“Okay, so I was going to ask you,” I said half confidently,
“why have you chosen to not go with this… your persuaders.”
Pointing a finger at his loin, and then recoiled it into a loose fist; “knowing that you have it, but crawling behind walls and its clefts like lizards retreating from the fury of catapult on your first attempt.
I mean, why should you rendered my face and that of Kyle’s for unsparing stony slaps?” I said with a lopsided smirk, the motive was to engage myself in a chat since idling would make me feel discombobulated in a situation like this, and only a mere suspicion could proselytize Jude and give me away.
“Point of correction, I never handed you over, you and Kyle are just a bunch of simpletons who gallivant around, devoid of vigilance, and of course, dumb.”
“Should you go about without vigilance, to begin with?” I just stare at him, my face expressionless.
“Knowing who are.” He sneered,
“And also, you should know; the emperor’s gang will never risk vulnerability without a purpose.” He adjusted in his seat, and with a serious face, he continued.
“And I should ask what you were thinking when the gates creaked open?”
“If not for your dissimilar but ingenuous mind, resisting adaptation that I had to plan a mild and unobtrusive operation to test the saint Ryker I need to meet up with standards, yet you messed up a big time.”
“Had it been the other way round, you could have grabbed a habad by now and taken the place I promised. And now, even if I overlook your lacking, you had managed to further screw things up with your loquaciousness.”
“How?” I asked, bewildered.
“I’d pretend you never asked that.” He said.
“Well. I never said much.” I argued.
“It might have worsened the case, should I say nothing. But the truth, I think had set me free.” I added with a smirk.
“Well then. The truth, I think should have completed the task by avenging your innocence too.”
“Were you not taught or you missed the lessons, during your elementary school days when they taught the abstract noun?”
“I think you should be confined into an abstract state too,” I whined.
“Shut the hell up, man!” He snarled.
“It’s obvious, you do not know yet what we are doing. Do you?” He protested.
My lips came together to articulate my reply to the ridiculous comment, “C’mon man! Why not?”
“We’re hitting on Mallam Kyari again, now armed!” I copied and pasted his words to him.
“Yan yan yan yan yan… (Sarcastic jargon used to mimic a disdainful utterance, usually coupled with irritated scowls.)” Jude sassed irritably.
“I am avenging my boys! Repaying Mallam Kyari’s household for the ruthlessness meted on my boys is the course of this operation.” He concluded as he cast a sharp look at his wristwatch.
For a moment, I felt intrigued, though the guilt of subterfuge engulfed my soft mind but, at the thought of threatening or torturing an old man at a gunpoint, I cringed.
“You’re such a dumbass, it’s almost unheard of,” Jude said over the silence.
“Really? Thank God it’s still on the verge of almost.” I said with a grin.
As the room came alive with loads of laughter.
“Let’s get going boys.” He stated in a commanding tone as he led the way, everyone stood and made to exit the building.
At least, it looks like things were working out as planned; I thought. I stood up sharply, and hasten my steps to catch up with him, moving snaky amidst the boys to get through.
“Hey Jude, do I at least get a Glock now?”
Blandishing him, like did I mean it. Far be it from me, that I sought notoriety by wielding a gun on a vulnerable household.
All my acts were to be a fulfillment in the plot.
“Glo– what!” He exclaimed, as a few of the boys listening in burst with laughter.
“I am no fool bruh” he muttered.
“Do I own a Glock myself? Besides, you’re still under supervision, I won’t entrust to you a weapon you’d split my boy’s brain with at a slight provocation.” He mocked.
Jude never speaks with a tone of familiarity if he is skeptical.
Therefore, I was feeling accomplished, settling his suspicion in oblivion. As I trod the path to an unexpected event for them with them in the dim, unfazed.
*****
Though my confidence had begun to decline gradually as we were coming close to the plan execution location, intermittently, I clenched my teeth and cracked my knuckles as we cover the distance that had confined us from Mallam Kyari’s compound I hated their cooperation more than ever, as we are moving under the impression that we were headed to a friend’s party. How could these lamebrains have thought I would be such a sycophant zounderkite, bootlicking for Jude’s intimidating and mind-occupying persona as they all do?
“On your kneel!” Jude swept a brutish resounding slap across Ali’s face and pushed him back into the scanty guestroom with such violence he bumped into things as he floundered backward, my stomach fluttered. Perhaps my vengeful spirit already seeks his comeuppance for his unsparing severe treatments to my face earlier.
Trying so hard to maintain a confident composure as Mallam’s sparsely lit compound manages to disparage the gloats of darkness embodiment on sight, I remembered casting uneasy glances around the vicinity solely aware of the imminent:
‘they should be lurking already’ I thought, I could never be more anxious, with each step that brought me towards the black mild steel gate,
I grew more fretful it became unbearable when Jude whistled and signaled to the boys and two moved swiftly ahead, hurdled over the hedgerow, leaped and climbed down to the opposite side of the fence, and open its gates for the gang to flourish.
(That was Billy and Eddie, what else were they good at?)