A Piece of Me | Flash Fiction

I think it may be becoming difficult for me to write shorter stories. I started this one as a hundred word story, and again, it went beyond that. My fingers are having way too much fun. Well, don't blame brain just yet. It's still taking a nap. LOL. Do enjoy.

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I was fifteen when Papa died. That afternoon, I was out playing football with Obinna. It was a routine turned habit. We would go to school in the morning – which only happened because we had each other anyway, we both hated school. Whoever that woke first would show up behind the other’s house and whistle – go to the stream in the afternoon, play in the evening before heading to block rosary at night. Our parents' combined both tradition and Christianity. So you can adapt wherever we may find yourselves, they said. I never thought much about it. It was one of the things that never really bothered me.

I loved Obinna. He was the only person who accepted my strange personality. I was a lanky child with an awkward gait. The things other people found normal held no interest for me. I laughed when others cried. I also kept to myself. Everyone avoided me. Papa said I was special. Mama looked away whenever she saw me. There were rumours she carried me for eleven months and wouldn’t touch me after I was born.

But everything changed when I turned thirteen and had to be initiated into the youth’s otu ogbo for growing boys. That was how they found out. There were no secrets and I was so scared after the ceremony that I didn’t go home. When I eventually did, Papa wouldn’t look me in the face. I later learned he was summoned before the elders and whipped.

So when I came home and saw a crowd spitting and shaking their heads, I knew he had done it. It didn’t matter that no one would tell me what happened. I knew he killed himself. I’d seen it in his eyes for weeks now. I was strange after all. But then I was also relieved. No more sneaking into my room and pulling my shorts in the dark.

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_{otu ogbo is an age grade, usually for people from one to five or six years apart in age. Boys get initiated when they become old enough to start taking responsibilities.}

Tell me your thoughts.

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