Adeboye, Sharon lives in Ile-Ife, Osun. TYWA stories may be slightly edited for grammatical accuracy and to better serve TGF readers. The originality of the story is 100% intact. - TYWA 2025
Editor’s Note:
This short story plays with fear, trauma, and twisted hope in a way that stings. What happens when the line between reality and fear becomes too thin to stand on? In an increasingly violent world, we must tread with caution and wisdom.
The street outside was quiet, but Muna’s room crawled with noise — the noise of rats scratching within and beneath every piece of furniture.
She crushed leftover fish onto a chipped plate, frowning as she scrolled through a Twitter thread. The decapitated bodies of two missing schoolgirls who had made the rounds a week prior had been found at a T-junction. It was the sixth of its kind in two months—another stream of frantic prayers and grim warnings.
Her oily fingers left faint smudges on the screen, but she barely cared.
She reached across the table for one of the two sachets of rat poison. The Igbo man who’d sold them to her the night before had promised it was nothing like anything she’d seen before.
“Na original oh, aunty. If rat chop am and im no die after twenty minutes, na winch him be,” he’d said in Pidgin, trying to get her to buy a full roll.
A knock rattled her thin door. Instinctively, Muna shoved the sachet into her pocket and wiped her hands on her shorts. The only “visitors” who had darkened her door in her three months of National Youth Service in Kano were preachers—and you didn’t get many of those around here.
She walked to the door and squinted through the peephole—two strangers stared back. Before she could move, the door burst open. Rough hands grabbed her. A blindfold clamped over her eyes. A gag followed. Something that felt like a charging cord yanked her wrists behind her. She kicked and twisted; the gag muffled her screams.
They threw her into the back of a van. The metal floor shook beneath bald tires. Petrol fumes and sweat clung to the air.
The news flashed wild in her head—ritual killings. Blood. Heads. Gouged-out eyes. Missing organs. She wrestled with the ties; they snapped more easily than expected, but fear locked her in place. Her heart thundered. Blindfold slipping, she fumbled into her pocket. Her fingers brushed the sachet.
The thought came quietly: an easy way out.
Tears blurred her vision as she tore it open with her teeth and swallowed. Bitter dust clawed down her throat like sandpaper.
Minutes blurred. Her stomach writhed. Pain punched her ribs.
The van halted. Doors swung open.
A bouquet. A sideways cake.
Her fiancé.
And fifteen voices screamed: “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”
-Sola Soyele
-TGF Team