Stolen

by Nikishia R. Hicks

Crawling through darkness, once great and feared, a living nightmare; now slowed by the vast and cruel tempo of time. What was the concept of time to a creature immortal? A blessing? A curse? Days turned into weeks, weeks into months and months into years; years that stretched across eons. Anansi wasn’t quite sure how long she’d lain dormant when something curious wandered near; and not by mistake. Anansi’s grove was sacred, a dark, wilted expanse of trees nestled in the Atewa forest; venturing here was dangerous. Branches creaked as she began to unfold her eight slender limbs. “How long had it been?” she pondered, noticing how emaciated she had become.
Had she really lost her will to thrive? 
The creature moved closer still and she smelled it, juicy fats, thick muscles – so decadent. Anansi’s lethal fangs dripped venom in anticipation of sinking into tender flesh, her eyes peered through the labyrinth of web and trees.
A boy.
As Anansi finished lowering her massive form to the ground, the adolescent halted. Even malnourished, Anansi was magnificent. The child was older and larger than expected. Excellent.
“Help me, please?” The boy dropped to his knees.
Anansi purred.
“What is it you seek, human?” Fangs folded in and out as she spoke.
“My mother needs help!” he said, his fear palpable.
Anansi extended a pedipalp, a gesture for the boy to continue.
“She cannot afford our rondavel, or to feed us. Debtors are threatening her! I’ll do anything if you can rid her of this burden.” The boy’s eyes were wide.
She smiled a wicked, majestic smile.
“Of course Anansi can help,” she breathed. “Acquire five horses. Leave two at your home, and bring the remaining three to me.”
The boy only stared at her in bewilderment. “Where am I to get five horses!?” he shouted. Anansi’s smiled never faltered.
“Steal them.”
He had until sunrise tomorrow to complete his task, or Anansi would refuse to help his mother. Agreeing, he set off into the early light of dawn.
And Anansi waited.

Hours before the next dawn, the youth returned with three substantial horses as requested. As the boy pulled the horses through the grove, Anansi struck, hoisting the first horse up and into the darkness of the canopy. Spinning her spider silk fast and tight, she began her descent for the remaining horses. The boy tried to soothe them with kind words. Anansi took another. And then the last.
The web maze above was now flecked with clusters of spider silk. Gliding down from her grotto, Anansi settled in front of the boy, who wore a victorious grin.
“How?” he asked.
Anansi, again, extended a pedipalp.
“The horses are for us to eat, I figured that much. But how will my mother afford to survive?” The young man, because that’s what he was, a young, wishful, naive man, was nearly exhausted as he gazed into Anansi’s multiple gem-like eyes.
“By having one less mouth to feed.”
Anansi struck, one final time.

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Nikishia R. Hicks
A devoted mom, wife, and skilled mechanic from Southeast Texas, Nikishia R. Hicks loves reading about spooky creatures with her five children, especially her eldest son, Gabriel, who is obsessed with all things cryptid. Now, she finds joy in writing those eerie tales herself, turning their shared family passion into creative stories.

The Pot

by Megan Baffoe

When I complain that I am hungry, my grandmother sighs, kisses her teeth, taps her fingers. “Remember,” she says. So I close my eyes and remember. I remember red dust and redder soil and fat drops of rain. I remember grandmother frying yam with her fingers, telling me stories to feed my soul and not just my stomach.
She’s an old, imposing woman now, tall and thin and twisted like some kind of hobbling tree, but she was a child once. She was the youngest of eight, too, and unless she was quick, she didn’t eat. Whether or not she ate, she worked. When I was younger, she told me that was so I didn’t have to – but that wasn’t how it was before. Before, she worked so she could survive.
She taps her fingers. Remember. I remember it as if it was me. Walking, walking, my stomach thrashing and gnawing. I see red sky, then red soil, then black emptiness. When I wake up there is an eight-armed man.
He had his back to her, but she could see him stirring something in his pot. From the shelves his different hands snatched pots and jars, unlabelled, and he shook them into whatever he was mixing. She had never smelt something so enticing.
When she asked for some, he laughed – but not unkindly. “Remember,” my grandmother says, eyes twinkling, “wisdom does not appeal to everyone.”
She’s right. Storytelling is an acquired taste.
Anansi turned, and my grandmother stared into eight shining black eyes. She was a clever girl; she caught her scream in her throat. When he smiled toothily, she repeated her request.
She drank.
In the end, she walked home even hungrier than she had felt before, but her pockets were heavy with the weight of all she had seen and bright gold coins. Growing up, she never forgot the scent of the pot brewing inside her, and although it did not stop her wanting, it means that she is standing today frying yam for me.
She puts down the plate, piled high. I thank her.
“Eat up before it gets cold,” she says. “Remember to say your prayers.”

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Megan Baffoe studied English at Oxford, and has now moved on to a Masters in Creative Writing. She likes fairytales, fraught family dynamics, and unreliable narration. Her writing has been published in venues such as The Mud Season Review, Baffling Magazine, and midnight & indigo.

“When cloud shado come, sun nuh set.”

by Careese Hutchinson

Nevaeh grew up immersed in tales of a prophesied peace. Her childhood was woven with memories of church hymns and itchy dresses that clung to her skin like a second judgment.
The fevered shouts of the predominantly Black congregation had long since faded from her ears. When Nevaeh had turned eighteen and stepped onto her university campus, she encountered a Heaven of her own making.
Emily.
Like Nevaeh, Emily studied English. The nights they spent together were electric, charged with the whispered exchange of stories and the tender reading of each other's souls through the brush of lips.
In the harsh light of dawn, Nevaeh would wake to her mother’s text: “How are you Nevaeh? Love Mum x.”
She could never speak of how Emily taught her it was okay to be different, to be something other. How could her mum love her, but not her queerness?
In Nevaeh’s culture, queerness was a duppy* that seeped its way into the world. She had endured the clumsy fumbling of boys, and with Emily, it was different—Emily saw beyond the dips and swells of her Caribbean curves.
And now, a family holiday to Jamaica loomed, a trip that filled Nevaeh with dread rather than anticipation. The scorching sun and the smoky scent of jerk chicken were foreign to her. Emily, with her androgynous grace, was even more out of place in the Caribbean values that governed Nevaeh’s world. For years, Nevaeh had buried the fear and the isolation that followed her ever since she was old enough to know that her hips only widened for goddesses.
“Emily is a friend, from university,” she had lied initially, her mother’s sharp eyes boring into her.
And so, they found themselves on a plane, flying into the sweltering summer heat, where the sweetness of ripe mangoes clung to the air like a forgotten sin.
And so, it was here, that they would meet their end.
Her grandmother's eyes shunned her. “Why you wan’ ramp with chi chi for?”**
Her cousins laughed, her aunts and uncles prayed for her, and she fled, Emily following close behind.
They found themselves walking into an ancient library, the books glinting with a knowing light. A tall, spindly figure whispered to them.
“Come here, child. Mi know what right fi yuh.” * * *
For in the dimly lit corners of worn pages lay the forbidden desires of the heart—secrets so dark and deep they could drown a soul.
Nevaeh, born on distant shores, felt the irresistible call of her true home. Uncovered were the long-forgotten Ashanti Tribe, cursed to the deep for being queer witches—a fate sealed centuries ago.
She had read their story, but never imagined it was more than a legend. Yet, here they were, and so was she. The Ashanti embraced them like long-lost children, the waves whispering of their eternal love.
And so, they left their tortured lives behind, luring unsuspecting souls into their watery kingdom forevermore.

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Careese Hutchinson is a Black British writer from Birmingham, UK. She is passionate about writing pieces that represent her as a bisexual, neurodivergent and Caribbean person, and is currently studying her Masters in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. She can be found at https://chariswrites.weebly.com

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Author’s footnotes:
* Patois for ‘Ghost’

** “Why do you want to mess around with gay people for?”

*** “Come here, children. I know what’s right for you”