Tales of Betrayal

PART TWO

PART TWO

AN URGENT LETTER TO DEATH

Adisa was of solid built. Short, bulky chest, wide shoulders, with thick hands outlined by very strong veins. He was fifty years old. Adisa stopped his education in Primary Three when he was just eight years old. He was never in agreement with Master Ola who was given to caning his pupils too much, too often. This day, Ola volunteered ten strokes of the cane to Adisa's buttocks. Adisa returned the favour with five stones hauled at Ola. Two landed on target hitting Ola's forehead and his left ear which let out a gush of red blood. It was the last day Adisa would see the inside of a classroom. Adisa was dogged, rugged and enormously stubborn.

Soon after Adisa dropped out of school, he took to hunting. His weapon was simple but formidable: a catapult and some carefully selected stones. They must be stones with some rough edges, which, when they meet their targets, were sure to do a lot of harms. Adisa was no stranger to stones. He chose the kind that drew blood from Master Ola’s forehead.

On most of his hunting days, Adisa killed nothing and he would go hungry during such times. It appeared as though animals also pray for long life as much as humans do. They simply evaded his projected missile of stones. But there were days Adisa got lucky. He would venture into the forest and emerge with rabbits or grasscutters and on one occasion, he did kill an antelope.

And so it was discovered that on such days when his forest preys slipped through his grips, Adisa would turn his weapons against domestic animals. One stone at a time, Adisa fired shots at goats, sheep and chickens. They were more gullible and more vulnerable and less defensive. Most of them, therefore, ended up in Adisa’s cooking pots. He was such a goat hunter!

Having lost more than a few pets, the villagers decided to do something about it. They got Adisa a job with the local security network, the Vigilante Service, which was considered a more secure job than his on again, off again hunting endeavour. With his hunting experience, Adisa could hunt down criminals. There was no better strategy than contracting a criminal to catch other criminals, the villagers thought.

In the end, everybody won. Goats and other domestic animals remained safe for as long as Adisa was gainfully employed.

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If there was anyone who matched Adisa fist for fist with a steel-strong will, that person was Al Capone who was forty eight, two years younger than Adisa. Al Capone was huge and physically fit. These two fought often and they would not see eye to eye. Capone was the Chairman of a motor park and was no stranger to troubles. Whatever Adisa liked, there Capone pitched his interest too. In fairness to Adisa, he had no problem staying on his lane and doing his things, but for reasons yet unknown to us, Al Capone must get his pound of flesh from Adisa. Sitting at his motor park, Capone boasted of how he would do Adisa one strong thing. He told others of how Adisa walked around raising his shoulders and chest. He promised to deflate his ego. Capone told his colleagues he would f**k Adisa's wife. It was the only way to burst Adisa's pride, deflate his over bloated tyres and sniff out his flames.

Capone was not a man to speak carelessly. Nobody took his words for granted. He was a lord in the park. From the day he talked about f*****g Adisa's wife, it became a project. At the close of work every other day, Capone would send an envelope containing a few thousands of Naira to Adisa's wife through his motor park boys. Sometimes, he took the envelope himself. On one of such days, Capone enquired about Adisa's schedules and movements, when he was expected home and when he was supposed to be off to work. Adisa's wife, content with the inflow of Capone's much needed cash, happily gave a detailed narrative of his itinerary. Armed with this detail, Capone showed up the following night, f****d two solid rounds before disappearing into the concealing darkness in the semi-rural streets of this ancient town.

Adisa's honey pot was sweeter than Capone bargained for. What started like a vendetta from an arch rival soon became a habit Al Capone would never be capable of taming. Chopping Adisa's wife became an everyday ritual. Before long, words started to filter in. From neighbours; from colleagues; from people at the motor park. Adisa was told: 'Al Capone is f*****g your wife'. They told him the time Capone would come around, almost every night when Adisa was written off to work. He was told, unfailingly Al Capone would be in his house by 10pm tomorrow to f**k his wife. Adisa suppressed his anger, laughed slightly and said in a voice jostling between silence and cry: 'the heavens would receive three visitors tomorrow'. 

Being a member of the local vigilante, Adisa was gifted with a Dane gun for which he kept a good amount of gunpowder and bullets in his hunting bag. When people saw him with a gun, nobody questioned him. He was a security man doing his job. On this night after dinner, Adisa picked up his gun and bag and bid his wife farewell like always. Getting to a nearby bar, Adisa dropped his gun and bag and settled down to a bottle of cold beer. This was where he would be tonight, waiting for his wife's fucker to come for more rounds of s*x.

At exactly ten minutes past ten, Adisa headed home with a good dose of alcohol running in his thick veins as he left behind eight empty bottles completely drained of their alcoholic contents. His bag and gun were hung properly, but this time his gun was c****d ready. Adisa was leaving nothing to chance and no room for escape.

Getting home five minutes after leaving the beer joint, Adisa met his door firmly locked. Standing outside his entrance door, he could hear his wife moan in ecstasy. His bed of iron springs was making sequential noise from the regular thrust of an apparently heavy man. 'This is your last f**k, Capone'. Adisa said to himself before giving his wooden door a heavy knock with his muscular feet. The door gave way at once. Adisa gained access to his dimly lit one room apartment, face to face with Al Capone as he thrust harder and deeper into the Punani Adisa paid for with his own money.

Adisa and Al Capone, two lethal rivals in one room with one door and one window. Kiniun pade ekun, ode r'ode (When a Lion and a Tiger meet, two hunters are meeting).

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In a swift move, Adisa stretched his gun to Al Capone's head as he announced: "Today is your last day on earth. Every day is for the thief. One day is for....."

While he was yet talking, Capone took a giant leap from the bed aiming for the only available window in the room as an escape route, his overflowing gown still hanging across his shoulders. It was a measure of his principle never to fully undress whenever he had illegal deals to settle. Adisa, whose gun moved just as fast as Capone, released the trigger: gadauuuuuuun...

Al Capone let go of a harrowing involuntary growl as he managed to jump through the window into the utter darkness lying outside. One man down, two to go.

Within seconds, Adisa reloaded his gun with the swiftness, dexterity and expert skill of a hunter trained from birth. First in was gunpowder of no specific measure. Then he rammed in a thin nylon to keep the gun powder in place. This was followed by local bullets, mostly irons generated from nails and similar metals beaten to shape; about ten or eleven grains down the gun barrel. He finally covered this with another thin nylon. Adisa's mind was made up and there was no going back. Three visitors must visit heaven tonight. One down, two more to go. This was meant to be a combined journey of three teams to heaven. He got no time to waste, lest the first man journey too far away before they catch up with him. Adisa c****d the gun and aimed for his wife's head. Katauuuuuuuun...

He pulled the trigger and his wife let out a feeble scream. All the neighbours heard was a fainting yell of “yeeeeeh”. His bed of iron springs, neatly spread with white sheet was awash with pure red blood of a woman whose s****l pleasure was cut short a moment ago. 

Just with the same speed, Adisa loaded his gun yet again: gunpowder, nylon, bullets of iron metals and then nylon. He c****d the gun ready, put the barrel in his own mouth. Three people have a combined journey to heaven. Two down, one more to go. He placed his right toe on the trigger. No time to waste, Adisa pulled the trigger for yet another time, the last time. Ratatatatauuuuuuuu...

With the force of an angry thunder, bullets ripped through Adisa's skull. Pieces of brain cells of whitish red splashed on the ceilings hanging above his head. Adisa and his gun fell lifeless on the uneven floor he once walked on.

Neighbours gathered outside Adisa's apartment, unsure of the fates of the occupants. Could it be armed robbery (but what would they possibly steal from poor Adisa)? Or an attack by rival security outfits? No one knew what to think. It took John, another vigilante member, to peep into Adisa's apartment; there he saw Adisa's lifeless body, clinging to his Dane gun, then his wife's, face down, still ashamed to look into her husband's eyes as she lied dead in the pool of her own blood in a bed covered with blood-stained white sheet. Their only son of four years, woken from his sleep by the torrent of gunshots, cried helplessly on the floor where he recently laid for a sleep that was not to be. The neighbours picked the innocent child, and headed straight to the palace of the local chief to report what they had seen. What was not known to Adisa was that this journey to heaven was going to be a journey of two teams, himself and his wife. Al Capone had escaped with bullet wounds, feeling groggy as he thanked his gods that he would live to fight (or to f**k) another day.

Al Capone, Okunrin meta at'abo

Gbengbeleku o gbodo ku iku lasan

Anikulapo Omo Kuti

Awo looooo

(Yoruba citation for a strong man).

The following morning, when news broke out about the souls lost and the circumstances surrounding their deaths, the neighbours and colleagues at the motor park knew exactly who the escapee was. It must be Al Capone. But who would arrest him? Nobody met him at the crime scene. He shot no one with a gun.

As news continued to spread around, Capone held up a white c**k in preparation for a sacrifice. He thanked the god of iron who made sure there was no burglary proof on that window; the god of wood who made the wooden window easy for him to open; and the god of air who made him light-weight enough to jump from that window unhurt. He slaughtered the c**k, sprinkled the blood on his head, on the ground and on the bullet wounds around his waist. Then he called on his second and younger wife, Mulikat, to make a delicacy for him. "Ensure you put enough salt and seasoning", Capone said as Mulikat headed for the kitchen.