Thulaganyo Phala Sehuhula: Under the Influence

She dressed herself in the warmest earth tones, leaving the scattered cardboard on the floor. Pulling the screen to her face, she watched as it flickered to life within seconds. Behind her, white walls stood plain and bare, interrupted only by the brown pottery she'd imported from Japan. She wanted one thing more than anything else: for more people to see her.

She lit an incense stick as she picked up her slab. Reorienting the light, she made sure it illuminated the whites and browns bubbling around her. She smiled through the comments from viewers on her slab, who demanded she stand more prominently. She nodded politely, answering their questions with a forced smile, even flashing a peace sign—only for them to deride her as cringe. But she paid them little attention, her mind fixated on the ticking viewer count. Now and then, she sipped from a tiny glass of water to moisten her lips.

She had a cute act where she set a metronome beside her mother’s cedar table, her phone clamped tightly in its stand. She’d cue the swing music, performing a dance in time with the metronome’s ticking. It got her attention for a while, but that had all faded. Aside from the shifting waves of viewers, there were a few loyal fans who cheered her on. Yet, success wasn’t coming the way she’d hoped—no merchandise to sell, no dance to copyright. She had so many ideas, convinced she was onto something, but she couldn’t rely on her subscription site to keep her apartment afloat. She needed a job, and that frustrated her to no end.

She took the night shift as a cashier, sinking into the monotony as her eyes followed customers dragging themselves in and out. It wasn’t the criminals or delinquents that bothered her the most. It was the ones who idled by the shelves, transfixed by the three flavours of noodles they couldn’t seem to tell apart.

She watched the idle customer, stuck in indecision, and saw herself in them—lost, uncertain, drifting between choices that all seemed the same. She turned to her phone, scrolling past her reels, hoping that maybe, just maybe, one of her videos had gone viral. But nothing has changed. With a sigh, she lifted her head—and froze. A knife was in front of her.

All those warm earth tones she had loved to wear had turned sterile, fading into white. It was a funny situation for her. Something began to trouble her, but she couldn’t quite place it. The glaring lights above her in the hospital didn’t bother her anymore. She couldn’t sleep much, but she could always doze off under any lighting, at any hour, even in the chaos of an overcrowded, noisy hospital.

Every day, the nurse appeared at exactly 6:38 a.m. Like clockwork. Morning always came with a lavish breakfast—boiled and bland. She never had an appetite for it or for any other meal. She shared the room with an older woman who often wondered aloud if she was married or had ever tried. The older woman had always tried to warm up to her, she tried everything to get the young girl to laugh, frown, or even cry. 

The white sterile walls seemed to strip something away, a fact that frustrated the older woman to no end. Only when her son came to visit did the older woman show any real emotion. He recognized her—he loved her videos, her dancing. The sweet swing she performed, timed perfectly with the metronome as it ticked beside her in the frame. He told her this while his mother gushed over the coincidence, beaming with pride at having the famous girl in the next bed.

But she didn’t gush. She couldn’t. Something gnawed at her insides, a feeling she hadn’t been able to name, but it surfaced the moment he spoke.

Lately, she found herself turning to her phone more often, watching her follower count slowly drop. It had been weeks now. The older woman soon left, and so did her sweet, kind-hearted son—or at least that’s what the 16:38 nurse told her. She blamed herself, almost as if she’d missed out on some kind of opportunity. Like she had been the fool all along, needing to be saved. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

This began to trouble her. At 16:39, she pulled out her phone and started recording. She bawled in front of a handful of viewers, ranting for over an hour. When she finally looked down at the screen, her viewer count had skyrocketed to hundreds of thousands.

She was a star again. She had something.

The next day, at 16:45, she started another livestream. This time, she ranted about the older woman and her son, nitpicking whatever details she could invent at the moment. And then they came—her stans, proclaiming her as a voice for the unheard. All those shut-ins, emotionally blunted people, came out for her.

She left behind those cold, sterile white walls and returned to something better—the warm earth tones of her apartment. She had them all wrapped around her finger. Their comments flooding in, shares skyrocketing, and money pouring through merchandise sales.

Interviews followed, praising her style, and her honesty. She wept on cue, lamenting her struggles. Her face now plastered on copyrighted shirts through collaborations with multiple e-commerce sites.

She had moved into a better apartment, bought herself better clothes, and now she was there—exactly where she’d always dreamed of being. As she walked down her picturesque streets, phone in hand, she prepared to say her last words to the screen. But before she could speak, she stepped off the curb, and a car rolled into her.

It took a few moments for her to realise what had happened. A crowd quickly gathered around her, faces blurring together, voices overlapping. She had risen higher than she ever imagined, but now she knew—it had to end.

They called her brave and told her they would wait for her recovery, but deep down, she understood it was over. The emails from agents, the DMs from sponsors—they all poured in. But she couldn’t move. Not anymore.

About the Author:

Thulaganyo Phala Sehuhula is a Motswana writer from the village of Serowe, Botswana. Their work focuses on community empowerment and grassroots organizing. Outside of writing and community work, Thulaganyo is an avid naturalist and jogger.