Flash Fiction Compilation 4

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Hello, everyone. I'm back with my flash fiction compilations. This is the fourth one. The first three are somewhere on my blog. I have three short stories here. All three of them are different. I hope you enjoy them. I know I had fun writing them.

Here we go:

First:

They say I’m mad, and my madness came from the gods because I defiled them and brought shame to our land. They point accusing fingers at me, snickering and whispering to themselves, thinking I do not understand what they are doing. They avoid the closest path to the stream; they don’t mind taking the long slippery path, because no one wants to be seen close to the person who committed sacrilege. No one wants to attract the wrath of the gods.

They say I’ve lost my mind, but they are wrong. I know exactly who I am and why I roam the bush paths. I know why the spirits won’t let me live in my hut or sleep on my bed anymore, and I know the reason they always give me battered cloths to wear and rotten things to eat. I wake every morning by the stream, stiff from cold with handfuls of sand in my mouth, the remnants of the sand they feed me in my dreams. But I know why I’m like this, why the spirits keep chasing me with a long whip, why they keep laughing at me in false mockery whenever they wish to torment me.

“Afam bu Afam.”

That was how I said it in the dialect of my people the day I went for oath taking at the shrine, and that was my offense. What have I done wrong? I only told them my name.
A grown man putting his manhood into the mouth of a girl child is not a new thing in Achara. Ikem do it whenever he wishes and gets away with it. Chima do it too. It’s only me, Afamefula who get stuck in things like this. I’m the dump fool who doesn’t know how to manipulate the gods and get away. Ikem call me naïve all the time, but I never take it to heart until now.

And this is my recompense. This is my painful reward for being stupid. I’m now mad because I refused to visit the village chief priest before the oath taking day to appease the gods for what I’ve done. I now hide behind the carpet grasses that line the wide streets of Achara, throwing stones at women and children because I have nothing to offer, because I’ve lost my mind.

Yes, I’m beginning to believe it and it’s Ikem’s fault.

“Akunna is the right one. I’ve done it with her before. She won’t tell a soul, trust me,” he had said to me that faithful night, under the moonless sky. And when Akunna later opened her wide mouth and vomited every detail to her mother, Ikem failed to spell it out to me.

I always pride myself to be the wise son of my father, one who doesn’t make unnecessary mistakes, one who doesn’t take unplanned risks. Who would believe that I’m like this because of that thing between a girl’s legs? Who would believe it’s that same thing that made me forget Akunna is an Osu, an outcast, the daughter of the gods, and no one messes with her and goes free? That same thing also made me forget that Ikem is an Osu too, and there’s a huge difference between an Osu and a true son of the land.

But these things no longer matter, because I’m going to die anyway. The gods first make you mad before they kill you.

Second:

She was twenty-three and fresh out of school when she married Mark. Their marriage wasn't particularly beautiful. Okay was the word she used to describe it at first.

Over the years, she realised that she was trying and failing to get noticed in her own home. Nothing she did impressed him. Her degrees, her CEO position, even her love and affection.

"It's a good thing you're so beautiful," he would say when he wasn't painting.

She tried to live with the unemotional compliment but soon suggested they see a therapist which he refused.

"Our marriage is fine. You should get a sales rep and spend more time at home," he'd said during one of their arguments. "I have a candidate in mind."

And that was how Marcel came into her life.

It started with giving him a ride after work to exchanging smiles over lunch, then to stealing kisses in her office after work hours. The day she came home with new sets of her favourite lingeries which Marcel bought for her, she had caught her husband looking at them and smiling surreptitiously. That same day, he informed her of the work samples his friend, Maxwell would drop at her office.

She was on a lunch break hot session with Marcel when Maxwell walked in. Her secretary, on returning from the restaurant had met him at the reception and because of the known friendship, had opened the door to her office for him to drop the files.

"It's very simple, Rita," Maxwell was saying two weeks later. "I'm recording this call. Come to me. If you make me happy, your husband will never know."

That evening, she stepped into Maxwell's apartment and found him and Mark, striped down to their briefs, playing snooker with an umbrella.

"Hey, baby."

She would later learn that Mark was a homosexual who married her out of necessity, Maxwell was his partner and Marcel was used as bait to end their farce of a marriage. She was now going to fully move into her role as his spare tyre.

Third

“You have such beautiful hands,” he had said to me the day we met. I was sitting on a bench at the hospital reception area, waiting for a word from the doctor about my niece’s condition. At least that was what I told him, not that I was there on my weekly medication. It was the sweetest thing I had heard in a while. His warm smile when I looked up was so beautiful it shamed the sun. Maybe that was why I forgot. I totally neglected the fact that I had to stay away, that I always got it wrong no matter how hard I tried.

“You lied!” his words echoed in my head. This time, I wasn’t at the hospital and he wasn’t sitting next to me. I was at the beach rather. The gentle salty breeze did nothing to soothe my aching heart. The soft soil only buried my cold feet and reminded me of how much I’d lost, how much I couldn’t take back.

Six months ago, I would have sworn to never do it again, but I already did. I had transferred HIV to yet another innocent person. I failed again. This was my curse now.

---

Thanks for reading!
What are your thoughts?