THE LAST MATATU HOME

 

The Last Matatu Home

The blood on my shirt isn’t mine.

I know this the way you know something before your mind catches up—like how you feel the heat before seeing the fire. It spreads in slow, sticky fingers across the fabric, darkening the cotton, stiffening it. The air is thick with sweat, the scent of iron and something else—something final.

I keep my head low, shoulders hunched, slipping through the night as Nairobi exhales its usual chaos. Matatus belch smoke, headlights carve weak paths through the smog, and men on street corners lean into whispered deals. I shouldn’t be here.

But where else is there to go?

---

Six Hours Ago

South B. A bar that smelled of stale beer and cheap regret. A jukebox that only played old Benga.

Kenga had called, voice tight. “We need to talk.”

Three years. That’s how long it had been since I heard his voice. Since Gikambura. Since the night we left someone we swore to protect, bleeding out in the street, drowning in their own breath. We swore never to speak of it. Never to see each other again. But here we were. And I should have known better than to pick up that call.

“You owe me,” he had said, his fingers drumming against the chipped wooden table between us. “One last thing.”

I should have walked away. But guilt is a funny thing. It grips you by the throat and makes you say yes when you should be running.

And like a fool, I listened.

---

Now

The sirens are distant, but they’re coming. The matatu screeches to a stop, its headlights slicing through the dark like a machete through sugarcane. The conductor dangles halfway out, banging on the frame. “Ngong! Ngong! Hadi mwisho!”

I climb in, my body finding a seat before my mind does. The cold window presses against my forehead. Outside, the city churns—hawkers shoving their last sales, a woman dragging a wailing child, a man disappearing into an alley, chased by his own demons. Nairobi never sleeps, because the guilty don’t sleep.

My reflection stares back at me. The eyes are mine, but the face—

I don’t know that man anymore.

---

Some Choices Can’t Be Undone

The thing about regret is that it doesn’t come screaming. It settles. A quiet, heavy thing, curling in the corners of your ribs, whispering to you when the world is silent.

My phone vibrates. A single message. No name. Just a number I deleted years ago.

Not yet.

My breath catches. The matatu rattles forward, the city swallowing me whole.

Outside, someone laughs. Inside, my heartbeat pounds in my ears.

Some debts aren’t paid in money. Some ghosts don’t stay buried. And some nights stretch longer than a lifetime.

---

Seven Hours Ago

When Kenga pushed the brown envelope across the table, I knew two things. One, this was not a request. Two, whatever was inside would rewrite my future.

“You don’t say no to this.” He leaned in, voice low. “You know that, right?”

I stared at it, fingers numb around my whiskey glass. I could have walked away. Could have let him rot in whatever mess he had crawled into. But that’s the thing about the past—it doesn’t loosen its grip just because you wish it away.

I slid the envelope open. Photos spilled out. A familiar face stared up at me.

“Kamau,” I breathed.

The last time I saw Kamau, he was bleeding on a sidewalk, his life slipping between the cracks like rainwater. We had left him there. Not by choice. Not entirely. But that distinction never changed the weight of it.

“He’s alive,” Kenga said, watching me. “And he knows.”

The room tilted. The walls felt too close. “Knows what?”

“What we did. Who did it. And that we let it happen.”

I shut my eyes. The whiskey burned down my throat, but it couldn’t touch the chill spreading in my chest. “So what now?”

Kenga leaned back, a slow, satisfied smile creeping onto his face. “We fix it.”

---

Four Hours Ago

I stood outside a dingy apartment complex in Eastleigh, the weight of a pistol cold against my ribs. The city hummed around me—music blasting from a nearby club, the occasional honk of a bodaboda, the smell of frying meat mixing with the stink of sewage.

Kenga’s plan was simple. We’d corner Kamau, make him disappear. A clean-up job. One night, one bullet, and everything buried for good.

Simple never meant easy.

I pressed the buzzer. The door clicked open. The hallway stretched ahead, dark and narrow. My heart drummed against my ribs.

A shadow moved.

Then the world exploded.

Gunshots cracked the silence. My ears rang. I hit the floor, pain flaring through my shoulder. A body slammed into mine, heavy, desperate hands clawing at my throat. Kamau. His eyes were wild, unrecognizable.

“You left me to die!” he roared.

I gasped, twisting. The pistol slipped from my grip, skidding across the floor. Kenga was shouting—then a second shot. Kamau jerked back, eyes wide, mouth forming words he never got to say.

He collapsed.

Blood pooled beneath him, dark and endless.

Kenga grabbed my arm, yanking me to my feet. “We need to go.”

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think.

“NOW!”

---

Now

The matatu jerks over a pothole, snapping me back. My shoulder aches. The blood on my shirt is still wet.

The phone buzzes again.

Come outside.

Cold prickles my skin. I glance at the other passengers. A woman dozing off, a man scrolling his phone, a student with earphones lost in his own world. No one is watching me.

I press my head back against the seat, exhaling slowly.

Kenga. It has to be him. He must have gotten out clean. He must want to make sure I did too.

Or maybe it’s someone else. Someone I don’t see coming.

I look out the window. The city is endless, its neon heartbeat pulsing in the dark. Another buzz.

Don’t make me wait.

I close my eyes.

There’s only one way this ends.

I step off the matatu.

The night swallows me whole.