Tag Archives: african fantasy

The Strife: Part One

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Last time we got a little bit of a history lesson, a background to The Strife which is going to be important to remember later on. Feel free to go and read it again; and if this is your first forray into Story Sunday, do check the prologue out, because we’re continuing this week with a time skip, and a letter from a dying man.

Happy Sunday reading, and see you next week!

Solutions. Interrupted

To You,

It all seemed like a great thing at the time, Internet access as a human right. By 2080 every school, library and community centre in the world had at least one computer with a high-speed Internet connection. It was a triumph of human perseverance! we all told ourselves. Oh, how civilised the world had become!

Then it started. It was simple stuff at first; cyber bullying became a norm, but then, everyone had expected that. Then things got progressively less civilised. Searches about the history of slavery led to multitudes of neo-supremacist chat rooms of every kind; queries about sexual health saw you bombarded with violent and graphic images of degrading acts performed with dubious consent. The grotesque became the mainstream, and soon we really were witnessing the dreaded and oft-mentioned ‘deterioration of the moral fabric of society’.

In all that chaos nobody can really say when the takeover happened, but those of us old enough to remember know that it wasn’t the bloodless affair they claim it to be. The Strife Lords came baying for blood and they got it, rivers of it. The blood of all those who dared to say humanity was decent and good and capable of being righteous.

The rest of us were either too cowed, or too busy drowning in the enormity of it all, to fight back when it would have made a difference.

Perhaps the Strife Lords really are what they say: our old gods. But I am too old now and have seen too much to care if they’re right and they are only monsters because we made them so. I want to see each of them destroyed, but I won’t live long enough for that. You see, I’m writing this because I’m to die soon. But if anyone ever finds this letter, I want you to know it’s worth it to fight. It has to be.

Allan, D.

Author

Linda, AKA TAGG herself, loves great music and terrible movies. Find her being boring on Twitter @ThatLFM

Inktober: Week 1

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After a long dry spell, I’ve decided to dip my toe back into some creative writing. And how fortuitous, it’s Inktober! The good folks over at Kugali Media have been kind enough to come up with prompts for those of us on the Mother Continent who need a little inspiration. So, for this month’s Sunday installations, I’ll be using selected prompts for the week and trying to bring them to life!

Do yourself a solid and go check out kugali.com for some awesome African storytelling!

ANCIENT – a poem

“Do you think about us?” whispers the grave

A question and indictment;

a truth which burns – for I do not

In quiet times, perhaps I hear

In dark of sleep, perhaps I see

There is so little thought, given to these

Truths of the soul and soil

Yet from them we are born and live

Back to them our breath we’ll give

FAVOURITE FOOD – a memory

I remember less of the taste, or the smell, than I do of the feeling. Warm, and full. Sated and smiling after a heavy meal of sadza and more beef, tomato, onion and veggie stew than someone my size should have been able to ingest – these were good times. Food brought out the best of us. On a full stomach my father was hilarious, my mother magnanimous and my siblings happy. I was content, after a fashion.

But things change, don’t they? Sometimes over long periods of time – a young man with ambitions and dreams wakes up one day burdened by the ghosts of the man he should be. A young woman with hopes and goals wakes up one day to realise that she lives in a gilded cage. Other times change is fast. Night to day. The best in us sleeps and neglects to wake the next morning and we are once again tip-toeing through a maze of triggers and pain.

Then the day fades and the night comes, and once again the best of us wakes. We sit around the table, we eat and we breathe. Then my father makes a joke and we laugh, my mother pours wine and my siblings smile.

Today, I made my favourite food. I sat at my table, and I brought out the best in myself.  

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