A CHRISTMAS PRESENT by Gordon Aywa Anjili

by KREATIVE DIADEM | Jun 3, 2020 | FLASH FICTION, SHORT STORIES

A CHRISTMAS PRESENT

by Gordon Aywa Anjili

The piercing ring of the alarm awoke him. He forced himself on his back, raised his torso and rested on his elbows. He glanced at the clock. It was still dark and he could not read the time. He switched on the bed light and looked at the clock again. It was 5.30. Obviously, the alarm had gone off a little bit too early. He sat up. His beautiful wife stared at him dreamily.

“It’s too early to go jogging,” she said.

“I know, I think I set the alarm rather too early. But I have to go out and jog. I have not done so for more than a week and I can feel myself growing unfit,”

“I know better,” she said coquettishly. “You are fit and as your wife, I am better placed to know.”

He laughed, kissed her and, with youthful zeal, leapt out of bed. He shed off his pajamas and scrambled into his blue tracksuit. He searched about for his sneakers and found them under the bed. He wore them hurriedly and trotted out of the bedroom whistling a Christmas tune. Though a devout Muslim, he loved Christmas in a Dickensian way. He loved the food, the presents and the merriment that went with it. There were even times when he envied his Christian neighbours and wished he was a Christian only during December. He had gone to a catholic school where most teachers were devout Catholics and his strong conviction that theirs was a calling to ensure their youthful protégés were molded into strong Catholics. He had for years imbibed and ingested Catholic tenets. But he had remained a Muslim, for his parents were strict (almost radical) Muslims.

He lived in a modest two-bedroom house with a modest living room, kitchen, bathroom and water closet. On his way to the living room, he decided to open the door to the bedroom. He switched on the light. On the bed lay his two boys-twins who Allah had blessed him with ten years ago. He saw their innocent faces, serene and blissful in sleep and felt his heart skip with joy. He smiled. That day, on the eve of Christmas, he would buy each of them a bicycle. He promised them. That would be a perfect Christmas gift.

He left the house and jogged into Bakari, a street that fringed the housing estate and joined the main road to the city centre. Usually, there would be many joggers, but since Isa had risen earlier, he found himself the lone jogger. He began to run fast, enjoying the cool morning air. He heard some footsteps behind and instinctively looked back. Another jogger had joined him. He slowed down to let him catch up.

“Good morning,” called the jogger as he jogged in step with Isa.

“Good morning,” Isa replied, trying to accelerate.

“I like your tracksuit. Is it Adidas?”

“Yes, it’s a blue Adidas.”

“It’s a very good design.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I think you’re exhausted. You shouldn’t jog until the end of this year.”

“Is that so? Thought I could jog seriously tomorrow,”

“No, there are younger joggers who can run faster. You can reserve your strength for sometime early next year.”

Having said so, the jogger accelerated past Isa and went round a corner. Isa heaved a sigh of relief and jogged up to the main road. Then he turned and ran back to his house. He was greatly relieved. At least he would stay at home and enjoy Christmas with family. He pitied the unlucky young men who had been given the Christmas assignment. Maybe they did not have families. Maybe they did not have lovely boys like Karim and Jamal. Isa was a member of a local cell of an international terrorist group. “The Peace on Earth” (P.O.E). Its operations were so elaborate and intricate that one hardly knew another member. Communication was verbal. A cell member received a message from someone he had never seen before or one he was familiar with but never expected he was a member. Two days earlier, he had received a message that the new password was “blue Adidas” and that he would receive his instructions from a jogger. What the jogger had communicated to him was that no assignment had been given to him this Christmas. He would come at the beginning of the following year. And that was the cause of his relief. He had feared he would get an assignment like suicide bombing. So far, all his assignments had been “soft” — passing coded verbal messages to members within and out of the country. He travelled under three fake passports.

Although Isa relished his task, he had long sworn never to undertake a suicide-bombing job. Once a senior member had expatiated at length about honour, sacrifice and concomitant dignity and perpetual bliss in paradise. Isa had bluntly told him that he did not believe in Kamikaze style exploits. “It’s brave to fight, win and come out alive,” he had said.

His wife and children were out of bed when he went into the house. The boys jumped at him, and he hugged and tossed each one of them at a time. They laughed joyfully, and his wife laughed joyfully, and they were all a joyful family in a joyful home in a joyful season. He proceeded to the bathroom and had a cold refreshing bath. Then he sat down at a table to have a hearty breakfast.

After breakfast, it occurred to Isa that he should go to town and buy the bicycles for his boys before the shops become overcrowded with last-minute Christmas shoppers. He knew he would get good bicycles at the Globe Hyper. He knew that the reasonably lower prices would make the place unbearably overcrowded. And if he did not hurry, what he wanted could just be bought before he arrived. That possibility was just too disconcerting.

By 9.30, he was at the Globe Hyper. It was teeming with men and women, and children all eager to buy what would make their Christmas memorable. He looked at the innocent excited faces of children in the company of their equally excited parents and regretted not coming with his Karim and Jamal.

He walked to the bicycle section and began to inspect two bicycles he thought would excite Jamal and Karim. Next to him was a man also inspecting two bicycles.

“I wish I had come with my boys,” he said aloud for Isa to hear. “They would have chosen the bicycles they want. I’m spoilt for choice.”

“I too have two boys, but I think they won’t mind if I buy these two,” said Isa.

“Mine are too fussy. I think I should go back for them. It’s just five minute-drive.”

Isa started weaving around other shoppers as he made his way out. He picked the two bicycles and headed to the cashier.

There was suddenly a loud explosion. People and things were hurled in the air. There were organized screams and cries for help.

—

Isa opened his eyes and looked blankly at the face before him. He felt excruciating pain in the head, the limbs and back. He groaned in agony.

“Allah be praised! You’re alive.”

He looked at the face closely. He recognized Shafiya, his wife.

“Where is Karim… where is Jamal…?” he mumbled.

“They are at home and fine. They saw it on T.V. and cried. A father to their classmate did not survive. It appears he had also gone to buy bicycles.”

“Bicycles… where am I?

“In the hospital. There was a bomb at the Globe Hyper. Over seventy people died. It’s by Allah’s grace that you survived. I wonder what I would have done without you. At least Jamal and Karim have a father.”

“The Globe Hyper… bicycles… the cashier…”

“It was a bomb at the Globe Hyper. A terrorist group, the P.O.E., has claimed responsibility. Very evil People.”

“P.O.E…” he began to cry.

But it was not for the pain in his body he was crying.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In his fifty’s, he teaches English and literature at Njoro School, Passion for classics, once won the Nigerian Television Authority (N.T.A.) play-writing competition with the play ‘Eclipse at noon.’

BITS by Chantelle Makenwa Chiwetalu

by KREATIVE DIADEM | Apr 26, 2020 | SHORT STORIES

BITS

by Chantelle Makenwa Chiwetalu

She wonders how the conductor will look dead. Bruised, battered eyes the size of coconuts. No, eye. She has never seen anyone with two swollen eyes. As she gets on the bus, she wonders what will happen if the passengers gang up on him. Will he laugh stupidly? What words will he say? How many blows before his heart gives out? She has just read Copacabana. Petina Gappah is a genius, really.

At Mkpokiti, a yellow man in a green shirt and blue shorts gets in. His toes are pretty. She discreetly moves her right leg so she can see them better. There is perfection in every line, every curve. His nails are pink crescents topped with white. She stares at hers. Unremarkable. Dark. In need of a pedicure. She detects a curious smell about him, and realises it is his hair gel. It smells like a mixture of sulphur ointment and vanilla. They struggle against each other; sometimes, the sweet clarity of vanilla wins and sometimes the rotten-egg pungency of sulphur dominates with a vengeance. She imagines both in a Coldstone cup, the biggest size, cream and white with sprinkles of wavy brown hair. She imagines her annoying roommate eating it, smacking her lips.

The man gets down at Okpara Square. There is a small garden outside Enugu State House of Assembly. On a bench, bold and white is written, ‘don’t enter our flower.’ She wonders, as she has several times, who wrote this, and if no literate person who works at the House has seen it. It is probably the gardeners. She imagines them clustered approvingly as one of them, armed with purpose, dips a brush in white paint and begins to write a lopsided D.

They are at a red light. She stares outside. The driver of the car on the left looks imperilled by his seatbelt. It divides his overgrown taut-drum belly in half. The vest he’s wearing says Fitness for Days. He reaches under to scratch his crotch and then leans towards the glove box to retrieve a corn cob. She looks away.

They arrive New Market at 6:18pm. When she hands the conductor a 100 naira note, he sniffs and asks where she boarded the bus. ‘UNEC,’ she says. He makes to give her a 20 naira note but pauses and says, ‘UNEC? You don’t have change.’ She gives him one last look after she alights, imagines a tyre around his neck. She crosses to the other side of the road and takes a bus going back to UNEC. She does this all the time, takes the round-and-round-Enugu bus route to free her head and kill time. Her phone buzzes. A message from Nnamdi:

Babes, was looking at my table today and realised how we cud put it to gud use. I can almost hear you—

Delete.

‘Just negodu this idiot!’ The driver exclaims. He is talking about a driver who has recklessly overtaken him. He hisses. The conductor lets out a stream of invectives. He is short and slight, this one. A tire would slip right down his shoulders to land at his feet.

Twenty minutes later, she is at UNEC gate. Near Chapel of Redemption, a car pulls up and the driver winds down. He asks where she is going and she says ‘don’t worry, have a nice evening sir.’ He mutters something about girls that are faster than their shadows. When she continues walking, he tells her that her behind is the size of a saucer. She bursts into laughter, quickening her footsteps.

The Prayer Secretary welcomes her with a smile when she gets to Freedom Square, asks her how her day went. She says fine. He says good, please lead us in the opening prayer. She stops, only for a moment, and then she smiles and says okay and smiles again. She picks her words carefully: appreciation and magnification, the plea for forgiveness, requests. Amen.

When the vice president raises the prayer point, ‘anything that is hindering my service to God this year, scatter by fire,’ she imagines Nnamdi splattering apart, his body parts plopping upon one another: kidney on lung, small intestines a ropey bed for his heart, ribs broken like tiny ivory tusks swimming in his stomach’s remains. She imagines his thumbs, his dirty, dirty thumbs that type dirty, dirty things, landing on the earth, their pads up in eerie approval.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chantelle Makenwa Chiwetalu is a law student at the University of Nigeria, Enugu. Where she can, she submits ‘The words do not yet exist’ on her bio. It is deep-seeming but manifestly lazy, and that suits her just fine.

THE SCREAMS IN THE SILENCE by Samuel Oladele

by KREATIVE DIADEM | Mar 23, 2020 | FLASH FICTION, SHORT STORIES

THE SCREAMS IN THE SILENCE

by Samuel Oladele

The get-together venue was two-hundred kilometers away. Slouched in the front passenger seat in Michael’s Audi, I pictured my obituary glued on every wall in my street. GONE TOO SOON. Perhaps I was seconds to my obituary with that cigarette smoke curling out of Michael’s mouth?

I gawked at him. Cigarette hanging between his lips, his cheeks sucked in. A gush of camphor-white smoke surged towards the windscreen—the smoke drifting towards me. I held my breath, watched it dance out the window. One, two, …, seven, I started counting until all of it was out the window, and, open-mouthed, I inhaled, the car air safe again.

“Remember I’m allergic to smoke,” I wanted to say, but he knew already—no need reminding him. I wasn’t ready to deny a man his latitude to smoke in his car. If he tossed out the cigarette after telling him, it would be because he pitied me. I never wanted pity. I’d rather die than be pitied. But I wasn’t ready to die.

I had people I loved too much, people who would starve themselves for months if I were dead. My girlfriend would surely have a heart attack and, for a year, cry herself to sleep. She would even die single. Our relationship was five years old. Letting go would be like cracking rock with one’s head. And Rebecca, my younger sister, would be left alone in this world. I was her only living family.

I was not ready to die. I yearned for a family, kids I’d watch cartoons with and watch grow, a wife I’d cuddle at night and share aspirations with. Until I achieved these, I was going nowhere.

“Tunde. Sir, T.” Michael darted me a glance. “You’re still that guy, that I-don’t-talk-much guy.”

I nodded and faked a tight-lipped smile.

He took the cigarette from his mouth. Out of the window went a dense smoke. “Anyone you can’t wait to see at the get-together? All those our babes have grown now… and married. Perhaps we can hook up with the singles.”

“No.”

“You and this your Reverend-Father-boring-attitude. I hope you don’t die like this.” He chuckled.

He turned up the car radio volume, and a rap song blared out. He rocked his head back and forth, gibberish pouring out of his mouth. Not once had I heard him rap—he was a good singer, yes, but not a rapper—in the three years, we shared a bunk in boarding school. But a lot had changed within the six years we had graduated from secondary school. Even smoking was new. His dark cracked lips too.

I edged my face toward the car door, breathing harmless air, eyes on the leafless trees sprinting backward, their leaves sprawling dry below them.

There were moments I had wanted death to swallow me. Moments I wished I had been nonexistent. But not this moment. This sad, sucrose-sweet life had cut me a thousand times. And more. I was never a happy person. Perhaps neither a happy baby too. My childhood was terrible, chunks of solitude and rejections here and there. On many occasions, my dad, a drunk, said to me, “I never asked for this,”—pointing at me—”but you came… with your sickness. Had to marry because you were growing in your mother.”

Once, my mum left me at a supermarket. She came back three hours later, said she was having a bad day. My mum was a sad woman. I must have inherited her sadness. The only time she was happy was when her only friend, Mrs. Ibrahim, this chubby woman who cried when she laughed, visited.

My parents were always traveling. Lagos today. Abuja tomorrow. When they were at home, they quarrelled a lot, Mum raining curses on him or throwing her high-heels at him, Dad calling her a prostitute. Because they were always fighting, the four of us were never in the same place. Either Rebecca, Mum and I, or Rebecca, Dad and I. Never the four of us. Mum took us to church on Sundays, the fun park on Christmas, Mr. Biggs on our birthdays, and Dad drove us to school.

I always prayed they leave the house so that it could be peaceful. But it was never peaceful, never felt like home. When they weren’t home, miss Seyi, the house help, took care of us. She was a small woman with a temper that broke into yells and insults if we went outside to play, or asked her to change the TV channel to a cartoon channel, and if she was having a bad day, she lashed our buttocks with her whip.

Only my room gave me peace. So I was always there, shunning the world sliding by outside my bedroom, studying my school books, reading Charles Dickens and J.D. Salinger, tucking away the rest of my childhood from my parents’ rejection, from their quarrels, from Seyi’s yells and whip.

The Audi slowed. The butt of a fresh cigarette was between Michael’s lips, lighter lighting the other end. Smoke spurted out. Cars dashed past us, vanishing beyond the horizon, where the sky rose into a stretch of blue and scattered clouds. A puff of smoke sailed towards me.

My silence scared me, for it would kill me. Like several occasions, I had chosen silence again. In boarding school, I once sat in class and watched three girls, who were my classmates, slap Rebecca. She was heading into my class to see me when one of the three girls standing by the door grabbed her wrist.

Couldn’t she greet? They asked her. And before she could answer them, each of their palms slammed against her cheek. Rebecca staggered, then held the door, before scurrying away. I wanted to stand up. I wanted to yell at those girls, but this was a boarding school. If I did, Rebecca would become a target. So I remained on my seat, updating my geography note.

Two days later, she grabbed my wrist as I was walking out of the dining hall. On her wrist was a small bandage. Those same girls had told her to frog-jump in the girls’ hostel, she said, and when she refused, they broke a tree branch and flogged her. She stared at me, perhaps waiting for me to act like a big brother to defend her.

“Sorry,” I said. “I will talk to them.”

But I never did. Rebecca kept telling me how they snatched her provisions, how they whipped her bareback, how they cursed her, yet I did nothing. My inaction vexed her. For a whole session, she shunned me. And gradually, we became strangers. Strangers tied by blood.

Another of my not-speaking-up moment occurred one August afternoon, a year ago, in the market. I was buying some foodstuffs. About three open-fronted shops from me, a lanky man in babariga stood behind a young lady checking out bunches of plantain to buy. The man peeped around, snatched a brown purse out of the young lady’s handbag, and trotted away. Thief, I wanted to scream. I wanted to run after him, to grab his neck, to wrestle him to the ground. I wanted to be a hero. But I was not a hero. What strength did I have? What if he had a knife in his babariga? What if he stabbed me as I’d try to grab him? What if… So I stood there instead, looking like a rabbit. Minutes later, the young lady fumbled through her handbag and scattered everything in it on the ground, searching for her purse.

Of all the times I had not spoken up, someone should have strangled me for this one. It happened two years ago after my parents passed away. The loss was hard on Rebecca, for she had forgiven them of their neglect. She was always at home on weekends, playing chess with Dad and cooking with Mum. She sent me pictures—she and Dad, cheek to cheek, a chessboard on a glass stool in the background; she and Mum in the kitchen, open-lipped smiles across their faces—thinking I would also forgive them and come home. She never stopped sending me pictures until they died in their house after a fire accident. I should have been there for her after their death. Perhaps if I had, she wouldn’t have attempted suicide. Thank God she survived.

There I was still sitting next to Michael, next to his cigarette smoke. I edged my face away from the car door and faced him. The aftermath of Rebecca’s suicide attempt invaded my mind again: how pale and gaunt and tearful she was when she told me she never wanted to lose me. I never wanted to lose her too. I had to speak up. I faced Michael.

“Michael,” I said.

He turned and blew a dense smoke toward me. The smoke curled into my nostrils, into my mouth, went through my airways. He was befouling my airways. I clutched my chest. I was drowning inside.

Air. I needed air. I started coughing. Wheezing. I fumbled for my inhaler in my jeans pocket. I pulled out. With trembling hands, I uncorked it, pushed it into my mouth. Thrice I pressed. Salbutamol flooded my mouth. I pressed thrice again—another flood of Salbutamol. I was still wheezing and still trembling.

Michael was talking, but I couldn’t hear him. I pressed the inhaler thrice again. Pain surged through my chest. Weakness quaked the whole of me. The inhaler fell. Michael held my wrist, and the feeling of his cold palm dwindled. The world around me dimmed, then blurred. Light petered out. The world vanished.

I woke up later to pairs of worried-looking eyes hovering over me at the roadside. The air was warm in my nostrils.

“Give him space! He’s awake!” Micheal was on his knees, his palm under my head. He held my arm, and I staggered to my feet.

Still feeble, I averted the strange eyes, my back to everyone. Michael thanked everyone as they went back into their cars, before leading me into the Audi, walked to the driver’s car door and climbed in.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He fastened his seat belt.

“But, you already know.”

“I forgot. You should have reminded me.”

I stared at my phone and double-clicked the screen. The screen lighted up—no mobile signal.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He pushed the car key into the ignition, started the engine, which roared to life. We continued on our journey.

The Audi was now speeding like a hurricane wind, the trees moonwalking. Sun rays streamed into the car. The car air was now fresh and nontoxic, though the stench of cigarettes was still present.

Michael kept apologizing. He kept darting me, sorry looks, those looks I loathed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Samuel Oladele, an Applied chemist, graduated from Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. His fiction has appeared on Virtual Zone Magazine.

HOW BODIES BECOME FLUID by Ibe Obasiota

by KREATIVE DIADEM | Feb 10, 2020 | FLASH FICTION, SHORT STORIES

HOW BODIES BECOME FLUID

by Ibe Obasiota

Shortlist (Top Six) of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Flash Fiction Category)

I)
Love is a verb with wings; a free verb that makes itself into a ghost; a dark spectral that walks into our midst and sits. Love is the thing that catches our bodies between its palm and we lie there, dying out into new thresholds or dying altogether.
The first time Uju gives herself to Kachi, she says it is because she wants to satisfy a yearning; because for once she has found a man she has not outgrown, a man that is willing to think first. Kachi is not like Wole who says he fears for the man who would inherit her intelligence or like Francis who attributes her purity to her virginity. It happens in a discussion about a dead classmate and Bernth Lindfors’ criticism on Cyprian Ekwensi. They are in Kachi’s room. It is a dimly lit apartment with two small beds arranged side by side. The walls are painted a solid grey and there is only one window. Two louvres are missing but there’s a net coloured in dust. The other bed belongs to Kachi’s roommate Obiora who is never around or is always leaving when Uju comes around. Uju takes time to think about this and she concludes that Obiora is simply thoughtful. On the wall, there is a picture of Achebe’s carved from an old magazine. The picture is in black and white and there are little cuts on his cheek or put correctly, the paper. Below, there’s a quote that says: I believe the English Language is able to bear the weight of my African experience. The quote is written in Kachi’s cursive handwriting and he says it is a paraphrase of something Achebe had said. Kachi says it is one of the most brilliant things he has heard. Uju suspects it is him consoling himself. She suspects that his inability to speak his mother tongue would be the reason he terms it brilliant. Sometimes he says he is an incipient bilingual. Uju doesn’t know what he means and she doesn’t ask.
Uju lies on her back on Kachi’s bed. She looks straight to the ceiling of his room. She stares at the little black hole in it and she thinks it is a consolation of the fact that Kachi is a struggling man like every man out there nowadays.
‘I think Bernth Lindfors is another bitter white man who thinks he is wise enough to tell Africans what to write,’ Kachi delivers in one swift manner. It is like something he has rehearsed, something that he has said more than once.

‘I’ve only read Ekwensi’s Akin the drummer boy, Kachi,’ Uju says back.
‘Do you think it is a good book?’ There’s persuasion in Kachi’s eyes when he says it and it makes Uju bulge.
‘I think it is a fantastic book,’ Uju says back even though she remembers nothing from the book except Akin’s name that is of course in the title. She looks away from the ceiling just in time to see Kachi’s face break into a full smile. Another expression that slowly creeps into his smile is etched on his face.
‘Can I kiss you?’ He mutters quietly. He doesn’t wait for an answer when he claims her lips in a long kiss and she moans into his mouth. Uju hears him call someone that she believes is Obiora. He mutters something about Obiora not coming home and him making it up.

II)
The second time she gives herself to Kachi, it is because she realises that bodies are like things that can be transfused for healing. Like saline solutions. Like blood. There is something about blood that scares Uju, that reminds her how weak bodies are; how bodies could easily become fluid; how a small wound that emits blood makes the flesh around it go away; how if our bodies are attacked by too much pain, it all becomes fluid and passes away.
It reminds her of the time her younger sister is hit by a stray bullet in Eight Miles Market and how she bleeds out from the doctor’s mouth into words that begin with ‘we are sorry’ and end with ‘the body’. She wonders how bodies could easily dissolve, how if she says my body, it holds so much life but when the Doctor had said the body, it was death itself.
This time she decides to transfuse some of her into Kachi because love to her is a thing that can be packed into tiny containers called bodies and placed on the shelf of another body. This time it is because Kachi is not the winner of a short story prize. They are in his room. One minute, Kachi is holding his phone and scrolling through his news feed and the next minute, he is throwing his phone to the edge of his bed. The picture of them on his home screen flickers off. If not the situation, Uju would think it was calculated because anger enough would send the phone off to the ground. Kachi picks up his pillow, flings it to his door and mutters something about how difficult writing queer stories were. He keeps pacing his room, occasionally rubbing his head and doesn’t decide whether to sit or walk.

‘ I didn’t get in,’ he says. His voice breaking.
Uju moves to hug him when she whispers a small ‘next time’ into his ears. She could feel his body convulse in her arms and she could also feel him shake silently.

‘I worked hard for this one,’ he says as his voice breaks into a sob. ‘You work hard for everything,’ Uju wants to add but she doesn’t. ‘I really did,’ he continues.’ I even had to borrow a laptop. I should have won it. I should have written better. I should have….’ His voice melts into a cry that rests on Uju’s shoulder blade. Uju does not know when everything moves from soft consolation to them testing surfaces. They are rolling off Kachi’s bed into Obiora’s bed and finally settling into a frenzy of wild kisses and scattered clothes. This is the time Uju’s body becomes a panacea for Kachi’s illness; the time when she gives up a part of herself on the altar of healing; the time when she subjects her body to perforation because love makes one do such things. Because scars are artifacts of love.

III)
When Kachi leaves a part of his pain inside Uju, that abstract thing called pain metamorphoses into a human. It becomes a living, breathing thing within her. But when a part of a person lives in another, the depositor would have to nurture it like tender elements and watch it hatch into fine living things. If the depositor doesn’t, that part of him becomes like untamed things. Things that do not metamorphose completely, that have missed a stage in the cycle. It is this thing that Uju tries to avoid when she decides to pull out the part of Kachi that he couldn’t take with him when he left. She decides to lose the baby.
Everything ends at 8pm on a Wednesday night. It ends with a simple phone call. It ends in Kachi telling her that she did not help him or that she was intellectually weaker. He says she doesn’t understand his interests. She was too unlike him. These words made Uju think only of loss. There are various things that follow a loss. Sometimes it is an instant death of parts of one’s soul. Other times it is the metallic taste of depression on one’s tongue. It could also be a desire to carry out an exorcism, to ward off all the memories that precede a loss.

Tonight, Uju tells the taxi driver to stop two streets before her house. This is the first time she does this. She finds that her heart wanders. She wonders whether the man approaching with the black hat could see her heart step away from her chest. She also wonders whether the boys who whistled at her as she walked past could see the evidence of the thing she was carrying inside her. She wonders whether when they hurled insults at her, they knew they were insulting the thing inside her too. She also wonders whether this strange man and his hotel room could feel the pulse of the thing inside her. She wonders whether the man she is lying on top this evening knew that two minutes before he entered her and she unconsciously called Kachi’s name, she had decided to abort Kachi’s baby.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ibe Obasiota Ben is a Nigerian. She is a graduate in English and Literary Studies of the University of Calabar. She has won the African Writers’ Award 2018(Flash fiction category). She is also a gender critic and sometimes an editor. One will always find her reading or writing.

TO PULL A LION’S TAIL by Boloere Seibidor

by KREATIVE DIADEM | Feb 10, 2020 | FLASH FICTION, SHORT STORIES

TO PULL A LION’S TAIL

by Boloere Seibidor

Shortlist (Top Six) of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Flash Fiction Category)

Two days ago, there was another cold-blooded murder down Wellington Drive, riling up trepidation in the city.
What bothered him wasn’t the killings per sé, but the killer; a seemingly smart assassin. The victims—particularly ladies—were stripped naked before strangulation with their wrists slit open, and bore a neatly clipped paper, with a number inscribed on it, patched to their forehead with blood. These numbers, he’d surmised, bore a significance. What that could be, scared him too.
All these he’d narrated to his wife, Yemi, last night, made her neglect dinner. He understood her fears; they had a teenage daughter too.
His assistant, detective Rena, who’d been recently transferred down from the Uyo’s SCID, also lost her crave for nicotine, she stabbed her half-burnt cigarette in an ash bowl. Perhaps he should remind her this was the garden city, and to expect more, viler, mishaps.
His phone rang, jolting him from his disconcerted thoughts. A frantic Yemi was on the receiving end. He excused himself, and returned minutes later.
His expression, full of angst, gave him away.
“What is it?” Detective Rena frowned.
“It’s my daughter. . . she hasn’t returned.”
“From?”
“School.”
She chuckled and checked her watch.
“It’s 8:45, Bakpo. Something’s wrong.”
His skin grew ashen against the keen spikelets of the harmattan breeze. He quivered.
“I know. . .”

The drive home was incautious. He’d asked detective Rena to come along. . . just in case. He found his daughter by the veranda when he arrived. On seeing him, she sprung to her feet and rushed forward. She was safe! His relief was insurmountable.

As she drew close, he noticed she’d been crying. On her forehead was a red blot, and her blouse was stained with blood. His pupils dilated as his body’s mechanism built a reaction.

“What happened, Rose?”

She cried in heavy torrents, shaking her braids.

“I’m. . . fine, daddy.”

“Tell me! . . .there’s blood.”

Detective Rena tried to calm him; an abortive attempt.

“Rose!”

She sniffed back sobs then finally conformed. She led him to the parlour where he found Yemi lifeless on the floor in a small blood pool. He grew ashen. Numb. Perhaps he died that instant. Detective Rena moved closer and retrieved the paper on her head.

“Number 8,” she said softly. She didn’t know when she offered him a cigarette; she didn’t know what else to do.

* * * * *

Four days later, with the intervention of officer Yakubu Jed, a police general, the killer was found. His last killing seemed hasty, and his DNA imprints were caught.

“If it’s any consolation,” the general said to him during a lunch he merely poked at, “he’ll rot in prison.”

He nodded and acknowledged condolences from nearby colleagues.

He looked up when he saw Detective Rena running in, covered in sweat.

“There’s been another murder.” She breathed.

The general froze, looking from one stricken face to the other.

She lifted a small paper, “number one.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Boloere Seibidor is an undergraduate at the University of Port Harcourt. Boloere was born, brought up, and writes from the city of Port Harcourt, where she still resides. She is inspired by virtually all things; from music, to paintings, to people.

Her poem has been featured on SprinNG, and her other poems are upcoming on other online magazines. Her story was shortlisted for the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Writing Competition, where she won honourable mention.

When somber, she listens to Ed Sheeran and James Bay. And at the grimmest hours of the night, Boloere enjoys reading/writing suspenseful stories.

Meet her on Instagram @b.s_vinnie

THE FALLEN ANGEL by Ebeigbe Brian

by KREATIVE DIADEM | Dec 21, 2019 | CONTESTS, FLASH FICTION

THE FALLEN ANGEL

by Ebeigbe Brian

The Fallen Angel – Second Runner-up of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Flash Fiction Category)

The door let loose an agonizing creak as it slowly leaned open. Crumbled paint and what he could only assume to be mice droppings lay scattered the floor. It was funny to think that despite all that had happened, he could still return to this cave. A sanctuary that had sheltered him from the barrages of the unforgiving and unapologetic reality that was his life. He switched on the mains only to notice the cobwebs. It was better to ignore the terrible state of the place. A sudden fluttering of wings as resident bats swarmed out due to the surprising presence of a new entity forced him to crouch in astonishment. Some things can’t be ignored.

A pen, some books, a broken pencil and a few notes scribbled on old pieces of paper littered the table. He sighed, dropping his satchel. Pulling out a dusty record case, he walked towards the vintage record player. Two things struck him as his eyes darted across the old machine, his record although taken with him everywhere he went was still as good as new and his bird bath seemed to house a new creature. As to what it was…that would be left for later. He dusted the record player and blew at the dusty record. It read “Viva La Vida and all the melancholy of the institution.” There was only the initial scratch, the coarse sounds eventually blended out into a harmony echoed throughout the orifice in the mountain. Stripping down to just his tattered jeans, he sighed in relief as his broken wings clumsily fanned out creating all sorts of shadows that seemed to stun the little mice scurrying about. He lowered himself onto his seat next to the table. The old chair creaked and buckled but didn’t collapse under his familiar weight. Reaching into his satchel revealed three items. A cigar, a matchbox and a photograph.

No time was wasted in lighting the cigar. A cloud of smoke enveloped his face although his glowing brown eyes were still visible in the mist. Looking at the picture the stitches in his chest began to bleed once again as he beheld once more what he wanted but couldn’t physically have. Turning the picture over he read again the note written on it.

“[4/27, 10:21 AM]: Let them hurt. Let them molt and wither. Then, when the time comes, let them grow. The muscles surge and the feathers strong. They will lift you again and the sky will be your friend

Signed

The Eleventh Gentleman”

Would the council find him before it was too late?
Would jealously consume him?
How many more demons would he have to face and seal in his scars?
Would she be worth it?
Thoughts like these and more struck his mind like a rain of flaming arrows. However, before the cigar would finally find that one neural path straight to his brain, he could feel his skin being branded with one more curse. Unlike all the others on his back

Pain

Loss

Grief

This one was different.
…It was a name.
Overwhelmed, he dropped his head into the choking fog that was never just the smoke; it was pain. Pain searing and hot as his eyes shifted from glowing brown to smoldering red.
********

Elsewhere in a place just as derelict, a form could be seen kneeling in snow. A man dressed in a dark coat knelt amidst corpses. Corpses that could only have been victims of his wrath. Upon closer inspection anyone would tell you these three things; accompanying a truly terrifying groan, his eyes had slowly transitioned from murky brown to a vicious red. His coat seemed to burn, but from the inside and upon his kneeling he had spoken in a garbled tongue.

They would tell you upon his strange exclamation his then red eyes had cooled to an eerie green. They would mention that he had raised two fingers to hi temple and then spoken clear unmistakable English.

“He is slowly losing his grasp on the words of Power Merion. If we do not find him soon, he will be lost to us. I refuse to lose my brother to fate. I have only just regained my wings, so I leave his rescue in your hands”

They would tell you that he walked towards one of the corpses and slowly retrieved a sickle-like blade. Those strong enough to watch would recount how he cut an unforgiving gash on his neck, how he spoke without moving his mouth. Yes, if they were strong enough, they might even remember the words.

“To The Craftsman of Original Sin. Lord of Deceit. To the true Marquee of Snakes. To Lucifer’s Bane. Come forth”

Now for the rest of the story it would be best to visit the underworld, for if there were men foolish enough to listen to this chant. To watch the hand signs. They were undoubtedly dead. However, if you did manage to raise a witness, they would mention one thing before crumbling away into the nothingness. They would speak of the emergence of a dark figure that seemed to tug at their exiting soul. Whose aura foretold the song of death and the chant of anarchy. They would tell you of its sickening grin and hoarse whisper of a voice. Most importantly, as their soul was dragged to hell for whatever sin, they would scream on and on about how our unidentifiable winged killer had looked this being of darkness straight on and spoken only two words

“Hello Mother”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

From The Eleventh Gentleman:

My name is Brian as you now know and I’m a medical student at the University of Benin.

I’ve long-held dreams of either changing the world or setting it ablaze with my work. Childish and overly ambitious I’m sure. Writing and indeed the arts in general for me have served as an outlet for my erratic emotions. It’s been an honor participating in this year’s competition and I hope to try again next year.

I’ll push the line a bit to thank my Council Members: The Angel after whom this piece was fashioned, The Prince who is an idiotic yet heavenly Gift, to Percival and the Last Councilman… thank you for your wisdom. To naMe who even in absence pushes my pen. My last words will go to Sosa… I’ll continue to thank God for having met you.