I contemplated the boy. “There is something off about him.” Something I had seen before.

“Apart from the fact that he murdered his father in cold blood?”

“Look at him. How old is he? Twelve? Thirteen?”

“Ten,” she replied.

“He’s just a boy.”

“A tough one. Hasn’t said a word since, save for the unintelligible stuff he’s been mumbling.”

“Maybe because we have been asking the wrong questions.”

Ignoring Ifeyinwa’s attempts to stop me, I went and slouched in the chair across from him as if my shoulders were saddled with the grief in my heart. “Why?” I asked him. “Why did you kill him?”

He gazed deep into my eyes, unblinking, and said, “He sold my soul.”

Walter Dinjos is Nigerian, and he enjoys singing and songwriting as much as he does writing. His work has been accepted in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Space & Time Magazine, Stupefying Stories, and The Literary Hatchet. He is currently exploring means (both scientific and magical) of attaining immortality.