The Whisperer

The Whisperer Nobody knew where the Whisperer lived. Some said he wandered through forests older than memory. Others claimed he lived inside the spaces between dreams. Children imagined him walking across moonbeams. The elderly spoke of him as though they had once met him and forgotten. Yet everyone agreed on one thing. The Whisperer never raised his voice. Because he never needed to. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whisper-Dreams-Otatade-Okojie-ebook/dp/B0BKWZLD25 His words traveled farther as whispers. Farther than thunder. Farther than storms. Farther than fear. The first time Liora heard him, she was standing at the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. The sky was heavy with clouds. The wind carried the scent of rain. Below, waves crashed against dark rocks with enough force to shake the earth. Liora had come there seeking answers. Or perhaps escape. Sometimes the two look remarkably similar. She was tired. Tired of uncertainty. Tired of choices. Tired of carrying dreams that seemed too large for reality. The horizon stretched endlessly before her. Yet she felt trapped. The whisper arrived between two heartbeats. Soft. Gentle. Almost invisible. **"You are looking in the wrong direction."** Liora spun around. No one stood behind her. Only grass bending beneath the wind. Only the restless sky. Only silence. Her pulse quickened. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whisper-Dreams-Otatade-Okojie-ebook/dp/B0BKWZLD25 "Who's there?" The ocean answered with waves. Nothing more. Yet she knew she had heard something. The voice felt real. Realer than many conversations she had experienced. She returned home unsettled. That night, she dreamed. She stood within an endless hallway. Thousands of doors lined the walls. Some glowed with golden light. Others shimmered silver. A few remained completely dark. Each door carried a name. Not names of places. Names of possibilities. Artist. Explorer. Teacher. Creator. Leader. Dreamer. The hallway stretched beyond sight. A lifetime of futures waiting patiently. Then she heard the whisper again. Closer this time. **"Why do you keep standing before closed doors?"** Liora frowned. "They aren't open." The whisper laughed softly. The sound felt like leaves dancing in autumn wind. **"Have you tried turning the handle?"** Before she could answer, the dream dissolved. Morning arrived. But the question remained. Days passed. Then weeks. The whisper returned often. Not always with answers. Usually with questions. When she doubted herself: **"Who taught you to fear your own potential?"** When she hesitated: **"What are you protecting by remaining still?"** https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whisper-Dreams-Otatade-Okojie-ebook/dp/B0BKWZLD25 When she felt lost: **"Have you considered that being lost is sometimes how new roads are found?"** The questions annoyed her. Then challenged her. Then transformed her. Because each one forced her to look deeper. Beyond assumptions. Beyond excuses. Beyond the stories she told herself. One evening, unable to resist any longer, Liora followed the whisper. It led her into the ancient woods beyond her village. Moonlight spilled through the branches. Silver pools gathered upon the forest floor. The deeper she walked, the quieter the world became. Until she reached a clearing. At its center stood a tree unlike any she had ever seen. Its bark shimmered faintly. Its leaves glowed with soft blue light. And beneath its branches sat an old man. Or perhaps he was not old. His face seemed to belong to every age at once. His eyes held dawn and midnight together. The moment Liora saw him, she knew. "The Whisperer." The man smiled. "Names are useful. But not always accurate." His voice was ordinary. Surprisingly ordinary. She expected something magical. Something cosmic. Instead he sounded like someone discussing the weather. "Why do you whisper?" she asked. The man looked upward into the glowing branches. "Because people listen differently when they are not being shouted at." The forest brightened slightly. As though agreeing. Liora sat beside him. For a long time, neither spoke. The silence felt comfortable. Alive. Eventually she asked the question she had carried for years. "How do I know which path is the right one?" The Whisperer smiled. A sad smile. A wise smile. The kind carried by people who understand that some questions contain hidden traps. "You don't." Liora blinked. "That's your answer?" "It's the truth." The leaves above them rustled softly. "The future is not a map." The Whisperer touched the earth. "It is a conversation." The words settled inside her. Slowly. Like seeds finding soil. The old man continued. "Most people spend their lives waiting for certainty." The glowing leaves drifted around them. "But certainty is often just fear wearing a mask." The forest seemed enormous now. Infinite. Every tree a possibility. Every path an invitation. Every shadow a mystery worth exploring. Liora felt something loosen within her. A knot she had carried for years. Perhaps longer. She realized she had been waiting for permission. Waiting for guarantees. Waiting for certainty to arrive before beginning. The Whisperer stood. The clearing brightened. The tree glowed like a constellation rooted in the earth. "Listen carefully," he said. "The loudest voices in your life will tell you what is practical." A pause. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whisper-Dreams-Otatade-Okojie-ebook/dp/B0BKWZLD25 "The quietest voice will tell you what is true." Then he stepped backward. Into moonlight. Into shadow. Into mystery. And disappeared. The clearing remained. The tree remained. The night remained. But the Whisperer was gone. Liora stood alone beneath the glowing branches. Listening. Not for his voice. For her own. And for the first time, she heard it clearly. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just enough. A whisper. The kind that changes everything. Years later, people would ask Liora how she found the courage to pursue the life she truly wanted. She never mentioned the forest. Never mentioned the glowing tree. Never mentioned the Whisperer. She simply smiled and answered: "I finally learned to listen." And somewhere beyond the noise of the world, beyond certainty and fear and expectation, a whisper moved through the darkness like wind through leaves. Still asking questions. Still awakening dreams. Still finding those willing to hear it.

A slice of the Thunderstorms

The ring had been a diamond in my pocket, a jewelled secret. I had loved her once—treasured her, awed at the eloquence with which she moved, her liquid strides, the way she looked like a painting. Each word she mouthed to me had been artistry itself, shaped in the quiet spaces where we oohed and aahed deep into the shadow. Boy, had I loved Raven—with her midnight locs, her fiery temperament, her sharp wit that could slice a man open and still leave him grateful for the wound. Yet on the night before I died—and came back, resurrected into a more terrified version of myself—I knew something terrible: love had not been enough. It is one thing to be in love with the idea of being in love. But love itself—was it ever enough? She was complicated. We were complicated. I was a storm pretending to be a man. Being in love with Raven Featherborn was like being a toothpick in a thunderstorm. Tell me—can even firemen and detectives find you when the storm is over? When the world is picking all the pieces apart, what of you is left? — I met her on a morning that smelled like petrol and rain. She stood outside the studio, paint on her hands like she had dipped them into a sunset and refused to wash it off. The first thing I noticed was not her face—but the motorcycle. Black, sleek, breathing like an animal at rest. And then him. He leaned against it like it belonged to his bones. The kind of man who didn’t enter rooms—he arrived in them, trailing silence and questions. His leather jacket carried stories. His eyes carried endings. “Don’t touch the bike,” he said, without looking at me. “I wasn’t going to,” I replied, though I had been. Raven laughed from behind us, soft but dangerous. “He thinks everything beautiful is meant to be stolen.” “And you don’t?” he asked her, finally turning. That was the moment I understood—this was not my story to begin with. — His name was Soren. An artist who painted like he was trying to outrun something. Who rode like the road owed him forgiveness. His canvases were filled with ghosts—women half-formed, skies that bled, oceans that refused to stay still. I saw myself in them before I ever saw myself in him. He spoke to me differently than he spoke to Raven. With her, he was history—shared laughter, unfinished sentences, childhood stitched into the fabric of who they were. With me, he was possibility. Careful. Curious. A man standing on the edge of a decision he hadn’t yet made. “You look like trouble,” he told me once. “And you look like you’d follow it,” I said. He didn’t deny it. — The ring sat heavy in his pocket. I knew before he told me. “You’re going to ask her,” I said one evening, watching the way his hands trembled just slightly as he sketched. He didn’t look up. “I’ve known her my whole life.” “That’s not what I asked.” Silence stretched between us, thin as thread. “She’s… home,” he finally said. “And what am I?” I asked. That was when he looked at me. Really looked. “You’re the road,” he whispered. And God help me—I understood. — Raven didn’t see it at first. Or maybe she did, and chose to pretend love could outshout instinct. She loved him with a certainty that frightened me. Loved him like the world had already ended and he was the only thing left worth holding onto. I envied her for that. I pitied her for that. I hated myself most of all. — The night everything broke felt strangely quiet. No thunder. No warning. Just the soft hum of the motorcycle cooling outside, and the weight of a decision that had already been made long before any of us dared to speak it. “I was going to propose,” Soren said, the ring glinting faintly in his palm. Raven’s smile didn’t falter—but something behind her eyes cracked like glass under pressure. “And now?” she asked. He looked at me. And in that moment, I wished—selfishly, desperately—that he wouldn’t. “Now I don’t know what love means anymore.” — Love is a dangerous thing when it arrives too late. Or too early. Or dressed in the wrong person’s skin. — I left before the storm came. Because I knew this much: some loves are not meant to be chosen. They are meant to be survived. And as I walked away, I realized something Raven had understood long before I ever did— Being loved by a man like Soren was not salvation. It was weather. And no one—not even a woman made of fire and midnight—can hold a storm forever.

Seize Epilepsy short story By Otatade Okojie

There are friendships that grow like trees—slow, rooted, unquestioned. Ours was like that. Before the diagnosis. Before the language of seizures and silence. Before time began to fracture. Dara had always been different. Not in the way people whisper about. But in the way light chooses certain places to rest. We grew up in the same streets, where the air always carried the hum of passing cars and distant conversations. She ran faster than me as a child. Climbed higher. Laughed louder. There was something fearless about her then—as if the world had not yet taught her its limits. “You’ve always been different, D,” I said one evening. We were older now. Sitting at the edge of a busy street, watching traffic lights change like quiet decisions being made over and over again. “Always been.” She smiled faintly. Not the wide, reckless smile I remembered. Something softer. Something that carried weight. “Everybody’s got something they’re carrying, right?” she said. The question lingered between us. Simple. But not. “Yeah,” I replied. She nodded slowly, her gaze drifting toward the moving lights. “Sometimes I feel like I’m carrying too much,” she said. Her voice lowered, as if the words themselves were fragile. “Like the shakes… the quivers deep in my bones… and those blackouts…” She paused. The city moved around us, unaware. “The depression that comes after…” she continued. “Sometimes I wish it could just seize me somewhere else. Somewhere there’s less heartbreak.” I didn’t interrupt. Some truths need space to breathe. “I’m here,” she said quietly. “And yet I still feel like I miss so much time.” Her fingers tightened slightly in her lap. “So much is interrupted. So much I can’t express… because everything looks so polished on the outside.” I followed her gaze. The traffic lights flickered red to green. Stop. Go. Stop. Go. As if life were that simple. “It’s life,” I said. The words felt small, but they were honest. “We’re all unfinished. We’re all interrupting something. Broken shards of glass, like jigsaw pieces trying to find their place.” She let out a soft breath. “And me?” she asked. Her eyes stayed fixed on the city, on the endless movement that never seemed to pause. “When will I ever be a jigsaw piece that fits? A piece that slides with ease into place?” There it was. The quiet ache. Not of pain—but of longing. “Nobody fits perfectly,” I said. “We all long to be something we’re not. Desperate to be another version of a self we create in our minds.” She turned to me then. Really looked. “And if that version feels more real than this one?” she asked. I thought about it. About the versions of ourselves we carry. The ones untouched by fear. By illness. By interruption. The ones that move through life without breaking. “Then maybe,” I said slowly, “that version isn’t something you’re meant to become.” She frowned slightly. “What do you mean?” “Maybe it’s something you’re meant to understand,” I said. “Not as perfection… but as possibility.” Silence settled between us. Not empty. Just full of things neither of us fully knew how to name. A car passed, its headlights briefly illuminating her face. For a moment, I saw it— The girl she had been. The one who ran without hesitation. Who laughed without fear of losing the moment. “She’s still there,” I said quietly. Dara blinked. “Who?” “The version of you you think you’ve lost.” She looked away. “I don’t feel her,” she admitted. “Maybe that’s because you’re looking for her in the past,” I said. “Not in who you’re becoming.” The words felt strange as I said them. Like they didn’t fully belong to me. Like they had been waiting somewhere else to be spoken. Dara was quiet for a long time. The city softened around us. The noise became distant. The lights less harsh. “What if I never fit?” she asked finally. I smiled gently. “Maybe you’re not supposed to fit,” I said. “Maybe you’re supposed to change the shape of the puzzle.” She laughed then. Soft. Surprised. Almost like she had forgotten how. “Trust you to say something like that,” she murmured. We sat there a while longer. Not trying to fix anything. Not trying to solve what couldn’t be solved. Just existing in that quiet space between what was and what could be. Dara leaned back slightly, her shoulders loosening. “The shakes are still there,” she said. “I know,” I replied. “The blackouts too.” “I know.” She glanced at me. “And you’re still here.” I nodded. “Of course.” Because some things don’t need to be explained. Some things are chosen. Again and again. The traffic lights shifted once more. Red to green. Green to amber. Amber to red. And for the first time, it didn’t feel like interruption. It felt like rhythm. Like life was not something breaking apart— but something constantly rearranging itself into shapes we were still learning how to understand. And maybe— just maybe— we were never meant to fit perfectly. Only to find the people who sit beside us while we figure out where we belong

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. 🌙

Fall short story By Otatade Okojie

Fall The clinic smelled like antiseptic and unfinished sentences. Everything there felt paused—like a breath held too long. Names were called. Doors opened and closed. Lives were discussed in fragments. And somewhere between the ticking clock and the low hum of fluorescent lights, time seemed to loosen its grip on meaning. That was where Elia first saw him. He sat across the waiting room, hunched slightly forward, elbows on his knees, as if holding himself together required effort no one else could see. There was something careful about him. Not fragile—no, not that. But deliberate. Like every movement had been rehearsed against the possibility of collapse. His name, she would later learn, was Luca. Elia came to the clinic every second Thursday. Her mother filled the silence with nervous conversation, but Elia preferred the quiet. In quiet, she could listen—to the subtle warnings in her body, the small shifts that told her whether the day would remain hers or be taken. She did not expect to notice anyone. But she noticed him. Their first conversation happened without permission. “You count the lights too,” Luca said. Elia looked up. “The flickering ones,” he added. “There are seven. The third is the worst.” She hadn’t realized anyone else saw it. “Eight,” she corrected softly. “You missed the one near the door.” He smiled then—quick, almost surprised. “I always do.” It became a ritual. They didn’t sit together at first. Just near enough. Close enough for shared glances. For small, quiet observations passed between them like contraband. “Too bright today,” Luca would murmur. “Too loud,” Elia would reply. Language, simplified. Distilled to what mattered. The nurses never noticed. Or maybe they did and chose not to see. Hospitals are full of secrets. Most of them heavy. This one was light. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whisper-Dreams-Otatade-Okojie/dp/B0D8KP5H2Y One afternoon, rain pressed softly against the windows, turning the world outside into a blurred watercolor. Elia found him alone in the hallway. Not in the waiting room. Not where they were supposed to be. He stood by a window, watching the rain like it was telling him something important. “You’ll get in trouble,” she said. “So will you,” he replied without turning. She stepped closer anyway. “Do you ever feel it before?” he asked. Elia knew what he meant. “Yes,” she said. “Like falling. But slowly. Like the ground forgets where it is.” Luca nodded. “For me, it’s like a door opening somewhere in my head,” he said. “And I don’t know what’s on the other side.” They stood there, suspended between understanding and something deeper. Something unnamed. That was the first time their hands touched. Not intentionally. Just a brief collision of fingers as both reached for the windowsill. But it lingered. Longer than it should have. Long enough to change something. After that, the waiting room felt too exposed. Too watched. So they found other places. Empty corridors. Stairwells where the lights buzzed softly overhead. The quiet corner near the vending machines where no one lingered long enough to notice them. They spoke in fragments. About fear. About memory. About the strange loneliness of living inside a body that could betray you without warning. “I hate that I can’t trust my own mind,” Elia admitted once. Luca looked at her, something dark and soft in his expression. “I hate that people think it’s all I am.” The secret grew between them. Not heavy. Not yet. But fragile. Like glass held too tightly. One day, Elia didn’t see him. The waiting room felt wrong without him. The lights flickered, but no one counted them. The silence stretched too far. She told herself it didn’t matter. But her chest felt hollow in a way she couldn’t explain. He returned the next week. Paler. Quieter. But there. “You disappeared,” she said, trying to sound casual. “So did you,” he replied. “I was here.” “Not really.” Later, in the stairwell, he told her. “It’s getting worse,” he said. The words fell between them like something broken. Elia didn’t know what to say. So she did the only thing that felt true. She reached for his hand. This time, on purpose. 4 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whisper-Dreams-Otatade-Okojie/dp/B0D8KP5H2Y They began to measure time differently. Not in days. Not in weeks. But in moments they could hold onto. A shared laugh in a quiet hallway. A whispered confession between appointments. The warmth of a hand that chose to stay. The first time Elia had a seizure near him, she was terrified. Not of the seizure. But of what would come after. Would he look at her differently? Would the fragile thing between them shatter? When she woke, she was lying on the cool floor. Luca beside her. Steady. Unshaken. “You came back,” he said softly. “I always do,” she murmured. He shook his head. “No. I mean… you came back to me.” Something shifted then. Not sudden. Not dramatic. But certain. Like a leaf letting go. “Why does it feel like falling?” Elia asked one evening. They were sitting on the hospital steps, the sky fading into deep blue. Luca thought for a moment. “Maybe it is,” he said. “But not the kind that breaks you.” She looked at him. “Then what kind?” He squeezed her hand gently. “The kind that teaches you what’s worth holding onto.” Love, Elia realized, did not arrive in bright, obvious ways. Not here. Not in a place where everything was uncertain. It arrived quietly. In stolen moments. In shared understanding. In the simple, impossible act of choosing someone— even when both of you were already falling. And so they did. They fell. Not away from each other. But into something fragile, secret, and fiercely alive. A love that existed in the spaces between seizures. Between fear and hope. Between the breaking— and the becoming. 🌙 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whisper-Dreams-Otatade-Okojie/dp/B0D8KP5H2Y

Short story excerpt: Honey

"I could have died right there," my friend Kim announces. Christ everything is drama with this chic. " Just right there, not anywhere else?" I offer sarcastically. He's just a guy. Matthew Cole is just a guy, yet suddenly her whole world revolves around getting his attention. "What happened to Womens independence, Feminism,playing hard to get," I snap. Then I could have died right there. Literally I could have let the ground swallow me up. Kim fixes me with an arctic grey stare, drags her hair up and shoves it into a tidy little bun. She gets that look on the hockey pitch, when she wants to fight someone. Her chestnut hair wild like a stallions mane, her voluptuous mouth set in a firm line.  I step back, to create some space between us, the wind is like razors out here in the playground and the care taker hasn't come yet. " what is it with you?"
She tosses back. Finally shoving her hands into her blue puffer jacket pockets. "Red jeans today huh? That's different." The words slip out like oil.
" who are you? And what have you done with my friend?" Kim snaps.
I think about what my mum used to say, before I'd be made to sit in the corner whilst she studied my friend Kim with crow eyes. "There's something special about this girl, you know." Was I jealous. Of her attraction to tall, dark, razor sharp wit, and crystal eyes Matthew Cole? I hated it. It was like she was a different person when guys come into the picture. On the surface it always looks like jealousy I'm bookish with thin blonde hair, I let it grow to my knees because mom was obsessed with me cutting it in a style like the 80's. "Grow it, or rock it that's what you do honey."

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.”

 

Evein (Vampire story)

“ Somebody did this to me, and I wanna know who?” Evein glared at her parents angrily, their narrow gazes shrinking even deeper as their usually mocha skinned daughter was turning an almost pale shade of brown. “ Keep it closed dalton.” She hissed as her little brother reached to peel the ivory curtain back.

“I don’t get it, you don’t like light?”

“ It hurts. It feels like someone piercing you with a thousand needles.”

“And the guy at the bar, you don’t think he put some psychotic in your drink,”

“ Dolly im not gone crazy,”

“Its called metamorphose, or morphic, it’s a drug, that’s”

“supposed to stop your heartbeat, yet somehow keeps you alive.” Evein patted her fro gently, she wanted to take it off. Why pretend as though you stood for culture and clarity when all of a sudden you’d fade to nothing, when that gold orb tasted the blue sky. Christ she’d read vampire books, series that nullified any belief that things beyond the grave existed, a myth created by a very lonely, very imaginative mr something century J.k Rowling. After all the books were about people with super abilities, women who suddenly became sirens, that wouldn’t be happening any time soon. “ I’m literally,”

“A dead man walking,” Dally joked. Even he felt stale on that hit. “Any suspects yet?”

“Yes,” mother finally put in dragging a long breath, the anxiety in her tone amplified. She stood up slowly, the red gown theyd brought her wrapped and curled like a vine. “ Somebody hated you enough to want you dead but didn’t have the guts to see it through.’

Father agreed with a groan.” Who’d you piss of this time princess, because by my calculations that drug is a slow poison, you have one month to live to find answers, and to get the antidote.”

“I guess I need a detective.” There was a heavy silence, quiet enough to make the birds chirping outside sound as though they were on pop idol. “ Not him, anyone but him.”

“ He wont charge you, and he’s thorough,”

“he’s also a bit of a rogue,” Mother added, Evein glanced at Dally who was grinning from ear to ear.

“You shit head.”

“I called him as soon as you walked through the door,” Evein gulped the last of the strawberry juice, though she could barely taste it. Taurus Jones had an ego the size of mars at the best of times, and at the worst of times? Damn, this was supposed to be a flipping happy new year.  (To be continued)

SEDATIVE LIFE (SHORT STORY)

 

“ I am terrified of letting the world in. It’s not the worlds fault, i am scared to let go.”  My name is Mylene Klausman. Yesterday my boyfriend played Anthony Robbins in the car for the last time. Jesus, it was killing me. Not Robbins, My guy, total hypocrisy. “ This guy changed my life Mylene!” he announces over the speakers, yet everything stays the same. Our routines are the same, we get up at 7.30, i actually get up at 8 but he wakes me up with all the pacing up and down the house. Or sometimes he’s up at four and he decides to switch the lamplight on and talk about politics or something just to hear his own voice. I think we are growing apart, or two different people, the sentence is rehearsed over and over in my head. It claims every space in my mind, yet in the early hours i am sticky with sweat, after intense lovemaking. After conversations that trail deep into the night, where i find myself second guessing myself because Eden is getting way too intense. “There’s a guy,” I tell my friend Reno as she pulls up to my house in her navy blue Sedan. “ Shit there’s a guy and im practically married,”

“ Who, what, where, and when?” She lowers her tinted hugo boss shades to reveal stunning blue eyes. I like her new bob as well, everything is Slick and organized, Midnight black hair, exotic features and razor sharp cheekbones. Some guy said Reno looks like Angelina Jolie, personally ive seen her look way better. Then again im in awe. I slip into the seat of the blue Sedan. “ Look were matching,” she dots a kiss on my cheek,were both wearing  blue denim catsuits. “ Its not Tommy is it?”

“ Tommy who?” she puts the car into first gear. “ Thomas Denton, plays Basketball for the Rovers, prefect, perfect, uhhmmmn” she flutters her lashes. I cackle.

“ No im with Eden remember.”

“ Are you happy?” We are steering the car down Crossharbour Road, down Lucas Avenue near the local Mcdonalds. “ Im happy.” I lie. Do I remember what happy feels like? I wonder if I have become a sedative self, I smile when im supposed too, laugh when im supposed too, I feel like a puppy that’s being petted when his parents come over, “go on Myle sit.” I imagine myself with huge furry ears being propped on a dog matt, begging for a bone or some affection. Then there’s him. So I say it out loud because Reno, knows the Him syndrome, when some stranger invades your mind and your senses, you are hypnotized. “ His name is Aidan Rothschild, he sits in the third row in Science, and in the library he watched me for a whole hour, I didn’t even know he was looking,”

“ Nice,” Reno offers pulling out a stick of gum at the traffic lights. “ A Rothschild. I know about them. Damn their rich, devilishly handsome as well.Describe please,” I smile guiltily at the memory. I pin him to be 6 ft five Midnight hair, eyes so dark their almost purple, yet there’s a soft hue of brown in them. His features are strong Aqualine, he has a thick jaw, and long sweeping lashes. When he put his hands up and spoke, I swear on my whole entire life, id never heard anybody sound like that. It was a deep tone, his voice is like a song, I found myself being seduced in with every syllable. I instantly turned into one of those girls Annie Elkry is one of those girls and I hate her for it, overly inquisitive, what does he eat? What does he like? What does he do for fun? Why did he pick our School? And whats so interesting about me? I look up from the book im pretending to read, its awful. Our eyes connect across the Library hall, my eyes flicker away nervously. My stomach dances as he rises from his seat. Tall drink of water,that’s what he is, and he’s heading my way. I smoothe a tongue across my wrinkled lips and then watch in horror as Eden makes his way over to me. He is wearing his muddied tracksuit, I noticed the tall drink of water has a name tag. New students are put through this Orientation workshop, they have to wear name tags. He’s left his on. I study the name on the badge. Adrian Rothschild. He ducks his head and dodges Eden narrowly swerving as they almost collide. I like his scent. A trail of soft tobacco. As he walks away, our eyes connect once more, there is mystery there, and intrigue. Eden stands over my shoulder eyeing us suspiciously. “ Do you know that guy?”

“ No,” not yet, im thinking. Eden scratches his head. “ Guy looks like trouble.” Eden clears his throat. Aidan reminds me of someone like me, someone keeping a big secret. Grandma says I have an eye for it. “ Those grey eyes of yours girl, always exposing the invisible. You’ve got your mothers eyes.” But mothers eyes got her into a lot of trouble. My mother was murdered two years ago when I was sixteen, she was a journalist, and my father is still convinced it was something she saw. Someone she saw the day before she died. I remember how scary it was that she seemed so calm on the surface, yet when she thought id turned my back that day , her voice was manic and erratic. Her words were like someone choking, terrified, “ They’ll find out the truth,” she’d shouted. “ He’ll know, they will know. There’s nowhere to run, just come clean.” But whoever it was never came clean, and my mother disappeared for a week until her body was found by the river bed, Frozen and naked.  I don’t think I cried. I think I was numb for a long time, id been programmed for bad things. My mother was strangled to death. I had thought for weeks about her last few minutes, what was her final word, then for years, it haunted me. Id see her murderer in smiles from friends, in people who hugged and offered condolences, those who laughed at jokes too hard, everyone became a suspect. “ Still day dreaming about Mr wrong?” I snapped back into the present. “Were here.” Reno and I had pulled up outside Elmhurst high School, im never ready for this place. I lie, like ive become accustomed too.” Yeah maybe ill see him.” I take a deep breath as we step out of the car. I feel a sense of forboding. There is something coming, there is something about that guy. Whatever secret he’s keeping, its more than a curiosity now. Then I think of Eden. Do I delve into adventure, or return to a sedative life?

 

Selene (Short Story)

“ Did you look see?
Did you look?”
Because i haven’t looked at the scars just yet, the beating my best friend gave me after our ‘just fight’ at the local market. I am shivering with rage, my mouth is burdened with words, and i am burdened with sorrow. “ Just look at it,” My cousin Aaliyah says “ face it, thats a lot of rage.”

“ I didn’t even see it coming.”

“ Neither did we.” My family survey my swollen features. I know their swollen, because everything throbs, everything sports, yet there is a blackness there, but the ache has not begun yet. I am not yet longing for answers. I have all the jigsaws in my head, betrayal , jealousy. The conversations roll out like Polaroid films in my mind, the flashbacks consume each night, everybody around me is on tiptoe. I was on tiptoe. In my mind i know the conversation i would have wanted to have with Selene, perfect Selene who i had idolized once upon. Selene with the Movie star smile , shapely legs and dimpled brown eyes. She controlled all my pandoras boxes, i was her puppet, mainly because i figured when your lonely for so long, and someone new comes in, you give them your everything. Because deep down really i felt i had nothing to give. I had never been that chic chick in the playground, check out the knots in my hair, the dirt on my jeans, the holes in my trainers. To the boys i was one of their peers, to the girls i was always a threat. Too domineering, too Alpha, too different, i played football until the breasts came like two buds blossoming shame, teachers making me change in the closets. Selene’s story was different she had always been a siren. “ Whose your friend?” the guys would peer around me, behind me, sometimes even dodge, so in my eyes she had everything. Then something changed. It was a full day before i really looked at the scars Selene had given me, scars that reflected her state of mind. I remember the cautious steps i took towards the large bathroom mirror. I had always been scared of blood. When id seen the blood gushing from my nostrils i knew there was no point fighting. Selene wasn’t fighting me. There are Ghosts we fight, demons we cannot see. The mind plays tricks on you, leaves you an outsider.  I knew about Selenes Demons, yet i knew i had Demons of my own. My Demons whispered to me, teased at me, isolated me at times, made it hard to reach out, to fully connect. I had always been scared, and at times with Selene i was terrified. I’d see a flash of something in her eyes, a fleeting shadow that looked like something i recognized, something i saw within myself. I knew, i was not alone. This banana skin of mine,slippery as it was. Confidence that danced in and out like smoke, happiness that seduced like a belly dancer, i was not alone. When i studied the scars, Voluptuos, pronounced, there was nothing ambivalent, nothing mysterious. At the time i had shrunk into myself, like a pair of jeans set in the wrong wash. Was anything real? The laughter, the time, the conversations, or had i just been borrowed, used until someone worthy enough came along. “ Someone who respects you doesn’t do this.” The sentence broke my heart time and again. I remembered situations where 2+2 equals five, i became a detective, questioning everything. Was it A? B? Or had i simply just been unlovable?

silver necked pigeons

"Its a funny old world, ain't it?" My father said as we glared at a silver necked pigeon, it's ivory wings almost dove like, made it distinct from the pack that dotted at the scraps of pillar bread. The son beamed arrogant in The afternoon, cars scraped along the pavement wolfIng each other doWN. pedestrians lined the streets as mini zebra crossing, the air seemed to pulse with electricity. My father's bitter tone hung in the air.
" Am I too respond to that?"
He shook his head slowly,
" be Peter pan, they never tell you growing up.is.overrated."
" Grownups hurt a lot don't they?" I asked .
"Pain seems to be an acquired taste for some...." and you?every time you asked him a question too deep, he left. I didn't want him to leave, it was a bizarre strait of events that led to the murder of my father, this evolved fantasy version of him in this strange interplanetary orb had changed many things my father was, yet not his original version, broken, damaged, stinking of booze, his saviour his lover his life. I tried to cuddle this whisper of air but only ended up traumatized by its invisibility. I realised then I never wanted to hug my father or hold his hand I just wanted to talk to him about the things that didn't make sense, then I realised he was tilted. His world made no sense either..

broken in between

 Wanted

I didn't want to die this way, but I was disappearing like the ice in a snow storm." You'll feel better after this," the lady at the shelter popped two white pills in my hand. " don't worry baby, it's not poison," I raised my hand in defence. " words that sting," I muttered leaning against the wall, feet curled in a yoga position. " he beat you bad this time," she was black cocoa skinned, deep set brown eyes and curvy figure, she lowered herself to the bed. " I'm taking it to the mattresses this time," shoving battered hands through stringy brown hair. Every time he beat me, or he threw words like a javelin, I'd put on the godfather. A film became an episode. Daddy used to love watching it,when I hit sixteen I did too. I realised the world could be such an angry place, that you could be inside the frame and not know what the hell was going on. Jeffrey would be pacing, angrily, wine bottle in his hand, champagne glass the everything he had, I'd make sure he had nothing. He was my Shaw shank redemption~this prison I would escape from one way or another.  My fingers trembled I downed a cup of hot tea, allowing it to pierce my throat set it aflame.my stomach curled anxiously,I wiped a tear from my eye, fixed my brown hair tighter. There were bags from lack of sleep and one purple lid was.lowered shut. I.had such pretty eyes he'd tell me, now that was the first thing he went for. My home was raw with imaginary false alarms thatbwentboff in my head, each time we shared a verse, and each time family called his words dripped with disdain. I hated him, but I hated me more for being taken in. I wanted him gone, but how do you kill someone....whose already dead.

The Shelfman

He was a shelfman. Life was in neat boxes and tidy rows, everything was organised and well kept. Everything had to be, because she was here in his home, amongst all his things, amongst a smile and paperwork that was usually unfinished. He'd done the dishes this morning, first thing, 50 clock. It was before she woke up, and he'd even baked the lemon sponge cake she enjoyed so much. Though her face was round once more, he ached for the simplicity that came with being their team. There was an ease which came with Joyce, a flow, routine even, that didn't happen with the other women he dated. Though not as striking, she was beautiful to him, and warm like a mug of hot soup, she warmed his insides out. She made him not afraid to Love again. " Happy 64th Harry,"
"and a merry one it'll be ," he toasted with the glass of cider. His Irish stronger on the it'll. He smiled a broad smile, and waited for her to lean in and give him the kiss required.Glory Temple had been his High School Crush, he'd wait by the Bike sheds watch as she dropped books and pens, she was a clumsy one. In that blue uniform, with the pink knee high socks and the pig tails she was a sight for Sore eyes, and she was always a sight for him. He'd run fingers through thick curly hair, pose as she took air strides towards the black Gates of St Mary's.  His first conversation had been a "you've dropped your pencil by the way," at that she nodded stubbornly, fixing the broad glasses on her nostrils. She would only reply polite thank you's and walk by with royal finnese. She was his Glory he'd decided, as soon as he turned fifteen and was at the Bike Sheds again. He was a shelfman, his father had been a Shelfman, his father before him had been a Shelfman, no one outside their family knew what a Shelfman was. His father had told him, we are the Gatekeepers of every generation, we covet our women, and treat them with respect always, we are the tidy men. Everything is neatly organised, we bring structure to every conversation. Glory had mused at him when after much anticipation, a jitterbug he was, he stood before the gates of St  Mary's a rose in hand.
"Your friend Mary told me you like Yellow Roses, " she smiled sweetly. He liked that she didn't coo.
" Thankyou," she spoke, " There's a Cafe they serve really nice pie and Mash," he made a hell of an impression. Yellow roses and then Pie and Mash. The two seemed to contradict, the flowers made her think of chocolates, violin's and harps, whilst pie and Mash made her think of a Chef's gut. The flowers were taken, sniffed as though they had a poison attached to them. Then Harry stood frozen as a kiss was planted on his soft cheek. It had been 46 years of on and off, and on again since that blessed day. Since a kiss led him to think of words such as this. When she'd probed him about the concept of Marriage, he'd said with ease, " i'll just be putting some shelves up." underneath is where the ring was found.