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The Market by the Red Earth Road

2025-09-17 14:36:04

The sun was climbing steadily now, lifting the shadows from the savannah and laying its golden weight across the land. Victor and Sophia had followed the stream until it disappeared into a wider road, beaten smooth by generations of feet, bicycle wheels, and cart tracks. The earth beneath their sandals was red, a deep, living red that clung to their soles with every step, staining them with the memory of all who had walked there before.

Sophia lifted her face to the breeze, and for the first time in days, she smelled more than grass and bark. The air was tinged with firewood smoke, roasted maize, and the faint sweetness of spices. Her eyes widened, her steps quickening as the distant murmur of voices reached them — laughter, bargaining, children’s shouts, the bleating of goats.

“Victor,” she whispered, her voice quivering with disbelief and longing, “it’s a market.”

And it was.

Nestled where the red earth dipped into a hollow shaded by thorn trees, the market sprawled like a l

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The Narrow Door
The corridor exploded with echoing alarms — long, rising wails that turned the Ministry into a living creature screaming for its guards. Red emergency lights pulsed along the ceiling, splashing the walls in frantic color.The masked figure pulled Salim forward with surprising strength.“This way,” the rescuer ordered.Salim stumbled, barely keeping his balance. “Who are you?” he hissed.“Later. Move.”Behind them, doors were slamming open. Boots thundered. Minister Amina’s voice cut through the noise like a blade:“BLOCK THE EAST WING! HE IS NOT TO REACH THE STAIRWELLS!”Salim felt a jolt of terror. They knew exactly where he would run.The masked rescuer seemed to know this too.Instead of heading toward the main exit, they swung left into a narrow maintenance passage. The rough walls and exposed pipes made it clear this wasn’t meant for officials — only for workers the regime never expected to flee.“Down,” the rescuer said.A metal hatch lay open ahead — a service ladder leading in
The Room Without Corners
They escorted Salim through corridors he had walked a hundred times — yet tonight, each step felt unfamiliar. Too narrow. Too quiet. The Ministry after dark was a different creature altogether, stripped of its daytime bustle and left with only the hum of fluorescent lights and the soft echo of footsteps that fell like judgments.Minister Amina walked ahead of him with her usual precise calm. The two auditors followed behind him, close enough that Salim could feel their presence like cold breath on his neck.They reached a door he had never noticed before. It was unmarked, painted the same color as the wall. A room meant to remain unseen.Amina opened it.Light flooded out — blinding, sterile.Salim’s stomach tightened.The room was perfectly square, but somehow it felt like it had no corners, as if the walls curved just slightly, denying any place to hide. In the center sat a single chair. Metal. Bolted to the floor.Not a torture room — the Patron didn’t need such crude methods.No,
The Shape of Retaliation
Night wrapped the city in its usual dark velvet, but there was an edge to it now — a tautness, as though the streets themselves were bracing for something. Somewhere in a distant neighborhood, a dog barked once, sharply, then fell silent.And in the fortified quiet of the Patron’s residence, someone else was barking.Not a dog.A minister.The Chamber of Oversight — a long, dim room lined with portraits of past leaders whose eyes never quite aligned — trembled with the force of the shouting.“They interfered with an active retrieval,” Minister Barasa slammed a folder onto the polished table. Pages burst out like startled birds. “Your units were instructed to monitor that square. Not to retreat like frightened schoolboys.”Across from him stood Commander Juma, hands clasped behind his back, expression unreadable. “My men reported unexpected authority on-site.”“Authority?” Barasa hissed. “Who?”“They didn’t identify him. They feared he was senior. Possibly Ministerial.”Barasa’s lip cu
When a Name is Spoken
The van’s door slid fully open, the metallic rattle carrying across the narrow street like a warning bell. Inside, dim light revealed the silhouettes of three men — faceless in the way only loyalists could be, their movements precise, their bodies taut with readiness. They carried nothing visible, but Salim knew better. Violence did not need to be seen to be certain.He stepped into the road before he had time to reconsider. His pulse hammered in his ears as he raised a hand, a gesture half-born of instinct, half of impossibility.“Stop,” he said.His voice cracked in the air, too thin, too human against the mass of metal rolling toward him.The van hesitated.Not fully — just a hitch, a breath of uncertainty. But it was enough. Salim moved closer, his shoes scuffing the pavement, his other hand clenched into a fist inside his pocket. The envelope crumpled further, as if sharing his fear.The driver leaned forward, expression unreadable in the half-light. “This is restricted,” the man
The Choice
The night after the posters appeared, the city did not sleep. Or perhaps it pretended to, the way a wounded animal pretends stillness when the predator is near. Windows stayed shuttered longer than usual. Radios that once hummed with taarab or the chatter of preachers now whispered only news of prices, never politics. The sea air carried the smell of charcoal smoke, fried fish, and something less tangible — a hush that had grown too heavy to be called ordinary silence.Salim walked those streets without destination, his steps carrying him further from the Ministry than prudence allowed. His jacket collar was raised, but still he felt seen — by posters glaring down at him, by men who leaned against lampposts with their hands tucked into their pockets, by the invisible gaze of the Patron himself. Every intersection seemed staged for menace, every corner waiting to bloom with an unmarked van.And yet he kept walking.By the time he returned to his quarters, dawn was already dusting the s
The Drum
The morning cracked open with no color, only a weight of gray that pressed on the roofs and hung over the roads. The clouds seemed nailed to the sky, and in the neighborhoods where life usually began with music from radios and chatter from kitchens, there was only the sound of charcoal stoves being stoked. Thin spirals of smoke lifted through courtyards where families crouched around pots. Breakfasts were cooked in silence, as though the air itself had ears. Even the roosters crowed more softly, their defiance subdued.Across the city, power lines sagged, lifeless wires draped like ropes above narrow lanes. Children ran errands with buckets, fetching water from shared taps, their laughter hushed by parents who gave sharp glances toward the street before whispering, “Not now.” Fear had become the language that everyone understood without translation.The Patron’s hand had moved again in the night. Not content with choking bank accounts, he had stretched his reach into the streets thems

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The Narrow Door

The Room Without Corners

The Shape of Retaliation

When a Name is Spoken

The Choice

The Drum