Alfred T.M. Rossouw, participant in the 2023 Kommadagga short fiction workshop and 2024 Bosberg Book Writing residency, was recently featured in EFIKO, an online literary magazine with a focus on Africa. An excerpt of his story, Air Between Shacks, is available on Paulet House Stories. The full story can be read here.
Air Between Shacks
The night had a hum, like the earth beneath the shack had an engine idling in it. Sizwe lay motionless on his bed. The slightly chilly breeze whistling over the shack seeped in through the gaps in his tin roof, dragging in the dust and smoke from outside. A dog barked in the distance, then another, and even further, one responded. But the air regained its stillness after some time, carrying the sounds of loud televisions and radios, and the solemn voices of mothers and fathers praying for the protection of their families before they slept.
Sizwe reached for the old voice recorder on the table next to his bed.
He pressed the record button and let it run, and in the darkness of his room, the tiny red light on it blinked like a heartbeat. He placed it back on the table and, for a while, lay silently watching its pulsating light from his bed, transfixed by its monotonous pattern. He listened to the world move outside the open window: rattling of the roof as the wind blew over it, a bottle breaking, someone coughing in the distance, their sickly voice calling to no one in particular.
Alfred T.M. Rossouw (1991) is a South African writer and editor with over five years of writing, editing, blogging and book reviewing experience. He has worked across many industries in both the public and private sectors, including in the arts. He currently works as a freelance editor and writer, most notably as a freelance editor for FunDza Literacy Trust and Geko Publishing. Under the penname Thato Rossouw, he has authored articles for publications such as News24, Mail & Guardian, Africanah Magazine, Art State, Huffington Post and Sunday Times.
