The night carried a strange kind of stillness. The kind that came before a terrible storm.
The protesters stood packed together, shoulder to shoulder, sweat-soaked bodies pressed into one another. They were young—too young to have seen the wars of their fathers, yet old enough to know that survival in a country like this was its own kind of battle.
Their voices had been loud once. Defiant.
"We no go gree! We no go gree!" “Soro soke…”
Now, an uneasy hush slithered through the crowd. The giant screens that had once bathed them in light, the ones that had carried their voices to the world, flickered—then went off, as if it was unplugged. Streetlights, one by one, blinked out like the closing eyes of a city that no longer wished to bear witness.
Darkness swallowed them whole.
Someone gasped. Someone whispered a prayer. And then—
Crack.
The first gunshot was distant, like an afterthought. A warning. A test.
The second shot was closer. Louder.
The third found a body.
A boy jerked violently, eyes wide as his chest erupted in red. He staggered, hands grasping at nothing, mouth opening in a question he’d never get to ask.
He fell.
And then, hell opened its mouth, asking for more blood.
Gunfire rained down like a summer storm—merciless, indiscriminate, deafening.
Screams tore through the air, desperate and raw. People ran, but there was nowhere to run. Some threw themselves to the ground, others surged forward, trying to break through the barricades. But the barricades held firm.
They were trapped.
A girl clutched her best friend’s hand as they stumbled. Someone shoved into them, the grip broke, and she watched—helpless, horrified—as her friend was swallowed by the stampede.
"Chuka!" she screamed.
But Chuka was gone.
A boy—no older than twenty—knelt in the chaos, his phone trembling in his grip, livestreaming the massacre in real time. "They are shooting us," he whispered, his breath hitching, "Dem dey shoot us like anima…"
The bullet hit him before he could finish.
A man tried to drag a wounded girl to safety, but his hands slipped—wet, slick with blood that would not stop flowing. “Stay with me,” he begged, voice cracking. “Please, stay with me.”
She did not.
Somewhere in the crowd, a young woman wrapped herself around her younger brother, shielding him with her body. His face was buried in her chest, his sobs muffled against her skin. “They said they wouldn’t shoot,” he whimpered. “They said—”
A bullet tore through them both.
At the barricades, a group of protesters held up the flag—green and white, colors of a nation they still believed in. Their hands shook, but they held it high.
They won’t shoot at the flag, someone had said. They won’t shoot.
They did.
The bullets did not pause. The bullets did not care.
Soldiers—faceless shadows—marched forward, rifles raised, empty of conscience, empty of regret. The orders had been given.
And the night drank its fill of blood.
By the time the last shot rang out, the ground was no longer just ground. It was a graveyard.
Bodies lay still, others twitched—caught between life and death. The air reeked of sweat, gunpowder, and something worse. Something final.
A girl, barely conscious, lifted her head, her lips cracked and trembling. She had come here chanting the words they had tried to silence. And now, with the last of her strength, she whispered them one last time.
"We just wanted better governance."
Somewhere beyond the barricades, the city blinked back to life. The street lights flickered on. Traffic moved again. The world did what it always did—continued.
By morning, the news would call it fake. Officials would feign confusion. Footage would be erased. Names would disappear.
And the country, like it had done a thousand times before,
Would forget.
But the dead never forget. And neither do the living.
October 20, 2020.
It was my birthday that day.🥺
I cried reading this 🥺