=-d Hello friends, my name is Justina and I am a writer. The first time I wrote something more than 100 words was when I was 13. It was a letter to my Dad, asking him to send me pocket money. Lol. Now I am older. I have written a short story of 2 words shy of 300. A story told in less than 15 minutes. A story which exposes the ugliness of jungle justice in Nigeria.
Here it is.

He tasted blood and the force from the stick uprooted two teeth which flew free from the captivity of his gum. The rush of blood from the tear in his tongue and injured gum threaten to drown him. It muted his screams. A second blow landed on his head and he fell into oblivion. Suddenly, the pains where no more but he could hear their angry cries. He heard wailings close to where he stood watching. He picked out his mother’s voice.
“Oh my son! My son…. he is just nine, he is just a child”
He wondered briefly what he is now because he could see himself lying limp and helpless on the dirty sand floor of Ojuelegba Market. Then he knew. He was now a misty being free from the encumbrances of the flesh and he was glad that he did what was right but he pitied them, especially the woman who thought he stole her bulb of onion when he actually helped to pick it from the floor.
“A good name is better than riches” his mother used to say and he would ask
“what’s the use of a good name if nobody knows it?”
Mother would answer,
“Then you should be content because fame and power attracts the worse and corrupts the best”
Mother flung herself on his lifeless body as two men emptied cans of petrol on it. They bathed her with it too while she begged to die with her only child but three men bodily lifted her away while another dumped a tire on his flaccid neck.
He faded away, delighted to leave. Thunder rolled as people slowly dispersed. An impending rain brought the wind that carried the smell of the burning flesh and a mother’s screams to the high heavens.

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