FA Yuletide Writing Prize — Shortlisted Story
Theme: Dark Yuletide
Year: 2025/2026
Author: Omobolaji Olofinnika
Kanyinsola was already half-awake when the knocks began, slow, deliberate, spaced like a heartbeat. She sat up at once, her body already tight, her heart already racing, because even before the sound reached her ears she had felt the pull in her chest. It was that old pressure she and Ade had shared since childhood, the one that always warned her before he spoke her name.
Her phone vibrated on the mattress beside her.
She looked at the screen.
ADE
2:17 a.m.
She did not answer. She placed the phone face down and waited. The vibration stopped. The knocking came again, firmer now, closer, as though whosoever was outside the door was growing impatient.
“Kanyin,” the voice called through the wood, stretched and warped, as if it had travelled a long distance to reach her. It was Ade’s voice, but thinner, broken.
Her throat closed. She said nothing.
The handle turned once, hard enough to rattle the lock, then stopped. Something scraped slowly across the tiles outside, heavy and uneven, dragging rather than walking. She pulled the duvet over her head and pressed her face into the pillow until the smell of old sweat and dust filled her nose. She stayed like that long after the sounds stopped, counting her breaths, waiting for the familiar weight in her chest to ease.
It did not.
She fell into a fitful sleep.
*
Her mother called while she stood in her kitchen staring at the sink. Plates crusted with dried food were stacked inside, untouched for days. Ants crawled along the rim of a pot. She watched them without moving.
“I’m begging you,” her mother said, her voice brittle with strain. “Come home for Christmas, this house is too heavy for me alone.”
Kanyin leaned against the counter. “Mummy, I’m not okay.”
“You think I am?” her mother snapped. There was a pause, then softer, more dangerous. “Since they came, this house has not rested.”
Kanyin closed her eyes. She ended the call without saying goodbye.
*
When she arrived later that day, the calendar was still hanging in the sitting room. December twenty-five had been circled in red ink months earlier, the mark slightly smudged as though someone had pressed too hard. Her mother sat opposite her on the sofa, hands folded neatly in her lap, staring at the ceiling fan that had not worked in years.
Sleep had abandoned the house since the police first came. They had arrived with muddy boots and careless guns, asking questions that were not meant to be answered, walking through the rooms as if the owned the whole place.
The phone vibrated on the table between them.
ADE
2:17 a.m.
Kanyin watched it ring until it stopped.
Her mother stirred. “Who is calling?”
“No one,” Kanyin said.
The phone rang again.
She answered.
At first there was only breathing, slow and steady, close enough to feel. Then her name. “Kanyin.” Her stomach clenched. “Who is this?”
“Kanyin,” the voice repeated. “Why didn’t you come?”
She ended the call. The phone vibrated again almost immediately.
Her mother stood and took it from her. When she pressed it to her ear, her expression did not shift into fear or surprise. Instead, something settled over her face, a recognition that hollowed her out.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I know.”
She listened for a long time, nodding once.
“We will come,” she said.
When the call ended, she placed the phone face down on the table.
“They said we should identify him,” she told Kanyin. “Later this morning.” “Where?”
Her mother hesitated. “The station.”
*
The room behind the police station smelled of urine, petrol, and old blood. A single bulb flickered overhead, throwing unstable light across the concrete floor. In the centre of the room lay a shape wrapped in black nylon, stiff and wrong in its stillness.
“Open it,” an officer said.
Kanyin stepped forward.
The nylon peeled back slowly, sticking to what lay beneath. Ade’s chest had collapsed inward around the bullet wound, the flesh torn and darkened, blood dried in thick layers across his shirt. His mouth hung open, one tooth missing, his tongue swollen and discoloured. One eye stared glassily at nothing, the other had sunk inward, filmed over.
Her mother dropped to her knees and touched his arm. The skin yielded slightly under her fingers, then resisted, cold and unresponsive. “Why didn’t you run?” she whispered. “Why?”
The officer cleared his throat. “Madam, we should move.”
They did not release the body. Paperwork, Christmas Eve, come back, they said.
*
They cast Ifá for the two who arrived the same day,
Two who shared one door into the world,
Two whose breath rose in the same hour.
The diviners said:
“No one walks alone who comes in twos.”
For in the realm before birth,
where heads are chosen
and destinies are woven thread by thread,
the twins sat side by side.
One bowl of light between them,
one bowl of shadow,
and they drank from both.
When it was time to descend,
they held each other’s wrists, saying:
“Where you go, I go;
what you eat, I eat;
what blessings find you
must count us both.”
But the world is thick with forgetting.
So they warned the family:
“Feed us together. Dress us alike.
Give us our due, or one joy will split in two,
and one sorrow will double its teeth.”
The priest said:
“Prepare the sacrifice of sweetness—
honey for harmony, oil for softness, kola for the gate between worlds.” He said:
“Honor the divine mother who bears the twins,
and the spirit who twines their paths together.”
For if one child falls ill,
the other feels the fever.
If one child laughs,
the other’s shadow brightens.
If one destiny is blocked,
the other’s road bends inward.
So the chant rose:
Twins are two eyes of one vision.
Two feet of one journey.
Two drums beating the same name.
Honor them, and fortune multiplies.
Neglect them, and even sunlight grows sharp.
The diviners concluded:
“Ìbejì do not walk behind you or before you—
they walk inside your house, counting your days.”
And so the family carried the offering.
And the twins, satisfied,
braided their destinies tighter
than the cord that once tied them in the womb.
*
That night, Kanyin slept in Ade’s room. His clothes were still scattered where he had left them even on the bed. She lay on it anyway, breathing in his familiar scent until sleep dragged her under.
The vibration of her phone woke her.
2:17 a.m.
A WhatsApp message popped up.
ADE: Come downstairs. I’m waiting.
Her heart caught in her throat. She looked away from the phone, sensing their connection again. Heavy now. She ignores him as usual; he would go away.
Kayin squealed as a soft chuckle interrupted her thoughts, sounding just by her ears. Suddenly, reddish light flickered out from the wardrobe alongside a soft electrical hum. The door to the wardrobe creaked open, clothes shifting, hangers clinking softly, as something pressed through. It was too tall, folding itself wrong, and then a face.
Ade stepped out.
His stomach hung open, the wound gaping wider with each movement, dark matter shifting inside. Blood trailed down his leg and pooled on the floor, warm and slick. His face was calm.
“Kaaay,” he said. “You didn’t pick me.”
She scrambled backward, choking on her breath.
“They said you resisted arrest,” she whispered.
He raised his hands. The skin on his palms was shredded, bone visible beneath. “I raised my hands.”
He climbed onto the bed, the mattress sinking under his weight, blood smearing across the sheets.
“They left me there,” he said. “I waited.”
She pressed herself against the wall, shaking.
“I didn’t know.”
“You never do,” he replied softly.
He reached for her with cold, sticky fingers.
“Come,” he said. “They’re waiting again.”
The bulb exploded, darkness rushed in. Something heavy and wet moved fast. She screamed.
*
Her mother found her on Christmas morning sitting in front of the open wardrobe, blood streaked across the floor, whispering to someone only she could see.
Her phone lay beside her, ringing endlessly.
The screen was frozen at 2:17 a.m.
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