I’ve ferried two hundred and twenty-one souls across the river of death, and I can already tell my two-hundred-and-twenty-second is going to be a real shitkicker. I know by the lightness of the manila folder in my hand, the preemptive pity in the courier’s face as she gives it to me. I read the typewritten card paper-clipped to the front with my stomach tensed, braced for the sucker punch.
Today, in a small, quiet room near the centre of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, I went into the cold darkness of sleep and when I returned to the warm light of consciousness, I had become a god.
Do not go out to the dunes, the Chief says to Isiuwa. You’d do well not to awaken the wrath of the whistling gods.
When the dog dies, she doesn’t know she is dying. You shouldn’t feel sorry for her. To her, life lasts forever.
When Amelia turned fourteen, everyone assured her that she’d find her fairy soon.
Our late fee is twenty-five cents per day or a can of non-perishable food during the summer food drive. By the time the boy finally slid The Runaway Prince into the return slot, he owed $4.75. I didn’t have to swipe his card to know; any good librarian (of the second kind) ought to be able to tell you the exact dollar amount of a patron’s bill just by the angle of their shoulders.
Her whole body emitted a soft yellow light. Wherever cracks of skin showed through the mud, she blazed. She looked as if the sun itself burned within her; like goddess Usha at dawn.
The man wobbled his jaw. “Her face is contorted in beautiful agony. Her pain is what draws the beauty of her voice in contrast. The better the musician, the more beautiful her song.”
