short story
JL Maikaho | Weight of Time | Flash Fiction
We were the last to receive news of the attack. Mother was picking hibiscus for tea at the small garden behind our house while Labo and I roasted corn over an open fire in the courtyard. Our neighbour Aliza had rushed into our compound, wailing with the frustration of someone who bore bad news they…
Wisdom Adedeji | Cockroaches | Fiction
1. The way it curled over the colour fading wall irritated me, its antennae spreading over the surface as if finding a radio signal. While I watched, it lifted off the wall and towards my direction. Being a boy and always scared of cockroaches is an abomination. I hate those creepy creatures. Especially when they…
Lyrically │ Feyisayo Anjorin │ Short story
I keep sneering at the words of these oloshis who give me solemn and sagacious looks born of their deep-seated belief that my lungs would soon turn black and my life would keep getting shorter for the pleasure I get from this thing. Is life that predictable? I smoke, therefore I am doomed to a…
Little Things │ Sayo Juba │ Short story
“But she’s not that kind of girl,” she screamed with her hands on her chest, her heart racing as a trickle of sweat ran down her neck. She was right. Chinyere was not the kind of girl anyone would think of as getting pregnant at such an early age, she was thirteen. Oftentimes when Lola…
A Maybe True Tale │ Kathryn Olushola │ Short story
When I was five years old, my mother was critically ill. She was in and out of the hospital like a clumsy drug dealer going in and out of jail. She was always weak and could not even bring herself to bath her own body. Here’s the full story, but at some point, everything will…
Your Life is in Your Mouth │ Tayo Oladipo │Short story
So many times I have tried to kill myself. Not like I really wanted to, like people do these days, but some of the things I did almost cost me my life at different times, even when my life was just starting. For instance, one hot Saturday afternoon, I was helping Moomi pick beans for…
Darkness & Despair│Onuchukwu Joseph│Short story
1.So here you are, seated on the poorly cemented floor with your back against the itchy wall in this small room that shouldn’t even be for the living. Wet in your own sweat and burning with rage and the heat in the crowded room as the sun rays seeped through gaping holes in the corrugated…
Jesus Is the Sweetest Name│Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi│Short story
The choristers chorus the hallelujah song by Handel Messiah, so euphoniously. Sitting at the edge of a long, brown pew in church, your gaze lingers on him. He is the coordinator of the most revered choir in the diocese of Lokoja, Kogi State, St. Cecilia Choir Itakpe— No other choir could stand it. After winning…
Two Significant Figures by Bunmi Oke
I always wondered why she had issues with the arithmetic. It just didn’t suit her. Maybe, she was too good at her teaching career to tolerate any inaccurate application to real life. She taught maths. “Like how’d the Vicar say after joining, ‘The two are become one?’ If the two are one, then they are…
Book Review: What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
With an original take on speculative, dystopian, fantastical, magical realism and any other term that stands for ‘knocks the breath out of you’, Lesley Nneka Arimah has spun a collection of short stories in such a spectacular and intelligent manner that will stay with us for a very long time.