City of Dead Dreams

City of dead dreams is a crime fiction based on the oppression of the common man with a central message on cultism, violence, religion, poor governance, street governments, drug cartels, prostitution, gang wars, betrayal, alcoholism, love, lust, molestation, child labour, revolution, etc. The book has its setting in Calabar South, Nigeria, West Africa with a lot of surreal characters whose words and thoughts shaped this reality. Also, you can read through its prequel below; I witnessed it in the early 2000s, I was just a little boy in the neighbourhood, I witnessed them come into our homes every evening dressed in black ropes and carrying long guns to take all we had away from us and also take away every breathe of sanity left in us, we couldn't do nothing but weep for our helplessness as we took turns to wail over whose household got robbed, whose daughter got raped, whose son got mucked and whose mother got dropped. It was a terrible scenery for everyone of us, no one came up to save us, no one was there to help us, the elders were really scared to their knee to speak up whenever these things happened. I remember little Etebong Atakpa beating his chest and swearing to put an end to this unrest but he couldn't fall through, he died a week later of sickle cell anemia. Everyone mourned his death including his little cousin who died next, even though, it was barely 2 months he visited earth. The street chose us but some of us had mothers who swore to protect us, some of our mothers got raped in the process of resisting them from taking their sons away from them. Our fathers couldn't do much, most of them were cowards who sought succour from the bottle of alcohol. Young mothers in the city taught their daughters how to take in so much pain at a time at such a tender age by inserting "turner" of various shapes and sizes into their vagina just to get them ready for the day that the villains will take turns in defiling them. It was like these little girls were born ready to be defiled by detestable men who had no heart. We were young, really young at that time but we hated to look from the sideways and it felt like we were born to suffer when we couldn't do a thing about it. Every time we gathered at night, it wasn't for the moonlight tales, we were there to relate with each other on our state of helplessness. We had a lot of tears to give away, a lot of fakes smiles and hugs to go round as we held hands and reflected on the pains that was about to befall us like it usually does every night. We were young, bruised and torn but we were one!