Countless - S01 E100

3 years ago

Countless - S01 E100

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 100

The memories of all the awful things I did to Jide, my friend, some years back all came rushing back into my shangoic brain like a tornado. I couldn’t help but agree that am the cause of my own undoings. However his twisted way of getting vengeance against anyone that have wronged him might seem extreme, I realized have technically earned everything Jide has and had done to me..

Or tell me, what kind of friend am I? Eh? Judging by everything I did in the past?

But one piece is still missing from this puzzle….how Jide found out that I stole Lola from him?

How? How?

I rose up and began pacing the breadth and length of the room while lost in deep thought.

The question kept echoing continuously in my mind even after I’d returned Jide’s diary to where I took it and laid flat on the bed, now staring at the ceiling as I kept on wondering how Jide knew back then that I duped him after snatching his dream girl away from him.

30mins I spent on that thinking task but still couldn’t come up with anything as to how he knew.

The only reason I was even able to remember what I did to Jide back then was because the day Jide first asked me to help him toast Lola coincidentally falls in line with the day our Biology teacher made a funny mistake during his teaching period on that day. He wanted to write Biology as the subject on the chalkboard but instead he wrote Batistuta. It was later we found out the reason for his mistake was because the above named Argentine legend was among the goalscorers that defeated Nigeria in the worldcup match that was played between the two nations on the noon of the previous day of that said day. Since then, the man had gotten that nickname. Mr Batistuta.

After several minutes spent on trying to find the puzzle from my past misdeeds, I resigned myself to the fate of the unknown and slowly closed my eyes for sleep to consume my weary body.

*****

I can’t really tell for how long I was asleep but it was the sound of my phone that brought me back from dreamland.

Pursuing the remaining sleep out of my eyes with the back of my hand, I slowly used my left hand to reach for my phone lying beside the second pillow and checked the I.d. It was Blessing.

“hello Darous….whats popping?” Came her soft voice.

“erm….am fine. Blessing…erm…hows Jide?” I queried expectantly now sitting properly.

“we thank Gawd…he woke up few hours ago….”

“whaaat?…” I shouted at the sound of that goodnews forgetting that I had to keep a low profile so I don’t give Bella and Bianca the slightest hint of my presence in Jide’s room.

“yes Darous….”

“wow!…thats goodnews….thats…thats really great….” I chuckled on for some moments before Blessing ended my chuckle trip with her next statement.

“I want to ask when you are coming here.” She asked outrightly.

“why?…is something wrong?” I asked feeling slightly anxious.

“nope…. I just want to come home and pick some cloths and stuffs for both of us and you know, it won’t be okay to leave him all alone here. He might wake up anytime.” She explained.

“oh….I see…..erm…you know what, just give me till….” I paused to check the dial of the wall clock. “eleven. I will be with you by then.” I stated assurely.

“ok bye…” She said obviously about to end the call but I quickly interjected with a question.

“wait Blessing….”

“what?”

“did he ask of me when he woke up?”

“who? Jide?”

“no…Donald Trump…. Answer me jor….” I said with a slight angry tone.

“sure…he’s the one that even asked to see you…he said he’s very eager to see you.” She stated and some moments of silence escorted her last speech before she spoke again. “can I end it now? Na borrow credit ah dey use o.”

“yeap…yeap….sure….see you later.” I managed to say.

“ok. Thank you Darous….Jide is so lucky to have you.”

“how I wish thats true. After everything I did to him in the past….” I murmured that to myself after she ended the call.

I had barely ended the call when two angry knocks landed rapidly on the door. I jerked back frighteningly confused on who might be at the doorstep and what could have warranted such heavy knocks by that hour of the day.

The knock landed again this time but it was Bella’s angry voice that accompanied it. Then it dawned on me that my earlier noise had Judas iscarioted me. In simpler terms, it sold me out.

“come outside you bloody bastard…you can’t hide in there forever…” came again with another level of anger.

If there’s one thing I have been able to learn since the inception of all my troubles, its how to man up to any new challenge. Knowing fully well that hiding inside the room won’t make this descendant of mother Eve go away, I quickly dial the number of courage and boldness to come and help me on this new ordeal have gotten myself into and fortunately the beating rate of my heart slowed down gradually just seconds later.

“oya…Chisom!” I said to myself just before I opened the door and stepped outside.

***

“after everything I did for you Darous, how could you have payed me back by sleeping with my sister?” That was the same statement Bella had been repeating the moment she saw me step out of Jide’s room.

The weather was quite cool and was getting ready to rain when I stepped outside and she met my emergence with series of fist-hitting on my chest as she continue to sob and voice out her anger on me.

She did managed to let me know how her sister had reacted bitterly when she showed Bianca my picture on her phone.

All my effort to make her believe that I didn’t mean to hurt her or her sister either proved futile and all I could do was keep quite and let her battery of anger shut down by itself.

Few moments later, it did shut down, cos all she did henceforth was sniffing. I then pulled her closer and escorted her to her room where we began a sobless and angerless discussion.

“I already told you that I didn’t know you guys are siblings…..I swear to gawd of….” I was still saying when I was interrupted by someone shouting my name from the compound.

“Brother Darous!!….please come o….I need your help ooo….”

I rushed outside immediately and nearly collided with a woman known as Mama Joy who was panting heavily at the door steps.

“follow me please…abeg…” She said and began running out of the compound and I instantly followed suit.

We got to the gate of her house and I quickly stopped her from entering the compound before I spoke.

“Mama J, whats the matter….you can’t just expect me to enter here without knowing whats going on?” I asked curiously holding the panting woman by the shoulder.

She managed to calm down a bit before she spoke out.

“my daughter said you once…told her that you sabi kill snake wella…”

“ah….that one….yes I did….” I answered instantly but before I could tell her that I was only joking with her daughter on the day I saw her crying bitterly infront of a chemist shop because she stepped on a very big earthworm that looks like a snake. I’d tried to pacify the girl but she won’t stop crying and it was until I had to tell her that I am an experience snake killer and that I often command most of the snakes I caught to kneel down and raise up their hands for thirty minutes before I kill them that the teenage girl eventually stopped crying.

“thank God I found you at home.”

“wait….don’t tell me you call me here because of snake.” I asked with a nervous look.

“thats exactly the reason why I came to call you. two big cobra dey the back of our poultry now now, dey don dey disturb my chickens for sometime now……abeg help me….” She ended with almost one knee on the ground.

‘chisos! This na serious palava o. Me wey be say na temple run mode ah dey always put myself whenever I see snake na im this woman come dey beg to come help am kill snake!…ah! Wetin ah wan do o…how I wan tey escape this palava o…ah Joy, na teenage thunder go strike your left yansh o.’ Those are the kind of thoughts that was playing in my mind during the short period the woman and I spent at the gate.

Before I knew it, Mama Joy had grabbed my hand and began dragging me inside. “lets hurry up before the snakes escape again.”

“wait…” I said wriggling my hand out of her grip. “I need to go back home and get a weapon.”

“which type of weapon?” She asked eagerly.

“erm….cutlass..”

“we have it here…lets go and get it…”

‘ah…you have it? Chai…ah don die today.’

“wait…you said the snake na cobra?” I asked trying to use a delaying tactics maybe the snakes would have ran away before we get there.

“yes na. 2 Cobras”

“spell it please. Kobra or co-orbra?”

“which one be spelling again? Please nao…I will even pay you some money if you help me kill it. Pleeaase.”

“its not that I can’t kill it, but I need to know the type of snake am dealing with. There is Kobra and Cobra. One is immune to cutlass while the other is immune to gun.” I paused to clear my throat. “There was a day my father’s grandfather came home very sick after he had gone out to help one of his neighbours to battle a ckobra. We used all the medicine in the house but we were unable to heal him. He gave up the ghost after three years of scrotum infection. Same thing happened to my mummy’s grandfather. We tried everything to heal him also but we couldn’t. Samething happened to my elder sister father’s grandfather… Samething happened to my younger sister father’s grandfa…..”

“am deeply sorry for your loss…but please lets go. I promise nothing will happen to you.”

“how can you promise me safety when you can’t even protect your own chickens…abeg shift make I go check if the stubborn snake still dey there.” I stated all that in my mind as I followed her to the poultry where she handed me a big cutlass and pointed a corner to me where a big Gee-pee tank was located.

“the snake is at the back of that tank.” She said and moved back.

I took a deep breath and prayed silently that the snake shouldn’t be there again.