SHRIEKS AND GIGGLES returns with its Fourth Tale,
"The Hyena's Bride: Tales From Enugu-Ezike" so that whether you read with your eyes or your hands, the story will find you.
This is not just another tale.
It is a journey into the deep red earth of Enugu-Ezike, where the ground drinks secrets like palm wine, and the hills hum songs that even the wind fears to carry.
Here, the living dance with the unseen, and the line between man and beast is thinner than the thread in a weaver's loom.
"When the moon is full, the hyena laughs, and the wise man bolts his door," the elders say, their voices cracking like old firewood.
In this land, marriage is not always between hearts. Sometimes, it is a bargain, spirit joining with flesh. Wealth flows like river water, but the price is counted not in coins, but in bloodlines.
"He who marries a stranger weds the unknown," the people of Enugu-Ezike warn.
Yet even so, greedy hearts still trade daughters for whispered promises and golden lies.
Obianuju, a woman born from humble soil, is given to a man who is more legend than flesh.
A hunter wrapped in shadow, whose laughter is never heard under the sun.
They said he could not die.
They said his children would never bleed.
But in this land, truth wears many masks, and not all of them are kind.
Buried deep in tradition and hunger for riches is a dark secret, a family cursed by an ancient appetite, hidden beneath the bright cloth of wealth and silence.
"The gourd that holds the forbidden brew must never be shaken," the elders say.
But some thirsts... they cannot be denied.
And when old doors are broken and sacred oaths torn, the hills of Enugu-Ezike awake, singing songs of blood and betrayal.
A mother must choose: her love for her children or the curse that runs in their veins.
A village must face the sins it has buried under dance, laughter, and bride price coins.
In "SHRIEKS AND GIGGLES (The Hyena's Bride: Tales From Enugu-Ezike)," you will walk the red dust roads where loyalty cuts like a knife, where laughter can turn into snarls, and where forgetting the old ways costs you in howls beneath a blood-red moon.
"The hyena may wear the cloak of a man, but his laughter will always betray him."
So the elders say.
Come close now.
This is a tale stitched from shadows.
Listen well.
Because the hills... they remember.
A Taste From Chapter Five:
"Her ears ring with silence so deep it presses against her skull. And then. A breath. Heavy and wet, like a beast exhaling behind her neck. Slowly, fear chewing her insides raw, Obianuju turns. Oduma stands there... his face neither man nor beast but something trapped between. Hyena jaws. Human eyes."
Happy reading,
Anselm Eme