₦airaland Forum

thronekid:
Here wouldn't be ideal. Kinwayne is on the whatsapp group, he'll be enlightened more when he turns up, okay?
Y dont you join us there?

It ok, you'll do just fine with that. Ok bro, thanks all the same.

thronekid:
Once again, You wouldn't understand!

An explanation would do bro, none here is too daft to understand.

kinwayne:
Thronekid has already finished posting his own episode 5. What use is mine again? I'll just delete everything from my notes like I never typed it

@ Kinwayne,
I think you should post yours, Thronekid has withdrawn his. It is natural to feel bad, but mature to overlook

LarrySun:
Phew! In all my life, I've never read so brilliant a work of literature by a Nigerian as this. This is the 'rawest' talent there is.

Damn me to hell if I don't call on those who know literature to view this amazing piece!

Ishilove, Texanomaly, PrettySpicey, OMA4U, Whitemosquito, Royver, Ruffhandu, Simonhabby, Nuges11 and Princesa...please meet the great Mollusco! He's my big brother, we live together...I learn a lot from him. I'm glad he's finally decided to reveal himself here in Nairaland.

To hell with Soyinka, I aim to achieve Mollusco's literary skill. Watch out, sir, you've got a literary adversary in me . You know I've been cautiously tracing your steps since the past four years.

May the Good Lord preserve you for me; we'll stay true to our vows and dazzle the world together.

Dickens must have felt wants of men when he forced Oliver to ask for more! Bro, since you've been keeping your manuscripts well away from my reach, I'm eagerly asking for more here.

Hmn, a dictionary and absolute concentration would ease a lot on this for an enlightened mind.

SexySapphire:
I'm finally back. Thanks for asking after me candy darling. I'm feeling so esctactic with the turn out of things now. So Tade has been spending money on another man's children and wife!!! Kikikikikikiki(evil laugh). The idiot is so gonna lose on both ends. Bola is just a smart player.

How are you sure Bola's smartness would land her on a soft ground? How are you sure she is not her baby papa's maga? All of them, except my Wande and my guy Segun, are all mumus.

Good for Tade, gold-digger being gold-dug!

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.

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

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.

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.

It have be for Chuka, no more eriri. perhaps he'll start having savings now, unless alcoholism will hold him captive.

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.

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!

candy:
The line in question is just telling us he was just tolerating her because of the twins. No love for the sister, at all.

I really don't have the time to read through after typing, I just post. What I do is come back to read and edit whenever I can, or if my attention is drawn to any error.
.

I thought there was a mistake there and thus drew your attention to it for correction, save if it's OK.

candy:
Chapter 13


Ibadan


*****

"So, can I finally get my dream car and my dream house?" She asked him

"You know chief Mrs Williams is still a major share holder. The company's running cost and a certain percentage of every deal, still goes into the company's account, making it difficult for me to ..."

"What? You are the chairman." She reminded him. "And you told me mrs williams had loosened her grip since the birth of the twins."

"Yes, but..."

"More money for you means more for us!"

"Ok, how much are we talking about here?" He asked. He found her irresistible and despite Wande's twins, he was not drawn to her physically or emotionally. In fact, he found Wande more repulsive, fatter and shabbier. Her twins, the only reason he could stick her. But Bola had it all. Beautiful face, killer curves, taste and all.

"Let's say N10M?"


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

Hello Candy, pls check the bolded, don't really get the import of the line.

Nice use of your mental power Chinweblinkz

Modified