put your name as the account number).

Unbroken Happiness

2019-05-06T10:59:00.000+03:00

I woke up with a start. The smell of burning flesh congested the air. I did not know it was my skin singeing until I screamed in pain.

I’m dying. Oh God, please no. I can’t breathe.

My body gave to unknown force, and fell into a dark abysmal hole, head first.

“You left me,” I heard a voice say.

Love killed me!

***

Marline sat across from Eddah on the bed, the bench, where they judged their friends, sentenced obstinate boyfriends to death, gossiped about whose of their baby-mama girlfriends’ boyfriends was deadbeat, and who was trying to snatch so-and-so’s sugar daddy.

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Eddah reached for the glass of tonic water on the bedside stand and gave it to Marline.

Marline wiped her eyes with Eddah’s handkerchief.

“He did not even care,” Marline said. “I needed him, and he told me to leave.”

Eddah watched Marline’s hand’s delicate movement as she dabbed at her eyes.

“I will talk to him?” Eddah offered.

“The worst part of it is that I couldn’t walk, the pain was killing me,” Marline said. “It’s not like I was pretending to stay in his house. I just wanted one more night for the pain to subside.”

“Men are dogs,” Eddah said.

Marline said nothing, as if the silence was the answer. As if she did not blame herself already. What troubled her was not Finnly’s heartlessness, she knew, but the impact of what the man she loved had done.

***

“Finn,” she said when I picked up. “I wish you pretended you cared; that’s the least you could do.”

That’s not what I expected her to say. She couldn’t understand, see that I cared for her, despite how twisted my idea of caring was.

I exhaled heavily.

“I’m hurting because of love, my love for you,” she said. “I have endometriosis for God’s sake. I just needed you to care.”

Her words were a slap to my face.

I’m sorry, I wanted to say. But the silence was so palpable that I could hear her heart beating and the tears dropping on her lap.

“You’re not going to say anything, that you’re sorry?” her voice trailed off.

“What do you want me to say?”

She drew a deep breath and blew her nose. My heart grew heavy with sadness and grief, and, in hindsight, I hated myself for making her cry. What mattered to her was not what I meant to do but what I had done: me chasing her away from my house when she was hurting, the way I did not care about her.

***

She got back to Marline’s house in the middle of the afternoon. Marline was still in bed, her eyes red and swollen.

“Marlee, dear!” Eddah said. “Crying yourself to death won’t help.”

When they hugged, Marline’s body did not relax against Eddah’s.

“I’m no longer crying,” she said.

Eddah watched Marline curl up under the sheets, telling herself she was mistaken; there was nothing to read in Marline’s tone. But it bothered her.

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“I know it’s hard, Marlee, but you need to forget him.”

“Yes, I know. When love ends, life moves on!”

At that moment, Eddah knew. She knew from the way Marline pulled the sheets over herself, from the anger on her face, from the way her eyes narrowed at something distant, and from the way her lips pursed, that Marline would do something terrible.

“Please, don’t do this to yourself. Don’t hurt yourself. He is not worthy it.”

Marline sat up and looked at her.

Eddah would always remember Marline’s expression, her feral portent eyes, her trembling lips, her hands folding into fists and gathering the sheets and throwing them away; Marline getting out of the bed and stomping out.

***

Alone, I was furious.

Heartless, an animal.

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When I visited him, I was surprised.

“Why are you so nice to me,” I asked.

He said nothing. He reached for me and smashed his lips onto mine. When I did not respond, he pried them with the tip of his tongue.

“Why are you so nice to me?” I asked him again.

“I’ve realized the error of my ways,” he said at last.

I looked at him, resentful of his frail attempts at making up without saying anything, of how sweet it sounded when he said, “You know I love you, Em,” as if his words were the mortar that I needed to cement my life to him.

I don’t love you. I hoped I was not angry and that the anger won’t get back to him because I did not want to pine. But I did pine: I always wore the locket he gave me, slept in his T-Shirt, every day read the poems he had written to me, and listened to the songs he liked.

“Why do you love me?”

“Love has got no reason,” he said.

His words almost changed my mind.

Heart, you may feel; head, you may think, but Marline, darling, you’re showing this animal the error of his ways.

“Love comes first, reasons follow, you know,” he said.

“What?” I looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Forgive me.” I rolled every letter in my head.

My mind flashed into the future, when he had hurt me again. I felt like I was piecing together the shards of a broken glass only to have it shatter again.

“I’m here, I’m I not?” I said.

When he went down on me, he flicked his tongue over me but time did not stop like the first time he did it. When he kissed me, I did not close my eyes. I want to carry the look on his eyes forever.

The world did not spin when he was inside me. I raised my hips, moved with his deep thrusts, wriggled like a snake as if I was breaking free shackles off my wrists, exorcising demons, freeing myself with the soft moans that escaped my mouth.

***

I meant to hold her and never let go of her. Yes, I had told her to leave my house, but it was because I was scared, I couldn’t take care of her. I thought she was going to die on me and complicate my life more. Forbidden love is poison.

Long after midnight, serene in her sleep like a baby in my arms, I listened to her post-coital breathing even out against my chest. She was back in my arms, I was never going to hurt her; bigamy was a crime I was ready to be convicted for.

Unbroken happiness is a bore, the words of Moliere hang like a bad dream on my mind. It should have ups and down.

I was happy.

***

One minute I was asleep, snuggled in the crook of his arm, his semen drying up between my legs. Another, I stood over him, so gentle in sleep.

You don’t trifle with people’s emotions. No, you don’t get to trifle with my feelings, my heart.

There was no looking back. Your goose is cooked.

For the first time, I smoked, blew the smoke leisurely through my mouth and nose, and dropped the cigar.

The curtains caught fire first.

When he woke up, he hunched over and clutched his stomach. Then he started coughing, moaning, and screaming in that order.

I knew the kind of death he would have, but most importantly, the last person he saw and the voice he heard before he succumbed.