Mayday – Is Anybody Home?

photo credit goes to http://www.gdefon.com/

Hello people. Welcome to the first Oladimeji Ojo short story of 2014. One of my friends read this in advance and she’s been trying to convince me to make it a series. Nah bruv. 2014 is the year of short stories.

We hope you enjoy this. Please share with friends, family, frenemies and enemies. Drop comments too. We love to hear from you and please sign up for email notifications. You can find me on Twitter @istalkwriters.  We love you.

P.S. If you haven’t read The secret lives of Baba Segi’s wives by Lola Shoneyin, get it. Great book. Let’s support Nigerian writing this year.

— O.O

Strike that! I did succumb. This story is now the first part in a 6 part series scattered around the blogosphere. For old hands, to follow the breadcrumb trail, click the link at the end. For newcomers, welcome to Mayday.

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The house had been there since independence, but very few knew where it was.  It was the sort of place you could not find except you knew where it was and no matter how many times you asked the mallam down the street he definitely had not heard of the close you are looking for.  It was the only house in the short close, backed by the water, surrounded by a large compound.  The close led out to a crescent, that crescent to a street, one of the many that led to Bourdillon drive in Ikoyi, one of the many tributuaries to its Niger.

Oluwafemi Ajayi stared at the house for a long time before going in.  It was beautiful, large in the way that mansions customarily are, but it wasn’t a 24 bedroom ode to excess and fine living, it was a cottage on steroids, an oversized bungalow, the kind, he thought, you would expect to find in Texas.  They say everything is big in Texas. The house was framed by matching columns on the front, exposed brick work at the corners, the only blemish to the faded white of its walls.  Around the base of the building, a small pond was home to a perfect file of water lilies, all open as though welcoming the just risen sun.

For Femi, the house was a dream, the ultimate symbol of a life he wanted but which had danced gaily out of his reach, he had resigned himself to the fact that his portion in life was to visit this other side of the financial spectrum but never be able to call it home.  It had not always been that way, while studying engineering at the university of lagos, he had nurtured dreams of a job in a multinational, a salary he couldn’t finish spending, the good life.  Six years after receiving his certificate and a handshake from the University’s Vice Chancellor, he still hadn’t found that job despite his Second Class Upper and his mother’s assurances, she was sure of it, her  pastor had prophesied it.  The only engineering he had done so far was on their ailing generator when it ran out of oil, needed a spark plug changed or just obstinately refused to respond to his entreaties.

Eventually, femi had tired of waiting on the Lord and enduring in his faith. He set up a small enterprise.  He figured that everyone needed something lifted or moved but most people were too rich, lazy or entitled to do it themselves, even his father who was barely fifty five found reaching for the remote control at the end of his seat too tedious and would often summon him to do it amidst a grim reminder that he was afterall, good for nothing else.  Now, he helped people lift and move, wash, iron, clean, whatever was needed, exactly the same as the overweight ageing women he had given his clothes to wash at N50 a shirt all through his university days. ‘Any work’, they called them, the only difference was that he had a website and there was no toddler clinging to his ankles or strapped to his back.  

He had gotten the order to work here two nights ago, the time stamp read 12.47am.   the message was short and to the point, he would be required to clean and arrange the house, his fee would be paid.  He replied in the morning after having his breakfast and his father’s latest serving of insults which was just as regular.  He usually charged N5000 for a cleanup but the address caught his eye, South West Ikoyi meant money, he tripled the figure.  The reply didn’t come till the next night.  It was shorter than the first, asking him to come the next day, there was no talk of the fees. Femi wished he had asked for N20,000.

The house was empty except for femi and his assistants.  Friends who had, like him, learned that dreams didn’t always come true and adopted the philosophy of the crayfish, submitting to condition.  They usually helped him out on the more difficult jobs and he rewarded them with a portion of his earnings.  Today, he had promised to give them N2500 each.  N2500 is not a lot of money, but when your pockets have been long without a lining of currency, pocket change is known to deviously disguise itself as a King’s ransom or at the very least ransom enough to spend the day cleaning up another man’s home.  

When they got in they found the house clean, spotless if a little dusty and completely unfurnished. This kind of dust, a fine film over every surface came from a lack of use as opposed to the grime they were more accustomed to tackling on such jobs. Spilled oils, sticky carbonated drinks, even the occassional bodily fluids they had to deal with for far less in the way of monetary compensation. They set to work, quickly ridding the house of the dust that sat upon every surface. The furniture they were to arrange was piled up in the large living room. In the centre of it. All brand new, ringed by boxes of the owner(s)’ belongings.   The boxes were labeled precisely, they contained everything a house should have, down to the underwear. At the top of the pile was a note. It was written in a sloping cursive, they all mentally agreed that it was a woman’s hand, no man was capable of such elegant lettering.

The note informed them that precise instructions were attached to each box, every door in the house was open and that they were to follow the instructions to the letter. Femi shook his head and hissed, it had to be oyinbos or akatas who would pay what they were asked, then let 3 young men into their home where all these brand new gadgets were waiting to be taken, there was a laptop, a brand new iPhone and an iPad in the box marked master bedroom. But the note was wrong in one respect, not every door was open. They had tried to clean the walk in closet in the master bedroom and while they found one of the doors yielding, the other where they imagined they would be placing folded up clothes later in the day had obstinately refused to budge.  

The problem of the locked closet was to be their first of two conundrums albeit the last to be solved. When they had finally gotten to the box marked ‘Clothing’ they found that there were no folded up clothes and thus, no need for the second door to be opened. They hung up the dress bags, Femi all the while itching to unzip them and take a peek. All day long he had wondered who the occupants of this house would be. A family? Bachelor? Young women? Was it a set for a new reality show. He had hoped in sorting out the kitchen to gain some insight but there were no pots blackened from use to help him with his quest for enlightenment. He tossed the tags for the pots into the bin before arranging them then proceeded to unbox the giant icebox.  

The second conundrum was solved by human nature. After they had mounted the Flatscreens in all the rooms, installed the reading desk and bookshelf (complete with books) in the master bedroom and the pile in the living room had been reduced to nothing, they realized that there were no beds. They checked all the discarded labels again for any mention of beds, they paid a visit to the standalone garage, it was empty as well. Bare. No cars. No beds. They simply shrugged with the nonchalance of the average Nigerian and started to trash the boxes and assorted packing materials they had encountered in the course of the day.  

It was now 6 pm.  Femi had found the envelope with the cash at the bottom of the last box. The 15 N1000 notes were crisp. He counted out the N5000 he had to shell out to his assistants and pocketed the change. As they turned their back on the house, the sun was sinking below the horizon, at the gate, Femi asked his friends to go ahead, he would catch up, they protested, he insisted. They might have protested a little bit more but they had already been paid.  

Femi found his way back up the stairs, he had locked the house when he got inside, he didn’t want any of them returning to catch him in the act.   A casual onlooker would have suspected that Femi meant to steal but theft was not his vice, it was a safer, tamer precursor to it that had a grip around his heart. Covetousness. Femi wanted the life he had helped arrange and he wanted to see every bit of it. He unzipped the clothes bags and spread their contents on the large persian rug it took three of them to unroll. The clothes belonged to a man, roughly his size and build and there were a variety of them, all perfectly tailored, all brand new, even though all he had intended to do was look, Femi tried them on and pranced about the room letting his imagination have wings.  

He was the heir to an oil and gas fortune when the second closet door opened. He would have heard the slight creak of the hinges but he was high on imagined expectations, basking in the screams of the applause as he was awarded young entrepreneur of the year. He didn’t notice that there was something else in the room as he gave his acceptance speech or that that something now occupied the only seat in the room, one hand on the reading table, watching him give life to his fantasies in borrowed robes.   Femi had run the course of the fantasy the grey business suit afforded him and was going to try on one of the casual outfits when he finally saw it.

His body responded with a primordial fear he did not need to process although, the truth be told, if he had processed the fact that he had locked the door on his way in and he had spent all day in this house, certain there was no other soul in it then his palms would have grown sweaty and his heart would have attempted to sprint out of his chest anyway.  

He didn’t speak its name but his head knew what it was. It looked his age. Someone who might’ve been in the same class with him, graduated at the same time, incredibly handsome, almost beautiful, but for the extended canines which rested midway between his lower lips, Femi might have been tempted to ask him how he got in the room. He didn’t need to, he had now noticed the other closet door. Conundrum number one. Now opened, he could see it didn’t have any shelves for folded clothes, behind it was a staircase that disappeared into shadows. In the fleeting way that irrationalities often arise, he found himself thinking how such beautiful handwriting could belong to this creature, fast on its heels was the answer to the question of the beds. Conundrum number 2.  

Femi was frozen. He didn’t move even when the thing approached him, when it lowered its head and when it drank the life out of him. Viewing the kaleidoscope of his existence, the young man let go of his fear and embraced regret. The paralysis from that fear left and he crumpled to the ground cradled by the being that was killing him.  

Had his fear been more natural, more controllable, perhaps he would have run down the stairs, attempted to the get out of the house before it caught up with him, tried to scream and draw the attention of his murderer’s neighbours, not that it would have helped. There were no neighbours who could hear his screams and he would never have made it out of the room, for the moment the closet door opened, every other door in the house locked.  

This is Story 1/6
To read Story 2, Click here