'The In-Between' is the winner of the Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize 2024 (Short Story)
I awakened from the void with snatches of the previous lifetime, carrying the weight of a gruesome death, brimming with memories of a great wrong, unrequited love, an unavenged injury. An unfinished life.
I remember everything.
I remember how I died.
Hands tied behind my back, feet bound tight with ropes, writhing in agony beside the odikro’s corpse in the uncovered grave.
I remember fire ants scurrying across my face. They burrowed into my nostrils and crawled out of my mouth, their stings worse than any torment I ever felt. Each twist and turn to break free of my bounds triggered more bites, forcing me to scream the incantation to end my existence and transition to the abode of souls: into the shadows vanish, unknown and unseen.
It took me three days to die.
I am not supposed to remember any of this.
The instant I exited my bite-ridden body, leaving behind an empty husk in the shallow grave, my memory of this lifetime should have ceased. I shouldn’t remember the obaa panyin saying I was lucky to accompany her husband on his journey beyond. Any other time, her voice, which often frightened me, would have lashed out in rebuke. But instead, it dripped grief. Her words buzzed around me like annoying flies: “Serve him well,” as if this were some great honor. What did that even mean? How could I serve one who no longer breathed? That she deemed me a better companion for her husband than herself nearly drew a bitter, sharp laugh from my throat. I remember the questions I did not ask her. Is it really luck to follow the odikro into the afterlife like some wretched, loyal dog? Why isn’t your precious son Darko the ‘lucky’ one? Darko, with his easy smile. Darko, who’d seen the same thirteen seasons as me.The answer was simple. I didn’t matter. My kind was inconsequential. Any slave could have lain next to the elder’s lifeless body in the dugout earth and it wouldn’t have mattered.
I remember the morning of the first day after I was stolen from my people. Back then, the odikro’s skin was a deep rich brown and his eyes the color of cocoa, and I was a child who had only seen eight seasons. I remember the weight of the odikro’s hand on my shoulder, how I flinched when he squeezed and said, ‘Your life is ours.’ I thought he meant, ‘You’re a part of us.’ I felt I belonged. But five seasons later, I understood the true meaning of his words.
I remember that final glance at the most wicked of worlds—a sky that was the brightest of blues yet devoid of warmth, and the vibrant green of trees that felt lifeless. I remember the faces in the crowd peering down at me. Some of them I’d met at the stream or greeted on the way to the farm. I don’t remember crying, just the wetness on my cheeks as they stared right through me like I wasn’t there; lying in a grave that wasn’t mine. I remember the face I didn’t see in the crowd. My young master Darko. He swore an oath of protection after I risked my life to save him from bandits, taking a dagger meant for him to my chest. His oath was a lifeline in a world where assurances were rare. I remember the searing hate that coursed through my body. I cursed him until my voice went hoarse.
Death freed me on the third day.
But before that, it was three days of life slowly draining from my body.
I remember the howling wind that tore through the village on that third day. It ripped roofs from houses and smashed into trees, which, unable to withstand the assault, snapped like twigs, their branches flung violently through the air. The sky tore open, and the rain, relentless and brutal, dislodged clumps of sand from the heap on the surface that crashed onto my chest with a suffocating thud. Mourners fled in terror amidst shrieks, stumbling over each other as they tried to escape lightning. No one heard the obaa panyin’s half-formed scream as her fate was sealed beneath the crushing weight of a falling palm tree.
Abandoned in a hole with a lifeless companion, I do not remember fear—only the cold and the gnawing certainty that something precious was slipping away. Like the sunlight that flickers through the leaves of the old guava tree in my grandnana’s backyard, casting fleeting patterns on the red sand. The wind that rushes past my face as I chase my screaming cousins around the chicken coop on moonlight nights. My baba’s deep, resonant voice responding to the greetings of passersby, as he sits in front of his hut soaking up the sun.
Remembering is my pilgrimage.
It is trying to make sense of the things I already know, yet not knowing exactly what I am looking for.
Remembering is the present backwards.
It is the branches tearing through the air, reattaching themselves to trees that stood upright once more. It is the fallen palm tree lifting itself off the obaa panyin and righting into place, her dress no longer sodden. It is the sand floating away from me to the diggers’ shovels, ants running backwards to a reformed mound, and roofs settling back onto houses.
Remembering is the village intact once more, whole, untouched.
A clear sky with the midday sun shining brightly.
And me standing beside obaa panyin, her hands poised to shove me into the hole. But instead of her husband’s grave, I was staring at the flickering flames of the hearth in my childhood home, once again a baby cradled in my mother’s arm, whose soft voice sang lullabies that lulled me to sleep. At night she had those horrible dreams. The one where masked men came to steal her child from her. She cried out and reached for me, but instead of my mother’s hands, I found myself clutching Kwame’s hand beneath blooming cherry blossoms at the riverbank, both of us listening to the running water in the fading daylight. His body bore marks of long exposure to harsh elements that left his skin dry and rough with a permanently sun-beaten, leathery texture, but it was his face, creased with a slightly cracked appearance around the lips and eyes that held my attention. Away from prying eyes, our fingers laced together, we pondered the possibilities beyond our shores, imagining how different our lives could be. I yearned to tell him that there was no hope for us slaves. I wanted to tell him a lot of things.
Kwame often said we would be together someday, but he was promising a loyalty he was incapable of giving. I remember him sneaking up to the window of the room where the odikro’s first son kept me imprisoned, and how his accusation, “You brought war to us,” opened a chasm between us that kept widening as he added, “That is what everyone is saying.” Repeating rumors was one thing, but hiding behind them was another. “What do you think, Kwame? Do you believe I would ever bring war to you?” I remember how his eyes met mine, a flicker of something that might have been pity or guilt crossing his face. It was fleeting, quickly disappearing before I could identify it. But told me everything I needed to know. “I think . . . we should be prepared for anything,” he said, and then was gone.
I remember envisioning walking out of that room unbroken. But when the door finally opened and obaa panyin entered to say, “It is time,” I felt small and fragile, like a wet leaf about to be crushed underfoot. Each step into the blinding sun felt like the weight of the entire world was bearing down on me. I remember forcing my legs to move, one in front of the other. Forward was the only direction left.
***
“You must break away from these memories.” The child’s lips are eternally slanted in a grin that gives her the appearance of finding existence funny. She is tethered to this place by memories too. Doomed to wander these desolate lands for eternity. I wonder how many planting seasons have turned since she first arrived in this barren wasteland of the lost and hurting.
“What does it feel like not to remember?”
The child lets my question linger, head tilted to the side as if considering her response. I am almost giving up on getting an answer when she speaks, her voice cool and detached, yet wise.
“When it comes upon you, you will know.” Her words hang in the air like mist. “But isn’t the more important question why you are here?”
Around us, lost children gaze at me with pity, their eyes full of sadness beyond their age from having seen children like me unable to return home to the abode of souls for a rebirth. Each child bearing a story etched in the lines of their spectral faces, their thoughts echoing soft whispers in the wind that speak of forgotten dreams and unanswered prayers, of the fragility of existence, missed chances, and hopes dashed against the jagged edges of despair. Instead of childlike innocence, their faces are smeared with lingering grudges and insatiable thirst for vengeance—children who met brutal ends.
The child’s grin remains. “To break free, you must return to the surface and complete the unfinished business.”
A group of minstrels begins to play a mournful dirge, a haunting tune weaving through the air but the children show no inclination to troop out and perform. They remain in the same spot, gazes fixed on horizons that only they can see.
Not remembering is the blankness. It is the forgetting.
Gloria Ogo is a Nigerian author celebrated for her impactful poetry and prose, with over eight published works, including her acclaimed novel While Men Slept. Known as a “writer of conscience,” Gloria’s work often tackles social and political themes, earning her recognition in platforms such as Opinion Nigeria and Daily Trust. She is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, USA, while also serving as a tutor.
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