TYWA 2020 Nomination for The Read-Worthy Prize Timileyin
16 - ALL THROUGH THE MIRROR Akinmoyeje Timileyin Precious lives in Ondo State (19 years old). This story was slightly edited for grammatical accuracy and to better serve TGF readers. The originality of the story is 100% intact. It was just another Monday morning. Well, maybe it wasn't just another; this one felt different from the usual. I could sense something strange about the atmosphere. It was 5:00 AM. The bells of the cathedral had started tolling as usual. That day, they were passing a different message; a solemn one, a message that only I was yet to decipher. Even the wind echoed it slowly, delibrately, as though it were reiterating the solemnity of the bell's tolls. I stood at the half broken mirror - a Monday morning ritual - to brush my teeth and make out what the morning was about. I drifted into thoughts; memories of recent years slowly became visible on the mirror: my near death experience when the news of my father's death reached me, how I almost failed an