The Dark Issue 77 by Aimee Ogden

Author:Aimee Ogden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dark fantasy, fantasy, horror, magazine
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2021-09-29T12:43:53+00:00

Osahon Ize-Iyamu is a writer of speculative fiction. You can find him online @osahon4545. He lives in Nigeria, where he is currently working on his first novel.

The Hide’s Effect

by Frances Ogamba

The man is sandwiched in a crowd by the turn leading into Egbunike street where Tega lives.

“It is magic! My life changed when I discovered it.” The man’s voice is replete with vigour. His outfit bears a semblance to the original FENDI, unlike the labels masterfully sewn at Aba. His shoes catch the evening light.

The man palms a hide, dry to an extreme with skin too taut, and holds it up. Tega thinks the hide twitches, though he is not certain. A sack lies on the tarpaulin spread on the ground. It appears to be filled with more hides. Tega imagines their hues—cream-brown, coffee-brown—each hide an archetype of the human who once wore it, who walked and spoke and ate and drank from it. The circle thickens with more people. Voices are upstaged by another.

“The hide does the impossible! The hide gives wealth! The hide gives promotion! The hide waives misfortunes! If you need anything, make a request from this hide!”

Tega has heard of the hide from the stories often told at his workplace, or elsewhere in the city where suspicion trails every new vehicle barreling through the streets. Success stories are now randomly pegged to the hide’s effect. Most hide sellers remain behind WhatsApp numbers and Facebook pages—faceless, while charged with supplying the world with this elixir against a life of irrelevance.

Away from other sellers of hides, the man has made himself visible and this spikes Tega’s curiosity.

A story once swept through the media, claiming that people were disappearing, and that the hides were victims of these abductions. Politicians and other wealthy personalities repelled the story, called it damaging. Lengthy articles suffused newspapers and blogs claiming that the hides are people who volunteer themselves for the process after they die, that they receive compensations while they are alive.

The man holds up a stack of square-cut cards, gold-plated. “My name is Solo. This is my contact card.” His fingers are like tree stumps. The man offers the cards to everyone.

The card reeks of the man’s perfume. The business name, Solo Ventures, glimmers in a glossy font.

Solo continues to reel off the hide’s great potentials. A woman behind Tega narrates how Solo’s hide delivered a placenta that was stuck in her sister’s vagina during child birth. Another voice lifts from the crowd, another story: this hide got my brother a lucrative job in language translation. He lives in France now. Tega is always wary of such confessions from bystanders during a sale. Testifiers often work with the seller, and get remunerations for every customer their false testimonies could convince.

Tega nursed a need. Not just for wealth or friendships, which he also desired, but for his penis, no longer than the stub of a cigarette.

Woman after woman always sat upon his bed. He remembered saying sorry over and over again, and the

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