₦airaland Forum

[size=15pt]This is the season 1 of this series, seat and watch how things unfold.
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[b]
The following is the list of some of the writers who shall be participating in the Nairaland Writers Pre-collaboration:

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Chapter One:
LarrySun - Monday 23 February, 2015

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Chapter Two:
Ruffhandu - Wednesday 25 February, 2015.

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Chapter Three:
Fatalveli - Friday 27 February, 2015

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Chapter Four:
TiffanyJ - Sunday 1 March, 2015.

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Chapter Five:
ThroneKid - Tuesday 3 March, 2015.

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Chapter Six:
Stuff46 - Thursday 5 March, 2015.

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Chapter Seven:
Vonn - Saturday 7 March, 2015.

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Chapter Eight:
Simonhabby - Monday 9 March, 2015.

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Chapter Nine:
Kinwayne - Wednesday 11 March, 2015.

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Chapter Ten:
PureIvory - Friday 13 March, 2013.

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Chapter Eleven:
DUOz - Sunday 15 March, 2015.

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Chapter Twelve:
Tattesco - Tuesday 17 March, 2015.

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Chapter Thirteen:
Oruchechuks - Thursday 19 March, 2015.

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Chapter Fourteen:
Nimen - Saturday 21 March, 2015.

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Chapter Fifteen:
Queenelly - Monday 23 March, 2015.

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Chapter Sixteen:
Abosi31 - Wednesday 25 March, 2015.

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Chapter Seventeen:
Kenikazi - Friday 27 March, 2015.

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Chapter Eighteen:
Theorbiters - Sunday 29 March, 2015.

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Chapter Nineteen:
FigoMathew - Tuesday 31 March, 2015.

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Chapter Twenty:
*Adefaye Samuel - Thursday 2 April, 2015.

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If you have requested to be a part of this collaboration and your name isn't featured above, kindly contact either of the two e-mail addresses below so that the list can be modified.

1. Larrysun4real@yahoo.com

2. midyoungstar@gmail.com

Or send a Whatsapp message to

+2347066611666

Thank you, God bless you.
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[size=15pt]
Note: every participant should endeavour to check the timetable always and post their updates at due time to avoid conflict, Thanks. [/size]

okay seated . Let me watch how our talented NL writers will unfold things

Chapter One:The Red Paper
Written and Submitted by Larry Sun
(larrysun4real@yahoo.com)

The Present
Location: Lagos Island, Lagos State
Date: January 27, 2015
Time: 1133Hrs, GMT

The day had broken clear many hours ago, the immortal sun was bright and hot, but the breeze still managed to wash the air. A few small clouds, much like the little scoops of vanilla ice-cream usually sold by young men on wailing bicycles, endeavoured to drift lazily across the blanketing blue firmament above. Sometimes, the roaming clouds would desultorily travel across the face of the sun, and the world below would enjoy a few respite of coolness before the heat would descend once more to torment everything that slithered, crawled, walked, flew or germinated. It was this kind of heat that usually put dealers in umbrellas and sombreros in business. And it was under this scorching element that the strange young man was running for his life.

He was soaked through and through with sweat as he ran; perspiration trickled into the corner of his left eye, stinging him sharply, blurring his vision. He blotted his slick forehead with the sleeve of his shirt and blinked furiously to wash the salt out of his eye. He was getting tired but he must not stop running now. His life depended on how hastily he could make his retreat. More important than his own life was the laminated document he held in his hand; this document was more important than anything else. What was contained in the document could herald a new era of something spectacular. And it was quite astonishing that circumstances had subjected him to become the guardian of this secrecy. He knew of the terrible things that would happen if the document got in the wrong hands.

He looked behind him and saw his pursuers; five men, five armed men! He increased the speed of his retreats. He knew the men's mission; their intentions lied not only on retrieving the document but also to end the life of its unfortunate bearer, for the runaway man had known too much to be left alive. The runner, however, had sworn to protect the document or die in the act.

His pursuers were running towards him with weapons drawn; only two of the five men held pistols, the others weilded machetes with which they were all too eager to hack him to pieces. There was not going to be any room for negotiation or mercy if they caught him; the men would literally eviscerate him, they would gut out his entrails and split his head into two so as to make sure he remained undeniably dead. The bolting man tried to run faster but his legs were giving way, exhaustion was gradually overwhelming him; he had been running all day but the men after him seemed more determined to slaughter him than he was of protecting the damning document. The men must not get hold of the document, he must not allow it.

He ran into a dirty street, tripped over an aluminium can and picked himself up again. As he rose he thought about hiding the document among the junks, but he shook the thought off his mind. The trash was not safe enough; the document would be too conspicuous there. Even an slowpoke would easily find it, and the killers after him were no imbeciles; they were trained operatives whose main jobs were finding missing things and exterminating any living obstacles in their paths.

The pursued man cut into another street and ran with the little ounce of strength within him. He was desperate now, looking around to hide the treasure with him, but there didn't seem to be any safe place to conceal the document.

He looked behind his left shoulder, the pursuers were no longer running after him, they were now walking with full confidence. They had probably suspected his exhaustion. They walked with full swagger, as if they had all the time in the world. The street seemed deserted; everywhere appeared silent except for the few birds who sang occasionally as they flew hither and yon. Innocent civilians had run for cover on beholding five heavily armed men pursuing a lone runner. The running man was momentarily afraid. He knew the time had come for him to bade the world his farewell. He was very sad; sad not because he was soon going to join his ancestors, of course that was inevitable in the circumstance; he was sad because the men would finally be taking the document from him. And he found himself pitying the unfortunate living people who would witness and experience the horror the content of the document would unleash all across the federation. It would be a global but collosal catastrophe.

As he tried to run into a crowded street a shot rang from behind him and the bullet caught him in the neck.

The Past
Location: Abuja, Nigeria (Ten Kilometres away from Aso Rock)
Date: October 1, 1990
Time: 2200Hrs GMT

The assemblage occurred in a remote area of precisely ten kilometres from the Rock. From the highest floor of this magnificent cabin built only with wood, some of the builders had insisted on catching the view of the distant rock's peak. Now this gathering was a secret meeting, but it was not that kind of meeting where ridiculous rituals like a dozen men screwing away a lady were performed, or where members would place their vows as they drink from old calabashes the blood of goats, sometimes it could be human blood. Yet this particularly club was not one any of its members would publicly boast of belonging in.

Members of this fraternity (a group in which they had come together to name themselves The Common Men; and below their individual armpits, just above the ribcages of each one of them, was the gothic tattoo of the inscription TCM; no one knew about the existence of this gathering except, of course, the members) numbered exactly twenty. Each member came from each state of the federation, and they usually had this meeting quarterly. In the meetings, they usually sat to discuss the fates of the nation and her citizens. This night, however, was not their meeting night. But the appointed leader, TCM-13, the one from the federal capital, had summoned the members to this sudden meeting. Upon hearing the summons, each member had boarded the next available flight, while those who resided in neighbouring states had employed the services of taxi-drivers to drive them to the location; they never allowed their personal drivers to transport them there for no outsider must know about the existence of this sacred place. None of their family members must know, not even their wives were allowed that knowledge. Two years earlier, a member from Imo had made the mistake of confiding in his wife about the meeting. The member had met with a terrible fatal accident and his whole family was thereafter wiped out. Nobody knew about how The Common Men discovered this disloyalty, but the Imo man's entirely lineage paid dearly for his loose tongue. And within two months, another man from the state had replaced him.

Today, all the members had arrived before dusk. Today was a special day; this day was the celebration of the nation's thirty years after Independence. Something spectacular was going to happen tonight, every member knew, except only one who knew what was really going to happen. All the members, the twenty of them, spent the early part of the night popping bottles of champagne, laughing and cracking jokes until it was time for the meeting.

At exactly ten o'clock, the members were seated around a large rectangular table in a similarly large but narrow hall fitted with three burglary-proof windows on either side. The men seated here were in powerful positions, people prided to belong among the high echelons in their respective constituencies. For added security, members were forbidden to call one another by their names, instead, each of them was assigned a code name bearing the number of their states when arranged alphabetically. For instance, the man from Abia bore the code name TCM-01, while one from Lagos was TCM-13, the current leader of the group. Because of the revelation which was soon to be explained, the members never had their meeting in any state of the country, except here.

When all had seated, TCM-13 took his position at the far end of the large table, facing the entrance. The man was apparently the smallest and youngest person among the twenty members, but his position gave him an edge of authority, and no member dare look him in the eyes or disagree with him, for any act of insubordination would warrant instant death. Any member from Lagos was usually the luckiest member. The room became totally silent when the leader took his seat. It was really great to be a leader; but sometimes, leadership could be a dangerous privilege, every member knew that, TCM-13 knew that. Just eleven months ago, his predecessor from Lagos had suffered a Caesarean fate; all the members had connived against the man for disagreeing with them over a mere pecadillo, and in the next meeting, each of the nineteen members had come into the hall with a knife, and they had collectively stabbed the leader to death. They had thereafter cremated the body, ground it to ash and scattered the dust into the air. Then they had later replaced the leader with the current one.

TCM-13 stood up and addressed the men.

"I welcome you all to this august gathering. I will go straight to the reason why this meeting was called. It just reached my notice that there is going to be a shift of the nation's capital from the West to the North and..."

"How sure are you about this news?" TCM-06.

The leader glared at 06 and said, "I will oblige you to allow me finish my words before interrupting me."

"I'm sorry, sir."

"It mustn't happen again," 13 said and continued, "My sources told me that this shift shall be taking effect by next year. I'm sure you all know what that means, don't you? Abuja will be the country's new capital and that means new leaders shall be hence appointed from Abuja here. I have no qualms about that; in short, it would be a welcome development since some more states would be created and new members would automatically be initiated into the group. But before this shift in power and the initiation of new members next year, we have to put various things in place." He reached into the briefcase and extracted a document which he placed on the table. Everyone stared at the document as if they were seeing it for the first time.

"This is the original and only copy of the Red Paper. The future depends on what is printed on this document. But it remains invalid except it contains the names and signatures of the twenty of us seated here tonight." He picked up the document and raised it up for all to see. "As you can all see, it already contains my name and signature. My name is hereby written in the book of history. You all know the significance of the Red Paper, you all know its singular importance." He stopped and stared at the astonished Common Men, he could see the fear in their eyes, the doubt, the terror. He smiled. Everyone knew what was at stake when he agreed to become The Common Man. Now it was time for them to show their mettle.

"So, what do you say?" The leader asked, "Are you all ready to become parts of the future? Show your identities, prove your bravery to the next generation. Come on, we are The Common Men!"

TCM-13 pushed the Red Paper forward and each member, with shaky hands, wrote his name and signed. Soon, the document contained the names and signatures of all the men in the room. The leader collected the document and returned it into the briefcase. Then he stood up, went to the wine bar and extracted a fresh bottle of wine and three glasses, he placed them on the table and sat down. All the nineteen men stared at him, confused, as he uncorked the bottle and poured the wine into the three cups. He did not drink the wine, neither did he offer any of the men. He stood up again and spoke:

"I have a very sad news to tell you all. An outsider knows about this group. I'm sure you all know what that means. One of us has said what he shouldn't have; he has confessed the secret of this group to an outsider. We have a mole in our midst; but the most unfortunate situation is that we don't know who talked among us. We all know how dangerous for this group for a non-member to be aware of its existence. We have no choice but to correct this error, but there is only one way of doing that. Just sit down and relax; there is no cause for alarm, everything is under control."

He sat down, closed his eyes for a few seconds, opened them, sighed audibly and called aloud, "Come in."

Three hefty men, each armed with an AK-47, stepped into the hall. The time was gradually shifting to the hour of eleven.

"Lock the door behind you and bring me the keys." TCM-13 ordered.

The men obeyed as instructed. When the bunch of keys was handed over to the leader, the man flung the keys out into the dark night through the window; they were all locked in the room.

TCM-13 smiled at the nineteen terrified members and said, "Because we are all forbidden to directly take lives, I have therefore requested the help of these three gentlemen to do us the honour. They are going to make us matyrs. I congratulate you all for not only being a part of history but also of the future." He turned to the armed men and said, "Take the Holy Communion."

Without any question, the killers drank the wine.

"I'm ready." TCM-13 said, spreading out his arms. The men instantly riddled his body with series of bullets. Then they turned to the nineteen Common Men and shot them all. The floor soon became a pool of blood and the table littered with bloody pieces of the victims flesh. The corpses of the slaughtered members lay in different grotesque positions. There was no survivor.

Shortly after the massacre, the killers also slumped and died. What they drank had been poisoned. The poison was not in the wine bottle but in the glasses.

**************************************

It was already midnight when the seventeen-year-old boy arrived at the location. As instructed, he had come in through the paths in the bush that surrounded the arena. He would have reached there earlier if not for the twenty-five litres of petrol he had been instructed to bring along.

He set the heavy gallon down and moved to the wooden cabin. He peeped through the window and beheld the corpses within. He was not surprised, the man who had approached had informed him about what he was going to find here. He later searched around the areas of the windows, the man had also told him that he was going to find a bunch of keys. He discovered the keys under a leaf; it was almost entirely covered with the fallen leaf. He would not have found it if he had not come with the battery-powered torch he had also been instructed to bring. He unlocked the door with the keys, tentatively stepped into the room and over the corpses until he reached the briefcase that had fallen on its side. He retrieved the document in it and retired from the room.

Before leaving, the boy doused the corpses, the interior and exterior of the cabin with petrol and set everything on fire. The fire burned fiercely; flesh cooked and burned, the building burned and collapsed, until what remained thereafter were charcoals and charred fragments of the cremated corpses.

The boy did not wait for the inferno to dull; he walked away with the Red Paper, the most important entity, something more important than any single human. The boy had been appointed to be the guardian of the Red Paper. He knew what he had to do; another fraternity would have to be created somewhere else. The legacy must live on.

The Present
Location: Lagos Island, Lagos State
Date: January 27, 2015
Time: 1200Hrs. GMT

Irele walked out of the supermarket with a basket bearing her purchase. She stole a fast glance at her wristwatch and discovered that it was exactly noon already; she was amazed, she could almost not believe that she had spent almost an hour in the store buying just few goods. She chastised herself for this; next time, she would have to get her priorities right. Time was too precious to waste on the purchase of body spray and some other apothecary of toiletries. She had a lot of tasks to achieve before today ended; although shopping was one of her plans for the day, she didn't think it would take so much of her time.

Then, as she was approaching her vehicle, she suddenly heard the sound of a gunshot close-by. Irele was momentarily scared and ran to her car. She was not the only person running now; there were people screaming and bounding for safety. Hawkers threw off their trays and made a run for their precious lives, traders ignored their goods and took to their heels; gifted cartoonists would draw comical pictures from this tumultous setting.

Irele, like the bolting crowd, did not wait to confirm the shooter or who was being shot. The sound of the gunshot alone was enough to tell her not to linger around; she had heard more than enough stories of victims of stray bullets. She quickly unlocked the door of her car and got behind the wheel. She set the key into the ignition and started the car. Just as she was about to pull into the road and speed off, a bloody but dangerous-looking man suddenly appeared by the door; his neck was gushing out blood and he managed to speak in a guttural voice:

"Please, help me!" His eyes were pleading.

Irele screamed at beholding the bloody man. The man's shirt was soaked with blood.

"Please, help me!" The man said again, he was pulling desperately at the door.

Irele wanted to drive away but remained frozen with inaction. She was scared beyond any action. She didn't know what to do. Here was a man begging to be saved, but Irele didn't know how she would be the stranger's saviour. The man continued to desperately pull at the door and Irele resumed her screams. Then series of gunshots came again. The man had been hit in the back; his eyes opened wide as blood escaped from within his mouth and rushed to his chin and chest. But before he fell down dead, he dropped something he was holding into the car.

Irele was not seeing what the stranger had dropped; what she was seeing were five armed men approaching her vehicle. She quickly pressed on the accelerator and sped down the deserted road.

The five killers reached the dead man and searched his body. The document was not found. They didn't have to be told that the man had dropped the document into that car speeding down the road. The vehicle was now too far away to catch its plate number.

"The Red Paper is in that car!" One of the men lamented.

"We are doomed!" Another man exclaimed.

"No, we are not," said the third killer, "I know the lady behind the wheel."

The End of Chapter One

huh lala o ti wo

Whao, nice beginning Larrysun

Nice piece. Some of the descriptions are a bit flowery though, at the start especially.

DanWrites:
Nice piece. Some of the descriptions are a bit flowery though, at the start especially.

DAN i am waiting to see your participation in one of the collaboration series.

Dyoungstar:
DAN I am waiting to see your participation in one of the collaboration series.

I will. I promise to follow this one to the end.

Hello Larrysun, you are too much. But you have put people like us on a high pedestrian mood. A very marvelous start I must say. Kudos!

ruffhandu:
Hello Larrysun, you are too much. But you have put people like us on a high pedestrian mood. A very marvelous start I must say. Kudos!

Ruffhandu check the timetable above and see for yourself what task is ahead.

Dyoungstar:
Ruffhandu check the timetable above and see for yourself what task is ahead.

My head dey there bro, but you modified it. I'll continue from where Larrysun stopped.

Good story Larry... Nice start

Chapter Two: The Unplanned Vacation
By
Ruffhandu (cebillieonwu@yahoo.com)

Location: Lagos Island, Lagos State
Date: January 27, 2015
Time: 1303Hrs, GMT

Irele drove furiously and with little control. Her fright had driven away almost every smidgen of coordination she had. She was on auto pilot. Her right leg shook occasionally, exerting more pressure on the accelerator than was necessary, jerking the car even faster. Her thoughts ran wild, and with little or nothing to make out of the whole drama, her confusion sent her mind on a mission, which would be aimless if not to find the reason for the wanton extermination of life. The road seemed free and deserted. She soon found her car speeding towards Orile, jumping potholes like a sprinter and caring little about the instructions of the traffic lights; she was on auto pilot after all.

As soon as she veered off the Badagry expressway, her sense of coordination began to roost. She had jammed the left pedal to the floor of the car, jerking her forward, when she almost hit a little boy playing with a motorcycle tyre along the road. It then dawned on her she had not strapped the seat-belt on; during the near miss with the boy, her chest had almost slammed into the wheels. The thought that she had driven very far away from the killers afforded her some relief, availing her opportunity to think like she used to, normal. It was then a song filtered into her ears from the car radio. Her auditory system had been on exile, shut down by excess adrenalin.

Her 2012 BMW 7-series had been configured to wind down the two front windows upon opening the car whenever the car had been left outside in high temperatures. Irele had requested her car be programmed as such due to expert findings that ultraviolet rays from the sun knocked off benzene from plastic and leather surfaces in a car. These could become carcinogenic if not vented before the air conditioner is turned on. That explained why the man was able to drop the paper into her car in the first place. A hidden pang of regret hit one dark corner of her mind, regret of the automatic winding down of glass; she could always vent the car herself after all.

She turned into Makanjuola street, after wading through many busy, dirty streets; the narrowness of the street keeping her senses alert, enough to drive through without knocking down wares displayed for sale by the road, or ramming into pedestrians. Once, she cast a glance at a roof and the infra-red rays that snaked cloudily into the air just above the corrugated metallic surface reminded her how exposed surfaces scorched in the sun. It was then she realised how drenched she was in her sweat. Her car air conditioner had not been turned on. She brought a white handkerchief from the basket of toiletries from the supermarket, and wiped her face. It would be useless to turn on the AC then, so she just wound down the windows.

She pulled up in front of No14 and turned off the engine. She stared at the paper lying carelessly on the passenger seat of her car. The sight of a blood stain on a corner of the paper sent cold shivers down her spine as the image of the murdered man came rushing to her memory. She blamed herself for not whisking the man off to a hospital. She picked the paper, her hands shaking visibly, and stared at it. It suddenly seemed to be a chasm spinning a miasma of death and callousness. She could only see names and signatures, and as she stared further, trying to concentrate, a monster seemed to jump out of the paper and she dumped it on the floor of the car immediately.

She knew her brain was playing tricks on her, she knew her being was still wired with horror at the moment, and so she decided not to look at the paper again. She thought of shoving it off her car into a dirty water channel, but on a second thought, she decided against it, at least to fulfil the wish of a dying man. What she was supposed to do with the paper, she did not know, but she knew she had to seek some answers. The paper still lay carelessly on the foot mat when Irele got out of the car, locked it, and headed into the building. Her colleague, Tina, lived there, and was on maternity leave. Since she put to bed, Irele had not visited. She had not planned visiting Tina that day, even though she had procrastinated the visit severally.

The short walk into Tina’s apartment gave her a huge relief. Tina was excited to see Irele, her supervisor. She pranced around her room like a puppy wagging its tail to welcome its owner. Irele tried as much as she could to relegate every disturbing thought to the background of her thoughts, but little was left unhidden; she looked unsettled. Tina did not bother asking many questions as she assumed it to be the supervisor-subordinate relationship the office had drowned them in. Irele was glad Tina didn’t ask her too many personal questions, a perk of being a supervisor. She struggled to allow her some concentration on the subjects they discussed, but barely managed to carry on the conversation.

After a short time, which seemed more like an eternity to Irele, she stood to take her leave. She seemed more relaxed than when she walked in. She said a very short prayer for the baby, gave Tina some money, and bade her farewell. On her way to her car, she saw some boys loitering around it. Her heart skipped a beat as she thought of the paper. It suddenly became an asset she was ready to protect. One of the boys pressed his face on the glass window, cupping his hands above his eyes so as to survey the car more clearly. They stood aside and stared at her when she pulled the door open by the handle. It had unlocked automatically as she approached it.

She fell in behind the wheels and locked the doors. The boys shifted as she turned the car furiously, and drove away; the fear of being waylaid was not hidden from her face. They looked on foolishly like a hunter who had failed to shoot an antelope when he'd had the chance, only to watch the antelope lazily graze at a safe distance. She looked at them through the rear mirror, wondering what they were up to. Gradually, she relaxed as she headed to Marina, where her office was. She had promised her colleague, Nakun, she would come and hand over duties to her properly. It was unfortunate that her annual leave had already begun, she was too busy to hand over the previous day, she had worked from another location. .

As she drove on, her eyes caught sight of the paper. She pulled by the roadside and picked it up, avoiding looking directly at it, like it would plague her with some pestilential malevolence, and tucked it under the passenger seat. She continued the drive to her office. She pulled her car into the space meant for staff of her cadre. Her office complex sat on the sixth floor of a twelve storey building, artistically painted blue and white. As she stepped out of the car and about to head to her office, she suddenly decided she would show Nakun a new powder she'd bought. Something nudged her inner self, and she decided to also talk to her about the red paper and the incident that took place earlier.

She pulled out the paper and threw it carelessly into the basket, locked the car and headed into the building. She was a bit nervous, and because of that, decided to walk up the stairs. The elevator made her literally want to shit in her pants sometimes. She knew she was not all fit to ride it at the moment. She was panting and breathing heavily by the time she got to her office; On a good day, she climbed leisurely through, enjoying every bit of it. But this day, she had all but run upstairs. She consoled herself that the climb was enough exercise to keep fit since she did not engage in any other form of physical fitness. Irele was a dark-skinned beautiful lady, tall at 5.9 feet. Her bright eyes at the background of thick eyelashes gave her face an appealing appearance. She was well-shaped too: slim, long legs, round bulging behind, and a front that would compete with her for space if she decided to be an athlete.

At 28, Irele had no boyfriend. Not that she was a born-again Christian, but for her unique olfactory acuity which was as developed as her intelligence: If Irele were a scale, and smells weights, she would be able to measure weights to Nano units. She had been told she inherited the trait from her grandmother, whom she'd never met. It was said her grandmother was regularly called upon to assist locating a snake, or a shrew, or such animals, when they ran into a house. Irele had never learned how those animals smelt, but she could locate a cockroach in a large house by its smell. Over time she had learnt to suppress the urge to complain about some offensive smells; her friends had accused her of being mischievous in some occasions, even though they happily used her to identify unlabelled chemicals in the lab when they went for practicals.

Two of the smells Irele could not bear were bad breath and body odour. She'd had a few relationships in the past, but none had lasted; They had had bad breath. She bought Mike, her first boyfriend in the University, a mouth wash and tongue brush, as part of her birthday gift to him. She did not know how to tell him about it, but their first kiss had made her feel terrible, like the raw smell of his breath was suffocating her. Thereafter, she would not let him kiss her again, with an excuse that it aroused her indecently. She would urge him to use the tongue brush regularly, and the mouth wash any time she was with him. The kissing resumed. But one faithful afternoon, after Mike had sat in the lecture room from morning till around 2pm, without any food, mouth reeking of halitotic insignia, he found himself in her room. Since she couldn’t resist Mike’s kisses anymore, she had let him kiss her. After that kiss, she had sent him an I-need-a-break text message. And that was the end of the relationship.

All pleas by Mike fell on deaf ears. The end of the relationship did not sting him as much as his ignorance of the reason for the end did. Irele had wondered how people suck other people’s stinking saliva and still remain alive, she would die someday. She had tried to tolerate people around her, but it would take more than making up her mind to break her disgust toward offensive smells.

When she first started working, her supervisor had body odour. She had almost resigned because the man had insisted she brought her desk close to him so the internship would be easier. Irele had struggled to stay through, leaving her desk for ‘fresh air’ at every slight opportunity. Her supervisor had complained one day that she abnormally kept to herself in the workplace, which was not a good practice, but Irele asserted herself as she made him understand she was just trying to cope with the job. She was so relieved when the supervisor was transferred. On many occasions, Irele had been accused of being discordantly dissociative in the midst of womenfolk, because she did not view things the way they did, especially about men. As great as her sense of smell was, it often caused problems for her, so she had learnt to keep to herself in some things.

She exchanged pleasantries with Nakun as she got into the office, setting to work immediately. It didn’t take her time to finish with the handover, and then she wove into the powder matter seamlessly. Nakun suddenly became stiff and focused on Irele, fixing her a look of suspicion. When Irele enquired what the matter was, she asked her if she had any trouble with the police. Irele denied such. After Nakun tried without success to extract any useful information that linked Irele with the police, she then intimated her that some five men came looking for her and they said they were policemen. She went ahead to tell her that only two of them entered the office, even though she noticed the others who stayed in the lobby were part of the team.
“They promised to call back after I told them you would be around soon. They wouldn’t tell me anything other than showing me their ID cards,” Nakun narrated, a little high-strung.
Irele nodded distantly. She suddenly felt a visceral mix of discomfort and anxiety. A bitter taste rushed into her mouth, and as she swallowed, spittle became scarce, and her mouth dried up, almost instantly. She bade Nakun farewell and told her to tell the police to wait till she resumed. As soon as she threw a couple of strides, she felt something wet in-between her thighs.
“Gosh, this thing has come to embarrass me,” she muttered to herself.

Irele went into the convenience, just by the passage. She had gone in with her basket which contained a toilet roll she'd bought. She was very glad she had bought the roll. As she was cleaning herself up, she heard footsteps rushing past, as if people were taking to flight.
“They said she just left, perhaps she used the stairs,” a voice said, footsteps rushing toward the staircase. Nothing else came to her mind but the police Nakum had talked about. Why are they looking for me? She thought. Her heart began to race as soon as she connected the men looking for her with the murder she had witnessed earlier.
Perhaps someone had seen me. Perhaps they even know I have this document. Her thoughts were on the brink of running mad.

She glanced at the paper, and her will to protect it steeled. She peeped through the toilet door, after the footsteps ceased, and slipped through the hallway. She all but jumped down a flight of stairs to stand near a window overlooking the car park. She saw five men standing around a car looking around; it was her car. A frisson of surprise swept through her initially, but when she observed the men closely, she noticed one of them was among the men who shot the man earlier. She saw her spirit leave in fear, but she summoned it back into her with a little courage she didn’t know she had. She realized she had gotten herself into some deep trouble.

She walked up the stairs again; She almost couldn’t climb it. Her strength was drained and she floundered as she moved through the passage. She thought it safe not to talk to Nakun again since she suspected the men would come calling again, yet she did not want the innocent girl to be dragged into the mess.
What? Am I guilty? I’m also innocent. She thought to herself.
She took the fire exit that led to the very poorly lit basement. From there she could see the men loitering around the premises. One of them was rooted in front of her car. She waited. After about thirty minutes, she saw the men breaking into her car, ignoring the anti-theft alarm.

“These are not police men”, she said to herself, shaking her head slowly.

They opened the door and started searching. She let out a shout, but did not let it escape her palms covering her mouth. She was helpless. She saw determination written all over the men. She knew they were ready to stop at nothing to get what they wanted. The fierce and bellicose-looking men, eyes bloodshot and looking more dangerous with each passing moment. Irele thanked her stars she was on leave and made up her mind to abandon her car there. She managed to jump through a low window in the adjoining block directly connected to the basement. She then made her way through a narrow passage to Adesanya street, where she joined the sea of heads.

She walked to the bus stop and joined a bus heading to the street of her apartment. She walked into her apartment at No2 Adeniyi street, a two-bedroom flat. Her sitting room was tastefully but sparsely furnished: A beautiful set of leather-clothed settee that formed an arc around the large room; The leather was black in colour, which blended into the white walls and wine-coloured flowery curtains with a blend of fuchsia fabrics; A DVD player sat, neatly sandwiched in a compartment of a glass stand situated in front of a large screen on the wall. The ambience of the sitting room was like the bottom of an ocean, at peace with the world around it, while turbulent waves raged at the surface of the ocean. The room was innocent.

Irele hurriedly rushed into her bedroom, dropped the shopping basket by the bed, and started packing some clothes into a black bag; she did not forget her sanitary towels. She took out a pair of shoes out of a rack hosing twenty others, and threw it into the bag. She opened her purse to confirm her ATM card and her IDs were intact, then threw the purse into the bag as well. She carefully tucked the red paper in-between two satin dresses. The carpet caressed the sole of her bare feet as she moved back and forth inside her bedroom. The standing fan stirred the air, assuring Irele that she could trust it to keep any secret. She regarded the fan for a while, and considered sharing her ordeal with it. But again, she did not want to drag the innocent fan into it.

She placed the bag on the bed, thinking what and what not to pick. As she packed, she often raised her dress to peep into her pant, as if her sense of feeling had gone numb.
You need to get out! Her mind reminded her.
She picked up the bag, turned off all switches and disconnected all electrical cords from the wall socket. She usually did that whenever she left the house, though she had forgotten to do it that morning. She had been preoccupied with her schedule for the day, especially her date with Samson. She had acceded to his invitation to visit the cinema, hoping they would get along well without the asunder-putting bad breath or body odour. Samson was cute.

She walked briskly to the kitchen, where the adamant and undaunted hum of the deep freezer and the refrigerator slapped her ears. She silenced them, disconnecting them as well. Nothing perishable was inside. Satisfied that all was well with the innocent house, she locked the door behind her and threw the key into a side pocket of the bag and zipped it
Soon after she joined the street and took her left, a taxi pulled up by the building from where she'd just walked out, and three men alighted. As one of them paid the driver, the other two ambled into the building. The building had no fence, and the address, “No. 2”, was boldly written on the exposed wall. Irele saw them, the same men that vandalised her car, and hurried further away.

The main road was not far from there. As she entered a taxi, one of the intruders spotted her. He had waved the taxi they came in off and was about to join his accomplices when he caught sight of Irele.
“Hey!” he yelled at her, waving frantically at the driver behind the wheel in front of her. It was too late however; the taxi had set in motion. Irele looked back in time to see him waving to beckon on his other associates. The theatrics of the men running to the road, getting smaller as the distance between them grew, set memories rushing to her thinking faculty, which was how they had stood helpless when she drove off on them earlier. She instructed the driver to take her to the local airport. It had suddenly dawned on her that she was on the run, and she didn’t even know what the whole drama was about.

She had an uncle who was a police man and lived in Port Harcourt. She would have called him on phone to discuss the matter at hand, but she saw it also as an opportunity to go spend a vacation in Port Harcourt, away from the rigours and stress of Lagos.

She was in time to board a plane. Soon after paying exorbitant fees, and tipping one of the attendants, the plane was in the air, en route to Port Harcourt city. The ordered heads of passengers jutting out of their seats in the plane formed meshes of solacing sight to Irele.
She thought about the red paper all through the flight, save for a short time she invested her thought in her scheduled date with Samson. She was beginning to scrape off the cocoons of self-guilt that had denied her freedom of her own thought since she witnessed the killing.

Location: Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa, Rivers State
Date: January 27, 2015
Time: 1740Hrs. GMT


As soon as the plane touched down, she picked a cab and, after settling the fare and her destination, she relaxed behind the driver to enjoy the ride. She felt her phone vibrating in her bag and she suddenly realized she should make calls with it. Nakun was calling.
“I have been calling since, where are you?” she sounded languorous, and a streak of worry was evident in her voice.
“Sorry, I went to Idumota” Irele lied. She had decided not to trust Nakun, for the time being at least. Not that she thought nakun had any plot against her, but she could be used without her knowing it. Irele felt no one else but Nakun had given out her residential address to the invaders, and she feared she had also given out her phone number.
“Did you see those guys, they came back as soon as you left”
“No, I didn’t. Perhaps they were inside the building when I walked out”
“But your car is still here”
“Yes, my boyfriend called me while at Idumota to come to Okoko. I thought it not wise to drive that distance. And now, we would be travelling to Abuja for a wedding scheduled for tomorrow”
“Your boyfriend? A wedding on a Wednesday?” Nakun asked, her question rang with suspicion. She has never heard Irele talk about a boyfriend.
“Yes, a court wedding” Irele answered, undaunted by her growing string of lies. She did not bother clarifying her colleague about her supposed boyfriend.
“Did you say boyfriend?” Nakun wouldn’t let that slide.
“I’m not supposed to have one I guess, perhaps I was referring to yours ” she said sarcastically. Nakun saw through that and buried the matter immediately.
“Ok. Sorry. when will you be back?”
“I don’t know” Irele replied curtly.
There was a pause on the line. Irele suspected foul play, but she didn’t know what it was.
“Nakun, please buy a car cover and cover my car for me, I’ll soon be back”
She heard a heave of sigh from the other end and took it to be that of resignation and defeat. “Text me how much it cost so I’ll reimburse you online. Thanks a lot” she said and ended the call without waiting for Nakun’s assent. In fact, she did not care if she granted her request or not. The car can get stolen for all she cared.

She looked at her phone screen and saw 21 missed calls, many of them from unknown numbers. She called Samson to call off the scheduled date. He was disappointed but she knew she had more serious issues up her sleeves than trying too hard to please a man who may turn out to be repulsing to her with a barrage of offensive smells. She called her Uncle, Mr James, and informed him she was on her way to his house. He was excited and eager to receive her. She had feared he would be angry she had not informed him earlier.

The image of the bloody man came flooding in to her mind. She thought of how she would have been by him in a hospital, interviewing him when he was strong enough. She shook her head at such a waste of youthful life. She had not planned it, else she would have known what to do. But here she was with a document she understood nothing about, save for a list of names and signatures of unknown people. A document that might have led to the death of the man, a document he had clung unto till his last moments, entrusting it into her hands to ensure it remained safe. It was the same document that had denied her of a luxury of sitting side by side with Samson in a cinema hall, watching “Mr & Mrs”, together. Perhaps from there she would have started learning how to live with people with bad breath, or perhaps Samson wouldn’t have bad breath. The same document that had sent her on this extemporaneous trip to Port Harcourt; it had tumbled her whole life, all within a few hours. But she was confident her Uncle would be of great help.

The End of Chapter Two

Brilliant, Ruffhandu, abso-freaking-lutely brilliant! You kept the tempo high. Your choice of words is beautiful, your sense of description amazing. You've given the succeeding writers enough angles to work on. Well done.

LarrySun:
Brilliant, Ruffhandu, abso-freaking-lutely brilliant! You kept the tempo high. Your choice of words is beautiful, your sense of description amazing. You've given the succeeding writers enough angles to work on. Well done.

Thanks Larry. I'm just squatting in your shadows.

wow u guys are doing well.

Ahh, ruffhandu just did it. U re superb

wow. One wouldn't know it was written by a different writer

larrysun nd ruffhandu! kudos
a nairaland writers collabo cn neva disappoint u
#N.B my space is not for rent or sale

welldone ruffy, dat was superb!

This is incredible. What better start could a story have than this, I just hope the other writers are able to keep up this gravity defying tempo. Larry, you're a god; whoever carved your literary intellect is one helluva sculptor, being able to write like you someday would be a dream come true. Ruffhandu, your style is dangerously beautiful. Well done guys.

Cheers!

(Just finished reading the Nl writers Collab. For 2013 & 2014)
This Nairaland writers-collaboration is the best thing that happened to NL. Believe me this task is not easy at all...wow am really enjoying this nice flow of events.
Sir Larrysun you are the Best! For bringing up such a wonderful and brilliant ideal i duff my hat...and also my magnificent writers, i say ona weldone! For the good work. Keep it going...am following bumpa to bumpa

Nice update ruffhandu.

Top drawers!! Respect Larrysun and Ruffhandu.

Good Job

Wow! These two guys are just too good. Nairaland has stuff: LarrySun and Ruffhandu, splendid!