Tag: Nigeria

All Stories, General Fiction

The Broken Piece of Me by Doyin Ajayi

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Adult Content

For Ann

That sound, sharp.

It slices through the air like a whip. It jolts me awake. I haven’t gotten used to it. The harmattan wind blows through the open windows. I rub my shoulders and try to warm my body up.  The huge searchlight in the yard casts a shadow of the cashew tree on the walls. The branches spook me. They’re wraiths reaching for me, their pointed tips looking like spears aimed at me, reaching for my soul. A woman’s scream. Sergeant Wasiu’s gun cocks again. He’s the chief of the guards – a cruel man with gallows humour. The creeping feeling rises up in me again. The night’s quietness is eerie. The woman’s screams are louder now, they’re bloodcurdling.

The gun roars. Her screams stop abruptly.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

The Voice of the Poor- A Cry for Justice by Torsaa Emmanuel Oryiman 

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For the first time in our lives, we have come to know true terror, the kind that turns human beings into prey, hunted like chickens in the bush. The air in our village is thick with fear, the nights are filled with silence, broken only by muffled sobs and the hurried whispers of those who dare to speak of the evil that has gripped us. The weight of despair sits heavily upon our chests, making each breath feel stolen, each step feels uncertain. Every passing second is a countdown to an unknown fate, and every heartbeat is a reminder of our helplessness.

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Short Fiction

Beside Kam Salem by Adédoyin Àjàyí

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I had been dining in Ma Mabel’s bar for three months before I saw Bimpe. But nobody spoke about her. They all spoke about Ma Mabel. Yet it seemed no one knew her. Her bar was on Moloney Street, near the police academy. It wasn’t too far from my workplace in Marina. Everyone came to Old Ma Mabel’s bar. Different people, from various walks of life, Lagosians troubled with Lagosian problems – financial worries, overbearing bosses and cheating spouses, not to mention the long lines of traffic that lined Third Mainland Bridge every other day. No one knew Ma Mabel. Her bar had been near Kam Salem for longer than I remembered. Some of the patrons said she had died, others said she was an old woman confined to a wheelchair, and only came out of her house at night. She was elusive, a poor imitation to Fitzgerald’s Gatsby. I doubt she had Gatsby’s boundless charm though.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Expressway by Simon Bell

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He could recall years before, when he was working down south, there had been this exhausted and exhausting expressway, the Togo-Badagry A1. As you curve out of the greater Lagos conurbation you eventually hit the track, a cheerless concrete, four lane highway which if you stayed on long enough took you clear out of Nigeria and would allow you to proceed along the coast road, looking out at the Bite of Benin, to Togo, Ghana and beyond. He remembered one occasion when he got so far as the Benin border, but it was not a good time to travel. He was young, mid 30s, and Nigeria was plagued by bad politicians, bad policies and bad law enforcement. Not a helpful combination if you are a young professional man from upstate, travelling alone.

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