Wretched in Sin - By Galiana Njembo

Written By: Galiana Njembo

Category: Thriller

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

Galiana Njembo offers readers a chilling experience with her short story, "Wretched in Sin," featured in the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 hosted by Hashtag Kalakar. This thriller piece delves into themes of decay, haunting, and the struggle for redemption amidst a cycle of destruction. Njembo's narrative is a gripping exploration of a daughter's journey through the dark legacy of her father's repeated resurrections, set against a backdrop of visceral imagery and emotional depth.

About the Work

In "Wretched in Sin," Njembo crafts a narrative that is both haunting and evocative. The story's mood is steeped in darkness and tension, reflecting the protagonist's entrapment in a cycle of death and rebirth. The literary style is rich with imagery, painting a vivid picture of decay and the supernatural. The story's message is a poignant reflection on survival and the enduring impact of a toxic legacy, wrapped in an atmosphere that is both chilling and deeply human.

Wretched in Sin

Original Submission by Galiana Njembo

Wretched in Sin

My father died several times, and I watched him do it every single time. He didn’t die in a hospital bed with thin white sheets and the steady beep of a heart monitor counting down his final breaths. He died in the kitchen under the annoyingly buzzy fluorescent light. He died on the porch with a cheap cigarette burning down to his knuckles. He died at three in the morning, slumped over the dining table, surrounded by a ring of crimson-coloured glass bottles like a fallen king in a kingdom of empty red wine.

The first time he died, I was seven. I didn’t know yet that a heart could keep beating long after a person had abandoned their own body. I just thought the silence meant he was gone for good.

The seventh time, I stopped holding my breath. By the seventeenth, I had learned the rhythm of his ghost. He was a wretched man, steeped in sin and cheap bourbon, existing in a violent cycle of destruction and resurrection. Every evening, he would pour himself into a bottle until there was nothing left of the man who had taught me how to ride a bike or tie my shoes. What remained was a shadow. Sharp-tongued, unpredictable, and cruel. He would tear the house apart with words that felt like broken glass, burning down every bridge between us until he finally passed out, cold and unmoving on the carpet.

And every morning, the corpse woke up. He’d stumble into the kitchen, rub his bloodshot eyes, and pour a cup of black coffee as if he hadn't spent the night before dying right in front of me. "Morning, Lily," he’d rasp; his voice scraped raw.

And that was the cruellest part of it all. He always came back. He came back expecting forgiveness, expecting breakfast, expecting me to pretend that I hadn't spent the night standing vigil over a man who had killed himself a little bit more, repeatedly, until there was nothing left of either of us. Eventually, you learn to live with a ghost that still demands to be fed.

I stopped looking for the father who held the back of my bicycle seat. That man had bled out years ago, buried under a mountain of recriminations and crimson glass. Instead, I learned to read the weather of the house by the sound of his footsteps on the vinyl flooring. Three heavy paces meant he was tired; two sharp stumbles meant the storm was coming; absolute silence meant the shell was empty again.

I spent my youth becoming a curator of his ruins. I learned how to sweep up shattered glass without making a sound, how to scrub dried liquor out of the rug before it stained, and how to step over his sleeping form without letting my shadow touch his face. To touch him when he was dead was to risk waking the thing inside him.

The worst mornings were when he tried to be soft. He’d hold the lukewarm mug in both hands; his knuckles raw and trembling and look at me through eyes yellowed at the edges. "I’m gonna turn it around, Lily," he’d whisper, his breath still heavy with the sharp, sweet rot of yesterday's sin. "Just you wait. Next week, things are gonna be different."

And for a long time, the tragedy was that I believed him. Hope is a vicious, persistent weed that grows best in dirt that’s been poisoned. I would clean the kitchen, fry the eggs, and pretend that the man sitting across from me wasn't a murderer who killed my peace every night and asked for grace every morning.

But you can only watch a man die so many times before you realize you’re standing in the graveyard with a shovel, waiting to be buried beside him.

The eighteenth time he died, I didn't do what I usually would– turn off the kitchen light, pull the blanket over his shoulders, nor did I sweep up the broken tumblers around his feet. I just packed a single canvas bag, walked out onto the porch, and watched the sunrise paint the sky in bruised shades of purple and gold.

When the floorboards creaked behind me and his raspy voice called my name into the cold morning air, I didn't turn around. The ghost had come back, just like it always did. But for the first time in seventeen years, I was no longer waiting to be haunted.

The truth about ghosts is that they corrupt the matter around them. After the twentieth time he died, the house itself began to reject the physics of living things. The air in his bedroom grew heavy and sulfuric, greying the wallpaper into the colour of wet ash. The floorboards beneath his favourite chair began to sag, dark and damp, as if absorbing the sweat and poison leaking from his skin. Plants died on the windowsill simply from the draft of his lungs.

I started keeping a tally on the inside of my closet door, carving small, jagged lines into the wood with a sewing needle. I tried my hardest to remind myself that I was still real and that my fingers could still be cut into something solid.

Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Not only did he die and wake up, he returned in unsettling ways. Each resurrection left a piece of him behind in the dark, replacing it with something cheaper, darker, and slightly incorrect.

His eyes began to lose their pigment, turning the milky gray of a bottom-feeding fish. His teeth grew long and yellow, clacking together in his mouth when he tried to speak, as though his jaw was a hinge on a door that no longer closed right. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I would hear him dragging himself down the hallway. Crawling; his fingernails scraping against the baseboards like dry autumn leaves blown across asphalt.

I would lock my door and lie flat on my back, watching the doorknob slowly, silently turn back and forth. "Lily," a voice would rattle through the keyhole. That didn't sound like a man anymore. It sounded like two dry stones grinding together at the bottom of a dry well. "Lily, open up. I'm cold. The floor is so cold, Lily."

I never opened the door. But in the mornings, he’d be sitting at the table anyway. His skin would be loose, hanging off his cheekbones like wet linen, a fresh brown liver spot blooming on his temple. He’d be chewing on a piece of dry, unbuttered toast, his jaw making a wet, sickening pop with every bite. A terrifying smell filled the kitchen, a mixture of copper, stale tobacco, and cold embalming fluid disguised behind a squirt of cheap cologne. That smell was him.

"Pass the salt, sweetie," he’d gurgle, his tongue thick and grey in his mouth. He didn't remember the crawling. He didn't remember the scraping at my door or the way his shadow on the wall didn't match the shape of his body when he reached for his glass. He thought he was just a father having breakfast with his daughter. He thought the blood dripping quietly from his left nostril onto his plate was just a dry nose from the winter air.

That was the true horror of it. He became a corpse that had forgotten it was dead, dragging me down into the earth with him, one morning at a time.

By the thirtieth time, the boundary between his death and his living blurred entirely. He was no longer a man who died at night and returned in the morning. My father was now something existing in a state of permanent, active decay, kept upright only by spite and whatever foul current ran through his blood.

I stopped sleeping in my bed. I slept on the floor with my back against the locked door, a heavy iron fire poker resting across my knees. The house smelled of rot and stagnant water now. The mirrors in the hallway had grown dark, their silver backing flaking away in sheets until they reflected only black shapes moving through grey fog. Whenever I passed them, I caught glimpses of his reflection standing directly behind me—even when I was entirely alone in the hall. His reflection was always taller than he was, its arms dangling down past its knees, its mouth stretched into a wide, toothless pit.

One night in late October, the temperature inside the house plummeted so fast that my breath bloomed in white clouds before my face. I heard the familiar thud from the living room—the sound of his body hitting the floorboards, heavy and final. The thirty-second death. I waited for the usual silence, the heavy two-hour pause before the wet scraping and the crawling began.

It didn't come. Instead, the floorboards began to groan under an immense, deliberate weight. Slow, rhythmic thuds vibrated up through the wood, into my spine. Step. Step. Step. Not a stumble. Not a drag. A march.

He stopped outside my door. The silence that followed was so absolute I could hear the microscopic tick of the clock on my nightstand, counting down seconds that felt stretched thin, ready to snap. Then came the knock. It was a heavy, dull thud of a forehead striking the door, once, twice, three times, with rhythmic, brainless precision.

"Lily," he groaned. The voice came from beneath the door frame, from the crack where the cool air swept in. It was a chorus of voices—his old voice, sharp and angry; his weak morning voice; and a third, ancient sound that scraped like rusted nails over slate. "Lily, let me in. My hands are gone. I can't open the bottle, Lily."

I looked down at the threshold.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a prestigious event celebrating diverse voices in poetry and creative writing worldwide. It offers a platform for writers to share their unique stories and gain international recognition. This competition is an opportunity for writers to showcase their creativity and connect with a global audience, fostering a vibrant community of literary talent.

We extend our sincere gratitude to Galiana Njembo for her powerful contribution, "Wretched in Sin," to the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Her story of resilience and haunting beauty captivates and challenges the reader, leaving a lasting impression. We look forward to seeing more of her remarkable work in the future.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.