Wherever you go, however much you change, there are things that will not. There are placeless, immortal, immoral things, incapable of growing weary. You can start running away today. They will wait for you at the finish line. When I was six years old, my mother died. It had been raining the whole day. I … Read more
Being alone may just be the best thing that ever happened to me. I felt like a kid in a playpen with no other noisy brats to bother me. The ball pit? All mine. The slides? No need to worry if there’s some other kid dilly-dallying at the bottom. I could just slide on down, … Read more
Tuesday, February 20, 2035. He thought he heard the sound of sirens. He felt lifeless. Someone seemed to touch his neck, then his left wrist and then started compressing his chest. Another hand forced his mouth open. He felt like he was coughing but wasn’t sure whether he did. He felt tired and sleepy. The … Read more
Cobwebs hung from the wooden rafters of the one room mabati shack along with an assortment of beads and bones on strings. The room was dimly lit through a little wooden window that was only partially open and covered with a piece of sack for a curtain. Rays of light shone through holes in the … Read more
It is the 3rd of October, 2017 AD. We are in Nairobi at a place we once called Langata. It is almost midnight and there is a woman lying in her bed; she is crying. It is an ugly kind of crying, loud and pained without restraint or decorum. It is the cry of someone … Read more
The gurney was the vehicle that brought in the dead. Limp, silent and unresisting; the dead laid covered in blue rumpled sheets. Sometimes their flesh quivered in the careless abandon of death. The men that wheeled the gurneys to the room where the bodies were kept had little to say. In their blue, numbered work … Read more
It was hard to believe that where there now stood only one gray tree stump, a large forest reserve had once flourished. The myriad of cracks only gave evidence of the ground’s unquenched thirst, which had now lasted for generations. The only thing that did not seem to mind the harsh conditions was the dust, … Read more
It’s about that time of the year where we here at Will This Be A Problem present our annual anthology. This year, we tried something a little different from the usual. For the 2016 anthology, we opted to incorporate an open call for submissions. The theme was Speculative Fiction and we received stories from across … Read more
The night was as loud as it could get. It was like the final blast to the end of the world. Shouts, shrieks, thrills and cries of passion accentuated the music, which was so fucking loud you could feel your gut vibrating as if the speakers were inside you. It was a big party. One … Read more
I There was a place in Karen where the Devil sometimes came through to Nairobi. It was an open field of about a quarter of an acre with a few tall trees, sporadic thickets, and patches of stunted grass. The trees and the thickets had yellow, sickly leaves and the grass was mostly burnt. But … Read more