SHORT STORIES 

SYNOPSIS

A scintillating collection of short stories.

A woman decides to commit suicide but she travels to Zanzibar in an attempt to learn about death. A jobless master’s degree man decides to travel from Kisumu for a job offering in Nanyuki. On the way she meets a college mate. Things go south. And in another story, a woman narrates to the court her love affair with a college sweetheart who is divorcing her. And many other stories.

excerpt SHORT STORIES 

EXCERPT

Five days ago, I was to celebrate my birthday with the man I thought would grow old with me. He’d told my friends that it was going to be a big dinner, and everyone had been invited.

Two days to the big event however, he called all my friends. And cancelled. No reason to panic, he told them. Instead, he took me out to a resort in Naivasha. We had nice food and cuddled and kissed. Then we lay on the bed facing each other, our gazes locked. He inched closer to me and with our noses touching, he closed his eyes. I closed mine. We remained calm for a moment. Then he grabbed my ass and pulled me even closer. With his hands tight against my back and waist, he kissed me some more. Slowly, I melted away on his massive chest before he spread me on the king-size mahogany bed. And with his tongue he worked the bald man in the boat. I almost got a heart attack.

The next morning, over breakfast in the wild, he announced that he was walking away. I did not cry. I was too shocked to cry. That same week, I got back home from the shop and found my mother sprawled on our living room floor. Dead. Postmortem examination revealed she’d died of a heart attack. Two days after my mother’s burial, my university results came in. I failed.

In the short days that follow, the world starts to change color; it quickly drops its bright hues, and morphs into a terrifying darkness. The flowers by the door smell like putrid dead fish. 

I am a Walking Dead.

A month later, just past midnight, I sit on the couch watching TV, waiting for my boyfriend’s text, and waiting for my mother’s voice. Two hours later, it finally dawns on me: there’s too little to live for. It’s time to leave. This idea holds strong until it feels warm, like it is the affectionate thing to do.

I try the internet first. ‘Ten best ways of committing suicide’.

Why not travel by road to your eventual demise? I ask myself. Travel to Mombasa, enjoy the warmth of that city and take some strong poison on the last day of your stay? Or travel to Maasai Mara, drop off in the jungle and walk until you’ve no energy left… I mean watch yourself die slowly? Okay, how about traveling to Zanzibar via Arusha, Moshi, Dar es Saalam, and then crossing the Indian Ocean into Zanzibar, enjoy the ferry, and finally jump into the water, huh?

Let’s go to Zanzibar, I decide.

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