This story centres around the narrator and his strange encounter with a human-like creature that served him diligently until the table turned for the worst.....what happened?

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This is a fiction and fantasy. Readers discretion is adviced.

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Following....... 1000%

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Following.....grab chair

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It was on a very sunny and hopeless looking day like it has always appeared to be, I was sitting infront of my mother’s kiosk where she displays food stuffs for sale, I thought of my life and my future which seems to be on a stand-still, I couldn’t belief I was still jobless after three years of graduating with very good grade in the higher institution and serving my fathers’ land with strength and faith…. ‘Faith my foot’ I muffled with disgust. At the age of 27 years I still hadn’t find my bearing in life, I felt my life was best compared to a dry leaf surfing carelessly in the midst of great wind. There I was sitting all alone and trying to blame the government for my uncertainness of purpose as I felt my parents had no financial responsibility on me again.

“Is this how I am going to continue living my life without a job and hoping on my parents to feed me?” I rhetorically asked within myself as all hope of living my ‘Wizkid and Davido’ kind of lifestyle seem to be crumbling at that moment. I felt pinched and cheated by my government who ought to provide her youths with the necessary social amenities to enhance and encourage self employment “but no, dem go sidon yakata on top arm-chair dey swallow public fund, na God go punish dem!!” I caused aloud into the hearing of my mother who was busy picking grains of beans from a flat tray into a small bowl for one of her customers who had come paid earlier for it in the

“Shey ko si”? she looked up at me and asked

“Ko si ma, mo kan ka iroyin kan lori phone ni” I lied after I had quickly pretended like I was reading something of importance on my phone. My parents already have their own problems to deal with and it seem of no good for me to place my own ‘wahala’ on them. My father an aged retired civil servant with unsteady pension and my mother a trader of foodstuff in her kiosk not far from home, my three elder siblings all gone to various big cities to ‘hustle’, one of my younger siblings was a final-year undergraduate and the last one was an apprentice to a popular fashion designer few miles away from home.

Beside my mother I sat scoping through my phone, the job section on the nairaland forum was my popular site for suitable job search and it seems my luck was taking too long, as I was buried to my phone, my mother stood up to inform me she would be going out to go meet one of her customers. I was left alone and I kept myself busy by reading interesting stories on the literature section on nairaland, after a while, I raised up my head from my phone and surprisingly saw a man standing right in front of me, he was neatly dressed in a pure white ‘Jalabia’ with a white cap resting on his head, he wore a white palm sandal, a weird looking white goatee hung firmly below his jaw. The strange man appeared so weird in his all-white outfit but not as weird as his complexion which appeared so dark like a black coal. My first glance at him got me so frightened that I jerked up on the chair I had sat. I had to quickly comport myself and assure myself that he was just human in his unique form.

“Chai, dis guy black o!” I exclamated inwardly

“Good afternoon young man!” the man greeted in a fluent Queen’s English which got aback

“Good afternoon sir, what would you like to buy?” I politely reciprocated and unnecessarily asked just to prove to the strange man that I could do better in the world of ‘Queen’s English’

The stranger looked so surprise by my question, he had a weird facial expression on him like a man who had been seriously insulted. Then suddenly he took a step closer towards me and intensified his stairs at my eyes and that got me feeling so scared and unsecured.

“M..um…I’m …I’m very sorry but how…how may I be of help to you?” I asked in a shaky tone which betrayed my pretence for confidence. Worst still, the stranger got his eyes glued at me like an escaped lunatic, but my fear sky-rocketed when this man asked

“Why have you sent for me if you don’t know me”?

‘I don talk am, dis guy na cooperate lunatic, he must have escaped under the disguise of a good outfit’ I thought as I looked behind me to see if he was actually referring to me or an invisible creature….and yes, he was actually talking to me.

“are you talking to me sir” I asked for reassurance

“It is you young man that I am talking to and I ask again, why have you sent for me if you don’t know me?” clearly he repeated and that simply confirmed my fear.

I wanted to scream and teleport out of sight but I fear for the unknown, who knows what this insane man is capable of doing. Like ‘pinky and the brain’, I quickly scanned for a way out of my mystery. So I decided to play along and act like I understood what he meant.

“Oh…oh…yes…yes sir,…um…um… I was the one who called you just now, you looked so much like someone I know but I realized it was a mix-up, I am very sorry about that sir” I acted all wimpy. The man stretched his head a little towards me to sniff the air like he could smell my quick cooked-up lies.

“You lie!!” he said abruptly with rage in his eyes.

‘dis one na real phyco o!!....I had better beat him to his game’ I fearfully thought as I re-strategized and went for another attack of lie

“Sir you see” I timidly started “I really called for you because I felt bored sitting alone and thinking of how hopeless my future seems to appear, so I needed someone to share my problems with….like they, a problem shared is a problem solved”. I couldn’t believe I told an escaped lunatic the truth about my life, truly I’ve got problems but telling a complete alien my problems wasn’t part of the plan.

This stranger took a step backwards, knelt to one of his kneels and spoke queerly with his head bow slightly towards the ground “You have just spoken the truth, now how do I serve you my master?”

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