Counting Votes and Other Stories — When the World Teaches You to Forget, Stories Help You Remember

By George Shadow

Every story has a heartbeat — a rhythm of truth that refuses to be silenced. For years, I’ve carried voices that wouldn’t stop whispering in my head: voices of those who lost, those who lied, those who survived by pretending not to care. Every story I’ve ever written has begun like this, as a whisper — something small and insistent that refuses to leave me alone. This collection is my attempt to listen to those whispers until they became voices, until they demanded to be heard.

Counting Votes and Other Stories grew out of those whispers that came from watching the world around me — the politics, the compromises, the quiet heartbreaks — and realizing how easily people learn to live with what should never be acceptable. It’s not just a book; it’s a collection of echoes, drawn from a country and a century that both seem to repeat themselves, again and again. And again.

Every story I’ve ever written also begins with a question you can’t shake off, and for me, the question for Counting Votes and Other Stories was this: What happens to the human spirit when truth becomes a luxury? This question gave birth to this kaleidoscope of stories that walk through the cracks of power, memory, love, and justice. These stories came from late nights, overheard conversations, and the quiet ache of the world around us. They are about people who live at the edge of choice — between loyalty and survival, between silence and courage, between what’s right and what’s real.

A Collection Born of Contradictions

When the human spirit refuses to stay silent, it gives birth to stories that wouldn’t stay silent. When I began writing Counting Votes and Other Stories, I wasn’t trying to make a statement. I was trying to understand why people keep breaking each other — and still, somehow, keep trying to love.

I’ve always believed that life is made of contradictions: truth and deceit, faith and fear, love and loss. We live at the intersection of these forces every day — and that’s where my stories live too.

Counting Votes and Other Stories brings together characters who have been pushed to their limits — not because they are extraordinary, but because life has cornered them there. These are stories of people who try to remain human when everything around them urges them not to be. From the corridors of politics to the trenches of war, from quiet living rooms to haunted memories, each story confronts what happens when conscience and circumstance collide.

The collection began with a single image: a gunman at a polling station, tired, loyal, and angry. But as the pages grew, I realized I wasn’t just writing about elections. I was writing about betrayal — about how societies ask ordinary people to carry the weight of extraordinary corruption.

Soon, one story led to another. One story became many. Each tale became a mirror for something else I’d seen: a man laughing too loudly to hide his fear; a woman holding a secret as if it were her only child; a soldier writing letters to no one; a child crying over a future that never arrived. What unites them all is the same ache — the ache of being human in places where humanity is treated like weakness.

The Pulse of the Collection

The title story, Counting Votes, explores the price of loyalty in a corrupt political system where power is traded in blood instead of ballots. In The Widow’s Duel, courage takes the shape of a lone woman standing unarmed before the man who destroyed her world. And in The Weeping Girl, the past refuses to rest quietly, reminding us that grief and justice sometimes wear the same face. Each story may stand alone, but together they trace the map of a world still learning how to be human.

The Heart of the Title Story

The story that gave the collection its name came from a real moment: watching the news and realizing that in so many elections, the people counting votes are often the most forgotten, the most exploited, and the most at risk. Counting Votes is a reflection on power and betrayal — on how the machinery of politics often feeds on those it uses. It follows a group of hired thugs promised reward and recognition, only to find that their loyalty makes them disposable. What begins as a simple job — protect the candidate, guard the ballots — becomes a brutal lesson in how quickly the system devours its own.

In writing it, I wanted to capture not just the politics of a nation, but the politics of the soul: the constant negotiation between what we know is right and what we do to survive.

This particular short story was inspired by real-life political scenes — those blurred lines between democracy and survival. Here we meet Tunde and his group of hired thugs, young men born into desperation, handed guns and promises instead of futures. They think they’re shaping history, but in truth, they are history’s victims. When their promised “reward” becomes their grave, it’s not just a twist — it’s a commentary on how political power devours the very people who defend and protect it.

Counting Votes is a story about what happens when loyalty becomes a weapon, and faith becomes a currency. It is a story about what happens when there is brutal hope; the kind of hope that hurts to hold. It’s also, in a way, a love story — a twisted love between man and power, man and illusion.

The Widow’s Duel — Courage Without Ammunition

I wrote The Widow’s Duel as a love letter to the quiet kind of courage most people never see — not the loud kind, but the quiet one that comes from pain. The courage that doesn’t roar — it waits. It endures. It steps into the street knowing it might die and goes anyway. I wanted to explore what power looks like when it’s stripped of all illusions. When you have nothing left to lose, even fear begins to fear you.

In a small, dust-choked town, a grieving woman faces the man who murdered her husband. She doesn’t carry a weapon worth fearing, but she carries the weight of her loss — and sometimes, that’s heavier than steel. She doesn’t run. She doesn’t tremble. She doesn’t scream. She simply stands there with an empty revolver — and somehow wins. The man laughs at her — until the laugh turns into something else, because when this widow pulls the trigger, and the gun turns out to be empty, it’s not her bullet that kills him; it’s his fear. He dies of his own conscience — or maybe his own guilt. When the widow’s opponent dies of fright, we realize the truth: fear kills faster than bullets.

I couldn’t shake the image of a woman dressed in black, walking down a dusty main street at dawn, facing the man who killed her husband. The Widow’s Duel is about a different kind of courage — the quiet, grounded kind that rises from grief and loss. It’s not loud. It’s not cinematic. It’s simply human — and that’s what makes it unforgettable.

The Weeping Girl — The Past That Refuses to Stay Dead; Justice Beyond the Grave

The Weeping Girl haunted me before I ever wrote it. Set in the aftermath of war, where ghosts walk not for revenge, but for remembrance. The story asks what justice looks like when all the courts have failed. A spirit’s tears become the only testimony left in a world eager to forget its sins. The Weeping Girl is a quiet horror story, but also a moral one — about memory, guilt, and the cost of silence. It follows an investigator trying to make sense of mysterious deaths among former soldiers — all of whom die gasping, their faces frozen in terror, their last breaths filled with invisible smoke, their eyes staring at something unseen. And every witness swears they heard one thing: a girl crying in the dark.

She’s not vengeance personified — she’s memory. Her weeping is the sound of history demanding to be acknowledged. The past doesn’t die just because we stop talking about it. For me, this story is about the ghosts that history leaves behind — the wrongs no tribunal can fix, the voices no court ever calls. The girl isn’t just vengeance; she’s memory itself, returning to demand to be acknowledged. It’s not horror in the traditional sense. It’s moral horror — the kind that reminds us the past doesn’t die just because we stop talking about it.

Why I Wrote This Book

I didn’t write this book in one sitting or even one season. I wrote it in fragments — stolen hours between patients, half-dreamed sentences on napkins, whispers caught in the hum of a city generator. Some stories took days; others, years. The hardest part wasn’t starting; it was knowing when to stop. Because every time I thought a story had ended, another one began breathing beneath it.

I didn’t set out to preach, only to observe — to look closely at what happens when everyday people are forced into extraordinary moments. These characters aren’t heroes or villains; they are echoes of us all — flawed, frightened, yet still capable of grace.

As a physiotherapist, I spend my days repairing what’s broken — muscle, movement, balance. As a writer, I try to repair what’s broken in the soul. For me, writing isn’t an escape — it’s an act of healing.

Counting Votes and Other Stories became my way of holding up the cracked mirror of society and asking readers to look, not away, but through it. I wrote these stories during moments when the world felt unbearably loud — when the news cycle screamed and everyone seemed to have stopped listening. I turned instead to fiction, because fiction allows truth to slip past defenses, and still breathe. It’s the one place where people will still stop to feel.

The stories I write are not political statements, even when they sound that way. They’re attempts at healing — attempts to name what hurts. Counting Votes and Other Stories is the bandage I didn’t know I was applying to myself.

There’s something humbling about fiction — it teaches you patience, humility, and above all, empathy. When you inhabit your characters long enough, their pain becomes your own, and their small victories start to matter more than your own comfort.

I didn’t write this book in luxury or silence. I wrote it in waiting rooms, under flickering bulbs, in notebooks spotted with coffee and worry. Some stories came quickly; others resisted. But each one demanded honesty. Writing taught me that stories don’t belong to the writer. They belong to whoever needs them most.

The Stories Between the Stories

While the title pieces might stand out, the beauty of this collection lies in its range. You’ll meet dreamers, fighters, liars, and lovers — all drawn from fragments of real life. Some stories are political, others personal; some tragic, others gently humorous. But all of them ask the same thing: what does it mean to stay human in a world that tests that humanity daily?

These stories are my way of holding up the broken pieces of society and asking readers to look, not away, but through them.

Every story carries a bit of that reality: imperfect, tired, hopeful. Sometimes, writing felt like protest. Other times, it felt like prayer. But always, it felt necessary.

There’s something sacred about turning pain into narrative — giving shape to what feels unshaped, meaning to what once only hurt. That’s what storytelling is for me: not escape, but encounter.

Every story in this collection wrestles with one question: What does it mean to remain human when everything around you tells you not to be? I don’t have the answer to this particular question — maybe that’s why I keep writing.

Between Power and the Soul

Across the collection, the theme of power appears again and again — not just political power, but personal power. The power of silence. The power of guilt. The power of love that persists even when it shouldn’t. The stories’ characters all share one fight — to stay human in a world that keeps testing their humanity.

A teacher who loses his job because honesty no longer fits the system. A mother whose prayers blur into madness. A man who measures his worth by the shadows he casts. These stories are bound by a single invisible thread: the fight to stay human. I wanted to show that even in chaos — in broken systems, failed governments, forgotten towns — there’s still tenderness. People still love. They still laugh. They still reach for redemption, even if it’s with dirty hands.

A Mirror For Readers Who Still Believe in Stories, and Love Truth Told in Fiction

Every reader brings their own truth to a story. Some will see tragedy; others will see resilience. That’s how fiction works — it becomes a mirror that changes shape depending on who’s looking into it.

At its heart, Counting Votes and Other Stories isn’t about politics, violence, crime, or ghosts — it’s about people. If you look closely, you might find someone you know in its pages. Maybe even yourself. Every reader finds something different: one sees tragedy, another sees hope. That’s the quiet magic of fiction — it changes depending on who’s reading it.

I hope readers see themselves in the characters: in their mistakes, in their fears, in the small acts of grace that go unnoticed.

This book is for readers who love honesty wrapped in fiction — those who don’t need explosions to feel impact, who can find suspense in a heartbeat and poetry in an argument. It’s for readers who pause after the last line, not because they’re confused, but because they’ve recognized something true. If that’s you, Counting Votes and Other Stories belongs in your hands.

This book is for the reader who lingers after the last sentence. For the one who reads to remember, not escape. For those who have seen the world’s cruelty but still believe that kindness, no matter how small, is rebellion.

If you enjoy stories that mix realism with reflection — that whisper truths louder than shouts — this book is for you. It belongs to readers who believe that fiction can still confront the world and leave you changed when you close the last page.

If you’ve ever asked yourself why the world feels the way it does — and whether it can feel otherwise — these stories are my answer in twelve different tongues.

This book is for the reader who doesn’t rush to the last page. For the one who pauses, rereads, and reflects. For those who’ve seen how cruel the world can be — yet still believe in kindness. If you’re that kind of reader, Counting Votes and Other Stories is for you.

Closing Thoughts

Every scar has a story, and every story counts. Writing this book taught me something I didn’t expect — that stories don’t end when you write the last line. They begin again in the mind of every reader who touches them. Each time someone reads Counting Votes, it becomes a new book — reshaped by a new pair of eyes, a new history, a new heartbeat. So, to everyone who will read it, and everyone who might someday — thank you for listening. Because in the end, stories are just voices looking for ears that still care.

Where to Find It

📘 Counting Votes and Other Stories is available on Amazon and ElevenReader Publishing, as well as select local platforms.

If you’ve already read it, I’d love to hear what stayed with you — what line, what image, what silence, and what scene made you pause, even for a second. Because that pause is where storytelling lives: in the quiet space between feeling and understanding.

Yes, share your thoughts, or your favorite line — even a single line means more than you know. Because that’s the thing about stories: once told, they never really stop. They echo in every reader who dares to listen, in the minds of those who hear them, changing shape, changing hearts, refusing to be forgotten. Stories don’t end when you close the book. They live again in the minds that remember them. Your voice keeps the conversation going long after the book ends. Always remember that stories don’t die. They simply wait for someone new to listen.

About the Author

George Shadow is a Nigerian author, physiotherapist, and DIY enthusiast whose storytelling blends realism, reflection, and moral inquiry. His work explores the fragile balance between truth, loyalty, and survival in modern society.

When he’s not writing, he’s fixing, healing, or learning — always searching for meaning in the spaces between work and words.

📚 Follow his work:

• Instagram: @judge_shadow

• Facebook: George Shadow

• Amazon Author Page: George Shadow

• Website: Georgeshadow.com