Read: Fiction

A LESSON IN FISHING
DAMI AJAYI

It was not a weekend, not a time for a son to be around his fisherman father except that the teacher’s strike had extended beyond the Local Council’s “worst-case scenario,” twenty-eight days and counting.
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BETTY
ADEBIYI OLUSOLAPE

The Ijaw Students Association of the Delta State University was having its annual Jaja of Opobo Memorial Lecture. It had been one hundred and seventeen years since Jaja had died on his way home from forced exile in Saint Vincent. He was born in the same year Bonaparte died in exile on Saint Helena. His exile was a price he paid for breaking a personal rule of his: never trust a white man. Perhaps he was tired, a lifetime of being suspicious of one and all, of intrigues, war both at home and abroad, it was enough to wear out even the sturdiest soul.
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MY BMW
EGHOSA IMASUEN

I frowned in the car beside Mommy, remembering I was happy with the party only after Uncle Max gave me that Five Hundred Naira note. Not when I was allowed to run my hands across the sides of the shiny cars parked outside; not when I smelt the party-cake smell of the big parlour upstairs.
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A SHADOW’S QUANDARY
ABUBAKAR ADAM IBRAHIM

That was why I sought out this widow; because I knew her husband, because I knew exactly what happened to him on that night, because I think my atonement should start with her – perhaps then I will find the elusive peace to raise my own children, my family that cannot live with the penitent grouch I have become because they do not understand.
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COUNTING BEANS
AYOBAMI ADEBAYO

It was one of the most trying moments of my life, at least up to that point in it. Words were spilling up my throat, crashing into my mouth. I could not speak them for they would earn me a slap from Mama. So I waited, listening to Mama and Baba argue my fate.
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DOUBLE AFFAIR
EMMANUEL IDUMA

My neighbour said he sat on a rainbow with a ring on his finger and the world under his feet, while he invited me to talk with him later. I was amused by this, especially by how his face contorted when he spoke, as though he was saying something very serious. But I was more amused when he had been married for about a year, and this fact contrasted with the pimples on his face, the kind only adolescents have.
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LONG AFTER DEATH
OLAOLUWA AKINOLUWA

I got off the bus at New Extension, oblivious to the teeming faces before me, smoothening my shirt and moving towards the Patent-Medicine Shop. I was relieved to see that there was no crowd at the door. There was a couple with a child and a man with his back turned to me, staring at a large Tuberculosis poster on the wall. Muazu smiled in my direction and continued with the couple. Muazu had always been my doctor. He runs his shop every morning between 7am and 10am, when he leaves for the hospital where he actually works.
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END LOVE
PAUL ONANUGA

I never stopped to wonder, even as the bus sped on, creating that familiar image of trees and grass fleeing the other direction, “when did things go wrong?”. My mind was clouded by varied thoughts. It definitely did not happen today. The smoke occasioned by bush burning stung my eyes; the planting season was only just around the corner. Planting season? My own planting season has been jeopardized, the pot of soil shattered. How could Funto just throw away four years of courtship, blow it away with the whirlwind?
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GONE, BABY GONE
DAMILOLA AJAYI

She left.  Perhaps in the morning after I had clutched my torn portfolio and headed out on my usual job-hunt. After the morning sun arrived in its intense beauty and the city awakened from its quasi-slumber. After husbands grumbled out of bed in readiness for the day’s work; after children queued buckets at the dribbling tap to fetch their bath water; after the nosy housewives brought out their laundry to be washed with home-made soaps and gossip.
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ANOTHER SCAR
CHIAKA OBASI

Jeremy’s mother’s voice always echoed in his ears at such tempting moments.
“Your anger is a marked identity you must do away with.”
As a loner in school, he would not tell any one how he got the big scar under his left eye, and why he always felt this scar with his fingers.
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THE ROOT
CONSTANT-NGOZI OZURUMBA

As if dark dew smokes down the earth, each day comes and darkens into night when its sun suffocates.
One day, the sun had begun choking. And just like the sun, Ibukun’s spirit had risen on that day. Sunday, 11th January 2009. And like the galaxies around the sun, unlikely issues journeyed in whirls around Ibukun’s mind, dizzying him.
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GOD SEES BACKWARD
EMMANUEL IDUMA

They thought his death was the final thing God was to do before he ended the world. So they made mourning faces at the street, their signature of grief everywhere, walls and doors, streets, and even people. This was the weight of grief, that when she heard it her cloth loosened first, then she fell to the floor. And at that point, her nearby son did not care what he saw beneath her cloth, for in grief there is no shame.
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AN ACT OF GOD
DAMILOLA AJAYI

It all began that evening when papa knocked on the door, fully dressed in his police uniform save for his beret. The squeaky sound of the opening door is still vivid in my mind after seven years. More vivid is papa’s expression: furrows of worry etched his face. He seemed to have aged since he left for work that morning. He managed a smile that seemed to have lost its vitality; it was the husk of a smile.
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BOBO'S MANY PROBLEMS
ARTHUR ANYADUBA

Bobo was particularly happy that morning…
The lone feeling of having his distant sisters home, the spirit of reunion with loved ones that one was not always privileged to be with all the time. He was specifically delighted, if not excited, that some kinds of redeemers were coming to their home: saviours that would not only alleviate his suffering, fearful condition, but who would, to his joy, avenge all the misgivings he had suffered from Amoge, the house help.
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TELEPHONE CONVERSATION
BOLA AKINLOYE

As the phone rang, I thought about the answer I would give if he asked me who was speaking. He picked it on the third ring.“Hello, is that Beno?” I did away with the professor, so as to sound like an acquaintance.
“Yes, Good afternoon. Who is this?” came the hoarse voice from the other end.
“Beno, how are you? Long time no see, my friend. How is everything?” I feigned a deep voice.
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