Author: Meshack Yobby

Proceed from Part 2 *** The next day, I commit my first robbery. It is a woman walking alone at 8p.m. Surgeon says I have to start with women to get the feel of things before I could handle men. He slips a rusty knife into my hands and says, “Show that bitch the knife and take her bag. If she screams, stab her so that next time she does as she is told. Then run away because if you are caught, you will be killed, and it will be just sad to die without injuring anyone.” I puff some…

*Proceeds from Part 1* Father is snoring. Sometimes he growls and whistles through the nose, sometimes he sounds like the train. Mother used to say it is like sleeping next to a posho mill, that she’d never get used to it. But she is sleeping now. I can hear her heavy breathing. Even when she is asleep, she breathes as if she is breathing fire, as if she is about to beat someone, as if her chest is too small and she cannot get enough air. There is blue light seeping through the uneven space between the door and the…

To be a criminal, you need a sorry background. My father works as a drunkard and my mother is the local brewery, but Mrs. Thuku caned me for writing that in an English composition test, so now I am afraid of saying that. But it is true. My mother makes chang’aa in huge metal drums in a room she has rented. She banned me from going in there, but I have seen what she puts in the drink. Sometimes, it is battery acid, sometimes it is that liquid that smells like a mortuary, like the way Kuria smelled in the…

You will stop your car and watch them run over. To you. It will feel good, to have women croon and call you handsome and strong and ask how you want it.

Let me tell you something, Father. This thing is sweet, I tell you, like a meal laced with poison. Once you taste it, you will want to eat and eat and eat.

Everyone has at least one inappropriate friend; the one who replies loudly when you whisper about someone who is within earshot, the one who uses swear words in front of your church friends and you have to pretend you are not together and you are trying to bear witness to the Truth. The one who, when you upload a photo of you and a lady you’re showing interest in, will comment, ‘What happened to Nyambura?’ Inescapable friends. They will find you wherever you are. Even if you switch off the tv and radio and lock the door so that people…