Secret Cults

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The strangeness in Abe’s world feigned a retreat when he got to the night club. Sooner did he realize it had only gotten worse. The invite Chukwu sent him clearly declares it as …a place to get away from the world and have fun… l**t Night tour… , only for Abe to find it far from what his expectations are. He wanted an actual place to indeed get away from life’s troubles, his nightmares, though he never thought of fun. He only wanted peace.

The club’s atmosphere was too endemic for him to stay another second. Everything he saw fired him up, irritated and about to explode. He blamed himself for such an ignorant mistake.

I should have known better than this. He thought, hoping something better could come out of it, nevertheless, at every second his hopes reduced by a margin.

The club stayed true to its strictly invites only rule. It looked more of a parlour party with sparsely fifty young bloods who were willing to pay almost half a million naira, to waste their lives under the influence of drugs, rollicking under the dim-lit room. Except the disco lights and a few colored chandelier bulbs that served as illumination, no one knows who is who. The rule says, grab a girl, take your coke and smoke a little pipe and have fun till mama calls, which was everything Abe witnessed.

Under-aged boys in thick dreads busy spraying dollars on the strippers just to tap their asses. He took his sit on an empty couch, scanning his supposed haven.

On the couch across him, he sighted two ladies and a guy having s*x in the open and the couch beside them a thick necked and two skinny guys inhaling large chunks of coke. The smell of shisha pipe and tobacco turned his stomach drastically. In his process of scanning, he locked eyes with Chukwu, who responded with a jaunty smile across his face. He left the stripper he was romancing and went to meet Abe who did not hide his feelings with a frown.

“I knew you would turn up,” Chukwu said, with a nerdy grin from one side of his ear to the other, taking his sit beside Abe,“just have fun and be free,” he tapped Abe’s shoulder cheerfully. Abe looked indifferent, wishing he could put all the blame on the half coke-high friend of his, for his own blunder.

Chukwu, rocking on the chair to the music being played, still retained a small part of his senses to discern Abe’s hatred for the place. Abe made his choice afterall.

The disc-jockey made a call to the dance floor, specifically mentioning Chukwu’s name, he switched the music to a street hip hop the merry youths echoed along. Chukwu screamed excitedly, leaving Abe on the couch, after many failed attempts to cheer him up.

After a very long and fruitless while of hoping for something better, Abe ran out of patience. He arose from his seat, preparing to take his leave, restricting the urge in him to tell Chukwu he was leaving. A familiar aroma to his senses distinguished itself from the collided atmosphere. A man, looking plump with a cigar in his hands, sat on Abe’s couch. He patted on the couch telling Abe to have his seat. The man’s glittering goatee had a striking resemblance to what he had seen somewhere. He just couldn’t get a clearer picture of the man under the flickering disco lights.

Abe felt a rumble in his stomach, he felt unsafe with the man but he yielded.

The man puffed a flavoured smoke from his thick cigar, towards Abe’s face. His eyes dizzied for a moment. He felt his blood flowing opposite in his veins, his will and strength began to depart from him.

“Wh.. who…who are.. you?” Abe muttered, forcing words out of his mouth.

The man hoofed another shot at Abe, looking calm as a river. Abe groaned, but the sound of the music overshadowed his voice.

“Who are you?” he whimpered, fear skittering across his fiery red eyeballs.

“I am only a friend,” the man answered, laughing sinisterly, “a man of great purpose and ambition like you. But I am surprised you don’t recognise me, Mr Johnson.”

It struck Abe like thunder. He immediately clicked to the man’s bass. It had a metallic ting that sounded different to everything Abe ever heard in his life. It was the man from his boss’s office.

“You… are that man from.. ”

“Yes, Mr Johnson, it is I,” the man said with a heinous cackle.

Abe, realizing he was all alone by himself, after seeing Chukwu, his last source of help, kissing and fondling a girl in his arms, manned up and restricted the helplessness coursing through his veins. “It is you. You ruined my life,” his voice oozed from his lips, “you ruined me!”. He drove his clenched fist towards the man’s face. A sharp image of his parents murder pierced his brain and he backed down. He could feel the whole world closing in on him.

The man, with his leg crossed over his lap, evoked a bone cracking laugh that lasted briefly. “I ruined you?” he laughed harder again, “one path leads to another, life can be a coincidence sometimes.”

At every attempt Abe made to strike the man, the images pierced harder. His head became heavy like a thousand tree was forced into it. He gave up completely.

“Please… don’t kill me,” Abe muffled. Tears trickled down his cheek. His heart raced to eternity and back.

“Kill you? No, very far from it, Abraham,” the man said with a smile that contrasted the seriousness in his voice.

“Infact, I am here to save you. I am your saviour, your messiah.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, looking confused, holding on to his head tightly like it was about to fall apart.

“I bring to you an offer. Redemption. I offer you something nobody in the world can give to you.”

“What is that?”

“Power. I want to give you power to fulfill your desires, destroy your enemies and find the peace you always wanted.”

The man slipped out a golden business card, pointing it towards Abe who was slowly departing from reality, “with this, you’ll find me when the time is right,” he said.

Abe, seconds by seconds, dimmed his eyelids till he could no more fight against it, he saw the man evaporate from his presence. The darkness consumed him whole, Abe prayed, before slipped away into his unending tortures.