Published on aerogrammestudio.com

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The Agulu Crocodiles

Chapter One

I ate too much eggs.
I must be sick. Must be.
I limped along the MM Agulu’s promenade, smugly farting.
I guessed no one noticed my silent wind breaks.
They wont anyway. Everyone seemed carried away with their take on the Agulu lake’s scenery. I heard a few mouthing it possessed a hypnotic beauty. Their camera phones snapping away till infinity. A twenty something beauty wearing a white top, a black Vera Wang skirt and a killer faint smile begged me to snap her and a man with eyes that goes right through you. I refused with a frown and moved on.

I hate pretty people. S-hit, I hate guys that get the immaculate girls.

A small gal pointed at a swarm of cuckoos cackling across the lake in the far distance. She immediately turned her back against the boat’s railing reminiscent of those children who know how to pose before a camera at an increasingly young age, thanks to their parents’ quirky obsession with capturing every moment on their fucking cell phone. Her mother cooed instantly. Alright baby. Stay still and she snapped multiple shots. One man said the lakes green background will surely high light the girls navy blue dress.
Stupid greenery.
To me, it was a verdant madness. Shrubs, aerial roots and water. And I might have got the Norovirus. I belched audibly enough. The fifth time in two minutes.
Maybe, I was just lake sick. Lakeophobia you might want to call it. No, I gulped down 12 eggs. Twelve eggs in a sitting, could you imagine.

The lake cruise was the ultimate prize for a geek fest, ostentatiously sponsored by Governor Wilson Obano, and forever intimidating in the foreground was the fifteen storey luxury hotel with a grand portico adorned in imported Sicilian marbles.

I was expecting monetary prizes not this fucking boat ride.

I belonged to the university contingent that won the renewable energy slug fest. Participants were drawn across five universities dotted across the South East.
My team, comprised of five blokes and a girl with slabs of fat on her sturdy legs, neck and belly, were rewarded with tickets to an hour long hotel tour and Lakeside Riviera. Of course, batteries of politicians came along too.

The party was, well, hot for most.
Wilson Obano, decked in an Ankara suit bearing his grinning head, popped champagne like Jesus was locked in a cabin somewhere and mandated to perpetually turn water to the sparkling bubbly stuff.
It was a marvel no one was embarrassingly drunk yet.

The Eggs came before the champagne - Hard boiled and with servings of tomato abused Jollof rice. Those ominously fine eggs was Wilson Obano touting the success of his much advertised expansive poultry farm. He had always boasted Anambra could feed the nation with just eggs in two years if a famine should ravage the land.

So we were forced eggs, plenty of them.

White linen clothe draped tables with chairs arranged for six along the wide promenade. Conically arranged on stainless steel bowls, the eggs were the center of attraction for each table. Thirty Hard boiled , possibly GM eggs.
We cracked and gulped them with relish.

Oluchi, the girl with the rolling slabs of fat, surprisingly picked just two eggs for her jollof.
I was ravenous like a hen house Python. My rational mind had tried to intervene but i quickly rebuffed it.
I am considerably lean, not fabulously athletic so why not consume as much you can. Its free Protein and you are just clocking twenty eight - Bleep cholesterol, Ogadi, I advised my cautious mind.
So the eggs, 12 of ‘em, met the murky waters of my stomach with satisfactory plops until now.
The lunch had been 30 minutes ago. My stomach was already contemplating both Latin and Ibibio at the same time.

The cruise boat moved sluggishly over the calm lake like a crippled Biafran veteran. MM Agulu was a two-deck-high floating raft with three giant 16-cylinder Wärtsilä engines which would, at full power, each burn 377 US gallons of fuel an hour.
I heard it was assembled in China particularly for this occasion. It smelled of new polish, tarnished with the cheap scents of politicians.

Chapter two


I was increasingly becoming uncomfortable.
I have rushed to the lavatory area six times before now but I could not feel the need. I had pushed my rectal muscles, trembling for the familiar feel of excreta crawling their way out but noting came. My rectum was as free.

But my belly felt like someone punctured it with a vulcanizer’s pipe and pumped it full with helium.
And to complicate things, the fat girl and one of the guys start trudging towards me. Oh Dear Jesus and blessed Tabansi, Could you make me disappear now. I cant afford to have anyone near me this moment. Not with my every six minute flatulence.

The duo were in the thick of some argument, hands gesticulating widely, and with the intent of their stride they must have located me prior from our table. I was clearly in their line of sight. Chineke, I cant dodge.

“Its not even diplomatically possible” the boy had said, his baritone gonging and making a few heads turn.
“I saw it. Saw the flag icon even, not just the name.” the girl was indignant with conviction.
“I’ve forgotten their web address but i was fucking sure, I saw it clearly”
“Oh, don't be ridiculous” the baritone voice owner was shaking his head at her like the presumptive nerd he was. I don’t particularly like him. I think if you ask him, he’d say the feeling is mutual too. Boring nerds rarely gel.

They were now upon me.

The girl half panting with the exhaustion of the argument and the broad walk.
“Ogadi, whats the url of that volkswagen site?”
“Volkswagen site?” I questioned back, near stupidly. I had stifled a gaseous rectal push.
“The one displaying the Biafran flag as a link alongside the Nigerian Flag”
“Oh, I cant really remember”. I feigned ignorance. Biafra is as touchy a subject as one affirming Fulani herdsmen are born marauders.
“Ask Google” I forced a non-chalant shrug. I shifted stylishly to one leg, resting my weight on the sturdy railings.
“ You bookmarked it remember” she fixed me with her big eyes.

Oluchi’s eyes were Disney big, always lined in thick mascara and were her most alluring assets. Right now they were viciously daring me to make her loose the argument and face her wrath. Indeed I bookmarked the said url.
Quickly, I swiped out my phone and tapped the Opera icon. I gave her the web address and hoping earnestly that they would disappear and leave me alone with my tormenting flatulence.
Another one was in the works. Oh God.
She shouted with a vindictive swell.
“I told you, see for yourself, blockhead” She flashed her phone’s screen over the guy’s face. Fat muscles juggling everywhere.
The boy’s look was comical with disbelief.
“how can that be? IPODs must be in their midst”
“Dey there, the Biafran thing don get international waves. Now my five hundred naira. Gimme, gimme gimme.” she thrust out her supple hand, shifting her humongous body like that actress in the Empire TV series.

I moved away from them as they go into another bout of argument. I thought they were finding each other attractive though they would rather swallow toads than openly confess it. And gratefully, I had felt my rectum informing me, of it getting solid stuff up it’s walls.

I head towards the promenade’s end, the junction that cuts straight into the gangway. In there was an adjacent corridor. A door marked the corridor’s entrance and above it was a universal sign indicating that it lead to the lavatory.
Of the six times I had rushed through this space to the door with the sign, it had always been lonely.

But someone stood in that gangway now.
No, he was leaning on the railing.
No, he was holding on something.....his long thing, I mean its hard not to observe how long it was. No matter how you shut your mind from trying to take note. Somethings are hard to un-see.

And, oh Blessed Tabansi, what the fuckery? The guy was jerking hard and he was a Road safety corp. His head thrown back, mouth agape in a silent moan.
His body wracked in sensous spasms , hands willing his phallus to come quick .
He was in the throes of it, momentarily lost in the whole shit. How could he not calculate his chances of getting caught in this public but lonely gangway? The question flashed on my mind. Eyes still locked on that throbbing long phallus.

I moped stupidly at him, jaw unhinged in shock awe.
Flatulence fled for the time being.

One stifled grunt and he came.
Drops spilling on the chrome railing, over the chrome railing, and into the calm greenish lake.
A few found their way on his khaki black trousers, on his issue combat shoes. I wondered briefly how he would explain that to any observant eye. Ofcourse, he’d clean before coming through the promenade, stupid.

He momentarily left his phallus to do its dance unaided -and that was when his head revved up and saw me.

I felt caught, ashamed, terrified almost.
Its like coming home in the middle of a fine early afternoon to find your parents on the sofa doing 'it' - when they think they have the house to themselves.

He was ashamed too. You can see it written large over his face. Shame and an admixture of something I couldn't really grasped at that moment enveloped him. He was so in thrall to his shame and shock at that moment that he did not pull back his still dancing organ for almost ten seconds.

Courtesy demands that I should flee. My legs were as rooted as an Iroko.
My eyes refused to divert themselves from the unzipped trousers. It took a space of ten or twelve seconds and then they start reverting from the man’s eyes to his now getting lax organ.
Man’s eyes. Lax phallus.
Lax phallus. Man’s eyes.

My brain was in molasses , processing several things at once. A lever of emotions - shock, a silent outcry, faint cognizance, a far fetched analysis of his actions from an old psychology read - whined though the dammed brain.
Then it hit. The brain has a way of getting things in a jiffy especially when occasioned by the unexpected.
I know this guy. You caused my mother’s death.

A cemetery of pain filled imagery blew open in my brain.
You forced us onto a parked tanker...You caused the steering wheel to poke into her loving chest. He chased us with his issue bike, a four minutes chase that had mother driving off her lane and nose diving into a parked Capital Oil tanker.

I remembered the screaming voices. Mother moaning Jesus before her voice was abruptly silenced. The cries for help by the onlookers. Mother bleeding profusely, her head dangled over the steering wheel, the dashboard heaved crudely against my knees. Camera phones snapping away our tragedy.
Lights, UV lights. Nurses.
Twenty stitches on my knee caps. Masked Doctors. Titanium rods to support my pelvis.
Daddy turning a drunk because of the loss. Our loss.
Mother’s funeral.
The cause of my disguised limp, the potential of impotence...my crucified confidence.

This is the man, My mind reeled. Its him.....

I remember the deep furrows of his brow, the sunken eyes, the pink lower lip, the determined fury of a scorned road safety corp, that look that says ok since you refused to stop, I am going to chase you till you tire.
He ran from the scene when he saw us mangled against the tanker’s tail lights. He ran for his dear life to avoid getting lynched.
But I remembered his fucking face. You would always remember the face of your mother’s killer.
I curled my fists. White hot hate boiling off my knuckles.

I don’t know if he had seen the recognition, seen the tensed stance of my body but it was a prompt for him to withdraw his tentacle. He zipped himself, awkwardly moving his mouth. I guessed he was trying to make up a convincing excuse for his voyeurism.

I Wont care. My mind was blind with fury. And I uncurled after him, propelled by hate and the exhilarating force of revenge.
My flatulence forgotten. My stomach was no longer into Latin. It belched vengeful English.

Naturally, a tall six feet man with a belly pouch and a paramilitary training can easily smash down a lean civilian with a disguised limp. But the nigger did not respond. He simply braced hims . His fleshy chest dulling the impact of my fists like a pillow. His mouth in a tight remorseful line.

I pommeled him with angry knuckles. Hot tears blinding my eyes. Hot tears distorting my vision as his phone flew off his hand and went off the railing into the calm, calm lake.

Instinctively, he had turned to reach for it. His body at angle 45 over the railings. This did noting more than to infuriate me. It was a slight, my mind raged.

So I summoned all my will in those gelid seconds and hurled my weight against him.
It was a blind flash of events. Noting really that coherent.

The tall man flipped over on impact. His boots smashing involuntarily into my chest as they moved over the rails. And I could have followed in situ, but sheer luck and perhaps the impact of his boots forced me to braced against the sturdy railing, twisting my right hand’s wrists and forcing lightning up my elbows. Inertia is a deadly thing.

He fell head first into the Calm, calm green lake. The splash dulled by a new bass heavy rendition of Flavour’s Ada Ada by the ferry band.

Chapter three

He was all shock at first.
His dripping face tells it all as he surfaced above the foamy water. Then, the face wanted to be angry. You could see that tentative build from primal surprise to swelling anger.

I would have smiled smugly, laughed in that fulfilling sense of schadenfreude. I wanted to even unzip my trousers and piss over the railing, aim it directly at him if I could.

Revenge could have been properly served and topped in a stream of golden champagne laced piss. But my eyes caught movement under the water.
Dark shapes swirled. Dark homocercal shapes moved fast towards him, all underneath the once calm greenish lake surface.

Panic was a grass-cutter gnawing away beneath my forehead. I pointed sharply at the water surface. A look of confusion washed over him briefly before his mind registered.

Then he disappeared abruptly beneath the lake’s surface.

Panic seconds.
He reappeared again, chest thrusts upwards and with a painful scream, muffled by splashing water.
Three Huge crocodiles thrashed upon him like petulant children fighting over a Ben Ten toy figurine.

He screamed like a child. Bloodied Water sprays rose in amplified waves as the crocodiles thrashed and swirled.
Flavour’s Ada Ada Boomed across the promenade.

I was sick. Truly sick.
My flatulence came back full throttle and that long willed feaces escaped my anus and stained my under pants. I felt the hot wetness but it barely registered.
I was filled with regret. I was so madly scared. S-hit
The reptiles clamped their massive jaws on him. They could never believe their luck. They fought over him madly. He screamed in primal fright, once he was dragged underneath and propped up grotesquely again. Huge sick gashes across his abdomen.
His eyes searched for me briefly, I could taste their plea for help, any kind of help.
I couldn't stand it.
I dashed away from the gangway, banged against the door into the corridor. I had to use the lavatory....must.
His dying screams ...booms of Ada Ada, the sounds of the crocs fighting over their toy - their reptilian grunts of blood lust...ranged perpetually in my mind.
As the corridor’s door closed behind me, I could pick the sounds of rushing voices. People alerted by the thrashing water, I guessed.