Jalika Conteh

Writing has been a lifelong passion, something no one ever told 10-year-old me I was doing incorrectly. And so I’m here to have fun and be free.

Writings

Followers

Following

Jalika Conteh

Writing has been a lifelong passion, something no one ever told 10-year-old me I was doing incorrectly. And so I’m here to have fun and be free.

Writings

Followers

Following

The Taste of Strawberries

Jalika Conteh

2 min read

**TW: Mention of sexual assault/rape.**

/Never trust a survivor until you know what they did to survive./

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Henrietta was not dead as Young Master Cuffee had thought. And now, in the barn where he had dragged her in and done what he had done to her, she was here to make what had been wrong, right.

He had done what he did and then taken a knife in his soft-whit...

The Heart’s Lover

Jalika Conteh

2 min read

If Hassan had heard the rumors of the housewives that gathered in the square and gossiped as they washed their husbands’ laundry, it would have spared him his fate.

/“Her husband was found dead and bloody in his chamber the morning after the full moon. They said there was so much blood. Ah, Allah—be with him.”/

/“Yes. With him and the foolish boys that run to her side in his stead.”/

But inste...

The One Inside the Gingerbread House

Jalika Conteh

2 min read

It was a boy. And a girl. The House could feel them better than I could, but I was not without sensation: a tickle at my wrist; a pinch at my arm were tiny fingers broke the gingerbread free.

They wouldn’t care about what was on the inside; none of the children ever did. They needed not to know The House was nearly a husk: fowl and herbs of all kinds smelled but not seen around me. And, of cours...

Mushroom Clouds

Jalika Conteh

1 min read

It was starting to be a sick habit of mine nowadays: sitting in my darkened apartment, scrolling through Twitter, wading through hashtags and halting at a video.

I wasn’t here for the comments, the memes. I wasn’t even for the entitlement the Karen in the video displayed. She was just as unremarkable as the rest: she was clearly vying for an even tan, but had ended up with a sunburnt splotch ove...

Even Death is a Liar

Jalika Conteh

2 min read

Let this story of The Son, his Mother and Death be a tale of caution as you tuck into your bedcovers.

And remember: the lesson here is not to speak to Death the matters of lovers.

For what had driven The Son to consequences dire,

was learning that his beats Mother had attracted the vain, tyrant King’s desires.

The Son had feared a life alone,

and so, gathered his blood, spit and a bone,

to...

What History Remembers

Jalika Conteh

1 min read

When people recounted the actions of A-4dm4—“Adama;” when they became free and names were no longer dashes and numbers, they would call her Adama—they would call her a hero. A woman who held her Sigmure, the parasite that fed on her, until it curled and burst in her fist.

Not that she would know that as attendees pulled her out of “her” Bathing.

No: history would leave out that she was wet and h...

What Happens at Initiation Means Revenge

Jalika Conteh

2 min read

Somebody from the Age 11 group who had heard it from somebody from the Age 13 group who had heard it from their cousin who had come to the camp a long time ago said it was the way you knew you were cool because only the cool kids did it, and when they invited you, you were *in.*

Everyone knew it happened behind the Mess Hall on a full moon. And even you were supposed to get your own flashlight fr...

Bertha In the Attic, Author Looking For the Kitchen.

Jalika Conteh

2 min read

I don’t know why, but the chain I been fighting all day suddenly, magically unclasping itself makes “today” funny. After ‘x’ amount of hours, I know where I am—even if I don’t get why (sigh, creative writing prompts)—but it lets me know that I really don’t have power here. Bertha is I, and I am she.

I laugh the kinda laugh that Bertha probably makes—a mad scientist laugh—partly because I’m suppo...

The Hum Along the Goddess’s Waters

Jalika Conteh

2 min read

It is possible that more persons of the S.S. Poseidon’s crew would have survived and may had even been able to bring their shipment of Africans in tow if they had not included the girl. Or, more smartly, had not been in the business that they were at all.

But they were in that business. And they had brought her.

Mr. Josiah Greene had claimed to have found her in some ways from the ship. That ma...

The Bad Guy

Jalika Conteh

1 min read

“...I just really, really like you,” he finished. And it took me a moment to catch up. I had been stuck on the volume of his voice: he had confessed at a normal volume for any other person, I guess. For him, it may have been loudly; for me, it was slightly louder than his usual soft-spoken decibel. That was different.

And now he stared at me. I had always seen his expression as kinda sleepy: half-...