Head Leader

Black Coming of Age Fiction

Written in response to: "Write a story that doesn’t include any dialogue at all." as part of Gone in a Flash.

If you are the kind with ear on the ground and eyes wide open, you won’t miss much, and overtime, you will start decoding them from their many shortcomings. One fact I have not failed to grasp from these kinds of humans is that they have wrong idea of themselves, environment and their neighbor. They term to use their own barometer, their own scale in weighing everyone and everything. That is first indicator, first shrieking sign that they are on the wrong lane.

Another thing I did not miss from creatures of this nature is that even as adults, the kids in them surfaces with least probing and seep out in any available pore they see in anything, any issue they are involved in. you know those kinds, right? give them simple assignment and they will come back full of excuses on why they fucked the mission up. Some of the excuses so sound that they don’t even know there is something anomaly in an adult not seeing off certain assignment no matter how sound the excuse might be. Same assignment another of their peer will go on and come back mission accomplished.

That is exactly the scenario playing out here before me and some leaders handed over the task of observing me to know how sound I am in the head narrative-wise and report back. All adult, all supposed to possess the traits the assignment needed to be seen through. Yet, you can see that time is the judge, solicitor, attorney when sample from the rare.

Why would what will take at least five months to be seen through take five years and the supposed adults are still fumbling, grunting and muttering? The answer there is that these grunting adults has wrong idea of themselves and their neighbors. You can see the overriding emotion controlling their decisions and action are reason they kept fumbling. Over blowing their virtues over vice. We can! We can! And yet after five years, no result is forthcoming.

I, as a person, I am not sure you will like me that much after being in my midst for few minutes. I am that kind many accustom with wrong emotion and idea of me clouding their better judgment. They always conclude after observing me that I pose no formidable obstacle to them only for surprise, anger, frustration, denials and accusations to be their lot within minutes. At times I can see that fear have morphed into anger, acute hatred that they start losing faith in themselves. I have witnessed this phenomenon for almost two decades now that I have not stopped snickering when such is the case for the pattern has not stopped throwing itself up no and then.

You know some people that are used to having their way, they don’t need to sweat to have their way in anything, since birth that you can easily see they have become entitled in anything and everything that little level ground in any game becomes to them Kilimanjaro that needed surmounting. Those are the kind of creature given assignment to observe me and report anomalies witnessed. They are marvelous I tell you.

At times, it will take you only minutes to decode the overriding emotion they came with. They are weighing me with their own scale, not universal or generally accepted scale. A day, two, nothing tangible is happening that you can’t fail to see that they are having a rough time playing according to the rules of engagement. They are not used to events dictating pace to them, they make events manifest desired result at their desired time and no one ask questions for no one ever ask them questions since Jesus and Mohammed walked this planet.

So, common observing and reporting back becomes a core that they never failed to make a move to engineer result. They started tampering with the object of their interest, playing underhand games for local wisdom assured them that it is how it’s handled and that had been how they do it since they came into this planet. They can’t just wrap their privileged heads around common observation assignment and report back without tampering or seeking for cut corners.

So, they always eye me, eye themselves, weigh me and themselves in their own scale and it fed them what they wanted and they make a move after concluding that I don’t exist. At times, the trigger is even that known overwhelming desire for short term win they never halted to see if it will amount to winning a battle and losing the war. They just barge in only to see the folly of their last two weeks win this week. Then anger and self-louting morph into frustration which leads to another uncoordinated action that pushes them more into the black book of those that matters. Their grumbling intensifies. Normal procedure doesn’t just jive with their known ways.

Frustration and fear induced anger saps strength needed to act with clear head and leads to one becoming afraid of he that would otherwise be afraid of one. This had been the bane of people sent to observe my brain shortcomings, only for them to came to bare theirs. Utter things, secretes no one ever solicited from them.

When they realized that the lack of charisma they weigh people on with their fake scales had been advantageous to their neighbor, I have not failed to see that amazement and fear of me always becomes what weighs them down more when reality hits. The kid in them manifest more as they point accusing fingers on themselves and churn out justifications. It’s comical and educational at times I must tell you being in their midst.

Today in this their observe and report mission, every utterance coming from them had been noting but lamentations or tales rooted in illusions and mysteries. Those kinds you hear from the camp of the losers. Like malfunctioning machine, they churn out excuses why they failed to deliver required result. Yet none ever tell you how the supposed referee became a player in the game he supposed to be officiating.

That had been just a fraction of the lot of these comical homo sapiens circling me here for years now. I tell you the truth, they jabber and they do it in an amazing way.

Posted Mar 12, 2026
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2 likes 1 comment

Helen A Howard
18:15 Mar 23, 2026

Everything weighed in the scales and often found wanting.

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