The Apprentice Ep2

Good afternoon! The man who sat by the stairs remained silent, he’d had just about enough of interruptions in his moment of rest. After a few seconds of incessant greeting he looked up from the book he was reading and asked the student before him what she wanted with all the disgust he could muster. She stammered her way through the message she had come to deliver. Apparently a louver had been broken in one of the departmental offices upstairs and he was needed to clean up the place. He lowered his gaze, once again with disgust sizing her down till his eyes retuned to the pages of his book. He simply stared at the space between the lines till the words blurred. He kept his gaze, till the sound of her feet shuffling as she motioned to leave jarred him from his minute-long day dream. He dreamt of better days, even though he didn’t believe they would ever come.

As he climbed up the stairs, he winced from an age long injury to his left knee. He had been caught in the middle of a cult war back when he was in the university. While trying to flee a hostel under attack, he was shot at by a member of the attacking cult and took a bullet to the knee; never healed up right…time and chance he muttered to himself as he took the last step off the stairs.

Walking towards the office of the head of department where the louvre had been broken, his eyes met that of an annoyed lecturer who had just gotten a piece of the head of department. Staff around the block secretly referred to him as “Holuki” an unofficial Yoruba adaptation of the name Hulk, a movie character with great strength, a hot temper and an ugly face. As he neared the office he braced himself for the wave of insults and bad breath about to smack him in the face for taking all of five minutes to get up the to his office but to his surprise Holuki ignored him completely, obviously too engrossed in whatever he was working on to be interested in the likes of him.

He started cleaning up the mess without wasting any time, as the less time spent in the office the safer his well-polished ego would remain. Within a few minutes he was done and he cleared out, not bothering to declare his exit.

He was done for the day but he didn’t leave the block. He never left the block earlier than 8:30 pm, he would often sit and think of the events of the past that had led him to this moment in his life. At the moment he was thinking of the day he got his knee injury and how where others developed a phobia for violence, he on the contrary had taken to violence after the events of that day.

Rose had always been one of those people considered borderline psychopathic. A little push and they are done, but he got a hell of a shove that day. He found it weird how much the pain and gore all around him gave him a soothed him despite the pain in his knee. Exactly the same as the sweet after taste of bitter leaf. It was like a door had been unlocked in his mind, not a day went by that he didn’t dedicate a silent toast of whatever he was drinking in appreciation for the events of that day. As touching the person who ordered the events of that day; he gave up a long time ago on any thoughts of God or the plans he had for him, but it’s a good day he thought to himself. He smiled as another memory crawled out into the open.

*

Maybe it’s was the heat that was getting to me, but I was not in the best of moods for the most part of the day. Two people had only a few minutes ago discovered that the hard way, they took forever to finish up their withdrawal at the atm machine and had the guts to help someone behind me make a transaction and I just laid it on them. The shock on their faces at my outburst of obscenities only made them look sillier to me. My classes for that day were not over but I was done with classes for the day. On my way back from the atm I stopped over at a restaurant to get some food; shitty as usual but for me it was either that or cooking and the latter wasn’t an option, at least not for the few hours that followed.

Ever since the last sessional break when I had seen that man in the priest’s robe, I hadn’t remained the same. I’m not normal, that I’ve always known but this was different. I couldn’t get the images out of my head. The gruesomely stunning way in which the killer had ended the gardener’s life, the dedication with which he had carried it out, with so much detail. It was nothing short of a beautiful display of art. I remembered the days that followed when the news hit the wire. The school went crazy for weeks. Curfews were imposed and security was bumped up. The blogs spat all sorts of inaccurate information to the public feeding them the usual bullshit stories from even more unreliable sources. It was kind of interesting I have to admit, they spent their days rallying around the hottest gist they had seen since a riot turned bloody in the state polytechnic a few years back. They came out with all the wrong facts and I was one of the two people who knew it all except of course, the reason why. For the first few weeks following the encounter I tried to take a walk every night to as many secluded location as I could access, hoping to find another body or better still the mysterious priest but I also didn’t expect him to strike so soon. My mind ran wild with fantasies on who he was and why he was, none of them so far was conclusive enough.

Seated in the restaurant, still thinking about the mysterious priest, I saw something flash past my face then I heard a crash. A girl walking past my table carelessly holding her bag had knocked my drink down, the bottle landed on the floor and ended in spilt coke and shards of glass. For a moment I thought I was just going to get up and leave without saying anything but she stopped me before I could move and started apologizing, offering to buy me another one and all... The drink wasn’t the problem I’d just had enough of peoples’ shit affecting my shit, but the cascading looks of the people around the restaurant coupled with her pleas swayed me and I obliged. I took a new table because of the mess and then she brought me a drink and asked if she could join me as there were no empty tables available. This lady was really pushing her luck but something about her kept me in a persuasive mood. She apologized again as she sat down and I told her not to worry, that it was fine. She introduced herself and I did the same. Her name was Toyin, a student from the department of Sociology. As I grabbed an opener and opened both our drinks, she asked if I was a student, and after my reply asked why I wasn’t eating with anyone of my friends.

I don’t keep friends I replied. She looked up from her food, my last sentence seemed to have caught her attention and she saw it as an avenue to start up a discussion with me. I explained that I’m not a people person and that I had gotten used to my own company being an only child and all. She still didn’t grasp how a person didn’t have any friends, she’d said she didn’t know what her life would have been like without her girlfriends. We spoke for over an hour after I had finished my meal which was weird as I would naturally have found a way to end the discussion and leave. The discussion wasn’t boring to be honest, but it was one with interesting deviations. From me not having friends to what I was studying, to what my relationship status was and on. They weren’t all discussions I really wanted to have, especially with a stranger but I had a few laughs when she shared some of her experiences with university boys. At some point I caught one of the guys that worked in the restaurant pointing and staring at us while he spoke to another lady behind the counter. They were probably wondering why the girl who broke the drink and the guy whose drink was broken had so much to say. We ended up leaving the restaurant together and exchanging numbers. She promised to give me a call sometime in the course of the week.

Walking away, I looked back to catch a glimpse of her, and our eyes met as she also turned back to look at me. I smiled and waved and looked away. Instead of taking a tricycle back to my hostel I decided to take a walk and clear my head. Mid-semester tests were fast approaching and I had barley attended classes, so I barely had notes to read in preparation. I contemplated going back to class to get a note and make photocopies of it but I wasn’t that bothered enough about school to go all the way back to class.

I took a brief shower on getting to the hostel, the cold shower helped me off to sleep. I woke up about four hours later, it was getting dark outside already, so it was time for my walk. Guys in my hostel usually assumed that I was off to see one girl or the other. I knew because I had been teased a few times by some of them, but I was going to walk along the bank road, in hopes of finding the priest again. I pulled out a pack of mints from my pockets, I never went anywhere without them. Popped a few in my mouth and started humming to a song that had gotten stuck in my head for about two days. Enjoying every bit of being alone, I walked along the road at a slow pace. The skies were clear that night and the air was still, I could smell the scent of fresh vegetation to my right. I could hear the crickets and the occasional croak of a frog somewhere in the bushes. My eyes pored over every inch of my view area, taking it all in looking for the slightest hint of anything out of the ordinary, my mind in earnest prayer for a repeat of events, but I had no such luck as the area was deserted as any normal day. I pushed my luck by a couple hundred meters but still no show. I’d usually walk the same distance or for the same amount of time but I quickly lost interest seeing as I didn’t find what I was looking for. Instead of walking all the way to the faculty of communications I cut through a couple of buildings to my left. A number of people were in a lecture theatre I passed, mostly couples and Wi-Fi users. I hit the main road and walked across towards another cluster of buildings. Somewhere not too far from the walkway, under a canopy of trees sat a couple, making out. Not far apart sat another set doing the same. I just walked past paying them no mind. Walking on towards the faculty of arts I took a path close to the bushes, the time was 8:45pm. I started contemplating what to eat on returning to the hostel when I heard a moan to my left. Now university students were almost always horny, but I never expected to find them at it in bushes with no clear sitting area. It was just too much of a risk.

I decided to investigate further, taking care not to make any noise as it was late and the littlest of sounds would carry. I crept low and inched forward towards the sound. Habitual night prowling had given me an iron heart towards bites from insects and snakes. They just were not a factor of fear anymore. As I got closer to the source of the sound my phone beeped, I hadn’t thought to put it on silent. My whole body froze except for my hands which quickly pulled out the phone and silenced it. The call came from Toyin the girl I had met earlier that day. My little – didn’t go unnoticed as the moaning stopped and everywhere fell silent. I stayed still, my eyes staring so hard into the dark it seemed to solidify. There was a man, crouching over another body, his hands seemed to be clamped over its mouth as he searched for the source of the intrusion, looking in my direction. I guessed he was looking for the source of sound so I held my breath staying completely still. My ankles hurt from my crouched position but I endured the pain. He didn’t seem to be wearing a robe like the other priest, I really couldn’t see what he was wearing as it was black like the rest of the night. I guessed if he was wearing one the hood will be on to cover his face. And then I saw his face as the moon came out of some clouds and cast a light on his face. I let out a soft gasp, I knew this man! His face was unmistakable. I saw him every other day in school. I took a step forward and stepped on a dry branch, the snap echoed in my brain because I knew surely my location was compromised. He immediately turned his face sideways and ran for cover in the bushes, at that moment I turned to leave not caring about the noise. Once I got out of the bushes I flew down the path in a crazed dash, not minding the attention I was bringing to myself.