A very blissful day in the land of Gambaga in the Northern part of Ghana, lived a happy and rich couple blessed by two set of twins. The father, Mr. Keanu is a prominent and well-to-do oil tycoon who had many businesses and industries in his name. These kids almost had everything their age mates will be wishing for. It came to a time a plague broke out resulting to three thousand kindreds including three of the kids by these couple. Keanu as he was always called grew up being loved by young and old because of his kind and pure heart. On Keanu’s 18th birthday, his parents died due to road accident when the couple were returning from the wedding of a close relative. Their demise shattered Keanu’s heart into pieces to the core since he held them dear to his heart. Life began to reveal its true self since he was to fend for himself in both school and also food since his parents were no more and his other relatives were forcing him out of his father’s house because his deceased father bui

She was large as a human. She sat on the top of the swaying open door, ducking her head down so that it would not touch the ceiling. She swiped cobwebs from her hands. “Dirty corners,” she said.Cinderella winced. “Sorry. I can’t reach up there.”“Didn’t they teach you to use a napkin tied on a broom?”“I was tired. I’ve been chopping firewood, sweeping the house, carrying water, scrubbing clothes.” She sneezed, and gripped her skirt. “And I have catarrh.” She sneezed again and covered her mouth.“Complain, complain.” The fairy took a puff from her pipe, blew the smoke out into the shape of a sitting angel.Cinderella had a smutch on her forehead in the shape of a star. “Sorry. It’s my catarrh. I’m tired and unwell.”“So you said.” The fairy glided down. Her eyes took in the room, the fireplace with its dying embers, the tattered cloth over the window, the dented pot hanging from the nail. “Used to be cleaner.”“I know.” Cinderella let out a small cough, bent her head meekly, saw the

Christmas is great when you’ve got a kid but it was fine when it was just Becky and me too. We took everything so goddamned seriously, the first Christmas we were married, even researched what kind of tree to get. On Christmas morning that year I went downstairs when Becky was still asleep, thought I’d make coffee, but I looked at our Douglas Fir, moderately priced and valued for its sweet scent, hung with Our First Christmas Together ornaments and the whole thing was so bogus, me and Becky, my dirty girl, acting like an old married couple, that I went back to Becky, lay down beside her, said, “Santa is here to fill your stocking, little girl.”Cheesy, but we thought we were cool, rushing to get dressed for dinner at her parents’ house, Becky giggling whenever anyone looked at her.“I don’t believe in Santa now,” our boy said yesterday morning, sounding proud of himself. He’d done a handwriting comparison. “You’re Santa. Santa is really you.”I’d gotten a kick out of that shit, listen

Grand Re-Opening Soon! exclaimed the sign out front and above the heavily plastic-wrapped and taped double doors leading into the main foyer of Velvet Glove. I walked in and saw the place with its fragmented ghosts of Wildcats, the club’s previous incarnation, but the contractors working inside had assembled the Jazz Age elements and had started replacing the derrick- and pump-jack-shaped themes, mirrors, chrome, and sparkling décor on the remaining walls and booths for brass and gold sconces and polished dark wood and inlays that management bragged about to me months ago. I brushed past a lineup of blinking modems on the bar and new cash registers set up for wireless transactions. A man wearing a yellow hardhat lowered a pallet of frosted and etched glass panes a few feet from me. Fleur-de-lis.Management watched me sidestep a concrete mixer and a stack of lumber and motioned to me after I nearly tripped over extension cords. They sat at a small round table set between the main stage

I left him weeks ago. I try to forget. I avoid thinking about him as intently as I avoid getting burnt on a hot stove. I ignore the slight shaking of my hands whenever his name pops up in my email or on my phone. Like when I go by places we commonly went. Or when I walk by the avocados in the grocery store and remember his laughing derision when I didn’t know how to choose ripe ones. Or when shivers shoot down my spine when I pick up a pizza and place it in the back seat, reliving his ire when I’d bring one home with the cheese and toppings shifted more to one side than the other because driving home required more right turns than left. I ignore my staccato pulse a thousand more times over the weeks. I try to relearn. I try to live. I retrain myself to go to the pharmacy without telling him first. To the grocery. To work. I remember I have every right to walk outside in the falling sun, to sit in the grass and the crisp leaves, and I can even lie back if I want to, breathe in brisk ai