Sluggishly, I stressed my feet to push in last,
‘here is the real deal’. I just could not turn back now, I wish I could.
‘I doubted it if I won’t clasp a bullet with my brains tonight, Jude doesn’t faze and he won’t go down easily!’ I pondered. I surely knew the package in wait for me if this plot bloops, He’s good at what he does except for absolution.
But now I cannot, it’s impossible to relinquish this stint of patronizing the emperor’s in this cumbersome plot that toys with lives at this point, perhaps the thin possibility of extrication would pledge allegiance.
Stanley had looked back then stopped while I was sluggish to enter into that compound, as I was pondering and calculating the odds against making it out alive, he turned around and gesticulated, “c’mon Rye, we’ve got this!” He enthusiastically encouraged,
What an Idiot! Got the necessaries to be comfortably satisfied, yet he was devoted to crime. Should his father come home this Christmas in preparation for it, and the post-Christmas celebration into the new year, he should rather prepare for a funeral but if lucky, would end up parading the police station extemporaneously. I presumed!
I gathered enough wit to follow suit and paced across the carpet grass to the threshold of one the biggest farmhouse in Balltown’s downtown.
Randy, the gang’s hyperphagic fatso had pounded straight up beside Jude munching potato chips, Jude was standing adjacent to him as he beat at the door as if to bash it in. Soon the knob clicked and Randy quickly made way for Jude before the door finally opened, Ali, a dark complexion young man in his late twenties of average height robed in a brown, white striped short sleeve V-neck thobe. His short dreadlocks look unkempt, had emerged through the entrance wearing an annoying and irritated scowl which Jude had wasted no time to wash off his face and replaced it with a shocked and trembling countenance.
Thanks to his overpowering slap debut.
That had enriched my confidence, as I felt avenged!
Abashed, now Ali was on his knees as he grabbed with his right hand the hand that clasped the stricken side of his face. Looking so defenseless as the boys poured in all possessing a handgun, of course, I am be opposed to the inept juvenile mob.
His left little finger strayed across his face, as he scanned the riot of boys; our eyes locked as I stepped forward slowly. I smirked and nodded to the shock in his eyes, ‘be rightly served Mister’ I said within me.
“What a weakling with an itch on his palms to slap!” Jude mocked him.
He barely completed his speech as Mallam Kyari in his late sixties, already gnarling with age (not yet ripe for the gnarling age but guess, any peasants, especially of the penurious farmers’ caliber would not care to gnarl their skin if they had to, in order to avoid the craters of poverty for life) appears to the scene in a grey checked deep blue Polo and a trite midnight blue casual shorts, clutches clumsily at his staff as he moved out of a room drowsily, rubbing his face.
Willy one of the three of Jude’s sworn boys, in an indifferent manner, walked briskly towards Mallam grabbed and violently pulled him by the arm prompting him to thrash about wildly he unconsciously let off his staff: what it rendered was a disservice, he had dragged him so hard and released him to faltered forward and bumped into his son, which had provoked Ali to neglect his fear and rushed towards Willy only to stop abruptly as he faced the pistol Willy cocked and pointed to his face, his breathing ceased.
“No no no! Please don’t.” Mallam pleaded with a seemingly mawkish sentiment as he kneels but with a posture that seated him on his calves, “Please, I beg you. Do not!”
He reiterated, gesturing virtually both with words and all possible body movements that can communicate his plea and imploration.
“You don’t want to do this boys. C’mon!”
Ali voiced out with such egotism,
“Really? How sure are you?” Jude countered as he made some determined strides toward him.
I was already envisioning a heartless sanction Jude is sure to pass on him for pronouncing those words.
“What do you want?”
“Please,” Mallam muttered weakly changing the topic and reinstating his focus.
“What do you want?”
“Please,” Jude said sarcastically, mimicking him, as he turned, walked towards, and squatted stylishly to hold his gaze.
“Oh really? Do you —”
“Kiss the floor!” Willy’s hectoring voice garnered all attention suddenly as he commanded Ali, and he made to hit him on the head, but he grabbed him by the elbow and pushed him back in two long powerful strides then clears Willy off the floor and had his pistol depart from him.
Ali rushed to grab the gun,
POW!!!
but he was conciliated with a bullet in the thigh from Jude’s barrel.
Startled! My eyes opened wide as he lost his youthful balance and wobbled to the ground groping his thigh with such agony I felt his pain.
His brown garment has started to drench downward in his blood deepening the intrinsic color of the thobe.
Willy started up and in his wrathful countenance and kicked him in the face so hard Ali shrieked and cursed.
“Please do not kill him, whatever you want but spare us.” Mallam wept sheepishly as he shook with terror.
“What have you got to offer?” He sneered.
“Apples? Grapes? Cherries? Oranges? Plantains?”
“No, I’d prefer Bananas.” Randy jeered heartily as he passes judgement on some snacks he’s provided himself with.
“Not only. Banana island should do, what do you think?” Wolfe the top critic amongst the boys with an irrationally misanthropic perception of people’s idiosyncrasies, hyperbolically sassed him with the question that provoked virtually everyone to laugh.
“Say something, old bag!” Jude barked!
Screwing his gun barrel to the old man’s skull.
“UHM! No no.” Mallam flinched, filled with terror.
“I got mone– money, there’s is money.” He was trying to say as he got choked on his word.
I was full of pity and rage simultaneously I cannot contain my anger as I was forced to step forward, “Jude, take the gun off him, you scared him enough.” I said with a determined face as I was already displacing the pistol away from the old man’s head.
“What?!” He grunted. I saw the shock on Mallam’s face too, perhaps he never thought I could return to his abode in the company of armed perpetrators. I never did too!
“Yeah! You heard me bruh, he has been served just enough, perhaps overserved now” I said pointing towards Ali who pitifully was grunting and fondling his thigh “enough.”
“Moreover, if Kyle was a good narrator he should point out the fact that Ali, tortured us and not this old man.”
“And do I say so? Has anything been done to him yet? He said closing the gaps between us,
“Are you stupid?” He bellowed.
“I warned you but you kept biting more than you could chew.”
“Why won’t you listen? You keep provoking me bruh!
Now you’re telling me not to ask for my dues!”
“And the man asked you what you wanted, he just told you he’s got money. Must you prove to have got your nuts under your shoe?” I protested without even allowing him to finish with his faulty claims.
“What is screwing with your head blud!” He was vociferating, as my brain would interpret what are those tiny sensations; he was subconsciously spatting as he pronounced his point of view with much vigor, as he did with his gun the same thing he had done to Mallam to provoke my opposition to action.
“Well, I.” pointing to my chest with such meanness, “got slapped and Kyle also, who I am already representing like you’ve proposed, and now, I hereby say it’s E. N. O. U. G. H…!”
“Do not kill someone on my behalf,” I concluded as I held the barrel of the gun he’s been pressing to my head, as he babbles and brought it away from my head,
“Just shoot me bruh, don’t give me an unnecessary headache.” I wittingly uttered.