Mama always said that death had a way of creeping under you. It would showcase its claws before it hacked you to join it in the darkness.
The night Afi died, everything changed. There were birds chirping in the air. Cold gnawed at thumbs and wrists. The rickety streetlights dimmed and the road remained a pallid leather-black, melding with the night. I walked down Penny Lane for kelewele, arms interlocked with my best friend. Afi spun this tale about her life as a teaching assistant at the university and I still wondered why a scrawny level 100 student would dare ask her out on a date. Na she be your mate? I said out loud to the imaginary level 100 as I clearly saw the desire gouging out his eyes.
Now, Afi was plump. No, fat. I would usually just say plump to make her feel better. And she’d always respond that it didn’t affect her. I would feign understanding. Because I think it did get to her. How some men hissed and called her, “Di Asa. Shake body.”
“See how they think I’m supposed to dance for their entertainment. Those twerps. Fat women always get the worse share of the misogyny,” Afi would succumb to, on a bad day, when her feelings were more unfiltered, honest.
She prided herself on being a fierce feminist that would train her daughter to surpass her. Once she had a daughter. She had been dating this bigshot from Tema Oil Refinery and said although they’d decided on family planning when they got married so they could enjoy, without interruption, sweet, sticky sex; their daughter would be the icing on the cake, the crème of the crop. She’d be twice the woman Afi aspired to be.
That night, there was a narrow stretch of slick asphalt in front of Afi and I as we made our way to the kelewele seller and I slapped my thigh to Afi’s tales as we walked leisurely across. There was no vehicle in sight. Afi’s phone slipped from her free left hand in the middle of the road and she stooped to retrieve it.
“Hurry up.” I had reached the pedestrian dirt path beside the road.
Afi laughed as she grabbed the phone, composed herself and walked towards me. “My screen didn’t crack oo. Hallelujah!”
“We thank God. You’re one lucky bitch.” I walked closer to the kelewele seller, Mama Theodora who had just dropped a ladle of spiced and chopped-thin ripe plantains into the hot oil. It sizzled and my nostrils filled with a sweetness interlaced with a faint smell of smoke and pepper. As my eyes fixated on the large pan hissing with intent, oil fighting and dancing with the sliced plantains, I salivated.
There had been a tiny path between where Afi and I stood that inched into the shadows on the left. Tiny, tiny path, that seemed non-existent. Till a motor screeched towards Afi in a split-second and a hooded figure knocked her head with a cement block and the rider he leaned against snatched her phone away.
Mama Theodora screamed. Ran to check her pulse. Then screamed again.
I didn’t scream. I couldn’t scream. As blood trickled and leaked, gradually, onto the road, Afi’s body digging into the dirt path, my throat tightened and itched.
I already knew when we got to the hospital and were given the verdict.
Afi, my best friend of twenty years was puddled into death by an act of greed, becoming one with the dark, with the night. Life would never be the same.
Mama was wrong. Death didn’t showcase its claws. It took what it wanted. When it wanted. How it wanted. It would hack you to join in the darkness, yes, yet its claws were too swift to allow time for pondering, or retreat.
David Agyei-Yeboah is a poet, writer and musician from Accra, Ghana. He holds an MA in Communication Studies from the University of Ghana and graduated with first-class honors in English and Theatre Arts for his BA. His work has been published in many print and online journals across Africa, North America, Australia, Europe and Asia. His manuscript, OUR SPIRITS YEARN FOR HOME won the 2023 Kofi Awoonor Literary Prize. It was also nominated for the Totally Free Best of the Bottom Drawer Global Writing Prize from the Black Spring Press Group, UK. David has also won the Webmaster Award in 2025 for being nominated in the Kene Offor-Teambooktu competitions twice; in both fiction and poetry categories. His short story, ‘Kiin Kiin Kiin’ was chosen and included in the Top Ten Stories of All Time list at Literally Stories from a pool of over 3000 stories published over a decade, and his flash fiction, ‘Desi’ was shortlisted for the EU Delegation Prize. Dogs make him smile, always.