A Collection of Short Stories

Michael Ogah
The Indomie Man
with my “first”. We did it and he never even told me he loved me. He’d never pick my call
after that day. I‘d been had, I thought, and felt so ashamed. I wanted more than it with him.
The heart is such a fickle thing. I’d wished to be rid of desire; to need no one and to not be
needed. It seems a liberating a contemplation. But such will never be the case.
I stand there and watch this man stir the dish. He is breathtaking. He is stupendously goodlooking.
He moves from stove to sink with a commander’s swagger, and I quickly lean back
to avoid his seeing me. A misstep, and I knock over the dustbin falling headlong into the
kitchen.
“Are you ok?” He turns swiftly to help me up.
“I need some water to drink so I...”
“Are you sure?” he asks with a smile. “I knew you were watching me all the while” he adds
without judgment, and fills a tumbler with water from a nearby jerry can. “I’d known.”
I ask how, surprised and a bit embarrassed by the revelation.
“I sensed you”, he says, handing me the cup of water.
Unable to deny he seems to possess an intimate knowledge of how enthralled I am by him,
I look sideways, wistfully at nothing exactly, before excusing myself from the kitchen.
When the meal is done, he brings the cooking pot to the bedroom, places it on a tray and
dishes it out onto a round yellow plate. We sit on his bed, our backs to the wall. He spoonfeeds
me like a parent does a toddler, dipping the fork into the noodles, twirling it enough
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