I'm not like most writers on this site. Instead of always typing up essays after essays about politics or some type of social reform, I excel in the art of fictional storytelling. You play to your strengths, right? This is just a hint (part 1, technically) of what I write about and the characters I work with, this character in particular - Jovian - was one of my first creations and has seen countless evolutions through the years. Though I am proud to present to you all the final "form" of my earliest creation: Deborah and Jovian. Enjoy "Out the Mud", please leave comments.

Graphic and sensitive content lies ahead, you have been warned.

I always knew this day would come, further down the line when it really wasn’t relevant. Wish me luck on delaying my story any longer, for I cannot get my persistent yet pest-like partner to leave my ear. Ever since Dustin supposedly opened his mouth about my family, Deborah has treated me as if I’m just another buyer-- her trust is plastic-like thin. Which is odd, considering the fact how she willingly put down the skinheads attacking me before even knowing my name, but it’s a fool's errand trying to not only figure out how a woman thinks, but also what their motives are. That’s what I admired the most about Deborah; when I asked her why she wanted to get involved with the drug industry, without hesitating, she told me about her cancer-ridden mother and how she can’t afford the proper treatment. Deborah always had her motives straight, it’s only right she learns the real reason as to why I’m in America and how I got here from Somalia-- no more telling her I came by boat.

I don’t know where to start, she’s always emotional after visiting her mom so I guess I’ll just wait until the drive back to my motel. Or if I’m lucky, she’ll forget all about it. Yeah, ok. Who am I kidding? Probably gonna be the first thing she yaps about once the engine turns, let me just bury my head in this magazine and play it by ear. As I flip through the pages of this toxic piece of literature (seriously, what type of information do they feed Americans?) I overhear a news broadcast; apparently Dustin and the other bodies Deborah left behind were discovered by random pedestrians, with choppers providing bird's eye view of the destruction and journalist interviewing the two pedestrians, reports start coming in about how mobs/gangs are turning up dead or wiped off the map more and more frequently. This que’s a journalist to ask the golden question: “Is Florida the latest state to have superpowered vigilantes protecting the innocent? Or are these particular vigilantes adding to the violence?”

So in other words, are we on their side or are we out for ourselves? Who do Deborah and I really fight for? On everything I own, I’ve asked myself this question more times than a functioning man should. Hey, you grow up in a torn country where your family funnels the purest cocaine and only the best ganja available, the lines get blurred. Especially if you were born into that type of life, where gunning down a group of thieves or raiding some trap house in the slums Somalia becomes the “good”, yet not letting your “crew” rape the girls in said houses were the “bad”. Sorry, is that off subject? My memory likes to revisit those days, despite how much they hurt and contort my mind. It seems like it was just yesterday that me, Afua, Dakari, and Chima were making a delivery to the Sheikh Barre regime, only to get ambushed by Dahir Hasan’s regime.

I’ll never forget that ambush, at the time me and my crew were under the impression Islamic troops would stay out of Somalia, boy was I wrong, they had come to Somalia to help out the rising Islamic Union. Their first move? Take out the drug dealers giving the Barre regime the extra edge, apparently our stuff was that good. Little did they know my father mostly utilized the youth to smuggle the drugs, as he thought we were too “unassuming” to garner much attention. The RPG missile they launched would say otherwise. A large gust of dirt and debris blinded me to everything else, so did the shock. The missile had knocked me on my ass, along with Afua and Chima, it was Dakari taking the brunt of it. Can you imagine being twelve years old and seeing your friend’s decapitated head fall in front of you? Not only that, but the rest of his mutilated body rained down from the debris right behind it, further terrifying us. While Afua and Chima ran back to the Galmudug chapter of the Afolabi Connect, I couldn’t stop staring at my ravaged friend. Brimming with emotion, about three of Hasan’s men approach as the debris settles, sending my rage and sadness into a fever pitch. I don’t remember much other than grabbing the war knife I always kept on my side, and then regaining consciousness on top of three bodies bathed in crimson. Up until that day, I had never killed anyone, and to this day I wish I wouldn’t have.

Catching my breath and regaining my composure, I turned around to find out my father had paid witness to the entire episode. There was a sick, perverted glee in his eye as he embraced me, for the first time he acknowledged me as his son. He then decided that my “talents” were too valuable for smuggling, that I needed to fight in the ongoing war and do the Afolabi name justice. It took all I had not to slit his throat. Instead of doing that, I took advantage of his new found compassion and convinced him to not send his son off to war just yet, that I have many things to learn before I take such liberty. Basically, I signed myself up to become what I am today-- a natural born killer.

The next four years of my life consisted of learning how to utilize guns, how to properly strike somebody with a machete (believe it or not, there is a method), how to cause what father likes to call “quiet chaos”: a method of killing that involves stealth but to the most violent degree, usually involve taking out groups of opposing forces. I’m talking about crafting my own trip wires, making my own explosives, there’s a laundry list of things I learned during those four years, a laundry list of things I try to unlearn. While training for those four years, father Afolabi would have me apply whatever I learned from the previous three months and pull them off during the deals. See, now I was removed from the actual deals, I’m just hiding in the trees or a nearby ditch, ready whenever the Islamic regimes were; Field missions, basically. During these field missions, it was my sworn duty to make sure the transaction went accordingly and everybody came back whole, though father Afolabi would be surprisingly understanding if two or three of his men didn’t come back.

“Not all can be saved,” he would say, “It is simply the Gods ridding us of dead weight, as long as you spill your own share of blood, you’re doing your job.”

Didn’t have the balls to say anything back then, but that type of sadistic shit is one of the reasons I decided to bail. Nevertheless, I continued doing field missions while applying each skill I’ve possibly picked up. By the time I was thirteen, I could wield a war knife and fire a submachine gun with ease, that combination gave me six bodies and a mutilated foot. Age fourteen I was still wielding the same ol’ war knife, but two pistols sat in holsters on each of my legs with the submachine gun resting in its chest holster. That was a particularly dark time, as the Afolabi Connect decided to expand beyond ganja and cocaine, and invest in heroin. That meant double the demand, double the ambushes, double the raids, double the bodies. Akua and Chima were still taking part in the deals, but they too were training for the war was calling, naturally their nerves were on end. This deal was the first involving the distribution of all three drugs, and it was also the first time we dealt to both the Nur Ahmed regime and the Sheikh Barre regime. Needless to say, we-- no, father Afolabi needed this deal to go down. We (as in me and the traffickers) just needed to make sure we did our jobs. Not only did Dahir Hasan’s regime decide to bushwhack Barre’s regime, Yusef Muhammad's regime joined the party, their troops setting up a machine gun that completely shredded through the vehicles of Ahmed’s troops. Akua managed to make it out with a couple of bruises and abrasions, Chima? He put up a fight. There’s only so much you can do with a mere pistol when you’re surrounded by opposition boasting heavier artillery. By the time I had shot and slashed my way to him, Chima’s body had already been vandalized with bullets. Couldn’t blank out and enter another one of my homicidal episodes because everybody else had either scattered with the drugs or were already dead, instead I just stood above my dear friends corpse, horrified and confused. Confused because it was hard seeing the same boy I use to play make-believe with just laid out in such gruesome fashion, I don’t know if my heart sank or if it became overwhelmed with anger.

I relay all of this to Deborah during the drive back, she maintains a stoic demeanour as she processes all of the information, though it’s obvious it's just a poker face. It’s interesting she would rather hear about my backstory, rather than trying to cook up a game plan for the Aryan Elitist. I don’t think she knows our little spat with Dustin and his crew went public too, but that can wait till later. We pull into the parking lot and park right in front of the outside balcony holding my room, I try to dip but she locks the door and sternly states “continue”. Asking to see if she’s sure, her answer comes faster than a speeding bullet: “Yes”.

I decide to skip over the next four years of my life - where it was more of the same and mostly the years I spent honing my craft - and start the next part of my story with the Afolabi Connect choosing to once again expand our business and invest in prostitution. You see, the main hook for us was that we were able to provide things on the side during the civil wars, such as drugs and now, pussy. Investing in prostitution proved to be our most profitable decision yet, with income being between a hundred to three hundred shillings per week. Everybody won in this scenario, the consumer and the supplier. For a while it had pried us away from the ravages of drug trafficking, but it was also at that time we would go out and raid local villages of their women. When I say raid, I mean completely run through whatever shelter the woman was residing in, shooting down the front door and demolishing the valuables on the inside, making our presence well known. Very few tried to resist as they recognized the warpaint Afolabi’s wore in the field, but the ones that did found themselves face down in the dirt. Rape was commonly used to initiate the women into the prostitution ring, rape along with branding them on the right shoulder blade with the Afolabi’s insignia.

Both of these rituals didn’t sit right with me, whether it was the blatant agony being expressed through the faces of each woman or the animalistic pleasure my brethren exhibited whenever raping one, I always had to suppress a slight cringe. But here’s where the lines get blurred for me, the women are in pain, right? No shit all of this is inhumane and illegal. But what about the glee my brothers feel whenever a successful deal went down, or whenever they got their rocks off to another woman without their consent? I was raised to believe family over everything, this sometimes includes personal feelings, and when you’re raised in a trafficking circle, you’re lead to believe everyone is your family.

Still, the thought of forcefully ripping someone away from their homes just because we inherently had this power over a certain part of Somalia, the thought of ridding someone of their integrity and dignity, nevermind their innocence, it never sat right with me. I know I know, smuggling drugs really wasn’t any better, but that mostly involved either robbing another militia of their inventory or simply stocking up by purchasing/making our own products. If we did the former, we were no good criminals simply robbing another set of no good criminals. If we did the latter, we were no good criminals making a way for ourselves. This prostitution shit? I couldn’t see the silver lining like I could in smuggling drugs. Instead all I could focus on was how sadistic we all have grown to become, with Akua being the prime example. When he was merely sixteen the boy couldn’t even look at a naked woman, now he’s ordering his unit to secure an entire block of them and letting his top five violate whoever, including him.

Akua having his own unit was the worst thing to ever happen to my brother, his change was almost overnight. Me, being what my father called “Death From The Unknown” due to my new found role, couldn’t help and witness the stark difference in his attitude. Akua, a boy who was once more wondrous and ambitious, who saw himself one day getting out of the Afolabi Connect, was now as loyal as ever to our cause-- no matter how demented. And my father was catalyst to all of it; The twisted nature of our militia, the sadistic hedonistic ways we approach our goals, the chaos and blood loss we caused with each move. Ironic thing about it? Most of that was due to yours truly.

I for one never participated in raping women, always having an excuse not to like “I have to stay on watch for other regimes” or something like that, thankfully they were always too riled up to really push me into doing it like they did the younger militants. The younger ones didn’t need much motivation though, their eagerness to be apart of East Africa’s most powerful guerilla trafficking militia superseded morals, superseded the innate need to be a child-- oh they wanted to be a child, a child of war. I hadn’t noticed it until later on but the youth of Somalia were admiring us more and more, the false image we gave them (the image of us being a brotherhood fighting the greater battle through nefarious means) instilled hope at a time where hope came in rare portions. This type of hope, the hope for answers to looming questions, the hope for safety and belonging influenced a lot of sons to seek out one of our men so they may take the first steps in becoming a part of the Afolabi Connect. This was unheard of during the civil wars, kids actually volunteering themselves to ply their trade. It was more of militias running into towns, ransacking the residents home and kidnapping the kids, forcing them to become child soldiers in the process.

Our influence over Somalia had grown to be so strong, so prominent, we were legitimately being looked at as a place for escape. This tickled Father Afolabi. He knew the kids were delusional but it didn’t stop him from taking advantage of each child that approached him. I would always stand next to Father whenever we were at the main chapter in Bosaso, by this point I had been gifted my trademark machete by Father himself (who said the knife has been passed down through the generations and whoever wielded it meant they were the strongest in the chapter) and held it underneath my right arm with my arms crossed, as children were enlisting themselves each of them shot a quick glance at me and my weaponry, the type of look that says “I wanna be that man someday”. I’m sure that at the tender age of thirteen and going through all the trauma war brings, a half-naked man holding a machete with multiple firearms strapped to the sides of his legs is something of an aspiration. To them and to many, I was the ultimate warrior in the Afolabi Connect, the measuring stick of which everybody is held against.

Tales about my killings and my conquests spread like the stuff of legend, the name Jibril Afolabi struck fear into the hearts of the regimes in West Africa. It got to a point where if a western regime knew there enemies were meeting with a militia in the East, they didn’t even bother trying to plan an ambush. This came from a defect of Dahir Hasan’s crew, poor soul, he thought defecting and giving us juicy information would spare him, but once you’re a part of Hasan’s or Yusaf’s regime, you’re in it for life. He didn’t make it past the first night, my machete claiming yet another victim. Much of what I did during this time is a blur, mostly because my savagery went hand-in-hand with black-outs. I can only recollect the moments after I would become conscious and find myself amongst a plethora of dead bodies; all being dead in their own morbid way. Akua has told me time and time again that watching me work is a “treat”, he’s also told me that he wishes to be as powerful as me and as versatile. How I wanted to tell him that’s a wish he doesn’t want granted, but then again, this was the new Akua I was talking to. He wouldn’t flinch at the opportunity to kill somebody, whereas I only offer my “services” should the situation call for it. Other than that I made sure to stay lowkey, either in plain sight or just a good vantage point to see everything go down.

My face was normally wrapped in a ragged turban, my outfit always consisting of a long sleeved white woolen shirt, the khaki trousers I wore had gun holsters on each side of my legs with a burgundy sheath for my machete strapped on my back. A part of my “legend” is the fact people have seen me get shot at, only for the bullets to do absolutely nothing. The legend says it’s because of my “fortitude” and “willpower”, in truth it’s because my father had gifted me a reinforced chainmail that had been seized a while ago. Didn’t bother asking from where, I will say this though, whoever he got it from is either dead or looking for him because the protection it provides is otherworldly, I’ve been shot point blank before and the bullet just bounced off; it’s most certainly the work of a brilliant craftsman, which if you know anything about African craftsman (especially during the civil wars), is that they take great pride and honor in their work. Father gifted it to me because he deemed me the only one worthy enough to wear it, it practically made me invincible.

By the time I was nineteen, Akua had not only recieved his own unit, he was now opening up another chapter of the Afolabi Connect in Hyulo, Somalia-- a tiny town with little to no authority and where poverty and starvation is around every corner. I forgot to mention a tiny bit of info: Yours truly was the co-founder of this chapter, by no choice of my own of course. Father gave me an ultimatum: either fight in the war or kickstart a new chapter. If you couldn’t tell, I don’t exactly fancy the idea of voluntarily fighting, so I chose this thinking I could offer as little help as possible. Walking in Hyulo I could automatically tell the residents knew who we were, we weren’t even wearing our warpaint or war colors, instead they recognized the sheath of my machete. They recognized the insignia etched onto it. You have to forgive my naivety, it was second nature carrying my machete around, it’s infinitely better than walking around with submachine guns and rifles dangling on my sides. I committed a bigger mistake, however. I walked into Hyulo thinking we would calmly pick an HQ, which turned out to be a decent sized shack with two bed-rooms and a living room that provided the right amount of space, boy was I wrong. I thought we already brought everybody that was going to be a part of the chapter, with the standout prospects - Habido, Liban, and Kalifa - carrying all the resources we need; this means food, armory, medicine, etc. So tell me why once we settled in the new HQ and ate dinner at the meeting table, Akua’s first orders has president were to raid the resident’s homes of all belongings, while ordering them to bring back about five or more women to start up our prostitution service. He then added that if the troops want to, they can either force the kids to join so we can have our own kid soldiers.

Time froze as I sat in my chair astounded at the savagery we have all grown to inhibit, I observed the twisted looks of delight on each of my guy’s faces, some of them varying in heights of euphoria. I look at Akua, who’s grinning at the arousal of the crew and seems to find it quite endearing, Akua then looks at me and gives me an ear-to-ear smile. I force a slight smirk but then the images of fraile, defenseless children being ravaged by us creeps into my mind; I see the looks of sheer terror on the faces of women and feel their helplessness, as I to felt helpless to stop this unwarranted raid on such weak and vulnerable people. I tried to ration it out with Akua, trying to point out that as a new chapter we don’t need that much attention or activity on the first night, even tried saying that none of the women would be of substantial service and that the children are to starved to be of use, but to no avail. Akua and the rest of the Hyulo chapter were all set on wreaking havoc on a bunch of residents who were down on their luck and had managed to steer clear of the chaos the civil war brings, that’s when I snapped. That’s also when I went into my bedroom (Habido placed my weapons in there) and pulled out my uzi SMGs, loaded it with a clip and attached it to the holster. I then pull out my AK-47, put a clip in that and a couple in a little ammunition bag I usually carry on my hip, I calmly insert that into the holster on my right leg. I place my two other pistols in their respective holsters, and make my way out to the living room, where everybody is getting prepared for tonight’s raid. Without saying a word, I walk up behind Akua and unload an entire SMG clip into the back of his head.

*For more short stories, visit thethinkingman.com and read the very first installment of "Deborah and Jovian", "Kosmic", and the prologue for "Harry Highstepper".