Berry Feistypen

I am Berry. I am Black. BlackBerry. Smart. Sassy. Feisty. Soulful. My writing reflects who I am and whose I am. I'm inspired by God, life, and an on-fours adorable kid.

May 102011

“I’ll be in Lagos soon. I’ll stay only a few days. I can’t wait to see you”, Tricia, my old friend says. She lives in Abuja, and is just out [...]

Mad World

Posted by Berry Feistypen 109 views Fiction, Flash
Apr 202011

Nothing in Caca’s seventy years of existence could have prepared her for this experience. Not even when she had given birth to her son fifty years ago in a midwife’s hut called MY CHILD far away from civilisation. The son she hadn’t spoken to in six months.

Apr 192011

Just as I was about to climb aboard my father’s rickety Toyota for a ride to the airport, I looked back and watched my mother and my siblings. Hands akimbo, eyes shiny with tears. The entire neighbourhood was out on their frontages peering at me, hands folded over breasts; expressions a mix of admiration and envy.

Apr 152011

Sweaty bodies jostled for space and seemed to merge into one glistening behemoth with thousands of legs. Balogun is known all over Lagos as the market where legs do not touch the ground. On a row on Breadfruit Street, were the stalls of the corpulent widow; Alhaja, MamT; mother of eight children and who was just as big as Alhaja and Secretary with a build just like the others and whose husband had just lost his job. They never spoke to each other even though their stalls were lined side by side.

Apr 132011

Amuche sat sniffing; dabbing her eyes with bits of the serviette paper she was supposed to be using to wipe her mouth. But the tears won’t just stop streaming down; ruining her MAC.

Dec 072010

One day, Mrs Effiong returned home after a trip to the market to discover that the money she had set aside for the baby’s christening dress was short. Of one thousand naira. She had a hard time reconciling her accounts, and later, after exhaustive but unproductive brain wracking concluded that she must have used the money somehow, maybe in buying some things. It didn’t matter that there were no things!

Monica was up at night typing on her phone. Mrs Effiong found out because in the middle of the night when she got up to use the bathroom, and she had to pass by Monica’s room, she heard the familiar sound she usually heard from the phone of her neighbour upstairs. She restrained the urge to barge into the room, in a characteristic Mrs Effiong style and demand that Monica go to bed. That why was she wasting her light and a host of other questions. Dealing with an apparently non- stupid housegirl did that: dulled your instincts and Mrs Effiong’s instincts were almost becoming non- exis

Dec 052010

The ceiling fan was making a whirr whirr sound, swaying from side to side in a last desperate attempt to do the work for which it was made; to circulate air. The Power Holding Company had just emasculated it. Mrs Effiong groaned. Her three month old who was sleeping soundly, would soon cry out when he became hot and sweaty. If she had known that PHC was this unreliable in these parts , she would have prevented her husband from paying for this flat in Ijesha.

Nov 292010

And God said, “It is not good for man to be alone”

This is the most quoted scripture in the Bible. It is quoted in reference to only, perhaps marriage.
But could there have been a deeper and more far reaching idea in the mind of God when he said that, that for the first time something was not good? Could he have meant that it is simply not good for Adam to dwell in that garden alone without someone of his kind, who would serve as a sounding board for his dreams, and it need’nt always be a wife? This is why I say, I think you need me to feel good.
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You have just closed your eyes in sleep — a different kind of sleep, and then you hear someone calling your name and you find yourself slowly slipping to the other side. But you are still hearing your loved ones, raising their voices to a feverish pitch. They are saying something that sounds like an unbroken string of mono syllabic words ; you recognize it as the tongues of angels, the tongues of mystery. This mysterious language is broken up by fierce , passionate singing and deafening clapping: “He has promised he will never fail”, the song goes , but you are going and they still continue praying and singing, singing and praying, voices hoarse, tears streaming down.
But then you go. It is final. You have gone.

Nov 152010

A passionate catharsis of the mind of a citizen torn between patroitism and the stark reality of the present despicable condition of her country

There are so many ways to be a rat in my house, and I know you already know them.

A comically twisted tale of a young womans flight from the law -in her dreams,and how she paid up in real life.

Oct 312010

A form four student ,petrified by the impending ridicule when he fails to bring a new raffia mat to school,is saved by the principal

Oct 272010

Angered by her 8 month long unemployment,a young lady denies faith,aids and abets a hit and run crime to get to a job interview on time.

Oct 252010

A copy of the gold embossed wedding program in his right hand,he held Oto,his fiancée in the left.They were at a booth in the ever bubbling Barcelos.Her blood red French [...]

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