Tumble short Story By Otatade Okojie

Chaos can be crippling. For me, chaos has a language. It begins in fragments—jerks, auras, the soft betrayal of my own body turning against itself. A tightening. A flicker. The spasmodic pull of something unseen, like invisible strings yanking me toward a place I never chose. Then comes the unraveling. The writhing. The seizing. The slow, inevitable descent into shadow. And afterward—silence. Always silence. There are days I forge myself into something else. Something smooth. Predictable. Acceptable. I practice being normal the way others practice piano—repetition, precision, control. I shape my laughter, soften my pauses, hide the tremors beneath stillness. I want to belong to the ninety-nine. Not the one. Never the one. The world, I have learned, does not like question marks. It prefers certainty. Simplicity. Easy answers wrapped in comfortable lies. So when people see me falter, they rename it. Episodes. Fits. Something strange. They shrink it down until it fits inside their understanding, even if that understanding is wrong. Especially if it is wrong. Epilepsy, to them, is a story told badly. Full of myths that cling like smoke in closed rooms. And people—people would rather breathe smoke than open a window. I met Eden two weeks before the third semester. And I did not like him. There were no birds. No soft music swelling in the background of my life. No delicate flutter of butterflies pretending to be prophecy. There was only irritation. Sharp. Immediate. Uninvited. “You’re doing it wrong,” he said. I turned to him slowly. We were standing at a volunteer booth for an epilepsy awareness campaign. A folding table. Purple ribbons scattered like misplaced intentions. Pamphlets no one wanted to read. “And how exactly am I doing it wrong?” I asked. Eden smiled. Not kindly. Not cruelly. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whisper-Dreams-Otatade-Okojie/dp/B0D8KP5H2Y Just… knowingly. “You’re explaining it like you’re apologizing for it.” His words landed harder than they should have. I felt something rise in my chest—defensive, sharp-edged. “I’m not apologizing,” I said. “You are,” he replied gently. “Just not out loud.” I studied him then. Really studied him. He was tall in a way that felt unbothered by space. His brows thick, almost dramatic, like they had something to say before he did. Bladed dimples cut into his cheeks when he spoke, softening the edges of his confidence. His skin carried the warmth of pecan, his eyes the quiet depth of cocoa. And when he moved— he moved like poetry. Fluid. Unforced. Like his body trusted itself completely. I hated that. “You don’t understand,” I said. It came out sharper than I intended. He didn’t flinch. “Then help me understand,” he said. For a moment, the world narrowed. The noise of passing students faded. The hum of the day softened. And I realized something unsettling: He meant it. “People don’t want to understand,” I said finally. “They want something simple. Something they can label and move away from.” Eden nodded slowly. “And you’re giving them that,” he said. I laughed then. A hollow sound. “What do you want me to do? Stand here and tell them the truth?” https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whisper-Dreams-Otatade-Okojie/dp/B0D8KP5H2Y “Yes.” The word settled between us. Simple. Impossible. “The truth is ugly,” I said. “The truth is real,” he replied. Days passed. We worked together. Not by choice. By schedule. By coincidence. By something else neither of us named. I watched him. The way he spoke to people—not at them, not over them, but into that quiet space where understanding begins. He didn’t simplify things. He expanded them. “Epilepsy isn’t just seizures,” he told a hesitant listener. “It’s a way of living with uncertainty and still choosing to show up.” I listened. Against my will at first. Then with it. “Why do you care so much?” I asked him one afternoon. The question slipped out before I could stop it. Eden looked at me, his expression softer now. “Because people deserve to be seen clearly,” he said. Then, after a pause: “And because I know what it’s like not to be.” Something shifted. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whisper-Dreams-Otatade-Okojie/dp/B0D8KP5H2Y Not loudly. Not all at once. But enough. The seizure came on a day that felt almost peaceful. Which is how chaos likes to arrive. Unannounced. Uninvited. Unfair. I felt it before it happened. The aura. That familiar distortion, like reality bending at the edges. My breath caught. Not here. Not now. Eden was speaking to someone across the table. I tried to stay still. Tried to hold myself together. Tried to remain part of the ninety-nine. But my body had already chosen otherwise. The world tilted. Light fractured. And I fell. When I came back, the sky was still above me. The world still turning. But something had changed. Eden knelt beside me. Calm. Steady. Unshaken. “You’re okay,” he said softly. Not as a question. As a certainty. I waited for it. The shift. The fear. The distance. But it didn’t come. Instead, he stayed. “You didn’t look away,” I whispered. My voice felt fragile. Like it might break if I used it too much. Eden shook his head. “Why would I?” I didn’t have an answer. Because most people do. Because most people can’t hold that kind of truth without flinching. But he could. “You don’t have to be the ninety-nine,” he said quietly. The words settled deep. Too deep. “I don’t want to be the one,” I admitted. Eden smiled then. Soft. Certain. “Maybe the one is where the truth lives.” Silence wrapped around us. Not heavy. Not empty. Just… present. Later, as the day folded into evening, we sat beside the now-empty booth. The pamphlets untouched. The ribbons still. “Do you think people will ever understand?” I asked. Eden looked out at the fading light. “Understanding isn’t the goal,” he said. “What is?” He turned to me. Connection flickering quietly in his eyes. “Being seen anyway.” I thought about the chaos. The jerks. The auras. The falling. The way my body refused to follow the script the world had written for it. And for the first time— it didn’t feel like something I had to escape. Maybe chaos wasn’t something that needed to be erased. Maybe it was something that could be witnessed. Shared. Understood—not by everyone— but by someone. Eden stood, offering me his hand. Not to fix me. Not to steady me. Just to be there. I took it. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whisper-Dreams-Otatade-Okojie/dp/B0D8KP5H2Y And in that small, quiet moment, I understood something the world had never taught me: You don’t have to belong to the ninety-nine to be whole. Sometimes— wholeness begins the moment you stop trying not to fall. 🌙

short story excerpt: Game Of Dice

Game of Dice "You know to love so much , you dont have to sacrifice so many selves," Jada reached across to her mother, perching an ebony hand like a kiss on her caramel skin. "He left again didnt he?" Mother looked away, her silver eyes a window to a soul knotted with anxiety. " All that runnin' im tired of all that runnin' i just wanna love him."
"He doesn't love you back."
"I did everything," she wept,"everything for Leonard. I just asked of him to be there." Jada stared hard at her mothers slender frame. Rosalyn Taylor Smith was an extraordinary beauty, her features were aristocratic, sharp, striking. A nose like a dagger, bedroom eyes framed by spider lashes, men stopped when she walked by, women glared enviously. Yet Rosalyn's obsession with an alcoholic, who had a passion for Frances night life was heart breaking. "I sold the car you know," there was a croak in her voice "i was gonna set us up on the French Riviera, like back in the day." she paused
"Dads vintage Lamborghini?" Jada felt less sorry now, now she felt a burn in her veins. " What happened to the money from the sale?"
" I-"
"That was supposed to go to your grandchildren. Tell me, he hasnt got our money," Jada rose her two eyes spinning, orbs of fire.Lenny wanted to play his sick puppet games with Ma , games he'd gotten used to, but the hour of reckoning was upon him. "What the hell are you doing lady, thats.."
"a dead man . I'll find Lenny, find the money, but you'll have to pick...its me or him." She continued loading her fathers gun, its silver structure now erect in her pocket.

Short Story: Marcus

It wasn't what I expected, he wasn't what I expected. My friend Marcus has changed a lot, there's a venom in him. His words seethe with rage, they leak out of the crevices of his tongue. Poison that they are. He used to be that guy, the smiler in the neighbourhood, the one who always waved at you first. But somethings strange about him, these days. There's a sickness in his eyes where there was warmth, a darkness where there was light, and yesterday his soul felt completely black. " I'm not a how was it for you,kind of girl." I stretch my tall limbs out to the edge of his mahogany bed post.my breasts are pert beneath the sapphire blanket. I used to feel a warmth in his room. The embers in the fireplace, the painting of a more retro urban Monalisa, the gold chandeliers, when we were kids we used to do yoga on his older brothers tiger rug which he had claimed for himself. " would it be cheesy if I admitted, that it made me feel cheap," I tie my hair up in a satin bun. There's rouge on the bedsheets from where I lay on my front as he claimed me in the shadows of a busy night. I was dense with drink and sick with longing. "Did you want it to mean more?" His voice is throaty, rough as his brown eyes lick the embers in the fire. " No." I confess. We're not couple people, Marcus and I have never been couple people. We hate Valentine's Day, and it's tedious marketing campaigns. I don't care much for chocolates, silk scarves, or funny lingerie. Last Valentine's Day Marcus licked bourbon out of my belly button, and planted a kiss between my thighs. It was soft and gentle, I felt his goatee tickle the soft layers of my flesh as I curled his handsome face like a stallion. Allowing his tongue to slip between my undergarments. We'd never went beyond that. for years, we'd watched, tingled, tiptoed around the electricity we felt. Now I simply felt stone in my stomache salt in my mouth. It wasnt supposed to be like this, it was meant to be hot and sweet, a sedative for my pain. Nourishment for my starvation. Sometimes I feel like a lynx, combing a trail through the wild, yet with my other lovers I feel myself clawing into infinity. " will you ever talk about it, about what was done?" Marcus runs large hands through his ink black crown, his eyes almost as dark. "Maybe." He shrugs his lean frame dragging on the dark jeans and turtle neck. "One day."

The dungeons

It was the wayward ones that requested for life to begin. Asking questions of a life that paralyzed them. They wanted so much more than this, and as the world belched out, the pain of promise yet to arrive, held them in a state of captivity. It was done, and it was questionable, Menelik hated playing hero to young girls who were starved of all their dreams. Girls who took a wrong turning in life’s obstacle course and here he was, the defender, the protector, the healer of all wounds deep. He lit the Cigarette, felt the Tobacco swell on his insides, he gulped and swallowed hard, as he wrestled with discomfort in the seat of the green Toyota. “Why do you hate being a detective, so much?”

“Because I have my own life to save.” He glanced briefly at Vivien Marx, he hated her idealism on most days, but today, she was the worst version of herself. All sunshine and daisies. It was too much for a Monday morning Stretch.

“I just think…” she began, then ran long fingers through the folds of spaghetti tendrils. She’d dyed her hair Midnight black; she always did that when work was heavy. Her hair usually a brilliant auburn would be transformed, but the eyes are always magnifying glass of the soul. Their soft brown would light with a tear, and protectively she would raise the collar of her leather jacket, as though it were hiding her from the world. 

“ You change my perspective, and yours is drugged by misery,” she uttered

“Forgive me for having seen too much in my 32 years of living,” Menelik countered. “Forgive me for not buying into your pity Mel,” she snatched the cigarette from the comfort of his fisted mouth. Stubbed it, “you promised you’d stop smoking.” They shared a glance for a five second stretch, her smile was hypnotic, her gaze like a touch to him. Menelik released a lazy smile. “You know Mel if I wasn’t so crazy about you,”

“But you are….”

He nodded, a nod meant back to business. “So you think this guy killed her.”

“Dianne Fahilla mysteriously disappears, completely out of character, right after she publishes the book revealing Aztec International’s dodgy ventures. They market themselves as a clean corporation, she knew a lot of powerful people, and she pissed of a lot of powerful people.”

 

Colin Lane (Short Story)

Shit I hate Colin Lane. Shit I hate Colin Lane. I wrote it five times in my journal, and then I scribbled in on the toilet walls, next to Punk Fish Woz Ere 2018. “That bastard thinks he knows everything, he’s a total Jimmy knows it all.”

“ Jimmy knows nothing.” My friend Surinder echoes. Were sitting in the diner bitter as fuck. Lane has done it again. “ How did he snag that last point in the spelling bee,” I shift my glasses higher up my nose and scan him with my xray eyes,” scum, look how smug he is.”

Sunny leans in to study Colins lean frame opposite us. Confession, we both had a major crush on him when he first moved into the neighbourhood. He looked athletic, lean tall, he looks like one of those teenage boys you’d see in an advert and wish they would talk to you. He’s taller than most of the boys in our year group, and his voice has broken already too. “ Another book I see.” Surinder tilts a brow as we scan our arch nemesis. He’s running thick hands through sleek Chestnut brown hair, his green eyes look up with alarm when he spots us glaring at him. Surinder smiles cattily, his friend Malcolm elbows him, “ look it’s the birds. It’s the birds.” Suddenly his whole table is in uproar. I shrink in my seat. They have nick named us, the birds. Last week mum made me and Sunny a ham and pickle Sandwich and we were publically attacked by a flock of pigeons on the basketball court, where we preside. I wondered what he had been doing on the basketball court anyway, know it all like him. Everywhere he went his friends followed him like shadows. We became the butt of everybodys joke for a whole week, and Esmerelda Thompson, Snap chatted the whole incident. Of course it was to impress him.  “ You can sit over here if you want Issy,” he announces, “ and you Sun. There’s two seats.”  Surinder and I cast suspicious glances towards each other, I notice she’s got the beads in her hair today green and black, hair flowing like a waterfall. I’ve seen Colin look at my friend Surinder, My Gosh his mum wouldn’t like it. Proper judgy mare. “ Ace and Marcus will be here in twenty minutes,” his friend Cosmos interrupts

“ Cos that’s an hour, yeah they can sit. Unless, we smell or something. Or maybe you smell.” Colin teases. I hate that now he’s making us look like the immature ones, ive read waiting to exhale three  times. I tilt my head up and say in my most grown up voice, “ Yeah we’ll sit, what’s the gossip? We mostly socialize with interesting people.”

Surinder winks at me for that. I notice Colin know it all go bright pink then clear his throat. Sunny is real smart, but theres things that I notice which she doesn’t. Like days when she’s not wearing the Sari ,and she’s just got jeans and a tshirt on like at the Drake concert, Sunny has quite the magic effect on these idiots. Three guys offered to buy us drinks, because we both look older much older, it was a summer festival.  (To be continued)

To the victor goes the spoils?

It makes sense to want to dwell, we live in a world where people don't always play fair. They cheat. They use certain tactics to gain access to the information you have, to empower themselves and yet so they win? Not really. victory is a mindset. You are a Victor when you learn the art of happiness, some people will never be happy in this lifetime. It is a choice they make consistently with the actions they take. Greed, cruelty, envy , and when the light grows dim, they crawl their way back to you hoping you'll welcome them into your bosom. We are a product of the choices we make, we are a fragmented self, distorted self, damaged self, at times a broken self, yet in this lifetime, be an honest self. Be true to the reflection you see, do not be supported by other people's fears and other people's failures. It makes sense to dwell, yet we live in a world where dwelling is not the key to the answers you seek.

Bethlehem baby

I wanted to disguise myself amidst your confidence hose myself down with your patented charm.id become you , in some sensuos way. I like things to make sense, but we don't. Our love is a frame, everything outside the box. Everything that's bad for your teeth, yet vinegar on your tongue. You made me a promise that day by the beach remember. That you would always tell me I was mad, never buy me roses, always eat the chocolates, and never scribble love notes. Aghast! What have you done? It was Saturday, no it was Sunday, I refused to go to church, and you said "here's a note to Bethlehems baby," I was mad at you then. Mad at world's that were spinning into hostile loops of oblivion, questioning everything like a child confused at the lap of a cemetery. This world and it's Limerick of shadows, nothing neatly folded anymore, pastel colours smudged, young eyes ripe for the poison of a non fiction world. You said I love you in that note, now and forever, so don't be scared of creatures in the dark, there are fireflies everywhere, and as smoke you disappeared.

The purpose of persistence

Don't be passive in a world where your meant to collide with dreams, you will feel lazy, tired exhausted from the tedium of other people's failed attempts. Discontent people who conquered little and thrive on showing you that you too are unable to accomplish much. Writing, enterprise, entertainment, business, is a journey, what we think we are , is what we become. We can spend a lifetime listening to those who always half try or never even attempt to go forward, or you can believe in the power of your imagination, and your ability to  accomplish your goals. We transport ourselves between these two ears, what we observe, utilise, tap into, engage with, can be recycled to be used to create access for us. Utilise it you must, or knowledge escapes you.

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