​Father. Strengthen My Arms.

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Photocredit: Google.

 

I.

Thunder crashed. Lightning flashed. She turned with hesitant casualness. Before lightning left the blackness of night gulping back the world around her, she had a glimpse of him ducking out of sight.

She clutched her bag in response to the realization that she was being tailed, increasing her steps. A second later found her running.

II.

She scissored through the wind, Continue reading

EJIMA – EPISODE 7: FINISH WHAT YOU START

 

“Not everyone knows my fiancée’s death wasn’t an accident. Even I didn’t know at first. Carbon monoxide poisoning is what they said. He left his generator set on all night, pulled a little too close to his bedroom window, they said. He died in his sleep, they said.” Amauche is looking down at her tied hands, but her gaze is unfocused, mind drifting somewhere in the past. “Victor was a deep sleeper; he never left his

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EJIMA – EPISODE 6: LEGION

Parasitic Twin. Fetus in fetu. Vanishing twin syndrome.

According to experts, some pregnancies start out with multiple foetuses. For some yet to be verified reason, during the first trimester, one of them may be absorbed by another twin, multiple or placenta. This foetal resorption is either partial or complete. The partial type leads to the discovery of extra limbs and body parts on or in the surviving twin, but when complete absorption occurs,
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EJIMA – ​EPISODE 5: DOPPELGANGER

The staff of Yaba Psychiatric Hospital is used to handling emergencies in the dead of the night. Sometimes, the inmates try to hurt themselves. Sometimes they succeed.

And sometimes they hurt other people.

Twenty minutes before Chisom Benson reached the hospital, her twin sister bit someone’s ear off.

The victim was a big strapping fellow called B.J. by his colleagues. He was the strongest orderly Continue reading

EJIMA – EPISODE 4: GUILTY BY ASSUMPTION

After it is ascertained that Amauche Benson is still securely locked up in the psychiatric hospital at Yaba, naturally the police turn their attention to her twin sister, Chisom.

“Young lady, how do you now explain how that girl ended up in your kitchen then?” a policeman asks, tone brash, his eyes narrow with suspicion.

They are standing outside Chisom’s house; two policemen

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EJIMA – EPISODE 3: EMBER MONTHS

They called her The Ember Killer.

Named after the notorious ‘ember months’, coined by superstitious Nigerians obsessed with the spate of fatal accidents and misfortune that seemed to thrive in the last four months of the year. Those were the months in which she began her murderous spree.

Mid-September had seen the discovery of what Amauche Benson claimed was the third victim, a French lecturer in the University Continue reading

EJIMA – ​EPISODE 2: THE MAID IN THE SHORT DRESS 

Chisom staggers out of her house, almost falls and then grips the railing on her verandah.

Her head is swirling, thoughts jostling each other in her head, full of red stains and broken flesh and the vivid images throw a hook down into her stomach and try to pull up bile. She retches and clamps a hand over her mouth, careful not to look back at the door she has left open behind her, frantic to find something to anchor her to the moment. Continue reading

A dress to have

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Inside the questioning room, wrists cuffed to the table, I listen to the two detectives on the other side of the glass divide until a female voice joins in. Gbemi. The one I have been waiting for.

“Aren’t we just a terrible bunch? She says. “So we arrested a lady just because we found a few other ladies chilling in her basement?”

They laugh, and when I laugh too, they stare in at me. I wink at them. I see their growing confusion; I shouldn’t be seeing or hearing them through the soundproof partition.

“I’ll speak to her.” I say aloud, relishing the shock on their faces. Continue reading

This Present Darkness

 

“When the roll is called up yonder…” he hummed along to Bimpe’s favorite hymn as they all got ready to leave the house. He buttoned up his jacket and watched Juli help TimTim with his shoelaces. As she tied the laces into an ‘eight’ shape, he froze. It was happening again.

 

He could taste it at the back of his tongue; the sourness of something sinister coming. Continue reading