23.58.17.2.11 (THE LOST NUMBERS)
THE TENSION in house number fifteen Palmview crescent, Osborne estate was as dark as a gloomy storm. There was fever in the duplex owned by Simon Arowofela. He bowed his head in fear and couldn’t look up at the terrifying looking men who had paid him a visit tonight. They were stern in all ramifications with not a cause to smile. They were fierce with no class.
It was all like a haze, a blur. They shouted and commanded the act in the sitting room of his house. He wasn’t even listening anymore. Perhaps because of the intense slap they had conquered him with just as they entered or because he was lost out of the scenario.
It was the tallest one who commanded the plot of all that was happening. He was apparently the most restive of the three men who were visiting. He was standing and speaking with so much effusiveness that you may just have preferred him to be an actor than actually the armed robber he was playing tonight. He said his name was Thomson. Evidently he didn’t look like a Thomson, and it only seemed to be a name to fit the act he was playing for the night.
The other one who was seated in the sofa adjacent to him, busy chewing a gum and saying nothing was referred to as T-Blow. He wore a dark shirt that had written on it in bold white, FUCK WITH ME AND FUCK WITH YOUR DESTINY.
The third one of the armed men was a fat man who looked more like a man who needed to be at the gym than the criminal he portrayed. He was the complaining one. He was complaining about everything, about their time of invasion, the house they had decided to hit, when they would leave… he complained about everything and anything. He wasn’t the type for this operation. He was simply called Fatty. His real name may just have been Fatai.
Thomson was checking his wristwatch every minute. He seemed to be a cautious-of-the-time type. He spoke about time as if it was always a disturbance and was never enough.
There were three others in the room, ladies he had picked at Oniru beach to come pump his evening up. They had never expected this. Why would they have followed him to come and meet these angry thieves who felt insulted by everything?
“Now will everyone please shut up,” Thomson ordered. “I don’t have time for this. I should be with my wife in the next thirty minutes given her a forty minute fuck.” Only god knows if he truly had a wife. He pointed his pistol at one of the women who didn’t know any other thing but to cry ‘Jesus.’ “Now will you shut up? It will take you one minute to die from any of the bullets from this gun.”
Fatty was standing there hissing, his chubby hands on a rifle. He didn’t look like someone who could shoot a chicken. He trembled and continued complaining as he stood watch by the door.
Thomson approached the owner of the house, Simon. Simon was a forty something year old man who had never planned for this. His balding head reflected that. The pistol was pointed at him. “Where’s the fifty million naira in your keeps?”
He managed to look at the terrifying face. It seemed undeterred by his pitiful countenance.
“It will take me approximately two seconds to pull the trigger of this gun. Please don’t make me do it?”
“I don’t have the money here,” he stammered.
“You don’t have the money here, how long will it take you to bring it here?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” He pointed the gun at one of the ladies and squeezed the trigger. Her head pulped like a rotten tomato, blood oozing out steadily of what was left of it. Her body dropped lifeless on the floor.
That was a shocker, too sudden to be perceived. It was a cracking gunshot that had quickly rephrased the thoughts of every hostage in the room.
“Now it will take me another two minutes to get a better answer, am I clear? Where is the money?”
He didn’t know if he had the words to give an answer this time. Would it have saved a life if he had never answered at all? But he felt the question reverberating in his brain. It throb his mind with incandescent thoughts. Was the end near for him?
A week ago he had been a low class real estate agent begging for the next big client to come rent one of the houses in his care. He was nothing then. He was only a man who begged to be delivered from his many debts. How so much he had wanted to be saved? That was before the numbers had arrived, the numbers that instantaneously changed his life and shot him to outstanding wealth. The numbers…
A WEEK AGO
MONDAY 9:05 A.M
Simon woke up from his bed in a mini apartment. A mini apartment is one that has a bedroom, a sitting room, a kitchen, a bathroom and toilet. It was to the comfort of a single individual. He hissed at his loneliness, how would a mature man in his forties still be sleeping alone? He hated this inconvenience. He hated his life. He managed to drag himself to the bathroom and took his shower.
He wondered if this day would bring something different, why pour so much energy into it? Business had been on the downside of late. February wasn’t the highest point of the year. How he would do anything to change his financial status.
He dressed up and got out of his house, as he was leaving the phone call came. It was his ex-wife. She was never a joy to the soul. And for her to be the first person calling him on a Monday morning, that spoke volumes. He picked the phone. “How are you doing Asake?” he said.
“You must have forgotten poor man.” That was Asake, she was always looking for a way to insult him. She didn’t even greet him. “Your daughter is getting married this Saturday, how can you forget? Are you so poor you can’t remember?”
“I am sorry Asake, it escaped my mind.”
“Why should it? If it’s not because you don’t have anything to contribute, why will you forget? Well the family of your in-laws will like to see you before the wedding. We will be meeting them at their house on Wednesday. Don’t tell me you are not coming?”...
ABOUT AJEGUNLE
AJEGUNLE is a fast paced collection of five stories weaved around the most populated slum in West Africa. BLACK AND WHITE takes you into the slum like no other story has and strikes you with characters that just can’t deal with the maze of a tough neighborhood. THE LOST NUMBERS is every gambler’s passion as Simon strikes lucky in the National lotto. A FOOL’S PARADISE is a ‘yahoo’ boy’s tale. THE WISH is a condemned inmate’s battle with an injustice. And in AJEGUNLE an assassin at the top becomes the target of every other thug.
Casey Imafidon in this book titled “Ajegunle” paints a picture of daily life in Lagos and uses Ajegunle as a place setting. Comparatively certain elements in Ajegunle are seen in the larger picture of Lagos State. In a collection of seven stories which fictionalizes real life struggles and issues which residents of this slum and many other slums across the world face, Ajegunle speaks from the heart! Ajegunle is a home to over three million residents. It is the most populated slum in West Africa.
To buy AJEGUNLE for as low as N180 download the app OKADABOOKS on your I-PHONE, ANDROID, BLACKBERRY from your network’s app store. If you are using MTN text OKADA to 131 and get it for free. Search for Casey Imafidon’s Ajegunle and buy. You sure would read the book more than once and be glad to have it on your phone.
Casey Imafidon is a writer, filmmaker and a media consultant. He has ghostwritten books for several major players in the industry and knocked deals with M-net, Jungle Filmworks, Urban Touch Entertainment, Real TV, Eagles and Angels production and other production outfits. In 2009, he released his first book titled EFFECTS and it is available on all online bookstores. Currently a managing executive for Venus Media Ltd and still consulting for TV outfits locally and internationally, he lives in Lagos and Abuja.
You can contact Casey Imafidon via email Caseyimafidon@gmail.com
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