Content warnings

Religion. Clowns. Police violence. Gun violence.

In this part of the city, the air pulsed with noise, raw, metallic, and alive. The barber shop’s speakers spat static-laced dj Demakufu songs, battling the Matatus’ growls and touts barking “tao mbao!” Mama Kimani’s knife whispered sha sha sha through wilted cabbage, while across the street, the call rang out: “kuangalia ni bure, kuuliza bei ni bure, kubeba ndio pesa!” To nine-year-old Mumbi, this chaos was normal, a soundtrack she’d grown up inside. But deep in her chest, she knew that Jesus would come like a thief. We were living in the end days. Some days when the noise got so thick, she imagined how the noise would be swamped by the thunderous woosh!!, and just like that, people would be gone. Rapture.

Mumbi’s favorite sport was licking the orange-flavored ice pop from the afternoon seller. She was a result of games children played, her mother got her in her teens. But hey, at least she always looked forward to the ‘ice cream man’s call. That day, a tall shadow interrupted her as she hopped towards her midday routine task; she looked up and froze. First sight of doom? The darkness had arrived silently. Secondly? Its legs were thin, it was tall, impossibly white on the face, and wore trousers the color of a bruised pineapple. Its nose protruded, its mouth was red as blood. Mumbi froze in time; she had never seen such a terrible painted mistake. Why were the other children chasing it? Why was it holding a balloon? In Mumbi’s world, faces were either brown or dark; they smiled occasionally and always complained about the economy, not round and white. This was not woosh! Mumbi thought, this is the pre-show.

Everything stood still; the ice-cream man was not in line of sight. The clown moved its head in a jerky manner. It was here to collect, had she been a good girl? Will she go to heaven? She stole her mum's 5 shillings for extra ice-cream. Could it be the reason she is being targeted? Mumbi made a strategic decision to hide from the End Times. She bolted into her house, slammed the thin wooden door, placed the stone next to the door, dropped to her knees, and scrambled into her sanctuary, the dusty free space between the shared bed and the ‘kitchen’. The terror of it all, everything was quiet. She yanked the stained, flowered lesso down from the bed until it covered the entire opening, leaving her in a private, dark space. Mumbi listened, no matatus, no sha! Sha! Sha!, the slum soundtrack has converted into the biblical apocalypse.

She gently raised the cloth, then came the loud Bang! Bang! Bang! Followed by my Mama Kimani’s scream, cutting through the air. Mumbi pressed her hands over her ears, the bed frame started rattling, and the floor was shaking. Teacher Carol, the nice-smelling Sunday school teacher, had started that the angels would descend with trumpets. To Mumbi, the gunshots were the trumpet sounds, the wuuuui! From Mama Kimani was the sound that people make when they’re being raptured. The air in her makeshift hideout grew stale with fear and the smell of the soaking ugali sufuria. She began to pray in a shaky, silent whisper.

In the hood, police searches are not uncommon. Today, the boy from Dandora had tried running away, and they shot him. He wore white shoes and carried a backpack. Mama Kimani witnessed the fall. The heavy diesel truck full of young men with handcuffs miraculously ventured into this part of the town today. Its Subaru engine hums did injustice to the corrugated iron sheet walls on Mumbi’s street.

According to Mumbi, the sounds made by the tires were those of the chariots of fire, the one ferrying the righteous ones. She imagined Jose was in the front seat of the first one. Jose always paid his tithes and helped Mama Kimani carry her vegetables. The high-pitched panic outside made her envious. She hadn’t been a good girl; she would be left behind while everyone would be walking on golden streets in the clouds, eating ice cream. Ooh, the horrors of being the one left behind. Mumbi began crying silently. The external siren sounds met with her internal certainty of abandonment. Her mum said her father was God, which is why she did not have a father like Grace. Why did she steal the color pencil from Caro? Gradually, the heat and the sustained noises turned pale and hypnotic, her fears receded, and in their place, a deep exhaustion of having survived the rapture.

She drifted.

She drifted into a dream. Mumbi wore golden slippers, walking on clouds. Her dress, unpatched and flowing, resembled the Pastor’s wives: flowered, purple, princess-like. Lost in this vision, the scene softened into a white room with tiled floors—not dusty and rough like home, but familiar, like her uncle’s, with jacaranda trees outside. This must be heaven. No Matatu noises, no cabbages, no ice cream. “Hello,” she called, but silence answered. Was this how lonely heaven was? Then she heard a song, gentle and distant, like her mother humming while cleaning.

Then. BANG! THUMP!

Followed by continuous knocking sounds.

The sounds were immediate and painfully close. The fourth bang was so loud it woke Mumbi from her sleep, the entire hour shuddered, and the birds in her stomach flapped their wings. ‘They have come for me’ she whispered. A familiar, annoyed voice sliced through the air.

“Mumbi! If you don’t open this door this minute.”

It continued.

“I am just done fighting that foolish tout for my Ksh.10 change, then this child locked me outside. Where do I fetch water this time of the night?”

Wait a minute that was no angel with trumpet... That was her mum. Mumbi scrambled out, covered in dust. She laid her mother’s carrier bag on the wobbly table and thought, thank goodness my mum stole something, it’s a good thing she was not raptured.

END

Celestine Ndanu K.

Celestine Ndanu K. is a Kenyan author whose storytelling explores cultural narratives by blending raw emotion and African societal nuances. She was the top three in the 2022 Harambee Literary Prize. The self-proclaimed dealer in words was recently featured in the Gazmadu Education's Tell Her Story Magazine.Her writing has been previously featured in Sisi Afrika Magazine.