So two weeks ago we looked into Novellas, even marked off a few titles. I am sure that after we had talked about it, you went in search of other titles that fit under the Novella Category. Just in case you missed out on that conversation have a look at The Woman Who Waited – Writing Novellas.

So where do you start?

Well, perhaps you are wondering which genres would do well as Novellas.

Science fiction, romance, fantasy, crime fiction, hard core noir, and the in betweens, basically any genre or category that can be told in 10000 to 70000 words. Just to prove this, do you remember Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, Chester Himes, Mickey Spillane, Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, Robert B. Parker, Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, Walter Mosley, Agatha Christie, James Hardley Chase, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, The Mills & Boons Franchise, even Stephen King horror stories… this list could go on and on.

Alright, so you have your idea, what now?

Let’s start with the Setting.

Because of the brevity of this category of writing, the setting is just as important as the plot line. So decide on an interesting setting. Work on the descriptions, have it clear in your head, because if you can see it, the better you will be able to help your reader see it.

When we talk about setting, we are talking about the time and the place. Think about it, if you are writing about an adventure that is complicated by storms, you want to describe the rain, the cold and the thunderstorms as much you want to describe the rugged hillsides and flooding valleys. But you can’t place a storm in a time of year when the little corner of Western Province where you’ve set your story is usually as dry as the Sahara. And you can’t talk about rugged hillsides when you’ve set your story in the great flat bushlands. So think about it, have fun with it. The more you enjoy it, the more your reader will.

And just so you know, I am afraid of thunderstorms. That’s probably why I read horror stories set during stormy nights J

What about the Pace? We already know that the Novella has a shorter length than a novel. So does the story have to go very fast or can it be more relaxed?

That’s up to you. But shorter stories work best when the antagonists and protagonists are clear and the conflicts between them are set out. The more conflicts there are, the faster the pace of the story. Be careful not to rush your reader along so fast that at the end of the story they are left with a feeling of anticlimax.

Which brings us to the next point. Structure. Whether short or long, a story needs a plot. It needs to have a beginning, a rising action, a climax, a falling action and an ending.

Start with plotting out the story from the beginning to the end. You can do this in point forms. And don’t worry this plot is not written in stone, as you go along you might find the need to change certain things and that is ok.

On your plot line, now mark the rising action – this is the point when conflict arises. Then mark the climax – the point at which this conflict reaches its absolute peak, do or die, adrenaline rush… Then mark the falling action – the point when resolution of the conflict begins to happen.

Once you have these points, it shouldn’t be too hard for you to see how to introduce the story – works best if you immediately introduce the main character and his issues. The conclusion should offer resolution for the reader, allow him or her to now let go of the characters and hope for the best. As you might have deduced from the previous sentence, not all resolutions are ‘happily-ever-after’ resolutions.

So get started now, write that story you have always wanted to read!

And with that allow us to send you to this week’s reading.

The first piece is a longer short story that is not quite a novella.

Stones Bounce on Water – A Short Story by Dilman Dila.

The second piece is a shorter piece with an title that made me want to read it.

A Repulsive Beauty by Henry Kamundi

Both of these pieces are not up for voting, as they will be put up on the main Storymoja Blog for longer exhibit. Please read and comment on both stories to let the authors know what you think of their work.

Next week’s genre of writing is Urban Fiction. Please send in your work to blogs@storymojaafrica.co.ke by Sunday 17^th, April 2010.

Written by Henry Kamundi

I threw a side glance to her as she walked. What a figure! Tall, tender and slender. Feelings of a hungry hunter were instantly excited in me. My glance turned into a gaze. I walked close behind her…feeding my eyes with this walking beauty. My nostrils were gluttonous to consume her sweet scented perfume that smelt like something really edible. First to see were her soft, African light-skinned thighs that emerged under her floral short skirt. The pale green spaghetti tight top which she wore, nicely matched with her high heeled open shoes. Those high heeled shoes made her bottoms push out backwards excitingly. I was tempted.

Colored bangles almost filled her both arms and matched with the shoes. The beaded necklace suited her that at first I thought she wore a colored tattoo around the neck. She had a number of rings on her fingers and a pin on the nose. The nails were vanished to match with the prints on the skirt. A real accomplished masterpiece beauty. I had real temptation to shake hand with her. But I did not have guts. How could I begin? She was a stranger.

I raised my eyes to see the face. I confirmed that I did not know her. Nonetheless, her look sparked in me unexplainable things. It is like my blood was boiling. At one point I even thought I was staggering. But I went on to feed the eyes. Her dimpled cheeks were so bewitching. Then there were the cherry-red lips which were really inviting. Sweet, soft, smile, seemed stuck permanently on her face. This sent me to the skies. I wondered whether she saw me. She walked as if I never existed on that road. How I wished her eyes met mine at least once.

The way she moved her bottoms in the air… with hips gyrations that tantalize men; twirls that would quickly send a man’s hand deep into his pants. Yes, she would drive any man’s saliva glands loose. As she walked, her short wide skirt swung like she was dancing salsa. I was totally carried away…to the blue skies. And her black natural hair that was tied to form a porn tail at the back painted a picture of a horse in my mind. I thought her to be a horse that had rode me to the skies.

She walked and I followed foolishly like I was her shadow. I am not a slow walker. But I had to adjust to her pace. How could I walk fast and leave behind all this? I wished we talked. Her ‘door’ was locked. But it is me who had not knocked. I thought it was good to give it a try. But I had no courage. I breathed hard. No oxygen seemed to have been in the surrounding. I gasped for more breath. I often caught myself plucking tender leaves from the lantana camara bushes along the path as I walked. Upon plucking, I would juggle it on my palms unconsciously, drop it and pluck another one. I felt hot and sweaty. I ran my hand over my face. It was wet. My armpits were welling up like twin springs. I felt like a person who wanted to step into a river of unknown depth.

As she swaggered, my mind was swayed and fuddled…I knew what I wanted but I did not know how to achieve the goal. I just wanted to greet her. Shake her hand and just look at her into the face, into the eyes. Just that and I would be contented. How I wished to hear her voice. I could easily guess that she had a soft voice or may be nicely husky. Such girls cannot match to a rough baritone or bass. It would be injustice done to them by their creator, so I thought.

She clung to her clutch bag as if all her life depended on it. You would think the oxygen she breathed was reserved in it. Then I realized that the big round green earrings on her ears not only matched with the clutch bag but also the hair clip that peered from the porn tail. As I marveled this African beauty, I wondered where she could have come from. No doubt she did not belong to our village. I knew every so and so’s grown up daughter by name or at least facially. But this one, I thought, must be a visitor here…may be from the city.

A thought of the city left my blood almost frozen. Girls from the city are tough and unapproachable, I thought. But for such a girl to be in the village means she is ok with life of the village and the people who live there. My blood was excited afresh. Now I could smell chocolate. Oh I love chocolate! It is the thing I like eating most. This chocolate…and I was not hallucinating. Then I figured out. There were coffee bushes on the right side of the road which had beautiful fully-blown white flowers that scented the air strongly. The combination of the scent from coffee flowers with her perfume produced chocolate smell. This chocolate…my saliva glands went loose.

Now there was no turning back. I found myself advancing towards her. The distance between us was now very small. It is then that she looked at me and quickly looked away. I felt short of oxygen again. I breathed deep. Trying to smile, I extended my right hand to her while courteously saying “Hi madam”. Quite! Then I repeated the same words thinking that she had not heard or seen my hand. She still remained quite. My repetition of the same greeting sounded to myself like a chorus of a boring song. I decided to change the tune. “How are you beautiful lady?” I said confidently wishing that she would respond.

She turned down my stretched hand and my uttered greetings. Instead, she twisted her lips as if to express disgust at my demeanor. She quickly rushed her eyes from my feet to the head and clicked her tongue. The click of her tongue sounded like an expressed full stop to the journey that had began about twenty minutes back. It is then I realized that I had passed the barbershop where I was going to shave my hair and trim my beard. I thought so foolish of myself. So I turned and walked back loathing. My hand was in the pocket and my eyes downcast almost seeing nothing.

I wondered why such a beautiful lady behaved like that.  Could it be because of my long, shaggy hair and my bushy beard? My armpits started to well up again. The weather seemed so hot for me. This was despite the clouds that now covered the sky. It looked like it would rain any time. I wondered what would happen to her beautiful hair if rains started to pour. Would those sharp heeled shoes make it in the mud? And the red lipstick? I do not know why I had so many imaginations about her being rained on. I blushed away these thoughts. And as I walked something bitter stuck in my throat. My mouth was dry; I had no saliva to push the bitter reality down the tract.

©Henry Kamundi 2011

Written by Dilman Dila

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A full moon lit the first night for the visitors as they took tea on the porch. Meg, a native who married Joe Paulson when she went to study in London, asked me turn off all the lights so that her guests could enjoy their first African moon.

Winnie Hoodge, the one who started all the trouble, said she’d never noticed the moon’s beauty before. That the night sky in London, where she lived with her husband Peter, who sat next to her, wasn’t so real.

Peter said: “We should’ve come here for our honeymoon.”

And Winnie scowled. It however passed so quickly that the others didn’t see it. At sixty, I was fifteen years older than any of them, but my sight was good.

“I’ll spend my next one here,” said Chelsea Croele, Winnie’s partner in a chain of shopping malls, thrice married but with no children.

Winnie nearly dropped her cup at Chelsea’s remarks. The scowl returned. To hide it, she put the cup on the table and reached for a hanky to wipe her face.

“That’s if the Paulsons let you,” Winnie’s cousin Tim Collins, a small man with glasses, said. At thirty five, he was the youngest person on the porch that night.

At this point, I retreated to the kitchen. I didn’t hear or see anymore, and it wasn’t until later that the significance of this conversation struck me.

Meg drank secretly. She paid me to mix her tea with waragi, a strong intoxicant. She became quieter with each sip of this brew. The guests couldn’t understand her gradual shift from a jovial host to a brooding housewife.

At about nine, when the fatigue of the day was beginning to tell on all of them, a firecracker went off.

The Paulsons had thrown a birthday party for their son the day before. This boy and his sisters had earlier left for a week long stay with an aunt, but the police believed the Paulsons sent the children away to spare them the trauma of witnessing a murder. The porter normally removes every crumb of cake off the lawn after a Paulson party. This time round, he (suspiciously) missed a firecracker bigger than his fist. The toy had a timing device to set it off. It failed to explode at the party, but remembered it was supposed to entertain guests and went off a day too late.

Everybody on the porch jumped. Meg fled into the house, screaming, and the other five scrambled after her.

I was in the kitchen. I came out with the two other cooks to investigate the commotion. We turned on the lights. I went to the porch. The firecracker gave a final pop-pop. The sparks went out. The night regained silence. I returned to the living room.

Meg came out of the dining, wavering on her feet. She looked at me with glazed eyes. Joe appeared behind her.

“What was that, Simon?” he asked me.

“A firecracker,” I said. “Opita didn’t clean the lawn thoroughly.”

He nodded. He walked out to the porch. You could see his silhouette through the windows. Chelsea and Peter came out from behind a sofa. I got a funny feeling that they’d been kissing. Peter wiped his mouth. His eyes shone with happiness. Chelsea tried to look innocent. Tim and Winnie came from the hall. Winnie was panting and the most shaken of them all. Her fingers dug into Tim’s hands as she sought comfort and reassurance. Her face was white.

“What was that?” she asked no one in particular.

“Firecrackers,” I said.

“I don’t believe that,” she said.

“We had John’s party yesterday,” Joe said. “You met my son John, didn’t you?”

“I know John,” Winnie said, “but what was the firecracker doing in the lawn? Why did it go off at this time?”

No one had any answer. They trooped back to the porch. I went with them to clean the table. The biscuit and groundnut bowls had spilled their contents, so had one of the tea pots. Winnie slumped onto her chair – no, it wasn’t her chair. It was Meg’s, but she didn’t notice. She’d sat next to the host all evening. Her hanky was on the table closer to Meg’s chair than to hers. She, given the shock, easily took up the wrong chair.

And inevitably reached for the wrong cup of tea.

The alarm showed on Meg’s face. She looked at me for help. I shrugged.

Winnie sipped the tea and immediately spat it out. She slapped the cup on the table, half emptying it and cracking the handle. She jumped with a scream.

“Someone’s trying to kill me!”

No one knew how to react to that.

“Calm down, honey!” Peter her husband said.

“Don’t you honey me!” she screamed at him. “You are the top suspect!”

For a moment, I feared a nip of Meg’s tea had knocked her off.

“That’s not a nice thing to say,” Chelsea said.

“Oh! You Chelsea!” she turned on her partner. “What set off that firecracker, if at all it was a firecracker?” Chelsea started to say something. Winnie didn’t give her a chance. “The murderer wanted us to run from this table so he, or she, could poison my tea!”

“Impossible,” Joe said.

“Taste it! Taste the tea!”

Joe took a step towards her, but stopped and stared at the cup with a frown. I think he noticed it was Meg’s cup. For a time, he’d suspected Meg had secret bottles. He once asked me if I put anything in her tea. I denied it. Meg was my relative. Well, we had to draw diagrams in the sand to establish the relationship, but that was enough blood between us for me to be loyal to her. Moreover, she gave me big tips to satisfy her secret hobby. I couldn’t betray her. But now, Joe looked at the cup with a frown.

“One of you wants me dead,” Winnie said in a calmer voice. “You each have a motive. Joe and Meg, you want to run this project on your own! I started it. I funded it for years before it could get on its feet. Isn’t it a lucrative business, this charity thing? You get a lot of money and you don’t pay tax. You think if the Chairperson of the board, that’s me, is dead, you Joe will become the new Chairperson and you two will get more money!”

The charity she talked about worked to improve the health and education facilities in our county. It built schools and health centers. For long, we’d suspected that the Paulson’s were in it for money, not for the love of helping the poor.

“Gosh,” Peter said. “These are out hosts, Winnie. We’re all very close friends. This is supposed to be a vacation!”

Joe fixed his wife a glare that had one question. Meg understood the question, but couldn’t stand her husband’s eyes. Tim Collins later told the police that the way Joe looked at his wife was an admission of guilt.

“I have a headache,” Meg said. “I’ll retire now. Goodnight, everyone.” She abruptly walked away from the porch.

“You upset her, Winnie,” Chelsea said. “Why do you say such things?”

Winnie turned on her. “If I die you assume sole ownership of Gala!” The chain of shopping malls they owned. “Or probably it’s you, Tim.” She pirouetted to her cousin. “The only relative I have. Like Peter, you stand to inherit my money!”

“I’m sorry,” Peter apologized to Joe. “I don’t know what’s got into her head.”

Joe was now looking at me the way he’d looked at his wife. I could still read the question in his eyes and I couldn’t deny it anymore. I nodded.

“What got into my head is that someone is trying to kill me!” Winnie’s voice rose again. “You all have motives. All you now seek is an opportunity!”

“That’s not your cup,” Joe said. “You sipped my wife’s tea. It tastes funny because she puts alcohol in it.”

Winnie looked down at the cup. It came to her that she’d sat on the wrong seat and drunk from the wrong cup. She hurriedly took her own seat and picked her cup, but couldn’t put it on her lips. She was trembling. She started to cry.

I lived two miles from the Paulson mansion. I left for home at about eleven. My bicycle had no headlamps, yet I rode fast without fear of an accident for the full moon lit up the sandy paths. The village looked deserted in sleep. The only sounds were from crickets, frogs and a solitary dog barking at the moon. I enjoyed coasting in the still and quite night. It made me feel young.

I drank two beers I’d snitched from the Paulson’s and watched TV for an hour before going to bed. My house belongs to the lucky few in the village, with brick walls and iron sheet roofing. While most folk sleep on mats, can’t afford blankets and listen to croaky radios, I own a comfortable bed and a TV. On occasions like Christmas, scores of folk came to watch my TV. Solar panels pinned to the roof provided the electricity. My children are educated, have good jobs and can support me. I got this good life after cooking for twenty years at Sheraton.

They next morning, the guests visited the schools and health centers. They had lunch at two o’clock and did not go out again. We were in the dry season, the time of no rains and hot sunshine. They lolled under a shady tree, playing a card game, in the lawn.

I didn’t have to start cooking supper until six, so I took a walk.

Tim Collins asked where I was going. “For a smoke at the pond,” I replied. The Paulsons didn’t like smoke in their house.

“I’ll come with you.” He abandoned the card game amid protests from his colleagues and ran to me, smiling awkwardly.

We walked in silence to the pond. To access it, we had to climb a ten feet high mountain of rocks (I went over it without panting), then descend twenty feet to the shores. I sat on a rock under a cool tree, my favorite spot. Tim sat next to me. I lit a cigarette.

At this time of the year, the hundred feet wide pond had green slime on its surface. Flowery vegetation draped the mountain of rocks that formed a ring around the water. White stones pocked the muddy shore. Several bird species flew about, chirping and singing to add beauty to the scene.

“Amazing,” Tim said, taking pictures with a digital camera. “Amazing.”

“It’s a taboo site,” I said.

“You are kidding.” He knelt and aimed the camera at a colorful bird perched on a rock that jutted out of the water.

“Locals keep away from it,” I said. “Children don’t play here. Nobody brings his cattle here for a drink. It’s a good thing the rocks enclose it.”

“Why?” Tim took several pictures of the bird. “Gotcha!”

“Dead bodies.” I took a long drag of my cigarette.

He probably thought I was joking because he laughed.

“It used to be a popular playground for children, but one would drown every year. People believe there are ghosts in the water. Nobody comes here anymore. I think that’s why murderers dump victims here.”

He smiled. “Probably that horrible Winnie will end up here.” I joined him in the laughter.

“We last had a murder three years ago,” I said. “A man killed his brother in a quarrel over land and thought no one would know if he hid the body here.”

“You don’t believe it’s haunted,” he said. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t come here.”

“I do,” I said. “Stones don’t sink in that water. They bounce.”

“Impossible.”

“Watch.” I threw a rock into the pond. It bounced thrice before it sunk.

“Wow!” Tim said.

“Now do you believe it’s haunted?”

It took him nearly a minute to reply. He watched the pond all this time. The color of his face had changed.

“Let’s go back,” he whispered.

I laughed. “I scared you, didn’t I?”

He looked at me confused. He tried to laugh in vain. “How did you do it?”

I threw in another rock. It bounced four times.

“There’s no magic,” I said. “If you shoot low and hard so that the stone takes an almost horizontal flight, it will bounce like a ball.”

Tim tried. It took him several attempts before he made it.

“Wow!” he said. “I’m Houdini! I’ll bring them here to see my magic!”

That night during supper, Tim told them about the pond. I’d brought them a bowl of mushroom soup. They were talking about beaches and where to go on their next holiday.

“Why don’t we go and relax in the pond?” Tim said, looking at me.

“What pond?” Peter said.

“You can’t enjoy a pond the way you enjoy an ocean,” Chelsea said.

“Don’t talk about that pond,” Meg said. “Not now.”

Joe stole a glance at Winnie and the paranoid woman caught him looking at her.

“Why can’t he talk about the pond?” Winnie said. “What’s there in the pond?”

“It’s a haunted site,” Tim said. “The locals avoid it because dead bodies keep turning up there. Murderers deposit victims in it because no one ever goes there.”

Everyone turned to Winnie, for she’d dropped her spoon and her face had lost color. She was struggling to keep the food in her mouth. She lost the battle and dumped the stuff into the napkin on her lap.

“Is that where you’ll deposit my body?” she said.

“Oh God,” Chelsea said.

“Jeez!” Tim said. “What got into your head?”

“What got into my head!” She half rose from her chair, but only to throw away the napkin she’d soiled. It fell on the wall behind her and slipped to the floor. I wondered whether to pick it up.

“She never behaves like this,” Peter said, apologizing for her behavior. “I just can’t –”

“Peter,” Winnie hissed, “when I die the police will question you first. You won’t tell them that we don’t have sex anymore, will you? You won’t mention that we quarrel every time we go to bed, so I better publicize it. PETER IS CHEATING ON ME!”

“Shut up!” Peter shot out of his chair, banging his fist on the table at the same time. He upset a glass.

“You won’t shut me up! You are cheating on me with Chelsea!”

“Oh Winnie!” Chelsea said.

“Don’t you Oh Winnie me!”

“I’m not sleeping with your husband!” Chelsea shouted back.

I didn’t want to listen to the row. I walked back to the kitchen.

“Where then did he go last night? He wasn’t in bed for a whole hour! Where was he if not in your bed! You two want to kill me then Gala will be yours!”

I was out of the dining room at this time, back in the kitchen, but she was yelling. I could hear everything. Tim said something I didn’t hear because he didn’t shout.

“Just paranoid! Why did you go with that cook to the pond? He’s the cook, Tim! He can poison my food!”

The two other cooks knew little English, but they understood what she was talking about. They looked at me with pity.

“He took you to that pond to show you where you can deposit my body after he’s poisoned me! Didn’t he?”

Joe and Meg loved to eat, but they couldn’t get good food in a village like ours. Then Meg heard I was once a Sheraton chef. She didn’t say much to lure me out of retirement. A little income in old age couldn’t hurt, and I’d get a chance to teach these two fine men the art. But that night, I wished I’d never stepped into their mansion. I took off my apron.

“I’m going,” I said to the other cooks. “I won’t come back.”

They were young men still struggling to pay bride price for their wives. They couldn’t afford to quit.

“We are going too,” one said. “If anything happens to that woman, they’ll say it’s us.”

We hung up our aprons and left by the back door. We didn’t tell anyone goodbye. We left food on the stoves and knew it would get ruined. We didn’t care. Our bicycles were in the shed in the backyard. We jumped on them and rode out fast.

We had to pass by the dining room window on our way out. The curtains were drawn. We saw the silhouettes of the people inside. I could identify Winnie’s from the headscarf she had on. I could also identify her husband’s for he was the only man in a coat. They shouted and tried to hit each other. The others fought to restrain them. That’s the last time I ever saw Winnie alive.

The next morning, I was still in bed at eight o’clock, reading an old newspaper like a truly retired fellow. A car roared into my compound. The Paulson truck, I knew before I looked out of the window. Still, I drew the curtain a bit and peeped. Joe jumped out of the Toyota, bare feet and in nightclothes.

“Simon!” he shouted as he hurried to my front door. He didn’t know my bedroom window. He’d have come straight to it. “Simon!”

I scrambled out of bed and got dressed. One of my sons, a twenty five year old man who’d visited us a few days before, restrained Joe from searching all the rooms. I found them in a mock wrestling match in the living room.

“Simon,” Joe said when I appeared, giving up the match. “Have you seen Winnie?”

I knew then that she was dead. Murdered.

“She’s missing.” His shoulders sagged as though he’d expected answers from me. “She locked herself in her room last night. Peter slept in Tim’s room. This morning, he tried to talk to her in vain. He knocked. She didn’t open. He thought she’d committed suicide. We asked Okello” – the guard – “to climb up the window and take a look. Okello broke a pane, parted the curtains and peeped in. He didn’t see her. She’s missing. Yet the room is locked from inside! The windows and the doors locked from inside!”

Joe was in a mess. Disintegrating. His skin resembled chalk dust. The tears in his eyes refused to spill out and seemed to irritate him.

“Go to the police,” I said.

“You think so?”

I nodded.

“Do you think she’s dead?”

I shrugged. “You shouldn’t drive. Let my son help. We’ll accompany you.”

The police post was just a collection of quotient huts under a giant mvule tree. We found no officer on duty, though it was nine with the sun shining like a doomsday fireball.

We went to the sub county headquarters, a long, white, 1920s building with red tiles for a roof and a ceiling made of bats. We found it deserted too. The people supposed to run our sub county hadn’t reported for duty. We however found a porter sweeping bat-shit out of the courthouse. The place stunk.

“I can take you to the sergeant’s home,” the porter told me in Swahili after I’d asked about the cops. “He doesn’t live far.”

We drove to the sergeant’s homestead. The women were already up and about. They pointed out the hut in which the sergeant slept. When I saw him, he struck me as one who’d spent a greater part of the night inside a pot of brew. His eyes were red like two balls of fires. He had a headache. He sobered up at the sight of Joe. He cleaned his face with his palms.

“We got a problem,” I said. “You have to come with us to this man’s home.”

“It might not be a problem at all,” Joe said.

We found Meg trying to entertain her remaining guests on the porch. Each had a cup of tea, which wasn’t hard for her to prepare. All she did was boil water in a kettle and pass tea bags around. They held the cups without taking the tea. They were all standing, in silence. As usual, Meg had more waragi than water in her tea. She was on the second cup when we arrived and the effects were beginning to tell on her.

The sergeant looked smart and sober in a gray uniform. He’d brushed his hair. He wore sunglasses to hide the redness of his eyes. He held an AK47 in a show off manner. Tim later remarked that he looked like a Sierra Leone rebel on the cover of BBC’s Focus on Africa magazine.

“I am Sergeant Pascal Kivumbi,” he said. “Sub County Police Commander” – a title that doesn’t exist – “Where is the missing woman?”

That question scared the people on the porch more than his appearance did.

“We don’t have anything to do with her disappearance,” Peter said. “We woke up this morning and she was gone without a trace.”

“Moreover her room is locked from inside,” Chelsea said. “How did she get out? How did she manage to lock that room from inside after she got out?”

“She just disappeared into the thin air,” Tim said.

“Let me see the room,” the sergeant said.

On the way to the room, I realized he was a better cop than I’d thought. We were climbing the stairs. Joe and his wife led. Meg still had her cup of tea. The cop followed them. I walked behind the cop. Peter, Chelsea and Tim were behind me. They still had their cups, though none was taking the tea. The cop stopped to stare at something on the stairs. Joe and his wife went a few steps up before they realized the sergeant had stopped. The three guests crowded behind me, trying to peer over my shoulder.

Sgt Pascal examined a smear of mud no bigger than a thumbprint. You wouldn’t have noticed it unless you were cleaning the stairs and looking out for such spots of dirt, yet this cop, wearing sunglasses, saw it.

“What’s that?” Joe said.

“Mud,” I said.

“Oh God,” Meg said, and took a sip of her tea.

“Is it a clue?” Chelsea asked no one in particular.

The cop went back down the stairs. The guests and I pressed ourselves into the railing to give him way. He got another piece of clue. Signs of wiping. Someone had stepped on the stairs with mud and tried to mop it off in a hurry. Whoever did it didn’t know how to swab the floor, and didn’t use a wet piece of cloth. Though the culprit succeeded in getting rid of the mud, he or she left water marks on the floor.

“Is it a clue?” Chelsea asked. No one gave her an answer.

The cop found more watermarks. They led to the dining room, then the kitchen and out the back door. From there, the clues vanished.

“Where did he get that mud?” Joe asked. “We are in the middle of a dry season. There’s dust all over. Where did all this mud come from?”

“The pond,” I said.

My suggestion stunned the Paulson’s and their guests. Chelsea gasped. Tim muttered something incoherent and Peter seemed to growl. Joe looked at me with alarm in his eyes. Meg took a very long swig from her cup.

The cop went back up the stairs. I followed him. The Paulsons and the guests didn’t move until we’d disappeared into the kitchen. I wanted to tell the sergeant what Winnie had said about someone plotting her murder, but Joe came hurrying behind me. The others stumbled after him, spilling their tea. The guests finally abandoned the cups on a table.

The cop followed the watermarks up the stairs. For a moment, I thought the mud would lead us right up to the culprit’s bed. The cop found something else in the corridor upstairs. A flower. Not a real flower for it was all thorn and no petals, a weed that clings to your clothes when you walk through a bush. It grew abundantly by the pond.

“When did you clean this house?” the cop asked Joe.

“I didn’t clean it!” Joe shrieked.

The Paulsons were health freaks. I told the sergeant that two women cleaned the mansion twice a day, at ten am and at six pm, combing every inch of the house for dirt and germs. Tim and I had returned from the pond at five thirty.

The sergeant pocketed the thorn.

We didn’t find any more mud spots, or watermarks. I think the culprit realized his shoes had mud and took them off at the top of the stairs. The mistake Sgt Pascal did was to let the suspects see his clues before he could make anything sensible out of them. I think the culprit found time to wipe the shoe clean, and dispose the cloth with thorns stuck on it, before the police searched the mansion.

The cop examined the door to the mystery room closely. He tried the knob, gave it a push. It didn’t budge. He peered into the key hole. A key stuck in the other side blocked his view.

“The bolts are pushed in too,” Joe said. “We didn’t enter the room. We only peeped in from the window.”

“Oh God,” Chelsea said. “We didn’t get in? Do you know what that means, Joe? We didn’t get in.”

“What does that mean?” Peter asked.

“Maybe she’s under the bed,” Chelsea said.

“Yes!” Suddenly excited, Joe had hope in his voice. “She might be under the bed! Why didn’t we think of it before?” The gloom left his face and he regained some of the color he’d lost. “Sorry to bother you, officer.”

Sergeant Pascal marched down the corridor to the stairs. Joe bounced after him. The guests followed Joe. Meg held my hands and made me wait until they were nearly at the stairs, out of earshot, then whispered.

“Did you tell Joe about my tea?”

“No,” I said.

“How did he know?”

I shrugged. “Let’s follow them. They’ll think we are hiding something. You heard what she said about me poisoning her.”

“Do you think she’s dead?”

“Yes,” I said. “And I don’t think she’s under the bed,” I added.

“Why not?”

“These windows can be locked from outside. The catch isn’t complicated. If you suspend it vertically and push the window gently, it won’t fall into place. When you’ve closed the window, you give it a thump and the catch will fall into place, so it would look like someone locked it from inside.”

“Really?” Meg took a long swig from her cup.

Sgt Pascal climbed the ladder and peeked into the room. He examined the window for a long time before going through it. The pane was broken and most of the glass had fallen into the room. We were down in the verandah, eyes stuck on the window. No one said anything until the cop’s head popped out, almost fifteen minutes after he got in.

“Is she under the bed?” Joe asked.

The cop didn’t reply. He looked at the crowd gathered at the bottom of the ladder for a moment, then slowly came down.

“Is she under the bed?” Joe repeated the moment the cop had touched the ground.

“That window can be locked from outside,” the cop said. “You arrange the catch vertically, push the window gently into a locking position, and give it a shove. The catch will fall into a horizontal position, locking the window from inside.”

“We didn’t know that,” Chelsea said.

“You and who?” Peter said.

“We people who don’t live in this village. We who’ve never seen such locks.”

“Are you accusing our hosts?”

“No, of course not.”

“I’m going to the pond.” The cop walked away without waiting for anyone.

“Does that mean she isn’t under the bed?” Joe asked the cop but got no answer.

“Do you people see it?” Chelsea said. “She locked herself in. Now, if she’s dead, that means she willingly opened the door for the murderer.”

“She’s not dead,” Tim said. “She’s not murdered.”

“Who could she have opened the door for in the dead of night?”

“She’s not dead!” Tim said.

“She could have opened the door for any of us,” Joe said. “Not just her husband.”

“I didn’t mention her husband,” Chelsea said. She hurried after the cop.

“Why the pond?” Tim asked the cop, who hadn’t yet disappeared round the wall. “Why do we have to go to the pond? She’s not dead. She can’t be there.”

“Is she in the pond?” Meg asked me. “Is she really in the pond?”

“Did you take her to the pond?” Peter asked Tim. He advanced ominously at the smaller man. Peter had a big chest and hairy arms that peeped out of his t-shirt like a wrestler’s. He looked even more menacing in anger. Tim, a small man with glasses, shrunk into the grass at Peter’s advance.

“Did you take her to the pond?” Peter repeated. I thought he was going to pummel Tim and bury him right there in the backyard.

“I didn’t kill her!” Tim shrieked. The cop stopped to listen. “I didn’t kill her!”

For several seconds, the two men glared at each other. Tim whimpering on the ground, expecting Peter to stamp him; Peter towering above him, like a wrestler teasing a beaten foe, encouraging the spectators to roar. The quite spectators looked at them with anxiety.

“I didn’t kill her,” Tim said in a quieter voice.

The cop resumed his march to the pond. Chelsea hurried after the cop, her slippers slapping the verandah noisily. Joe touched Peter’s shoulder and slowly dragged him away from the whimpering Tim. Meg followed them. She no longer had her tea cup, though she cast me glances that told me she wished for one.

The cop stopped at the gate to question the night guard, Okello.

“I never sleep at all,” Okello in Swahili. “But last night someone drugged me! I fell asleep at about four. I was walking, then sleep overcame me under that tree, and I fell down. Asleep. I didn’t wake up until six. Someone drugged me!”

“Shut up!” Joe said. He knew a bit of Swahili. The anger in his voice made the guard jump in fright. “You are making this look like a murder!”

“What did he say?” Chelsea asked no one in particular.

“Let him talk,” the cop said.

“But he’s lying!” Joe said in English. “If he was drugged, that means someone put something in his food. All these people are guests. They wouldn’t know the guard’s food. Nor do we! So if he’s saying someone drugged him, he’s implying Simon did it! Which isn’t true because Simon is a good man.”

Everyone turned to me.

“You didn’t eat last night,” I told the guard in Swahili. “We didn’t bring you food. We left in a hurry. Unless someone gave you food after we left.”

“No, no one gave me food after you left,” the guard said.

At this point, my son joined us. He’d got fed up of sitting by himself in the car.

“Did you go to the kitchen to steal food?” the cop asked the guard.

“No. I was drugged! I fell to the ground while walking and slept until six!”

“Did you eat anything last night? Did you drink anything?”

“No. Only the cigarettes I bought on my way here.”

“What exactly is he saying?” Peter asked Joe, and the host retold the guard’s testimony.

It made sense for the murderer to put the guard to sleep for there was only one way into and out of the mansion. The gate. Razor sharp wires and broken bottles grace the top of the twenty feet high wall, making it an impossible way into or out of the house.

“Probably someone shot him with a dart gun,” I said in Swahili.

“What’s a dart gun?” the cop asked.

“The kind hunters and vets use to put animals to sleep,” I said. “Did you feel any pain before falling asleep?” I asked Okello.

“I don’t remember,” he said.

“Show us exactly where you fell asleep,” I said. “We might get the dart.”

The guard pointed out the spot. We searched for thirty minutes. We didn’t find the dart.

We followed the cop to the pond. It looked like a paradise that morning. The encircling cliff of white rocks draped in vegetation stood clear against a blue sky, casting a shadow that offered solace from the sun’s heat rays. Where there was no slime, the water sparkled in calmness. The birds chirped louder than ever, and darted about in larger numbers than I’d ever seen.

“Beautiful,” Chelsea said. “A pity the locals fear it.”

We expected to find the body floating in the water. We were disappointed. We stood there for about ten minutes, not knowing what to do next.

The cop walked around the pond. Everyone wanted to follow him, but the rocks and mud didn’t favor a lot of walking, especially if you didn’t have the right shoes. I was lucky to have a pair of gumboots on, the one I wore to my garden.

I followed the cop. He didn’t say anything until we were out of earshot of the rest, who sat on rocks to enjoy the beauty of the pond.

“Do you want to tell me something?”

“Yes,” I replied. “The missing woman feared one of those five people wanted to kill her.”

“Why?” The cop kept his eyes on the banks, looking for footprints. If the culprit left mud on the stairs, he must have left prints in the mud.

“She claimed the Paulsons want to control the project.”

“I thought those Paulsons owned the project.”

“Me too. But she said she was the chairman – I mean chairperson of the board. She controlled the money coming into the project, but the Paulsons wanted to get rid of her so that they can control the money. It’s in millions of dollars. Billions in our money.

“Same to the others. They get rich if she dies. That man in the blue t-shirt is Tim, her cousin. He gets some of her riches. Her husband is the big guy in the white t-shirt. They have no children so he is the beneficiary of her estates. That woman with red hair, Chelsea, assumes sole ownership of a big business.”

“Money killed Jesus,” the cop said.

“Yes,” I agreed. “She quarreled with her husband every night. She claimed he was sleeping with Chelsea.”

“Interesting,” the cop said. “More people kill because of love than because of money.”

We saw the footprints, a lot of it, going into and coming out of the pond. There were tracks amid the prints. Someone had dragged something heavy through the mud.

The cop dropped to the ground and examined the prints. They were smudgy, couldn’t reveal what kind or the size of the shoe that made them. The mud was wet and ankle-deep. That’s why the murderer still had it after a minute’s walk.

“He didn’t drag her very far in,” the cop said. “He put her close to the banks, with a stone to keep her down.” He paused. “Women don’t have strength to carry corpses this far.”

I didn’t agree, but kept mum.

“That leaves three suspects,” the cop said. “Tim Collins, Mr. Hoodge, and Mr. Paulson.”

The others noticed that we’d seen something. They started to make their way over the rocks and mud, walking with difficulty, tripping and falling, but hurrying over to us.

“And you.”

I laughed. I had a strong alibi. My wife and my son would swear that I never left the house from the time I returned in the night until Joe came in the morning. Moreover, there was no way I could have entered the mansion without the guard letting me in.

“Poison,” the cop said.

I couldn’t reply to that. The others reached, panting and puffing.

“Did you find the body?” Joe asked. Then he saw the prints in the mud. “Footprints! The murderer’s footprints!”

“You can’t tell whose they are by just looking at them,” Peter huffed.

“This wasn’t a murder,” Tim said. Unlike the others, he wasn’t out of breath. “This is just like stones bouncing on water.”

“What do you mean?” Chelsea asked him.

“Simon knows what I mean.”

I didn’t know what he meant. I frowned at him.

“You can make stones bounce on water, can’t you?” he asked me.

“What has that got to do with this murder?”

“It’s not a murder. Winnie claimed that someone wanted her dead. But why? Why did she suddenly get that idea? Those motives she gave have existed for ten years. We could have done it in those ten years. We didn’t. So why did she suddenly get the idea?”

“What has it got to do with stones bouncing on water?” I asked.

“You can do it if you know how to shoot the stone into the water.”

“What’s you point?” Joe asked.

“Winnie faked it! This isn’t a murder! There’s no body to prove it’s a murder. She all of a sudden started to yell that someone wants to kill her so that when she plays this disappearance act, we all think of murder!”

“Why would she do that?” Chelsea said. “Why would she want us, her best friends, to be suspects?”

“You can’t divert us from this,” Peter said, advancing towards Tim. This time, Tim didn’t back away. “If you did her, I’ll be the one to hang you.”

“It’s you who must give us answers,” Tim hissed. “Tell us why your wife wants to torment us.” His voice rose in anger. “Tell us why she wants us to be suspects yet there is no murder! Tell us why she faked her own death!”

“You did it!” Peter screamed.

“You made her feel worthless! You cheating animal!”

Peter swung a blow at Tim. Tim ducked. Joe and my son broke up the fight. Joe restrained Peter while my son restrained Tim. The cop watched with a bemused smile.

“Where you sleeping with Peter?” Meg asked Chelsea.

Chelsea couldn’t deny it anymore. She started to cry. “We didn’t mean anything.”

Tim’s theory made sense. If Winnie felt worthless because her husband was cheating on her with her best friend, she might want to commit suicide. She might become depressed. That depression can give rise to paranoia, and the end could be a group of people at the banks of a pond, wondering whether it’s a murder or a fake.

Winnie must have been listening all along and waited for this argument to break up before she decided to give us answers. Her toe suddenly stuck out of the slime.

The cop saw it first. He squinted at the green water. He took off his sunglasses and inched forwards for a better look.

We turned away from Tim and Peter and looked where the cop was looking. At first I didn’t see anything, but then I too made out the toe sticking out of the slime. It lingered for nearly a minute, waiting to capture our full attention, before the rest of the feet suddenly shot out.

Meg’s scream scared the birds away from a nearby tree. Chelsea started to cry. The cop waded into the water. He appeared calm, but from the way his lips danced, I could tell he was excited. He waded in with both hands and the gun up in the air. Chelsea’s sobbing and Meg’s whimpers seemed to replace the chirp of the birds.

The water was waist deep where the murderer had deposited Winnie. The cop took hold of her leg, rather too roughly, as though he was used to holding dead bodies, and gave her a tug. Something held her to the bottom of the pond. He gave another tug. Still, the corpse didn’t budge.

He asked my son to give him help.

The boy had to go under water to extricate the corpse from whatever was holding it. He couldn’t see anything down there. He had to feel his way from her feet to her head, looking for hindrances. Gruesome business, but this son of mine is a brave one. He discovered that rocks pinned the corpse by the feet and chest. Somehow, the one on the feet had slipped off, allowing the leg to peep out of the water. He shoved off the rocks and together with the cop dragged Winnie out.

She was in her nightie, which was wet and clung close to her body. We could see her nakedness. Weeds stuck to her hair. Her eyes were wide open. Her tongue stuck out of her mouth. Strangulation marks tattooed her throat.

That gave us three answers. She was dead. She was strangled. She wasn’t poisoned, so it took me off the suspects list. The only question left unanswered was who killed her?

Her fears were true. One of her five comrades wanted her dead. The cop questioned the natural suspect, her husband, at length, about their quarrels, about his affair with Chelsea. Then he questioned the Paulsons, about the project and who actually ran it. Then he talked to Tim Collins, about his relationship with Winnie. He talked to Chelsea last. Yet he didn’t find anything in the answers they gave him.

After the questioning, he searched the mansion. He sent my son to summon six officers to help in the search. They combed every inch of the mansion, looking for the dart gun, for the cloth that wiped mud off the stairs, for muddy shoes, for clothes with thorns stuck on them, for anything that might point to the culprit. They searched in vain. Even the clothes Tim wore to the pond the previous day had no thorns, yet mine did.

Winnie’s story hit the international press. BBC got it first. Scotland Yard came three weeks later. They found the dart gun in the pond. They had called it the missing link, but there were no prints on it and it was virtually untraceable.

The Yard discovered that Tim called a poacher in Kenya shortly before Tim came to Uganda, but they couldn’t prove that the poacher provided Tim with the dart gun.

In the end, the Yard claimed all five conspired to kill Winnie. The case went to court. The five won. It became a mystery without an ending, a case with five suspects and no murderer.

The publicity hurt the Paulsons charity so much that it ceased all activities two years after Winnie’s death. They now live a quite life in their mansion. They are volunteer teachers at a local school. I don’t work for them anymore.

Winnie’s lawyers fought to prevent Tim, Peter and Chelsea from inheriting her money and Gala, but after the trail, there was no reason why they couldn’t.

Many people, including me, believe these three conspired to murder without the cooperation of the Paulsons. I became firmly convinced of this last night, after BBC radio reported that Peter had married Chelsea. Tim was the best man. The Paulsons skipped the wedding.

©Dilman Dila 2011

It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.

It is swelteringly hot in the city, and dusty. Very dusty. It should rain soon, or the streets will choke. The air, fetid from burst sewers and rotting trash in the gutters, ripples with noise; from matatus, the market stalls’ blaring music and human voices.

Everyone is in a hurry and shouting, a seething maelstrom of cogs, each trying to address the machine in their own way. A flustered traffic cop on a pedestrian island takes off his cap and wipes the back of his hand on his brow. Somewhere, brakes screech and an angry horn blows. The handcart pusher who was almost hit by the speeding Nissan van shouts expletives in Kikuyu at the driver, and continues to push his cart laden with bales of flour at the same leisurely pace. The Nissan slowly drives around him and its driver yells something that makes the people nearby laugh. The traffic policeman shakes his head sadly.

At ten past the hour, a wine red Toyota Allion creeps slowly past the front of the Ambassadeur Hotel and double parks in front of the Bakers’ Inn. From his position, the old cab driver sitting in his ancient, claptrap Toyota DX at the rank across the street can see the driver, a young man, with his phone held to the ear. He is making a call. The young man speaks for a moment and then hangs up. He is impatient, the old man can tell, as he keeps drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. What is he here for, the old man wonders idly. Then he forgets and lights a cigarette.

The traffic cop has had enough of the sun and dust. He needs a cold drink and so heads for the Bakers’ Inn. His relative, a second or third cousin or something, works there and this guarantees him a free one. As he walks into the shop, his attention is colossally diverted by the young woman emerging from a staircase that leads up into some offices next to the Inn.

She is wearing those skinny jeans and a strappy top, an ensemble that brings out her petite, lithe and curvy frame in gratuitously lust inducing chic. She is also carrying large satchel. The cop, distracted, slams bodily into an office messenger who is leaving the Inn, heavily laden with pastries and coffee.

The mess is marvellous.

The cop, who now has a large wet patch from his belly to his knees, and the messenger argue about whose fault it is. A small crowd gathers to watch. The cop points with his truncheon a lot as he yells at the poor man, berating him for not looking where he was going. The messenger tells him the same thing. He is much smaller than the hulking government brute, but he stands his ground, demanding in a loud voice for the cop to pay for the mess. Someone in the crowd yells that the cop has been on the street the whole day and would have definitely made enough from all the matatu bribes. A chant of he should pay takes on a life and the cop backs down.

He and the messenger step into the Inn and are seen haggling at the counter. The Bakers’ employee who is mopping up the spill has an angry scowl on his face. He doesn’t get paid nearly enough for this.

The woman with the satchel stops in the street outside, indifferent to the accident she just caused. She looks around a bit before raising her phone to her ear and saying something into it. Then she heads for the red car and slips into the front passenger seat. She greets the young man and proceeds to withdraw a CD booklet from her bag. She sets this on the dashboard and then pulls out a small portable DVD player. As she does this, the man appraises her, eyeing her up in the confine of the cabin. She notices and glares at him for a split second. The look seems to say don’t judge me because I sell porn, I’m not that kind of girl.

The young man stops ogling, but he knows what she is and that with the right kind of persuasion, she’d do with him what he will be watching on the discs later. He shrugs, physically and mentally. She then takes the CD booklet and opens it, showing the man the array porn DVDs within. The man picks six of them before she puts the CD case back in the bag. Then she plays his selection on the portable device, one by one, for his confirmation of their content. He says he’ll take all of them and she nods and voices her approval of his decision. He owes her twelve hundred bob and she makes an impolite sucking sound when he hands her two one thousand shilling notes. She doesn’t really want to come back down here to give him his change and asks, not politely, whether he has loose money. He shakes his head. She makes the sound again and exits the car. She leaves behind a ghost of cheap perfume, underscored by the faintest odour of sweat. The man turns on his AC before depositing the discs into his glove compartment.

He doesn’t wait for his change.

©Mwangi Ichungwa 2010. See more of Mwangi at Avalon Perpetual.

Well, you voted. The winning story is Lorot and the K.C.S.E Nightmares by Lorot Salem.
 

Lorot's Hills

Both of you, Lorot and Wanjeri need to contact me so I’ll know where to send your prize of airtime. Send me your phone number and preffered provider (Safaricom, Zain, Yu or Orange) to juliet@storymojaafrica.co.ke

Congratulations!

Photo Courtesy of artdenattic

The second time she let him touch her breast he had just given her sixty thousand shillings to buy a new phone. This happened two days after she first let him touch her and now she marveled at the power of those two round globes sitting high on her chest.

“This is incredible!” she thought as she tried to fold 60 crisp one-thousand shilling notes into the front pockets of her jeans. They were tight jeans so she opted instead to put the thick wad of cash in the brown handbag resting at the foot of the bed they were sitting o n.  The yellow low cut blouse she was wearing revealed the shiny brown skin of her cleavage. His eyes were glued there now. After two months, of drinks, food and pocket money, she could see he now felt he deserved the real prize. This was the moment of truth.

“Can I now touch the other one?” he asked licking his lips. She found it revolting how his pink tongue slid over his black lips when he stared at her but at the same time it excited her that a man could be so easily parted with his money. After all, she’d only let him touch her right breast twice and for less than a minute each time. And now here he was sixty thousand shillings poorer and begging to touch the left one.  What a fool! She decided then and there he was now her personal ATM.  Wasn’t she after all a 20-year old college girl with a need for money but no job? Yes! She would make him her cash cow no doubt. It would be a walk in the park.

So she let him fondle both her breasts and the look on his face was priceless!

Later that day, in the privacy of her bedroom, hours after she’d attended all her classes and gone home to mum, she’d unbuttoned her blouse and stared at her chest. She’d never really looked at them before. But now she looked. Her friend’s father had copped a sixty-thousand shilling feel for them so she figured they were worthy of some scrutiny.

At 13-years old, two years after they’d first begun to bud, she’d cursed, sometimes loudly at the swelling flesh on her chest. She lost count of the times she felt sharp pains shoot up from her chest to the very center of her brain whenever she accidentally bumped against something.  She’d wondered why old ladies had felt it necessary to rummage constantly through their bags while sitting next to her in the matatu. The way they had elbowed her in the chest while looking for coins to pay their bus fair had brought instant tears to her eyes. The pain was excruciating!

They weren’t painful now. Just a tad sensitive during that time of the month.

Remembering the look in his eyes, she stared at her breast some more and hoped her friend wouldn’t find out. That would be the end of their friendship for sure. But then again, her friend had a rich father, didn’t she? Thanks to him she could afford to buy nice clothes and pay for food at Java while meeting with her equally rich buddies with more or less equally rich fathers. There they would laugh and eat crispy, golden-coloured fries dipped in sweet and sour ketchup and washed down with creamy vanilla milkshakes. Those of us who didn’t have rich dads felt lucky to be in such gatherings. But sometimes we couldn’t help feeling out of place sitting in such ‘rich’ company. Our laughter wasn’t as carefree because we were aware that for every 100 shillings note we had, they had 1000. C’est la vie!

She met him again a week later. She showed him her brand new phone (China make of course! He was old enough not to know the difference and rich enough not to care). He asked to see her breasts again. She told him she needed money for text books. He reached into his wallet and gave her 10,000 shillings. She unbuttoned her blouse.

“Can I have a little more today,” he asked while eagerly rubbing her chest.  “How much more?” she countered. “Hiyo kitu utanionjesha kidogo leo, please”.  (Let me taste it a little bit today, please).

His choice of language was typical of men of his generation. It was a statement and a question rolled up in one sentence. Typical! And why did he have to call my lady bird ‘Hiyo kitu? (That thing?)  It was all a big conspiracy to trivialize the beauty and power of womanhood! Men like him knew the real power of our femininity. Why else would they pay good money for it? But still they were intimidated.

She would have laughed out loud at the irony of it all but that would scare him – make him think she didn’t value him. So she played along instead, smiled inwardly and said; “Of course. You can have it”, she said looking into his widening eyes. “But just a little bit”.

He froze. But only for a few second before shrugging off the ubiquitous looking black leather jacket he was wearing (again typical of men his age!). He quickly unbuckled his belt and wriggled out of his pants.  He was in the process of unbuttoning his shirt when she pulled off her purple blouse. The delicate silver sequins at the neckline grazed her check as she yanked it over her head and tossed it on a chair next to the bed. The hotel manager, a discreet looking man in his fifties had earlier smiled knowingly when she ushered them into their room. He had looked about five years younger than her friend’s father and was better looking to boot! Unlike her friend’s father, the manager’s hair was not obviously dyed black to hide sprinkles of curly white strands.

She unzipped her jeans and slid them slowly down her wide hips. He stared at her lacy white underwear. She stared at his ashy feet. Young or old, Kenyan men and lotion are like oil and water – they never mix!  As they lay down on the bed, she noted that like his feet, his elbows had that the same distinct white-grey colour.

It was over in less than five minutes.  She’d almost laughed out loud when he started shouting “Do It! Do It!” in her ear right before he “Did It”.  He’d tried to kiss her but she kept her mouth firmly shut when his tongue pushed eagerly against her lips. The thought of his thick pink tongue inside her mouth was a hundred times more revolting. It’s difficult to mentally detach when someone’s tongue is in your mouth. It’s personal and too invasive to ignore. Much easier to spread your legs, stare fixedly at the ceiling and hope to God they finish quickly.

Only the whites of his eyes were visible when he suddenly arched his back and groaned loudly signaling the end of business.  He got up to dispose the condom in the bathroom. She cleaned herself as best as she could with the “aloe vera treated” wet tissues she kept inside her book bag.

“Can I call you on Sunday?”, he asked when they were both dressed and finishing up the cold malts, roast potatoes and dry-fry chicken  a waiter usually brought up to their room. This was her favourite part of their meetings. Nasty sex business aside, their conversations were usually quite pleasant afterwards. He talked of his career in the Navy, she talked about her desire to become a Montessori teacher. “Sunday sounds good,” she answered while chewing on a juicy chicken wing. She would be probably be too hangover to get out of bed but he didn’t need to know that now. It was a Friday night after all, and he’d just given her  Sh10,000 – she would most definitely party throughout the weekend.

It became their ritual to clink their glasses together at the end of each rendezvous. They often toasted to good health and good living. Then he went home to his wife. She went home to her mum. But sometimes she went to her boyfriend’s place before going home.

Today, her friend’s father dropped her off at the bus-stop nearest to her house (to better avoid the stares of curious neighbours). She walked the short distance home, showered and got into bed.

Tomorrow, she would call up her friend Mildred and spend some of that lovely money on some new clothes. Maybe splurge on a new wonder bra to keep him hooked. Yes, a mani-pedi and a massage were in also in order, she thought while drifting into a contented sleep. She’d earned it.

©Pauline Odhiambo 2010

What is the price of freedom?

The moonlight slipped between the thick iron grate of the cell window. It split into strands and draped the back of the cell.

He sat in the darkness, out of the moonlight, his head rested against the wall.

With a sudden jerk, his hands went to work over his stomach, scratching furiously through his shirt. The bites itched so bad, he thought his body was on fire. It was the same cycle, just when he was getting used to the fleas, they doused him with powder and boiled his clothes. He had to work up his immunity all over again.

After a while, he came to look forward to the visits from the fleas. If he laughed, if he cried, if he screamed, the walls laughed, cried and screamed in cruel mimicry. He was tired of his own voice. Nothing else seemed to stir inside the cell. Once a day, the harsh scrape of the metal bowl sliding under the cell door jarred his silent world. His ears would ring while he swallowed the cold porridge in the bowl.  No words, no questions, no answers. Now, he prayed to be interrogated, just so that the silence could stop crushing his skull. He came to look forward to the visiting fleas.

Each day, he folded his shirt carefully: don’t want to crush them, he told himself. In the daytime heat, they were rather inhibited. But as moonlight streaked the cement walls of his cell, they fell upon him and reduced him to paroxysms of scratching. In the chilly air, he was warmed by the exertions. And he quietly thanked the fleas for their interest and concern.

Then the cell door would clang open with a clatter of keys and a whine of protest from the door hinges. And suddenly he would be blinded by light as they dragged his sleep-drugged form out into the corridor, through another door and into the hard stone bathhouse.

And they attacked him with cold water, and doused him in powder and watched as he meekly folded himself into another set of worn prison shorts and shirt; identical to the ones he had just taken off, but somehow…lacking. They had killed his fleas.

And, flung back into his cell, teeth a-chatter, he wept to himself. The silence rose and fell, like waves of sickness. He was frantic: he thought that he was going deaf. The harsh scratching of the metal plate sliding under the door relieved him of his worry. After a few days the fleas came back. They sank their teeth into him and he manically scraped his skin, and squirmed in the moon-lit floor, drunk with euphoria.

Sometimes, in the darkness, he thought he could hear the fleas jump.

In the morning, he stared at the raw skin of his torso and his arms and his legs- scratched white during the night. He began to laugh, a terrible, silent laugh.

“Sign here please.” The interrogator said, tapping the piece of paper twice. The sound of another voice was stunning, he felt like he was hearing words for the first time in his life. He gave the interrogator a baffled, happy smile.

The interrogator frowned, “Did you hear me?”

Quickly, he nodded. He glanced at the paper. He had trouble reading after spending so much time in darkness, the words were blurred and it took all his concentration to get his eyes into focus. He could not help admiring the interrogator’s beautiful, girlish handwriting. He finished reading and said nothing.

“Do you understand it?”

“No” he wanted to say. He did not want the interrogator to stop talking. He was hungry for the voice, to hear the wondrous beauty of another human being speaking. But he was afraid of the beatings. Afraid that the interrogator would bring back the electric motor, and the wires.

“I sign, and nothing will happen to them?” he ventured.

“Yes, yes.” said the interrogator.

“Well, I am not interested in them.”

The interrogator drummed his fingers.

He tried to remember his wife’s face, his little daughter’s pouting face- so heavy and warm in his arms as he fed her. He could not. It was like trying to peer through a thick veil. He almost sobbed out loud when he realised that he had forgotten their voices

The pen was awkward in his clawed hand, but the interrogator paid little attention to the scrawl, barely waiting for him to finish before snatching back the pen and paper.

“Guard.” The interrogator barked out as he stood up.

He waited patiently, watching the interrogator slide the signed paper into a slim folder. He felt strong arms around him and let himself be led back to his cell. That evening, there was more thickness to his porridge than usual. He scratched his leg and thought of his wife.

Now he is in a restaurant by the side of the Nakuru-Naivasha road. He is wearing the blue and off-purple uniform that drivers of the shuttle company are required to wear. He is gulping down hot chips and washing it all down with bubble-gum pink yoghurt from a white carton.

He is thinking of his metal plate and about how the dingy restaurant is too noisy.

Some of the shuttle-vans have been left running. They sit parked by the gravel strewn entrance.

The passengers are also swiftly shovelling down their food, others have remained in the vans, reading newspapers or stubbornly dozing.

A waiter standing right behind to him screams out an order for ‘Ugali sosa’. He has to fight the urge to turn around and punch the waiter in the stomach. Why can’t people just shut up, let me eat in peace? He asks himself.

And someone walks past and puts a pink slip of paper on the table in front of him, next to the now-empty carton of yoghurt. The paper is printed, in neat handwriting from a blue ball-point pen, with the price of his meal.

He feels a stab of fear in his chest. He knows that handwriting. He has dreamt about the curls in those ‘r’s and ‘f’s. He stares wildly around, looking for whoever put that pink slip on his table.

Slowly the pressure in his chest recedes and he begins to feel stupid. What would I do anyway? He asks himself. Do I expect the man to recognise me after all these years? Am I waiting for his apology? Will I kill him if I see him?

He suddenly remembers where he is, looks up and sees the passengers are already seated inside his shuttle. They are eyeing him meaningfully. He gets up, praying that his legs are steady, and walks to the door of the minivan. He opens it, sits down, turns the key in the ignition and slowly eases the vehicle out of the car-park.

The sunlight is bright and cruel. It causes the highway to shimmer in the distance and the air to ripple like a flag.

But he feels safe in his minivan, shuttling the tired and bored people behind him to Nairobi. Then he will get into another vehicle and shuttle people back to Eldoret. He will pass through that restaurant many times. And one day, he will meet the man again.

The man who wrote his confession then handed him a pen to sign it- in exchange for the lives of his family.

They had a lot to talk about. He smiles to himself.

No more silence.

© Ombongi Neyole 2010

It’s a humid evening, the ocean breeze deserts you, there is no sound. Even the Samsung flat screen in your living room is silent today, muted. Everyone is watching and waiting for you to take the oath that will determine your case. The Imam, the village elders, women and mostly men are here. Of course your lover is here too, so is your mother, their eyes on the thickly carpeted floor. Mortified.

They have now stopped talking; your daughter’s peeping school mates, the fishmongers who wait daily, patiently for fishermen on the beaches to exchange their swaying hips for fish; many men in white kanzurobes. They have all put their heads and mouths together, united in the condemnation and outraged by your betrayal. Hawkers and merchants, everyone seems to whisper, “But can you believe it!”

You know they will prescribe death by stoning, in public, but what can you do? This is it; your years of loving sex have ended. You wish you had not been found out, wish you could skip the oath, continue to deny it, but you have no choice. You know no one can lie holding the holy book; you would die.

What pains you is the pain to your mother. The scar and burden on her and your siblings will be beyond repair. No one will want to marry from your line now and mama’s disappointment will surely haunt you out of your grave.

People know you were raised a godly woman. From the cradle you faithfully followed religion. You cleansed for worship, prayed on time, wore hijabs with zeal and fasted. Your mother only wanted the best for her first-born daughter. “Your record builds this family’s repute.’’

Ah… your wedding at sixteen is still talked about. The gem-embellished dress still sparkles. Words like glamorous, flashy, flamboyant and grand still describe it. Again thanks to your mother. You want to scream out that you never cared for all that, that you have never loved your husband, but what’s the point? Mama hates ungratefulness. And you wouldn’t be ungrateful to her, who gave you a rich husband; and an almost happy ever after. Would you?

It’s your fault, not hers, it has come to this. You were every religious wife’s dream of a daughter, what every girl in the neighbourhood secretly wanted to grow up and be. But when you told them “be pure”, you felt bored. And lonely. The holy fasts nauseated you and the veils always choked. You yearn to be free now – to deliver yourself. But thank God no one knows this, or else Mama would be right, you are ungrateful.

You shiver as you raise your right hand, ready to confess and blurt out the whole truth at last and be freed. You see your mother rise, as in a dream, pushing her way through to you. She curtseys before the imams, begs to speak to you one last time, and drags you away, to your bedroom. There, she slaps you, pinches your inner thighs; words like “humiliation, ”ingratitude”, twinned with “Me”, spurt out of her mouth, hit you. She cries. And folds you inside her black flowing buibui, tightly embracing. Suddenly, she shoves her half-deflated balloon-like breast inside your mouth, whispering “mwanangu, my child…”, before dragging you back, in a daze.

Mortified, you hold the holy book with a shaking hand and raise it high, facing your lover and your mother, and you vow:

“I, Fatimah Aduda, solemnly swear: That from the last time that I suckled my mother’s breast, I have not slept with this man.”

Millie Dok is an event organizer at Storymoja. She seeks to share our untold stories, loves to question the wisdom of our times and lives and loves life. Feel free to contact this young, energetic avid reader who is working on her first book at millie@storymojaafrica.co.ke for details on upcoming events. We are open to exciting ideas on how to spread the love of reading,writing and performance arts.