THE CURE

The pungent fumes of cheap cigarettes had chased me away from the back of the bar – where I liked to sit – to the counter. I found a spot that was being bathed by the evening breeze hissing through a broken pane and pulled a stool. It’s fine, I thought, no need to fuss…

ALVIN

Underachievement in Gifted Students It is a warm, Saturday afternoon, and I am sitting in the library of a certain National school in the distant outskirts of Nairobi. I cast my eyes about and admire the impressive collection of books all around. In front of me, a quiet Form 2 student flips through an old…

The Professor

The Professor

The Greater East African Colony: 2084 AD Department of Astrobiology (DoA), Sector C. 12: 45pm He sat silently at his bench, motionless, and not a hair on his skin acknowledged the presence of the young lass hovering beside him. Aliya Kendi was a post-doctoral beauty that had but a scanty supply of flesh around her…

MICROBE

MICROBE

“I need you to lie on your side, Mr. James. Can you do that for me? Good, good. Now, pull your knees up towards your chest and relax.” Mr. James complied. It was his sixth day here, and he was now willing to do anything in order to get out. Well, perhaps not anything, but,…

THE WIDOW

               Parents often toss a prayer into the heavens when their little minions run off to school – their small hands clutching onto their jingling pockets, heavy with the pennies that they had stolen and those that their mothers had reluctantly given them. Parents hope that their children’s march…

A GIFT

The sharp clank of a metal bar colliding with bone filled the midnight air. A scream, and then silence. The weapon glowed dimly as it was spun, melting into the air with the typical transparency of a rotating blade. Beneath an amber street lamp in Nairobi, a man lay dead. At arm’s length, another man…

TO KILL, OR NOT TO KILL

A few problems with Capital Punishment When the body is rested, and the mind, subdued by deep contemplation, seems unbent by the impulses of its vessel, stranger creatures stir, and bring to surface emotions old. It is here that our pretentious affirmations of certitude  are revealed by the circumspect eye of self-scrutiny, and that our…