Excerpt from the short story "Professor Fire's Charm," from Unstuck #2:
Olowo was the first to raise the idea of visiting Professor Fire's clinic. It was on a balmy Friday evening at Mama Destiny's bar on Alafia-Ayo Street. Olowo sat on a bench and bent his head over the table, his bottle of beer untouched. After a while, he raised his head, and Kalejaiye saw the whites of his eyes appear as though they were covered by a thin film of blood. His face looked dull, and he was in a rare passive mood. As Olowo stared out the bar, he tapped a finger on the table and bit his lip.
"I'm not happy today," he said. "In fact I'm on a beer fast. That's why I've not opened the bottle."
"Did your girlfriend jilt you?" Kalejaiye asked.
"No," Olowo said. "Fayemi has gone to Professor Fire's clinic. He wants a charm to make him live long. Why should I be different? Who wants to die?"
Fayemi belonged to their circle of acquaintances, all in their early forties. Kalejaiye considered him a very good man. Fayemi drank only six bottles of beer at a sitting while drunks like Olowo consumed at least ten bottles. Everyone in Kalejaiye's circle smoked at least twenty sticks of cigarette a day, but Fayemi was satisfied with just eight. While most of Kalejaiye's friends drank throughout the day, Fayemi only drank in the evening. Kalejaiye was impressed that such a levelheaded man as Fayemi would visit Professor Fire's clinic.
As the days went by, Kalejaiye noticed that his other friends had gone to the clinic. Agbalagba—the freelance photographer who could drink a carton of stout at a single sitting—went a day after Olowo. Chief—a pleasant dark-skinned man who said "God is good" whenever he was drunk—was the next to go. Biodun, who never said anything when he was drunk, went after Chief. The last to go was Olominu, who had elaborate facial scars and said "I'm suffering" when he had not smoked a stick of cigarette for the day.
Within weeks of Kalejaiye's conversation with Olowo, some of his friends made a show of ignoring him at Mama Destiny's bar because he had not gone to Professor Fire's clinic. When Kalejaiye approached, they took their bottles of beer to different tables, laughing loudly, as though Kalejaiye did not exist. Kalejaiye would sometimes take his drink and join them. When he sat in their midst, they became silent as though an intruder sat among them.
In August, when Kalejaiye sat at Fayemi's table, Fayemi took his drink and moved. A week later, Gbenga snatched his cigarette packet from Kalejaiye when he wanted to take a stick, which would not have happened before. Gbenga had made Professor Fire's clinic his Mecca. Kalejaiye complained, but his friends replied only indirectly and with reluctance. Kalejaiye knew Professor Fire had come between them.
When they were with each other, Kalejaiye's friends were boisterous and happy. Kalejaiye could see them in Mama Destiny's bar, smoking and gulping beer as though it were water, flirting with the bar girls. They would tap each other on the shoulder and wink in a conspiratorial manner, the sense of something earned passing between them.
Privately, Kalejaiye felt betrayed by his friends. Still, he wanted to join them at their table, drinking beer, smoking, and laughing at the breasts of the bar girls and others on the streets of Akure. He wanted their eyes to brighten and light to shine on their faces when they saw him. He wanted them to include him in their circle, and was pained when they did not.
Previously, he had made it his regular routine to see his friends at the bar after work. Due to their attitude, he stopped the practice. Rather than go to bars, he played ludo near his office until the time he went to visit his wife. If he did not play the game, he visited his mother, who lived on Oke-Aro Street. Sometimes he simply strolled. During this period, he discovered a new bus stop from which buses travelled to places like Benin City, Warri, Ekpoma, and Port Harcourt. Written on the flanks of the buses, bold letters proclaimed PEACE AND HAPPINESS MOTORS, LET THEM SAY EXPRESS, GOD IS GOOD MOTORS, and GOOD NEWS TRANSPORT COMPANY. Standing beside the buses, touts announced, "Benin City! Benin City!"
In September, when he could no longer bear his pain, he went to Olowo and announced that he was ready to go to Professor Fire's clinic. When he strolled into Mama Destiny's bar that evening, his friends ululated and congratulated him. "He has come back. He would rather live long than die early," they sang. Fayemi began praying and thanking God for Kalejaiye's decision to leave the land of sin and darkness. Beer bottles and cigarette packets appeared from different directions, and Kalejaiye again felt at home.
"How can you think of going to Professor Fire for anything?" Funmi asked when she learned her husband wanted to visit the clinic. "Have you forgotten the professor is an animal in human skin? If he gives you a gift with the right hand, he takes it back with the left. He might even take your entire hand. If you want to live for seventy years, he'll give you a charm that will make you last only for seven days. If anything goes wrong, don't come to me. I won't be able to help you. You allow your friends to lead you astray."
"Nothing can go wrong," Kalejaiye told her.
Adetokunbo Abiola is a Nigerian journalist and fiction writer. He is the author of the novel Labulabu Mask and the forthcoming story collection American 419.
Unstuck is an independent, nonprofit annual based in Austin, Texas. We emphasize literary fiction with elements of the fantastic, the futuristic, or the surreal—a broad category that would include the work of writers as diverse as Abe, Ballard, Borges, Calvino, Tutuola, and (of course) Vonnegut. In our pages, you'll find everything from straight-up science fiction and fantasy to domestic realism with a twist of the improbable. We feature a mix of established and emerging fiction writers from both the genre and literary publishing communities. We also publish a limited selection of poems and essays.
"A real cause for celebration. ... The quality [of the stories] is uniformly very high." — Stefan Raets, Tor.com
"If you love both literary fiction and 'genre' fiction, and want to be able to read inventive new takes on both things, then you'll welcome a new literary annual called Unstuck that aims to blur the lines." — Charlie Jane Anders, io9.com
"Unstuck has all the right ingredients . . . [A] lot of esteemed authors from a wide variety of communities." — Samantha Pitchel, CultureMap.com
"The debut issue of Unstuck, an independent literary magazine out of Austin, Texas is a marvel. ... The entire issue will please and it's refreshing to see a literary magazine committed to this kind of writing." — Roxane Gay, Beyond the Margins
"The idea of blending genre fiction and literary fiction is ... potent. Unstuckhas the potential to be a serious part of this conversation. ... A striking debut." — Joe Gross, The Austin American-Statesman
"Oh, a fine volume it is, all perfect-bound, thick as a brick, and stuffed with texty goodness. ... A genre-bending literary powerhouse." — The Austin Chronicle
"Unstuck has managed to gather a collection of stories and poems that relate to and play off each other in exciting and often surprising ways. If there is one thing that ties these stories together, however, it is not a common theme but an intimate attention to detail and a sense of wonder at the world we live in or might live in, even if only briefly. Highly recommended." — Dustin J. Monk, The Spiral
Funmi Tofowomo
--The art of living and impermanence.
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