January 28, 2026

That Sound That the Crickets Make
​ By Val Chatindo

A first-person supernatural confession about inheriting witchcraft, where fear, taboo, and belonging collide—and refusing tradition comes at a terrible cost.
Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.



It never gets easier.
Eating another person.
It never gets easier.
Even when they've just died, and you can pick up that whiff of blood from their
nearly dry veins. It never gets easier.

There's just something off, I guess, with tearing through the morsels of flesh of
another human being. Someone, who just like you, lived, breathed and maybe even
cried too. A whole person with a whole existence reduced to morsels of decaying,
shitty-tasting flesh. Ha!

And the thing is, it doesn't really matter what state of decay or preservation you find
them in. Death is death. And it doesn't smell or taste good at all. There's no
excitement in consuming a person like they're a freshly slaughtered chicken on
Christmas day.

It's horrible.

Let's not even talk about the decaying ones. The ones who've been in the ground
for months. Who've since burst like water balloons, pouring their innards all over
their single roomed eternal confinements. And yes, that's probably my favourite
thing about death. That whether you lived in a mansion or a shelter, you rest
eternally in a single room. But back to those unrecognisable ones, we'd all rather
forget about them, or rather I would. Even though I pretend to enjoy their flesh
when I'm amongst those who are like me. What choice do I have? Witches are evil
and one slip up, one hint that you aren't as tough as you make yourself out to be
and those she-devils will eat your loved ones, alive. You can't afford to show
hesitation around here. After-all there are some real psychos in this little taboo
world. Extremists who take this whole witching thing to the point of obsession. I'm
sure they enjoy the decaying flesh. The smell of it. Rotting, putrid.....
Disgusting.
I remember the first time I ate the carcass of a rotting baby. I was twelve, and I
had just started my nighttime routine. Night running is what some fancy bastards
call it. It was just around the time I started to hear Gogo calling me in my dreams,
beckoning me out of the house and into the night. Those were just dreams, the first
few times at least. Until I really did start to see Gogo. Until I could reach out my arm
and feel her naked body under my hand. That's another weird thing about
witchcraft. Nudity. Why the hell do we need to be naked all the time?
​
Anyways, while others my age were heeding Jesus' call and preparing themselves
to feast of the bread and wine so generously provided by the church, I was going
through my own rites of passage preparing to feast on the actual body.
I remember that first night. Who forgets their first?
Rising from my bed that night, I thought at first that I was moving with my actual
body and so I had tip toed my way out of the house to avoid rousing my two younger siblings who had dozed off obliviously next to me. To avoid alerting my mother
in the next room, awake in those wee hours, praying over her little family, hoping to
ward off all the witches, in the form of jealous neighbours and discontented
relatives. Witches who threatened to ruin her children's destiny. Witches who were
like her mother-in-law. Gogo.
If only she knew that the darkness was already within her household.
The first time I realized that it really wasn't me was the next morning when I stood
next to my sleeping body. Just thinking about it even now has me shuddering. It
was so... unnatural.
My body laying there had looked so innocent and beautiful. Oblivious almost. And
yet something about it just seemed so wrong, dirty almost. That I had seen
something that most people never got to see. Something that God never intended
for us to witness.
This was a taboo. And not the sweet kind Sade sang about.
I avoided looking at myself from that day. For what would I do if that body opened
its eyes and looked right into me? What would I do if I saw me?
How would I ever cope with my own judgment? With my own assessment of the
person I was now? The thing I had become. A night animal that fed upon the
carcasses of the dead. Vampire, witch, bottom feeder. Call it whatever you want but
it's all one thing. Coward.
Gogo had stood by me that day and slipped her hand into mine.
"It's amazing isn't it?" She had said.
I had looked at her and thought what a sick a twisted person she must have been.
What exactly is amazing? I had wanted to ask her? Why had she brought me into
this disgusting little world of hers? A world where old, neglected and sexually
deprived women became young again. Where they terrorized their children and
neighbours and waited for the cover of night to settle petty scores. A world where
these old irrelevant women once more mattered. Where they got to rule over
younger girls like me who were still new and needed to be tutored into their way of
life.
It makes sense why this sport is an old woman's game. Especially for those who
have no other hobbies or pastimes. It's a world where they get to feast until they
are bloated and fuck each other until they tire. And when all is said and done they
hope to let their descendants in on their little secret. So that by the time we get old
too and our children have forgotten about us, we still have something to look
forward to.
But if they didn't want to be so lonely, why did they kill their husband's then?
"Will you do it?" She asks me.
Our eyes meet, and all the answers are shared without words.
Will I do it....
In our family all the women are widows. All their men die young. The world has
always wondered why most women are widows.
I love Jawala. I really do.
I love the smell of his morning breath and his sweat after we've made love. I fucking
love his dirty smell.
That's how I knew. They say you know someone is the right match for you if you love their dirty smell
and I love his. It's like the smell of dirt.
I love his dirty smell.
I really don't want to kill him. We've only been married for five years. Yet.....
"Is there really any other choice?"
I look at Ruva. She's been married for eight and soon she will have to give her
husband up. I don't really know why it's a must for us to kill our spouses? Or why
we devour human flesh that we really have no appetite for? Our grandmother's
married men they didn't love, men they hated and so killing them was a luxury.
These days women marry for love. Sure for other things as well, but there has to be
love.
None of the stuff we do really makes sense. I mean sure, I get why anyone would
want to be a witch. The thrill of leaving your body and floating through the air like a
dandelion. The freedom, the danger. The ability to see other witches flying in the air
and dotting the sky. That first night I followed Gogo I didn't know what to expect. But
all my fears were blown away the moment I saw my aunts, tetes and cousins.
Family. A sense of belonging. Isn't that what we really do it for?
Maybe the revenge too? Knowing that you can exact instant justice on whoever
messes with you. In church they taught us that vengeance belongs to God. God is
too slow, I say. Take matters into your hands and make sure they never fuck with
you again. You have to be careful with that one though. You can mess with the
wrong person and by wrong person I mean those people that are guarded by a
higher power. For some it's angels, their dead relatives and even a family spirit
which guards every member from stray bullets. I remember one time when I tried to
enter my neighbor's house and ended up being pursued by a man with fire inside his
eyes. Had he gotten to me, I never would've woken up. I would've died in my sleep.

Still, we don't have to eat people or kill our spouses. But you know that with Satan
all things come with strings attached. There isn't any magic in eating flesh or spilling
blood. The devil is just an asshole, and he loves to make people do sick things. He'll
make a person cut a toe for a car, wear a certain type of clothing for a business
deal, and rape a Virgin for a cure. None of those things holds power. If people simply
believed, they would get the exact same results. But we don't believe.
Consequently, Satan is a sadist who loves to make people fuck up. I hate that
bastard. Ironic right?

Like everything in life, there's a hierarchy, too, in witchcraft. And the higher up you go,
the less unpleasant shit you have to do. You'd think we'd wake up bloated, tired
even. But remember how I said it's not our physical bodies which do the deed. It's
your spirit and not just your spirit. I mean, am I making sense? It's the same magic
that allows certain ghosts to materialise and even manipulate physical objects.
There are, of course, degrees to this materialization. A ghost can be as fragile as
paper or as solid as cement. It all takes practice and a certain amount of energy
and focus.

I've seen my fair share of ghosts in the cemeteries and homes we frequent. The
ones we find amongst the graves are always a sad sight. Men, women, and
occasionally children wandering aimlessly. Watching
helplessly as we dig up their bodies. Some turn into balls of fire, others simply
vanish under the rays of the rising sun. Though some have become such masters
of the craft that you may even glimpse them by day. What makes any spiritual entity powerful, I've come to discover, is fear. The more
afraid you are of it, the easier it is for it to torture you. These forces have
nothing to do, Their families and loved ones have since forgotten them. So they
derive their only entertainment from preying on paranoid people who are fixated on
negativity. It's why you should be careful with your mind. Anxiety and depression
are good bait for negative spirits. You could be walking down the street absorbed in
your miseries, when a bored spirit picks up your energy and latches onto you. And 
you wonder as to why you can't get out of that slump.

Be very careful.

The principles of fear apply even with witchcraft. The people who we really have
power over are those who are afraid of us. Most of them hide behind their bibles
and holy water, which they sprinkle all over their houses. Some, like Mama, wake
up in the wee hours to pray in the hopes of warding evil forces away. It doesn't
matter, though. Fear is fear. And like dogs, we can pick it up, and we thrive off it.

What I am curious about, is those writers who get this whole spiritual realm thing
spot on. Writers like J.K Rowling who describe the witching world like they exist in
it. Watching the one movie where there was a snake used for all manner of wicked
acts made me realise that this thing really is global. Its a pandemic.

We're on our way home and we are wading through the tall grass of the savannah
just before we fly home. Ruva is still looking at me, hoping for an answer.
"Maybe we should end it once and for all?" She whispers even though we are alone
Not the witching thing. There's no way any of us want to walk away from any of this.
We're too far gone.

That sound that the crickets make as the sun is about to wake pierces the air and
as Ruva slips her hand into mine we smile at each other.

"Maybe" I answer. Maybe this witching thing should now be a young woman's game.
Just maybe.

                                                                             💀💀💀

Valerie Tendai Chatindo is a biochemistry graduate, writer, and communications consultant. She’s a regular contributor for The Kalahari Review, Enthuse Magazine, The Diplomat Zimbabwe, and EarGround. Her work has also appeared in Pink Disco Magazine, Creepy Pod, Agbowo, Argyl Literary Magazine, The Afterpast Review, Whisper House Press, Omenana, Efiko Magazine, Writer’s Space, and Literary Yard. Her short story “Sheba,” was shortlisted for the African Cradle African Heroines literary prize, and her pieces were featured in Povo Afrika’s Nehanda Reimagined anthology. Her debut novel Mono: Tales of The Tapa Kingdom is shortlisted for the Iskanchi Book Prize. The twenty-nine-year-old resides in Harare, Zimbabwe with her cat, Muffins. She runs her own Literary Platform, Shumba Literary Magazine.