PUBLISH'D AFRIKA

THEME: KNOCK YOURSELF OUT
TITLE: Why Him?
Written Mongezi Leslie Cakathiso

Perhaps, a wrong father birthed me. This thought drowned me into deep oceans of hatred and curiosity. What mechanism selected and bestowed me to my parents? Is a person’s consciousness restricted to their genetic material they inherited from their parents? What makes me, me? Imagination embraced a multitude of possibilities; to be a child to other biological parents but still maintain this consciousness. But reality denied, left me with this father. The urge to escape this man’s cruelty led me to this absurd thought.
Last night, my father came home intoxicated. His speech blurred into dissonance as a radio with a bad signal. Eyes hardly opened. He woke up still with the pungent alcohol stench all over himself this morning.
“Thando, where’s my money?”
I took him to bed. We staggered together, but God knows I didn’t search his pockets. After a violent door knock, I opened the kitchen door, let him and his friend in, and gave him his food. My sister placed it in the microwave just before she left the house at dusk. He was conveyed in his friend’s car upon his arrival. Uncle Andile, who was also slightly drunk, brought him home; time for cricket choirs and the twinkling stars arrived, so human animal primitiveness was out hunting for the species so that it self-destructs. The sooty, dingy streets were infested with drug-made zombies prepared to confiscate lives to hand over to their master, addiction.
“I said where’s the money?”
His gaze lightened up the whole room. A crimson-eyed cruel creature; a devil with eyes seemingly plunged in blood.
“Dad, I didn’t take it.”
His intense, dreadful, negative energy inflated my eyes such that I stared with a gleam from tears of fear. As he neared, I reversed in an attempt to evade him. With his huge, hairy hands possessing a power grip as firm as an ape’s, he gripped my neck and lifted me up, off the ground. He panted. His warm, stinky breath blew my face and goose bumps grew. Alcohol, old sweat, armpits, and yellow teeth with plaque all formed a strong odour that nauseated me. He fiercely threw me, down to the floor, precisely where he spitted his bolus with contempt, yesternight. The morning mist flew as the dawn’s sun chased it away. I landed not with my head but my back. Nonetheless, I still felt agony.
“Dad, what are you doing?” I invited a slap. As I opened my eyes, the blood’s acrid odour irritated me. The sun rays that penetrated the windowpane, burned my skin. He gave me a semi-coma.
“Thando, my goodness! Are you okay?” My sister, returned from her boyfriend’s home. I felt a sharp stinging pain in my nose. As I caressed the nose, I suspected I was smearing it with blood. My hand met my eyes to confirm. I panicked as I saw coagulated blood. I wiped it with my T-shirt.
“Who did this to you?”
“Your father.”
My heart palpitated with animosity. Warm tears crossed my face to my chin like rivers meeting at the ocean. I wiped them off with a tight fist. She stretched out a hand for me to grab, but I shook my head. My eyes ascended from her rejected, weighed-down hand to the curve on her belly that grew from flatness, almost to a sphere over the past five months.
“Don’t feel sorry for me!” Nolwazi knew I didn’t mean that and replied with a sigh. I guess it is what men do to ease themselves from shame of being seen as weak. The grumpy old man was definitely at his oasis to quench his thirst again.
I limped through the corridor from the dining room, to my bedroom. As I stood before a sideboard mirror, I saw the consequences of the painful disaster my face endured; a hill on the mouth, a mountain on the forehead. Pain, why do we feel pain? It is a defence mechanism, it hinders us from hurting ourselves, but when we do self-harm, it means life is more painful than the pain we ought to put ourselves through, for death. I had enough of this life. I wanted to end it. If I would be numb in my attempts, I would end it, casually, easily, at a snap of a finger.
The five-digit trails which were a result of a slap that thundered on my face, triggered a malicious thought. I wished he had died, not Mom. In 2010, I woke up on a pattering midnight, to an argument between my parents. I curse that day!
“Did you expect me to understand when you impregnated your student, Sibusiso?”
I couldn’t believe my ears. We don’t have skeletons in the closet; skeletons are within us, they support our very being. It all made sense, they lied to us! The Department of Basic Education dismissed him; he didn’t resign as we, my sister and I, were led to believe.
My bedroom is adjacent to theirs and given how father yelled and the nucleated houses, it was impossible not to hear. I’m certain the whole neighbourhood heard clearly. They knew everything. In townships, news travel faster than light, something my introvert mother hated.
“So you were retaliating, huh?” Sibusiso said. He shouted with his coarse voice. Beneath my blankets, buried as a corpse, I only prayed the tension ceased.
“No, I didn’t say so,” Cikizwa said. Cikizwa is my mother. As her name implies, she was adorned with beauty. Nolwazi is her duplicate – she resembled her mother’s dark complexion, golden brown intense eyes and a calm temperament.
“But you retaliated! Who’s the father?” Father cried bitterly.
“Please don’t do this, I’m sorry,” Cikizwa said. She sobbed.
Three shrill gunshots that emanated from their room pierced the night’s chaotic atmosphere; transformed it into serenity. Tears filled my eyes. Wailing sirens of police cars interrupted the momentary silence. How could he shoot a woman with children, his children, like that? Even if he felt remorse, it was too late. Mom gradually lost her warmth, forever. That’s how our home lost its breath.
We held numerous conversations with my sister, but not how and why mother died. We would debate about consciousness, existence, evolution, religion, but not about mother’s death. Illegitimate pregnancies conceived, one by mother and another by my sister at sixteen. Unwelcomed karma came knocking and kicked in. Most teenagers bear children nowadays; it might be an evolutionary trait; it ensures the species continues to exist. Adultery is polygamy and ensures variation. Only in my father’s absence was I allowed to say such a thing. I was hurt too, at least by a single incident. Nolwazi was expelled from school due to her pregnancy. Mother’s case on the other hand, excited me; a slight possibility I could not be this man’s son. He returned yesteryear, in 2018, from prison. Peace permeated this house in his absence, for eight years.
When the sun hid its face from Earth, the monster crawled out of its pit, back to our home, its territory, its house. The door knock persisted.
“Vulani maan, this is my house.”
The moment I undid locks on the kitchen door, my hands shook like an old person’s. Nolwazi was about to finish cooking. Her chicken stew’s aroma caused me excess salivation. I swallowed constantly. I ushered him in, his eyes glazed but he stood on his own. Andile’s car roared as it drove off. The pleasant smell beckoned Dad, but he didn’t forget his daughter didn’t sleep at home.
“Nolwazi, where did you sleep?” She was on exile. Whenever father returned, someone turned to a punching bag. The man needed no reason, but this time he had an excuse.
“Are you mute?”
“No Father,” Nolwazi said. Her fidgeting tiny hands started sweating. Tears engulfed her eyes.
“Then answer me!” That hellish fire ignited his eyes once more. My blood boiled, my body burned.
I already prepared for the day, the war. I wanted to avenge Mom, my sister and I. The endless throes. I clenched my hands into tight fists.
“Leave her alone!” I witnessed my pregnant mother’s death; I didn’t want that happening to my sister.
“People are talking, you are pregnant!” he aggressively flashed his yellow teeth and winced. He pointed me with a trembling first finger. “And you, you stole my one thousand rand; Andile saw you.”
Why did Andile lie? Maybe, he stole it himself. Sibusiso never bought us groceries or anything. We sustained the home with piece jobs, but he had the guts to tell me I was a thief? They were both unemployed, but Andile drove a luxurious, latest Audi. I heard rumours he was a drug dealer, certainly he used Dad to sell. Father always had money, but he spent it on booze and women.
The finger returned to Nolwazi. “You are a slut, just like your mother.”
An invisible dagger stabbed my heart as I saw Nolwazi’s head hung down and tears flowing like a stream. A few drops hit the floor. We all stood, Dad and my sister, near the table with cutlery and a stove with the glistening pot of chicken stew on top of it. Father grabbed a sharp, shiny knife. It made a clicking sound as he drew it and made a gentle collision with spoons and forks. Nolwazi shivered. He slowly approached her.
During the wee hours, when he was one step away from her, I pulled the trigger, the barrel pointed towards my own father. Three cracking sounds of fireworks. Rat-tat-tat. Each bullet for each person I love including myself.
“Like father, like son,” I said. Nolwazi cried, shouted for help with her eyes shut and her ears covered. Her father’s blood smothered her white, loose dress. A mutilated corpse on the floor; three holes on his forehead, blood oozed after it spurted. I saved her. I saved myself, us.
What was Mom thinking? Why did she cheat? Why did father cheat in the first place? Why do people cheat? Cheating is natural and most species in Kingdom Animalia prove it. Every organism increases chances of its gene pool survival and transfer by increasing its number of partners. As humans, we deem things we practice the most as immoral. It’s amusing that we define love as something other than what it truly is – selfishness. Both romantic and platonic love. No one wants to be cheated on, but many people cheat. We expect love to be something magical, while our very own selfish actions defile it.
I was surprised by how Father reacted to Nolwazi’s pregnancy. He did exactly the same thing to someone’s child. That’s pedophilia. Not even a single day have I thought how Mom is, where she is if she still continues to exist as a life-force. I was bothered by how her absence made me feel. Isn’t that selfishness? Probably it’s because I don’t believe in supernatural beings; that I don’t consider her a life-force.
I am convinced that consciousness is limited to biological factors. That there’s no escape. Your biological constituents; a sperm cell and an egg cell that resulted to the final product that is you, are the only factors which could ever result to you and this consciousness you have. This would disprove reincarnation if true. I need to prove it, and when do we become conscious, before or after birth? Is consciousness energy? If it is, it could justify reincarnation. Consciousness could be the greatest form of energy that observes itself, other energies and matter. Thus, it can neither be created nor destroyed but transferred from one body to another. I hope Sibusiso does not awake.
Nostalgic childhood memories resurfaced on my gallery of imagination. Nolwazi recited her poetry.
‘Does God Exist?
A dream
We are subconscious
Natural is not real
Supernatural is the perfect existence
At sleep, we perceive
Existentia not as this real
Events chaotic, reasoning not impressive
Awake to vividly think and feel
Likewise, after death
We think and feel realer than in this world
Comprehension of the truth
The truth about the existence of GOD
The dead know He is no myth
While we ask ourselves, “Does God truly exist?”’
Existentia, a word she coined; everything that exists whether a living or non-living organism. A compelling artwork for a seven-year-old. Her performance blew my fourteen-year-old mind. She believes there are three levels of consciousness and existence; that God exists more than we do; He is more conscious. She swayed from left to right as if a pendulum, heartfelt every word from her art piece. Her face beamed with innocence and excitement. Those were the days; when father still bought us sweets, read us stories. Love turns to pain, pain to hate; the more you love, the more you hate.
Just like how police and forensic vehicles did nine years ago when they took Dad and Mom’s corpse away. They formed an alliance of kaleidoscopic flashing lights and siren symphonies. Nolwazi carried her hands over her head, her face gleamed with tears. My life was over. But that’s not how I viewed it. Handcuffs set me free, I found a better way; escapism from my sorrows and woes.

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PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Magazine Facebook Short Story Competition is funded by the National Arts Council, Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme 3

THEME: KNOCK YOURSELF OUT
TITLE: Little Nights
Written by Andile Dube

I was too drunk to even notice my little girl leave with her mother. I only remember the squeal of our only suitcase scratching against the door. Layla, my little goddess, placed a drawing on my belly before she walked out. I couldn’t make out what it was at first but as the substances wore off, it began to look more and more like the giant white doll we had spotted in town the week before. She usually drew the things that she wanted the most.
My wife heard that I was getting my act together and she offered me a lifeline back to Layla’s life again. Having almost burnt down the one room we were renting with Layla inside during one of my escapades, seeing her once was more than I deserved. They were both staying with another man, a better man than I would ever be. I couldn’t compete. I was actually proud of my wife.
I got on the bus to the big city to see my daughter for the first time in a year. I was broke for the entirety of the twelve months but I couldn’t go empty-handed. That is why for two days and two nights prior to that trip, I had been working on a farm as Gogo Sebata’s nurse aide. I had enrolled into multiple nurse aiding courses before but fell out along the way in every one of them. Amongst the papers my wife had left was a pamphlet about a free nurse aiding course which offered as a courtesy by one of the ambitious politicians in my neighbourhood and so there I was, back in the fold again but this time, I finished.
Monica welcomed me to the farm. Her eyes looked through me in a very disconcerting manner. I was caught up in her artistic wrinkles I didn’t even notice the farmhouse filling my peripheral. I stretched my neck to take in its vastness. Not a spot but my fingers stained the oil paint. Monica stopped talking altogether.
“You will tell me when you are done,” she said.
“I’m done,” said I.
“The petrol for the generator is over there,” she pointed.
We walked into the house and again, she weighed me with her sharp stare. There were tiny thuds coming from above the ceiling, very haphazard in their nature. They kept ticking in my ear until Monica spoke again.
“I called for a female nurse aide,” she said before we walked into the open living room.
Gogo Sebata was folded into her wheelchair, facing an array of portraits.
“They bring her peace you know?” Monica said, “That is Naledi, her daughter.”
I only nodded.
We walked into a long corridor. At the end of it was a bed, on the other, a traditional artwork in the form of a spiral. I walked away from it before I turned and walked back towards it with the same fascination as Layla when she first ran her fingers through my beard.
I placed my hand on the spiral. It was gentle yet gritty on the fingertips. It felt like reed but lighter. A maize leaf it was. I pressed my hand on it a bit deeper and all the days came back to me in a rush. The ward sister looking at me with disgust when I held my baby for the first time. The security guard asking me to wait outside because the alcohol might affect the premature babies. The days rushed back even more vividly. My father-in-law giving me money to buy Layla some diapers after I had ran through my moonlighting pay at the local shebeen.
“I don’t have all day,” Monica called out. “Over there you will find lighters for the gas stove. One of them is faulty but the other is okay.”
“My apologies.”
“This will be your room,” she said pointing to the bed at the end of the corridor. “I know there in no privacy, but you have to see her choke on her dentures or fall from the wheelchair at a distance.”
I felt naked the more I took in the openness of my room. The view gave me solace, however. It was the maize field. Ever green in Monica’s words. It was so vast it curved with the earth.
“The Sebatas had so much money from this field that they were able to fund a whole insurrection during the colonial days. After that they mainly used it to fund the Naledi foundation.”
“Naledi Foundation?” I asked.
“Her daughter took her own life,” she said handing me a journal.
“Can’t imagine myself without my Layla,” said I.
“Hm,” she replied. “That will be everything. I will be back after three days. Just fill your name in this journal.”
The journal had a long list of names, mostly women’s names. The list was a reflection of the time Gogo Sebata had been ill.
“Three days?”
“I have a family matter to attend to, you will only be paid after that.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I know you heard them,” Monica said.
“What exactly?”
“The thuds from the ceiling.”
I had long forgotten about them, until now. Only then did I hear them more clearly.
“We have cat-sized rats roaming the ceiling boards. Downside of keeping corn,” she said. “Don’t let them scare you at night.”
Gogo Sebata only blinked, no more or less. She didn’t even flinch when I pressed the insulin against her veins, but her fingers moved slightly. I took out her dentures and fed her porridge. I put them back in and changed her diapers and the rest of the day was just me waiting for the day to end.
The first night was uncomfortable as any first night anywhere away from home should be. I stayed up until midnight, twisting and turning on the single bed. I got up and placed Layla’s drawing on top of the dusty wardrobe before I went back to bed again. I finally found the sweet spot which gave me the view of the sky reaching maize stalks swaying back and forth against the night.
When that spot became uncomfortable, I sat up to the view of the long corridor and right there at the end of it, wearing the night gown I had slid onto her before I slept, was Gogo. She was facing the spiral. My tongue rolled as I tried to scream. The hairs on my skin stood tall and when she placed her hand on the spiral, I slammed back onto my bed with an intense whiplash.
From above, the tiny thuds got louder than my heartbeat; hundreds of them. It felt like a very short moment before I sat back up again and on the end of the same long corridor was nothing but the spiral and the morning sun.
Gogo was still where I left her the evening before, but I couldn’t shake the feeling from the previous night. My body was heavy on my back and there was an itch I couldn’t quite place until I agonisingly bent down to put my crocs back on. My toenails were filled with mud and right from my room were muddy footprints which ran all the way to the outside. I followed them with a mop, and they disappeared into the thickness of the maize field.
I felt the previous night’s dream stinging into my every thought. I went back to feed Gogo her breakfast. Her stare on this particular day was uncomfortable. She opened her mouth and held the spoon tight with her dentures.
“Let go,” I pleaded with her, but she held on. She slowly turned her head and spit it out in the direction of the door. I dialled Monica to understand Gogo’s behaviour, but she never picked up. I went outside to dispose of the rest of her porridge. Against the pristine wall was a hoe and a digger. It wasn’t an alarm with the place being a farm before anything, but those footsteps were there, all around the tools.
Halfway to the big city was a mall. I walked past a kids’ shop on my way from the loo and it called out to me, certainly, the giant white doll. I looked closely at the price tag but my reflection at the shop’s window jumped at me. I was bent. My arms were hanging on my shoulders. The bus’s horn snapped me out of the sorry view, and I ran back to it. The doll, against my will, kept me at the farmhouse for the second night. Toiling for the money to buy it was the least I could do for my daughter.
That day had been rough. I couldn’t walk a room without bending over my knees to rest. When you sleep without properly studying for an exam, you usually have a nightmare where everything is falling apart. The question paper is too heavy, you cannot open it. The time is rolling away too fast, and your pen has run dry. I had a similar nightmare. Gogo was begging for her insulin, and I couldn’t open the refrigerator to get it. In another instance, the vials were stone frozen. Her screams for the insulin got louder. There is a point in the dream where you realise that it’s just a dream. I came to that realisation and the reality that I passed out without giving Gogo her insulin.
I snapped out of my sleep right into the chattering of my teeth. Above me were the stars and I was involuntarily ploughing the ground with a hoe. The maize stalks were so tall I couldn’t tell where I was. I forced my fingers to let go of the hoe but there was still digging all around me. Making my way through the stalks, I met a very short person or thing ploughing. One in front, another beside and all of them everywhere, quietly ploughing away. They were in sync as if in a hive.
They all stopped at once and started marching. My bones were stone cold, running was out of the picture, I just walked fast in front of the short things. At some point I started running towards the lights in the distance. It was the house. I burst into the door and Gogo was lying flat on the floor right beneath the spiral. I packed my bag and stopped. I did not need the clothes. I tried to reach for my daughter’s painting above the wardrobe, but it was just too high for me until I hopped on the bed and retrieved it.
Gogo was still there, cold on the ground. I thought of the crime I was committing by walking out of the door. I was potentially throwing away any chance of ever seeing Layla again, so I ran back to her and felt for her pulse. She was still there, barely. I sat her on the wheelchair and ran across the house to the refrigerator to get insulin but the door between myself and the insulin was the one from outside. It went open with a loud screech and the short creatures marched through with their muddy footsteps. I did not find the heart or the courage to jump over them. I got scared and ran back to Gogo whilst covering my ears to block the hundreds of wet thuds. Her temperature was dropping fast.
Maybe I should leave the witch and disappear into the world, I thought. Why am I trying to save her? I wondered.
I took the petrol and sprayed it all over the living room carpet and the corridor. The lighter couldn’t go off. I dropped it on the floor to go and look for another one.
“You are not going to take this field away from me,” a voice said from behind. I turned and a hoe handle ran across from face. I could feel my nose on my chin. I was dragged across the corridor and in the darkness, I could see the small creatures climbing through the trap door into the ceiling. The bitterness of blood filled my mouth. I spat out a few of my teeth before I was back into it. I was heavily fastened into Gogo’s wheelchair.
“There was a reason why I called for a female nurse aide. They never forget to give her the insulin to last her the night.”
It was Monica. The beautifully aged caretaker of the farm. Gogo’s body was lying beside me on the ground. Her fingers were still moving but she was wasting away.
“I served this family when I was still a child. The very moment they could afford better people than myself, they kicked me out, but I had lost all the days of my youth toiling away, young man. Rich people take and take, and they never give. It was my turn to take so I took Naledi away from her and used her blood for a ritual which would make me forever rich, and you tried to take that away from me.”
The more she spoke, the louder the ceiling rumbled with the thuds. Finally, a flick. Gogo, in her miserable state, got the lighter I had dropped to work. The flame ran across the carpet to the corridor then to the wall with spiral. When the spiral went ablaze, a yellow glow came from the outside. The whole maize field was ablaze.
Monica ran outside, lamenting, “You won’t take this away from me!”
I propelled myself with my feet and fell through the door to the outside of the house still fastened to the wheelchair.
From inside the house, people’s cries came. It was mostly screams from women, hundreds of them. Even more. Monica took sand by the buckets and poured into the field but the flames blazed even taller. Eventually she sat on the ground then wiped her tears before she stood again.
“Untie me I won’t say a word,” I begged, “I just want to see Layla again. Don’t take that away from me.”
She stood and walked towards me with a blank face. She knelt and undid the ropes she had tied me with. She walked slowly to the edge of the field and stood there for a while.
“Don’t do it,” I tried to save the real witch.
She walked into the flames and disappeared into the glow.
I finally got to the big city. My wife was with her new husband and Layla. It was her smile with the missing teeth that made my eyes water.
“Daddy, you look shorter,” she said before she gave me a tight hug.
“I’m sorry,” I replied, “I couldn’t get you the doll that you wanted.”
“What doll?” she asked.
I took out the drawing and she giggled.
“That is not a doll daddy, that is you in your nursing uniform.”

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PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Magazine Facebook Short Story Competition is funded by the National Arts Council, Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme 3

THEME: KNOCK YOURSELF OUT
TITLE: A Letter To Belinda
Written by Sifiso Makwakwa

I remember her very well, the first day I got introduced to her presence in this world. She was talking and laughing with her friends, our grade ten classmates. We were without a teacher, everyone was wild and noisy talking about their own crazy life experiences. However, my mind and focus were silent as my thoughts revolved around her. I don’t know why, but I knew I wanted to get to know her at all costs. She was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. A beautiful and cute girl that never existed in my wildest dreams of a perfect woman.
What I loved about her was how bubbly and outspoken she was. I knew she would always talk her mind and we would get to know each other very easily. She was a little bit taller than me, and had a little body. Her tiny figure made me go insane that I made a lot of assumptions about her. She was light-skinned and always had her lips shining with a glossy lipstick. She was my ideal American model reincarnated as my future Sicelaumusa High School girlfriend.
One day we were changing classes, this came after we were given a proper one to formally start our yearly lessons. That was when I approached her. I offered to carry the desk and chair she had as she was alone and mindless of what to do. She got the shock of her life that someone had paid attention to her, a weirdo out of all. A boy who was short and thin, who wore an oversized uniform had approached her. I looked as if I was tired of myself, and didn’t understand the world around me. I looked like I was forced to go to school, like I never wanted to be there. After that shock, she burst out with laughter.
“You really want to share a desk with me?” she asked, laughing.
By that time, I was trying to remain in a good posture to look cool to her. But if she was a mirror, I would have seen how embarrassing and stupid I looked.
“It’s okay if you already have a partner.”
“A partner?” she asked and laughed again.
Her laughter reminded me of how I often wasn’t taken seriously. I saw everyone who has ever done so in the past playing before my eyes.
“I’m kidding, nobody has asked me yet so we can sit together,” she said. “However, if someone does then you’re on your own.”
She had agreed. I had done it! It felt like I had successfully asked her out. We carried our desk together and went to our new class. Finally, I was close to her, and I’d be for a while. That was when I decided to relax and get to know her better.
Her name was Belinda, a name I’d have chills and shivers of excitement every time it was called. Months passed and we became friends. Little by little we shared our school days and outside of school experiences with each other. She’d try to advise me to update my looks to look better, but my grandmother was old school, and she knew better.
“Josh, your father lost focus in high school because of girls,” the old woman would say. “Now you’re going there too, and I will make sure that you don’t get attracted nor attract girls to yourself.”
I think she intentionally got me dressed ugly so that no girl would accept me if I were to love someone. But that didn’t stand in our way because Belinda had already fallen in love with my personality and values. I was gold hidden in a dumpster. Belinda had a rough side; she’d often keep giving me light slaps on the face to make me do something I’d refuse to do for her, like letting her copy my work and disagreeing with her. She’d send me for water all the time, and throwing away my books and stationery, kicking me off the table every time we had a disagreement. A part of me began to dislike her, however another part of me was addicted to her slaps and ill-treatment. I felt it to be what gave us a strong bond, and her slaps were the rare moments she’d touch my skin. She wanted me to be submissive to her and it felt like being loved deeply by her.
She’d also call me names. It’d hurt me since I respected her so much and expected the same from her. But I blamed myself for loving her dearly. She slowly shattered my motive to tell her how much I loved her. Her treatment reminded me of my primary school bullying experience and brought back those ugly feelings I had forgotten.
One day during break time, a boy I went with to the same school the previous year entered our class. Belinda’s friends kept whispering his name and Belinda’s. She quickly got up and went to him. She said some words to him, and they went out. I had never seen her being so gentle with a guy to the extent of being shy at his presence.
Her friends looked over to me and said, “So you’re scared?”
“Scared of what?” I asked.
One of them insisted they stop, and so they did and continued chattering about their own business. I decided to go out to the toilet, but just as I exited the door, I saw something I shouldn’t have seen behind me. I quickly rushed to the toilet and stayed there for a while. I was heartbroken, Belinda was on the guy’s hands and she was staring into his eyes. I had got out the exact moment they kissed. My world had shattered. After all the hard wok I had put to win her, someone else had done it first and easily. That could’ve been us, but I knew very well that when a girl has decided to place her heart on someone, no second guy stood a chance. I guessed that she never saw what I saw in her; to me we were more than just desk mates.
I waited inside. That day I ignored the toilet’s unpleasant smell. I felt like the floor, full of scars and being stepped on all day and without being mopped for a whole week. I sat there up until the bell rang calling everyone back to class. I got myself together and went back, and found he already had left. And there she was seated. She called out to me.
“Where have you been? we don’t have any water,” she said. “You saw that I was busy, and you should have gotten water.”
She wanted me to get water with the same bottle she’d wipe a thousand times before drinking If I had done so before her.
“Do it yourself,” I harshly replied.
I knew what was coming next – a beat down. She shouted on my face, threw my bag away. She threw a packet of Banana peels that she had eaten at me. This time her friends helped me and stopped her. I remember the gentle words Samantha said.
“If only he knew how bad of a person you were, he wouldn’t have asked to sit with you Belinda.”
What she did to me that day changed me; I no longer enjoyed her mistreatment. And going to school turned into a burden. I intentionally went to school late, just so she could fail to copy my work. I no longer covered up her flaws, she then would be in trouble with school work.
One day, she was in very good mood. We talked while she held my hands. It was the first time she did so without hesitation. She would give me random hugs and was always on my face, as if she knew something about me and then had to make sure to never lose me. This went on for several months that we were even thought to be in love with each other by the whole class, the teachers included. Well, I was but she wasn’t. She even volunteered to give me her number, and we would talk till midnight.
One thing I realised during that period, both our school marks dropped drastically. We would even laugh at ourselves when one had gotten less marks than the other. This brought back the love I had for her twice than when I first saw her, and I was aware that she might have possibly realised that. She no longer had any boys coming to class for her. That was when I decided to ask her about the guy I saw her kiss.
“We are relatives,” she said.
“I saw you kiss, so don’t lie.”
She looked at me, bewildered, “So that’s why you were acting up.”
“What?”
She had caught me, my secret had been discovered. That I love her. She kept quiet for a while, and then spoke again.
“We broke up, he wasn’t my type.”
I got relieved, but little did I know that it meant that all that treatment she was giving me was just to fill the void she had after their break-up. I was her emotional rehabilitator. Those hugs, holding hands, touching my face and being all over my body. She was drunk with a heartbreak, and I was helping her to get sober. I gave her advice on how disastrous dating can be for her, a copy and paste from my grandmother.
“Once you fall in love with someone, the world becomes small. Your world starts revolving around that person that nothing else is important. You can quit school just to have time to love that someone. You’d abandoned yourself and family just to run after that someone you think you love so much. Love is an illusion, and not everyone recovers from the damage love has caused them.”
As I said those words to her, I heard them talking to me as well regarding the love I had for her. She was an illusion, and I no longer cared about anything except her.
“So, you’re an illusion!” she shouted at me.
An illusion? I asked myself. Does that mean she loves me? She suddenly started to beat me up like always. That time she even kicked me. That was when I realised that Belinda wasn’t a normal girl. She was someone I couldn’t love. And from that day without hesitation, I decided to keep the love I had for her to myself, my illusion. I began scouting for a friendship. The only friend I had was Belinda, but I wanted to be free from her. So, I had to blur my focus and thoughts of her.
Luckily there was a guy who was a loner, but a genuine genius. His name was Lebo. I approached him. We talked regarding school stuff. I didn’t hide it from him what I wanted us to have. I asked him to be my friend, and he was more than happy to accept me. We became friends, and in a week we felt like we’ve been friends for over three months. We had a lot in common that our friendship was perfect.
Belinda felt a bit of jealousy, and she would always be moody around me. She would even spend the day without talking to me, but we shared the same desk. I lost faith in her; she wasn’t a good person. She held herself important than me, and never valued me. But I think I hurt her, and even if I did, she wouldn’t let me know but it’s clear she wanted me to care. She was trying to lure me back into being her punching bag and her slave.
But I already had my freedom – Lebo. He had important values and respect and I was part of it. My school marks began to rise and I got an average ranking. Belinda started to respect me. She really knew her boundaries when it came to being recognised as one of the hard workers. The teachers would often compare us with each other and say that I had realised how I was to fail and worked hard, but Belinda didn’t and was going to fail.
I felt sorry for her, but she had become a liability to me. I couldn’t waste my time, and for that I’m sorry I failed you, Belinda. Wherever you are, I hope you’re well, and I really loved you.
The end.

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PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Magazine Facebook Short Story Competition is funded by the National Arts Council, Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme 3

THEME: KNOCK YOURSELF OUT
TITLE: “REST”
Written by Pamella Amethyst Brown

My mother’s cries were the last thing I heard every night since my brother went MIA. It was heart wrenching seeing my mother loose against grief like that. We as kids had always seen our parents as impenetrable walls of strength. My mother unraveling at the seams not only was breaking her up to her atomic components, but it was also tearing the family apart. She had been figuratively the glue that helped keep the house together. My father was neck deep inside a beer bottle. I was a mess of emotions. But the one emotion that took the front seat was jealousy.
Yes, jealously for my brother.
It’s weird I know, but I was jealous of my missing brother. He’d been the golden child. Our parents clearly loved him more than me. I was their last born and only daughter but they worshipped the ground he walked on. When I say they gave him everything, I mean they gave him everything. He had his first car when he was 16 years old. They sent him to a private integrated high school, because they wanted the best education for him. When my time came for high school, my mother sent me to a township school that wasn’t even doing that well in regard of their passing mark. I never even cared about how fancy the school was. They could have at least sent me to a school that was strict and had a good passing rate.
No, not them. The best was always reserved for my brother.
Seeing them lose themselves when he went missing sent me up in flames. Even when I started getting reckless, they never noticed. I wished that they cared for me half as much as they cared for him. Even when he was gone – or in our case missing – they totally erased me out their view sight. I found myself sometimes for a spit second wishing that he was gone, permanently. That was a bitter possibility that my mother refused to accept.
My brother was in the South African National Defence Force navy, and his ship had gone radio silent somewhere around the Bermuda Triangle. A total of 321 men and women just gone like that, as if they had been ruptured or something. We hadn’t even known that he was that far away from home. Why was even our army that near the Americas? Was there something everyday people like us were missing?
We found out one warm day when two army brown cars drove up our long dusty driveway, their wheels pushing up dust and making it look as if a pack of wildebeests was stampeding across our front yard. Some of the downsides of staying in a farmhouse just a kilometer and a half outside the city was all the dust we had to deal with.
The cars pulled up in front of the house. My mother was already at the door. I assumed she was hoping it was her son, as we hadn’t seen him for a year up until that day. Instead, they gave her the bad news. It was like they had stampeded on her heart. She cried for days and as much as I was jealous of my brother, I felt for mother. She had given so much of her heart to him. Now there was a possibility that he had sunk to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean along with her heart. It was a fate far worse than death, for my mother. What is worse than a mother losing their child? I’ll wait…
***
I don’t remember much about the accident. What I could not get out my ears was the ringing. It was as if a phone was ringing right inside my ear. I don’t remember how I got out the taxi, but outside the world was ending. Smoke seemed to have taken up all the space, and a person could barely see two feet in front of them. The screaming. Jesus, the screaming was overpowering the ringing ten-fold. I navigated myself around the smoke and finally found the edge of it. I sat down and watched the wreckage as if I were watching an animal giving birth on the National Geographic Channel. It was an out of body experience. I could not take my eyes away from it. The image held me hostage the same way a pimple popping TikTok video did. There was just something about the burning people that just made me pause and watch everything in slow motion as the smoke cleared.
A woman was screaming her lungs out being held back by a boy in a school uniform same as mine. I didn’t recognize him. She was trying to get back to her baby who was inside one of the burning cars. She was bleeding profusely and close to death, but her motherly adrenaline was keeping her body just alive enough for her to witness her child being burnt alive.
A man walked out of the clearing smoke, as the hero would in an action movie, carrying the child. The women saw this and recognized the child in the man’s arms, and she stopped screaming and relaxed in the boy’s arms. I still didn’t know him. He looked to be in my grade or a year younger, but I just couldn’t place him. The man was limping badly as one of his legs was damaged to what seemed like beyond repair. He made his way to the woman. The mother took one look and smiled, as if she was satisfied with what she was looking at. She then just stopped. She stopped moving. The boy and the man looked at each other and a moment of silence felt like hours. It was an unbelievably unique moment to witness that happen in the middle of a car pile-up.
I would have probably witnessed the child waking up in the man’s arms, but the wailing of ambulances made their debut into this saga, redirecting my attention to then. They sounded as if a bunch of Banshees were screaming. Maybe that is what Banshees sound like. It’s just that we think it’s the ambulances that make the sound. Now isn’t that food for thought.
One ambulance stopped a few metres from me. People in green jumped up and whooshed past me. They attended to the motherless child, the man whose leg was long gone, the boy I didn’t recognize, and the newly deceased mother. I watched as more green dressed EMTs jumped to action to help other people who were still alive and holding on by doll hairs. It was a miracle that I had walked out without even a scratch. God must have had me on His lap when the accident happened.
Not a moment too soon, more fire trucks than ambulances made it to the scene and got to work trying to stop the fires. A field near the road was already up in flames. The crops were an inferno and those poor men and women in red had their work cut out for them. If the fire got worse, it would reach the city, and nobody wanted that. I felt someone place their hands on my shoulders.
“Pudding,” came a whisper.
I froze. Only one person called me that and right now he was most likely swimming with fish at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.
“What!” I jumped up and faced him.
He looked bigger than I last saw him. He looked healthier and happier. I jumped on him, attacking him with a hug. The resentment and jealousy were out the window. My big brother was home.
“Slow down tiger before you strangle me,” he laughed, prying my arms from around his neck.
“Sorry, got too excited,” I grinned and tried to keep my knees from giving way. “Why are you here?”
“Well, the car couldn’t cross over due to this….” he gestured to the accident. “…so they dropped me off here. Are you okay? Were you involved in this?” he asked checking my whole body.
“Yes, but I’m totally fine,” I said, looking myself over to make sure that I was really fine.
“Are you sure? You don’t want the medics to check you?” he blinked and pulled a smile.
I smiled back. I never realized how much I had missed his smile. Even though our parents had treated him like Cinderella’s stepmother had treated her daughters and me like she had Cinderella, I and my brother had gotten along fine. He’d even taken my side a few times and spoke back to our mother, and as always, she never saw wrong in what she did to me, and she never reprimanded my brother for speaking against her or going against her wishes. The golden child always won.
“I’m fine. Let them attend to people that need the help more than I do.”
I took his hand and looked back. The mother was covered in a foil blanket, the child was being carried by a female medic away from the scene, the man was on a stretcher being attended to, and the boy was nowhere to be seen.
“Then can we go home. I could use the walk. I need some time with you.”
“What does that mean? You can’t be going back. You got lost at sea. I can’t lose you again.”
I held back tears. Not today’s tears. This was not your day. Maybe tomorrow, but not today. I’ve seen too much to cry now.
“No, I’m just… I’m just saying I don’t know when we’ll ever get time just the two of us.” He had teary eyes. He was fighting them as much as I was fighting mine.
“We’ll have to make time, you are home now…”
We walked away from the wreckage. I didn’t even know how many vehicles had been involved. Where on earth was my backpack even? At that moment I could care less. My mother was going to lose her marbles when she sees him walking through the gates. Maybe this time she’d see me too. She’d see that I had brought her baby back, and maybe give me a hug.
It was a very blissful moment of walking in silence. I felt so at peace. I had never felt this light in my life. Our farmhouse slowly came into view. Our father’s van was driving down the driveway heading for the gate, which was already open. The car flew the two yards to the gate and they didn’t even stop to close the gate. They always left the gate closed when they left the house. The car zoomed past us, as if neither of them noticed us on the side of the road.
“Where are they rushing to?” I watched the dust they left behind them as the car disappeared in the direction of the accident. “They didn’t even see us. Anyway, let’s go inside,” I said and shrugged. “They’ll see you once they get back.”
I started walking towards the gate, but he didn’t follow me.
“What’s the matter?” I looked at him. He was fiddling with the army uniform he was still wearing. “What?” I started to feel a pit in my throat.
“Pudding, look…” he sighed, “…Mama never despised you.”
“You can tell me all that inside, come.” I walked back to him and grabbed his arm. “Come.” I pulled but he didn’t as much flint.
“She loved you,” He sniffed. “She loves you.” Tears ran down his cheeks.
“No,” I shook my head. “Let us head inside please.” I pulled, nothing.
“She just had a colourful way of showing it.”
“Bhuti no.”
I remembered who the boy was. He was the boy that had gotten me pregnant.
“Pudding.”
“Bhuti.”
We were on our way from school to tell my parents. We had already told his. They hated it. They wanted me to send it back to heaven. I didn’t know what I wanted. I had thought telling my mother would help. In hindsight, that was probably the worst idea in the history of ever.
“Pudding, our road ends here.”
The boy had pulled me out of the taxi hardly alive. I was bleeding from my stomach.
“You never made it out The Bermuda, didn’t you?”
“None of the 321.”
I swallowed the lumped and I felt sick to my stomach. My stomach. I held it and felt a headache brewing. I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream louder than any Banshee had ever wailed.
“Come on, let’s go rest. You must be tired… I know I am.”
He flashed me that one-million-dollar smile of his. I smiled back. I didn’t feel better, but rest did sound nice. I really was tired.
Aren’t you?

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PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Magazine Facebook Short Story Competition is funded by the National Arts Council, Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme 3

THEME: KNOCK YOURSELF OUT
TITLE: PAIN AND PENANCE
Written by Bwalya S Kondwani

Dalitso stood atop the tallest building at The University Teaching Hospital, soaked in the most violent storm Lusaka had seen in seasons. His tears blended into the rain like they weren’t even there. Poetic, isn’t it? For his tears to go unnoticed, just as his pain had gone for so long. They often called him troubled. All he ever wanted was to escape this hell, just that, escape, but how could he escape something within him? How could he ever escape himself?
He knew one thing for sure though – he could never find the forgiveness he was looking for, not here, not in this life. So if there really was a deity to grant him forgiveness beyond the sky, it would only take one more step to find it. So he took it.
As his body free fell from the roof, he got his last glimpse of lightning stretched across the dark night sky, the last beautiful thing he would ever see, accompanied by a harsh dissonance of thunder, which he took as God’s approval, heaven’s “welcome home”. Before the last rumble of thunder could be heard, everything went black for Dalitso, all the noise in his head was finally gone, and so was he.
***
It was Chimfwembe’s first night on duty as the hospital’s head of security. After being fired from his last job, he was vigilant, he wanted to make a good impression on this one.
The night had been peaceful so far, until the thunder broke through the noise of the rain, everything seemed to spiral into chaos from there. Chimfwembe was convinced it wasn’t just thunder he had heard, so he left his station and walked towards the entrance of the hospital to investigate, pulling himself through the strong winds of the storm. As he approached the gate, he heard a woman scream just outside the doors of the outpatient, so he put a tighter grip on his raincoat and ran towards her. He found her holding her mouth and staring at the body of a young man with his skull cracked open on the ground.
“Get inside madam,” said Chimfwembe, but the woman just stood there, her eyes locked on the lifeless body on the ground. “Madam” Chimfwembe said, as calmly as he could, “Please get inside and call a nurse for me, tell her to come with a stretcher and another security guard.” The woman left, hesitantly, she walked back into the OPD and about two minutes later a nurse and security guard came running through the doors with a stretcher.
“Mwelesa!” exclaimed the nurse, Chimfwembe and the other security guard carried the body on the stretcher, and took it straight to the morgue for an autopsy. The nurse called the pathologist on-call that night.
Dr. Chama was a pale, slim old man, he looked well over his retirement age, but he was good at his job and he didn’t seem like he had any life outside his work, so everybody just agreed never to ask, his age was between him and the human resources department. He strutted through the long hallway with the fervor of a man half his age. He found Chimfwembe standing at the entrance of the mortuary.
“Who are you?” asked Dr. Chama, in a raspy but high-pitched voice, while walking past him as though he hadn’t seen him.
“My name is Chimfwembe doc, I’m the new head of security.”
“You’re new?”
“Yes I am, doc.”
“Try not to vomit on the bodies or equipment.”
Dr. Chama spoke through the whole autopsy, recording every step as he did it. Chimfwembe could barely understand half of the things he said, it was mostly medical jargon, but he could grasp the basic idea of what he was doing. At some point the doc paused for a moment, stopped recording and called Chimfwembe to come closer.
“Where did you find this body?” he asked Chimfwembe.
“Just outside the left side of the OPD entrance.”
“Was he here as a patient?”
“Not according to the records, the name we found on his NRC was checked in as a visitor, but never checked out. I’m certain he jumped from the top of the building, I heard the sound of glass breaking, the thunder must have drowned out the sound of the impact, but I also found shards of glass scattered around the body.”
“Take me to wherever you found him,” said Dr. Chama. They hurried through the hallway, passed the OPD and made it outside to the sight of the accident.
Dr. Chama was quiet for a moment, and then whispered to himself, “That makes much more sense.”
“What do you mean doc?” asked Chimfwembe.
“Call the police.”
“The police? I thought he jumped.”
“Of course he jumped. What doesn’t make sense is that he died. Look up there, what do you see?”
Chimfwembe squinted to see what the doc was talking about, then he finally saw it. “A net?”
“Precisely,” said Dr. Chama. There were construction works being done to the building, and so, nets were installed as a safety precaution just in case one of the construction workers happened to fall. “If the boy simply jumped, he would have been caught by the net…”
“Doc,” Chimfwembe interrupted before he could finish, “I still don’t understand, if the boy had hit one of the windows on his way down, his body could have easily been propelled away from the trajectory of the net. Which would explain the broken glass and why he hit the ground.”
“You were a police officer before this, weren’t you?” asked Dr. Chama, “I’ve worked with many security guards here, most of them don’t even come in for the autopsy, much less care enough to come up with such a deduction.”
“I was a detective, until I was fired from duty for… misconduct.”
“That’s a shame, your deduction was almost right, except there are bullets in his head. This boy was shot, by a shot-gun to be specific. The bullets must have broken the glass, partly shattered the boy’s skull as he fell and the force propelled the body away from the net. The impact is not the only thing that the thunder had drowned out, the sound of the gunshot too. This boy would have survived this fall if it wasn’t for that gunshot. Which leaves two questions, how did someone sneak a shotgun into the hospital with you watching? And who was this person really aiming at?”
***
By midnight, the police had located the shattered window in order to find which room the gun had been shot from. The hospital was on lockdown, so that no one could either go in or out, but this was all unnecessary. When the detectives barged into the room they found an old couple holding hands on the bed, and a shotgun laid two steps away from the entrance of the room.
The man was Frederick Phiri, a mechanic, but before that he was an officer in the Zambia National Service, he was retired at a young age due to insubordination. Fred was a temperamental man, everybody knew that, he knew that.
The woman was Laura B. Phiri, Fred’s wife of 37 years now. Laura was a quiet and sheepish woman, she wasn’t one to argue, or even speak up. In a way she lived through Fred, he was always there to fill in the blanks. He said the things she couldn’t for herself, he stood up for her when she couldn’t, Fred was everything she couldn’t be, and having him in her life felt fulfilling.
Their marriage was far from faultless though, and for the past few years it had only gotten worse. Fred had started to drink more, he wasn’t as affectionate as he used to be. His protection did not feel like protection anymore, it felt more like imprisonment, he wouldn’t speak for her anymore, he now just barked orders, and she would fold into herself as she always did. Fred spent more time at the garage, Laura barely saw him.
They had a son, he was 22, but they never really saw him around. He was 18 when he left home and things were never really the same from then. He never spoke to his father, the last time they were in the same room they nearly killed each other. So Laura never told Fred that he’d come to see her from time to time, it would do no good. She felt alone, all the time.
Laura was in the hospital because of joint pains she had been having continuously, the doctors said they would keep her there for observation. It was nothing new, so Fred was in no panic, he just called her to tell her he would pick her up the next morning because he was too tired to sit with her all night.
There had been rumors of Laura cheating on him for months now, he never thought much of them, Fred knew she was far too scared, far too boring even to hold up an affair, so he just brushed them off. That night, a friend of his who worked at the hospital called him and told him that a strange young man had gone up to visit his wife and hadn’t come out for hours now. Furious, Fred took his gun, threw it in his truck and sped off to the hospital. He went straight to her room with the gun hidden in a bag. When he got to the room, he sprung it out, kicked open the door but only found his wife.
“Where is he?” he asked, in a low but angry tone.
“Fred, what are you talking about?” replied Laura, shaking from fear after seeing the gun in his hands.
“I said where is he, Larua!”
They went back and forth barking at each other, the anger in Fred’s chest kept building up, he felt like he was going to explode, and then finally, almost unaware of his own actions, he pulled the trigger.
The bullet flew passed his wife’s head, and straight through the window, shattering the glass. Laura’s screams, the sound of the gun and breaking glass, were all swallowed by loud thunder. The fear on Fred’s face was very vivid. He dropped the gun to the floor, walked over to his wife and hugged her, he held her tight. He kept spilling apologies like a mantra, there was nothing else he could think of saying except, “I’m sorry”.
Moments later, when the room had fallen silent again, the police barged in, Fred simply got on his knees, and put his hands behind his head. The tears could not stop rolling off of Laura’s wrinkling cheeks.
***
“Listen sir,” said detective Banda, as calmly as he could. All he needed was a confession. Fred had been cooperative thus far but none of what he said was conclusive enough. “You killed a man, whether you knew it or not, you did and that alone cannot go unpunished. On top of that, you are being charged with attempted murder of your wife.”
“I was not going to kill my wife!” barked back Fred, this was the first time he had raised his voice in this whole interaction.
“Oh, so you just brought the gun to play kankuluwale? In that case we should let you go.”
“The gun was meant for the man she was with, I already told you this, but I wasn’t going to kill him either. The gun was just to scare him. I am not a murderer.”
“There are easier ways to scare people than with a loaded shotgun. Don’t you think that was slightly excessive?”
“That’s the thing, that gun was not loaded, I haven’t loaded or used that gun in over 10 years. I knew that even if I accidentally pulled the trigger, nothing would happen. I would never intentionally put Laura’s life in danger.”
“There’s a boy in the morgue with a shattered skull. What you would or wouldn’t do doesn’t matter at this point, it’s what you did that does.”
A man walked into the interrogation and whispered something into Banda’s ears, detective Banda turned around to look at some papers in shock. He then turned back to face Fred.
“Mr. Phiri, are you currently aware of the whereabouts of your son?”
“Last I talked to him he said he was moving to Kafue, why?”
The detective glanced at the man standing beside him and exhaled heavily,
“The young man you shot, his name in Dalitso Phiri, aged 22. He came to the hospital to visit a woman in Room 33. Your wife’s room. He exited the room shortly before you arrived, but security did not see him leave the gate. Your wife says they had an argument and he just stormed out…”
Everything said after was drowned out by the ringing in Fred’s ears. The blood was flushed from his face, leaving him pale, he could not feel his fingers, and his mouth instantly went dry. He thought about Dalitso, his boy, his only child. He never hated him, he loved him so much, what he hated was how was becoming so much like him. That’s why he was so hard on him, he thought he could fix him before he was broken, but he only ended up breaking him. He killed his boy.
***
The sun made its way through the broken glass of the hospital room as it rose from the east face of the city, the light landed on Laura’s blanket, shining right on her tear stains. All that was going through her mind was that this would be the first of many sunrises her son would never get to see.
Chimfwembe stared at the blood stains on his hands. He picked up his raincoat and prepared himself to go home, awaiting that inevitable call from the human resources department.
Fred saw the sun through the glass widows in the back of a police car, tears running down his face. He knew Laura must have been watching the sun rise, she always loved to welcome the day. He wondered if she would ever forgive him.
***
A year later, the case had already been closed, Fred was serving 40 years of prison with hard labour, 39 now. Detective Banda was working on a robbery case, it was found that the culprits in this case were all linked to Dalitso Phiri. When investigated further, they found out that this gang had been conducting robberies for years now, and Dalitso was once part of them. Every time he’d go back home to visit, he borrowed his father’s gun and they would use it for the robberies. The last time he did that, he forgot to remove the bullets from the gun after the job, these were the very bullets that killed him.

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PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Magazine Facebook Short Story Competition is funded by the National Arts Council, Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme 3

THEME: KNOCK YOURSELF OUT
TITLE: THE ALLEGORY OF THE AFTERLIFE.
Written by Nompilo Gumede

“Time of death, 16:07,” the doctor pronounces my death to others. If I am dead, then how is it possible for me to hear what the doctor is saying about me? I want to ask myself many questions about my death, but my brain activity slips slowly away until I sink to complete darkness. The darkness does not linger for long. I open my eyes and realise that the stab wound I died from is no longer painful or visible. My body is bare, clear of all scars and rashes I acquired in the world of the living. I look around, inspecting my surroundings. I am starting to think I am in heaven. I am in a lush, beautiful paradise. I lie on the grass and enjoy the rest and peace I feel, peace I have never felt before.
“Khayelihle.” On top of the soothing experience I am currently indulging in, a calming unworldly voice nourishes me even more by calling out to me. I do not see the owner.
“Who are you? Where am I?” I am still amazed by the beautiful creation that surrounds me.
“I am God. Welcome to the spiritual heaven. Stand up and reflect on your life. You still have a long way to go,” says the voice, leaving me in disbelief. If I knew death was so peaceful, I would have never been scared of it. The wise man once said, “To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself knows what one does not.” Now it makes sense; the living has been ignorant. Presuming death might be the greatest of evils.
I was wrong; everyone was wrong.
As instructed, I stand up, and this crystal-clear lake catches my attention. It is so clean and calm that one can see what is at the bottom. I walk there to admire it.
At the bottom of the lake, I see a soothing thing that resembles a vision. I see a new baby crying until her mother lets her suck the nipple, her hands folded into a little fist. The little hand holds her future, her purpose in the world. She grows into a naughty toddler who always is rewarded with a smack on the bum for her naughtiness. This reflection is a cute sight; I giggle before it hits me that the baby girl is me.
I grow up to be a school child and progress to puberty. I start to sneak out of the home to see my boyfriend. I have my first sex that leads to pregnancy. My parents are disappointed in me, and my boyfriend runs faster than Caster Semenya when I tell him the news. I drop out of school and stay at home until I give birth. I leave the baby with my mother, steal her money and buy alcohol. I turn into a well-known alcoholic, disappointing my parents even more. The following year I decide to change my life. I pray to God for forgiveness. I apologise to my parents and decide to return to school and secure a future for this child I have brought into this cruel world. On the first day of school, I kiss my baby goodbye and promise her a better future. I hug my mother and father, telling them they will be proud of me. They both smile, already feeling proud, and I bid them goodbye.
Before I make it to the school gates, tragedy befalls me. Two men wearing balaclavas attack me, demanding my not-so-expensive phone. I have no intention of dying for a phone, so I give it to them without a fight. The other is thirsty for my blood; he stabs me with his okapi knife. One, two, three, four… he finally stops when his friend holds him. They both run away. My neighbour sees me and calls an ambulance. I make it to the hospital bed, but the doctors do not get a chance to attend to my emergency because my life journey ends there.
What I just watched is not a vision; this is a reflection of my life, just as God said. I want to feel sad as I left my baby too soon, but this world does not allow the feeling of sadness. All I feel is peace.
“The heaven of firmament awaits your arrival,” the godly voice says. Now that I am hearing it for the second time, it is a female voice. Is God a woman?

THE SECOND HEAVEN
I know what to do, and I move my eyes and see the small pathway. I follow the way, still admiring the beauty of this place. This is what I call greener pastures. Everything is more vivid than the physical world. The sky is brighter than usual, and the flowers are more colourful and fragrant. The air is fresh and uplifting.
“Welcome to the heaven of the firmament, the heaven of knowledge and understanding of the divine.”
Before me, there is something that resembled the scales of justice. I think today is my judgement day, where I account for all my sins. My heart begins to pound hard. I am surprised I still possess the feeling of nervousness. I have not stripped all my human emotions.
The scales are moving up and down, alternatively like a seesaw.
“This is a scale of your good versus bad. Whether this scale judges you badly or good, justice can only be served when there is balance,” the godly voice explains, its unnatural echoes calming my skyrocketing nerves.
The scales begin to move more rapidly. The left pan is black, symbolising good, and the right represents evil. I move closer to the scales to see what occupies these pans. In the world of the living, evil and good are merely adjectives that describe wickedness and its opposite. Today I might be seeing what bad or good looks like physically.
My wish barely comes true. As soon as my eyes land on both scale pans, I see water. An unknown force compels me to put my hands on the pans. When I put my hand on the left pan, the scales become stationary. Water channels the spiritual contexts of my actions and emotions. I do the same to the right pan. I then move away when the object begins to move again.

The right stays down. Does this mean the goodness in me outweighs the evil? I question my life. I broke most rules growing up, gossiped, had sex before marriage, lied, and so on. I can’t remember the good I have done except on my last day in the world of the living.
As if the scales can read my thoughts, the left pan descends while the right one ascends until they reach equilibrium.
“Your scale of justice is balanced because you lived a virtuous life. You made mistakes in your pan of sins, and you owned up to them in pursuit of the good. You did not just avoid the negative, but you strived for the positive. By understanding this balance, you understand divinity. Virtue is a gift from the higher power.”

THE THIRD HEAVEN
I have mysteriously relocated to the next heaven, the heaven. The woman’s Godly voice that has been speaking to me is not coming from anywhere. It now comes from me. With each step I take in this journey, I connect more to this voice. Now I can’t feel the nervousness. This place is channeling more happiness and peace. Not happiness in a sense of temporal bliss, but this is endless and has no boundary. Like I am glass and this happiness is water; it has filled me and is even spilling.
“You are in the heaven of ecstasy, and that is what you feel. You are getting closer to meeting God. Therefore, you need to be stripped of all other human feelings. This will happen through purification.”

THE FOURTH HEAVEN
“Now that the scales of justice have been balanced and have been connected to divinity, it’s time to purify all your sins in the pan of sins. To meet God, you need to be purified and be cleansed of all imperfections. You are now free from sin.”
As the rain continues to fall, I feel my body becoming lighter and my soul expanding. I feel as if I am being lifted by the gentle breeze and carried away by the clouds. The raindrops shimmer like diamonds, reflecting the light of the sun and bringing a sense of joy and wonder. I am surrounded by trees and flowers, releasing their sweet fragrance into the air. A rainbow appears in the distance as if to symbolise beauty and hope. The rain stops, and eyes shift from the rainbow to something shiny like gold. It is another pathway to heaven.

THE FIFTH HEAVEN
Now I feel like I’m in the heaven our parents and pastors told us about when we were growing up—a place carpeted by precious gems, glittering in the sunlight. Diamonds sparkle like raindrops creating a scintillating display of colour. Trees laden with jewels like sparkling harvest.
“Khayelihle,” the intensity of this inner voice reverberates like a thunderstorm, but the tone is warm and embracing. “Welcome to the heaven of the throne, the realm of wisdom. Before you proceed, you are to be made aware of the laws that govern your universe. The first one is the law of attraction. Everything you achieve in the world of living is something that you manifest. Everything you focused on was drawn to you. The second law is the law of cause and effect, the law of karma. You reap what you sow. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. The third one is the law of abundance; the world of the living has endless resources the living need. To attract what you need, visualise it. Therefore, to have a meaningful life, focus on positivity, be careful of what you sow because you will reap it. You focus on the lack; you manifest the lack,” the voice explains, each word resonating in every cell of my body.

THE SIXTH HEAVEN
After the universe insight session, I move on to the next realm. It is called the heaven of splendour. For the first time after passing the first heaven, I take a glance at my physical body and realise that it is metaphysical. I look like an unexplainable creature of the higher realm. My soul feels empowered. Like a spiritual Divine being, I feel the connection between myself and the physical world. Right now, I see my mother holding my child, weeping for me. I close my eyes, connecting my soul to hers, my heart to heart to her. I tell her everything is okay. As if she can feel my presence, she stops crying, wipes her tears, and passes my words to my child. It’s going to be okay. I have attained an ability to interact with the physical world. I am going to make a good ancestor or a spiritual guardian. The name of this realm matches exactly how I feel, splendid. I am in control.

THE SEVENTH HEAVEN
I finally reached the highest realm of the universe. All the flowers and bliss are no more. It’s pure white, with no colours or shadows. There is also no sense of space. There is only a sense of pure consciousness. I feel my consciousness expanding to hold within all existence. I’m no longer a separate individual. I am part of the divine consciousness that animates all creation. My separation from the world dissolves. I become pure awareness.
“Welcome to the heaven of might.” If this realm had a ground, I would have dropped my jaw to the ground. This is my voice; I have been talking to myself from the beginning.
“Where is God?” I say out loud.
The inner voice replies, “I am your higher subconscious. I am the supreme being within. God is within you. I am the infinite light. You and I are both subconscious and conscious. We are both in control of the universe. We can filter what is drawn to us. We are in control.”
After these words, I feel the compulsion to chant something.
“My deepest desires are within my dreams; I am connected to every creation. I am part of something greater than myself. I am surrounded by boundaryless possibilities. I am guided by endless wisdom. I am worthy of abundance, happiness, and meaningful life. I am filled with creativity, inspiration, and motivation. I am connected to the eternal flow of life.”
—
Beep, beep, beep. The sounds echo in my ears. I open my eyes, my nose overwhelmed by the hospital’s stale smell.
“She is back!” screams the doctor while my mother cries tears of joy and disbelief.
“I thought I lost my child. I thought you were going to abandon us. Why did you scare me like that? Where did you go?” She floods me with questions, not believing that I am back, back from the secret heaven.
“I was on a journey of self-discovery,” I proclaim.

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PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Magazine Facebook Short Story Competition is funded by the National Arts Council, Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme 3

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2023 Slam Poetry Competition Africa Poets are invited to submit an entry for 2023 Poetry Africa festival theme: Vote4Poetry: More Than Words. The poet is free to interpret the theme as broadly as possible but the poem must express the poet’s ideas related to matters such as human rights, justice and equality. The poem must demonstrate how the poet’s voice works towards strengthening South Africa’s Constitutional Democracy. We are looking for innovation, creativity and different integration of multimedia to engage with matters of human rights, justice, equality & democracy. A poem submitted for the competition can be in any of the official South African languages but it must have English subtitles. Poetry Africa is streamed globally and the use of English is for the purposes of being accessible to the festival’s global audiences. A poet may submit on only one entry for the competition. The poem must be submitted in a video format (MP4, AVI). Poem/video must be no more than 100MB. The video poem must not exceed 3 minutes in total. Entrants will be allowed a 10 second grace period. Failure to keep to the length prescribed, the poet might be disqualified. The poem submitted for the competition must be original and be the poet’s own work; and it should not have been submitted anywhere else (other digital slams/projects). The video must be original and not contain other people’s copyrighted material. In the event that the poet uses any other person’s content in the video (visuals or sound, etc) it is the onus of the poet to secure the rights of use for such content. The festival reserves the right to request proof thereof. Props, costumes and/or instruments are permissible in the presentation of poems. Poets may not do introductions to their poems. Poems that are shortlisted will be shared on the festival’s social media platforms. Entrants must be between the ages of 18-35 The Top Ten entrants will be invited to perform at the Poetry Africa festival semi-final Slam Competition in Johannesburg on Friday 6 October 2023. Where necessary the Top Ten entrants will be provided with flights from a major airport in South Africa to Johannesburg, 2 night’s accommodation in Johannesburg, per diems and a performance fee. The Top Five poets will be invited to perform at the Poetry Africa festival in Durban on Saturday 14 October 2023. Where necessary the Top Five entrants will be provided with flights from a major airport in South Africa to Durban, 2 night’s accommodation in Durban, per diems and a performance fee. The winner will receive an overall fee of Twenty Thousand Rand. Entrants must be between the ages of 18-35 Poets may submit their videos via WhatsApp to 071 420 5185. Poets must complete the entry form when sending their poems. Entries close on Friday 15th September at midnight The decisions of the panel of Jury will be final.

Apply for the 2023 Miles Morland Writing Scholarship

The Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship

Grant
Scholars writing fiction will receive a grant of £18,000, paid monthly over the course of twelve months. At the discretion of the Foundation, Scholars writing non-fiction, who require additional research time, could receive an additional grant, paid over a period of up to eighteen months.

Scholar’s Undertaking
At the end of each month scholars must send the Foundation 10,000 new words that they will have written over the course of the month. Scholars are also asked to donate to the MMF 20% of whatever they subsequently receive from the book they write during the period of their Scholarship. This includes revenues as a result of film rights, serialisations or other ancillary revenues arising from the book written during the Scholarship period. These funds will be used to support other promising writers. The 20% return obligation should be considered a debt of honour rather than a legally binding obligation.

Qualifications
To qualify for the Scholarship a candidate must submit an excerpt from a piece of work of between 2,000 – 5,000 words, written in English that has been published and offered for sale, you must send clear evidence that the piece you upload as part of your application has been both published AND offered for sale. This will be evaluated by a panel of readers and judges set up by the MMF. The work submitted will be judged purely on literary merit. It is not the purpose of the Scholarships to support academic or scientific research, or works of special interest such as religious or political writings. Submissions or proposals of this nature do not qualify.

Scholarship Requirement
The only condition imposed on the Scholars during the year of their Scholarship is that they must write. They will be asked to submit by email at least 10,000 new words every month until they have finished their book, or their Scholarship term has ended. If the first draft of the book is completed before the year is up, payments will continue while the Scholar edits and refines their work.

Proposed Work
The candidates should submit a description of between 400 – 1,000 words of the work they intend to write. The proposal must be for a full length book of no fewer than 80,000 words. The MMF does not accept proposals for collaborative writing or short story collections. The proposal should be for a completely new work, not a work in progress, and must be in English.
Please note that if you are shortlisted for a Morland Writing Scholarship, you will be asked to send us a 3,000 – 4,000 word “chapter” of the book you are proposing to write on your scholarship year to help the judges assess your ability. Writers will be notified that they are on the shortlist at the end of October. Shortlisters will then have 15 days to return the sample “chapter”. In view of that, please do some advance thinking about the sample “chapter” you will have to provide if you are shortlisted.

Biography
Please also tell us in 200 – 300 words something about yourself and your background. People who reach the shortlist will be asked for further information about themselves and how they propose to write their book.

Fiction or Non-Fiction
The Foundation welcomes both fiction and non-fiction proposals. We are aware that non-fiction Scholars may need extra time for research, so the Foundation may exercise its discretion to offer non-fiction writers a longer Scholarship period of up to 18 months.

Starting time
The Scholars may elect to start at any time between January and June in the year following the Scholarship Award. Their payments and the 10,000 word monthly submission requirement will start at the same time.

Accepted works
The Scholarships are meant for full length works of adult fiction or non-fiction. Poetry, plays, film scripts, children’s books, and short story collections do not qualify.

Mentoring
The Foundation will not review or comment on the monthly submissions as they come in. However, each Scholar will be offered the opportunity to be mentored by an established author or publisher. In most cases the mentorship will begin after the book has been finished and the Scholarship period has ended. At the discretion of the Foundation, the cost of the mentorship will be borne by the MMF. It is not the intention of the MMF to act as editor or a publisher. Scholars will need to find their own agents and publishers although the MMF is happy to offer advice.

Residency
Please note that this is not a residential Scholarship. It is up to the Scholars what their living arrangements are during their Scholarship year.

Important Dates
Applications will be received between 1st July 2023 and 18th September 2023. Applications submitted outside that period will not be looked at.
All enquiries relating to the Morland Scholarships should be directed to scholarships@milesmorlandfoundation.com In order to apply, please click on the blue box that appears on any page of the website, entitled: ‘Morland Writing Scholarship Application’.
A submission of between 2,000 to 5,000 words as a Word document of work that has been published and offered for sale.

Proof of publication and proof of sale.
A description of between 400 – 1,000 words about the new book you intend to write.
A scan of an official document showing that you, or both of your parents, were born in Africa.
A brief bio of between 200 – 300 words.
Please tell us how you heard about the Morland Writing Scholarships.

Contact Information
Miles Morland Foundation
2nd Floor, Jubilee House
2 Jubilee Place
London
SW3 3TQ
+44 (0) 20 7349 1245
mmf@milesmorlandfoundation.com
For more information, visit:
https://commonwealthfoundation.com/opportunity/miles-morland-foundation-writing-scholarship/?fbclid=IwAR08r_hSoXnA_BIc9rnDdTTeZERqo_sIXYtxAxfcmUxZ53MZOzv7AJYYL50

Tell A Story Of An African City

African urban space anthology The Flute is looking for submissions highlighting the tales of African cities. Please submit your chosen poems or images by September 1 if the theme appeals to you.
The Flute is edited by Olajide Salawu and Rasaq Malik. The anthology is looking to publish works in the genre of poetry and photography focusing on African urban spaces such as Lagos, Accra, Kinshasa, Lonligwe, Durban, Marrakesh, Nairobi, Ouagadougou, Dakar, Luanda, Yaounde, and more.
The theme of this issue is “African Urban Echoes“, defined as the flute of the city, the noise of the people at the park, the bus conductor shouting on top of his voice, the rhythm of the night taxi cab and the car honking games. In these echoes, there is resistance, hope, and anxieties all produced simultaneously as the power of art can transmit hope out of the bleak stories of African urban governance.

Read the inspiration behind the theme here:
In the words of Nigerian poet, Odia Ofeimum, “A city is like a poem. You enter it and you enter into a world of concentrated time.” Odia’s observation makes us think of the city as malleable, changing from time to time, switching tempo from moment to moment. The African city, we guess, can be fast and uncanny, and can offer the balm when we walk in its faith. The question then is, is the city like a poem? What kind of poem does the city produce to reimagine Henri Lefvebre, what kind of city does the poem produce? With a focus on African cities as an urban capture with many Surrounds, as described by Simone Abdoumaliq, we are thinking of how these urban centers carry the heritage of colonial violence in their walls, roofs, texture, and rhythms. How can we create stories that inspire a lifeworld not of struggles to counter the normativized narratives of African urbanity? What other forms of city do we have and hope to live in? We also imagine the South Africa urban poet Mongane Wally Serote chanting fervently against the darkness of Johannesburg as we deliberate on the “Sorrows of the Black City” in Muhammad al-Fayturi’s poetry. There are many questions African cities ask us, that we have not been able to answer.

Submission Guidelines:

Send three poems or two images with the subject line: “African Urban Echoes”
Write us a note on what has inspired you to write this poem.
We prefer a Microsoft Word attachment
Include your bio in the body of the email.
Deadline: September 1, 2023

There may be compensation for contributors.
Submit to: africanurban69@yahoo.com