The Wife ESCAPED!

It was a tortuous journey that Timmy had riding in the trunk of the car. Everything from speed breaks to potholes were traversed and responded roughly. He was like a dice in a cup being shaken and he didn’t know exactly what to feel. He wished he could just die, he also he wished he could turn back time to his time in the States and he wished too that he was back home in Abuja. What a life!

Just when he made up his mind, in frustration, to hit his head repeatedly against the trunk, the car suddenly came to a halt. The trunk was soon opened and he was hit by a cool breeze, taking away some of his pains.

He could not see through the blindfold, but he could feel the night, the quiet cold night. By his arm and legs again, he was pulled out from the trunk, and to his surprise, the blindfold was taken off. The first person he saw was the armed policeman and he was shocked! Was he an impersonator? Or was this not really a police uniform? Then it hit him. The policeman was the armed guard in the mix, so he certainly could not be his rescuer, rather he was one of his captors! Then how on earth was he going to get rescued? And by the way, what had they brought him here for?

“My friend, move jor,” one of the young men said, pushing him from behind.

His exhaustion and the suddenness of the push sent Timmy straight down. He welcomed the dirty ground with unusual relief and was about to get comfortable when he was given a savage kick. There was an impatient shout from the Oga and he could hear some feet marching ahead.

“Alaye, get up na,” someone shouted, kicking him again at the ribs, but Timmy only held on tighter to the ground as if it was his happily wedded wife. The person had no choice but to pull him up by his collar, but it was a serious battle to move him an inch forward.

“See me see wahala o,” he grumbled as he fought hard to push the taller Timmy forward.

“Tunde o! Bring the boy na. Ah ah!”, Oga called from afar.

“I dey bring am, sir,” he called back and pushed Timmy down on the ground again. “I no know how much dem wan pay me for all this work o,” he hissed and proceeded to pull Timmy by the shirt collar.

Timmy relaxed his entire body and let himself be dragged on the ground. He could see the shadows of the tall trees as he plowed along on the forest floor. He was so weak and resigned that any opportunity to rest, he did not miss it. Right now, dragging or not, since he was doing nothing but keeping still, he began to doze off. Only when he was dropped flat on the ground did he open his eyes and look around him. He thought he had gotten to the stage where he feared nothing, but what he saw next made him sit up immediately.

A savage-looking man decorated in a scary fashion was seated in one end of a small shrine, and there was a hole in the ground right in front of him. What scared Timmy the most was that smoke was constantly emanating from the hole! Was that where they were planning to throw him? A semi-circle of his captors were formed around the hole, their heads bare and bowed. Suddenly, there was a blood-curling shout from the shrine’s priest. He was speaking a language that Timmy could not understand, pointing directly at the armed policeman opposite.

“Go, go, go, go out,” Oga whispered to him.

When the policeman had walked out of the shrine and stationed himself a few metres away, the priest calmed down and went back to staring at the smoke curling out of the hole. No one made any attempt to speak and Timmy had the opportunity to look around his new environment albeit in terror.

The shrine was decorated with assorted skulls, calabashes and several angry-looking carvings. The priest himself was topless, only wearing a bright-colored cloth around his waist. His face, chest, beard and hair were decorated with several couries and white designs, probably from native chalk.

“Hmm mm mm mm,” the priest suddenly launched into a hymn of some sort, making Oga shift uncomfortably.

The humming went on for a while as he continued to stare at the smoke and then he stopped abruptly and looked directly at Oga. He spoke some words in that language that Timmy could not understand and Oga signed to one of his boys. Before Timmy could say Jack, he was grabbed by the collar and dragged towards the hole. His eyes widened in horror and he struggled in panic to free himself from the grip on his collar. In the process, the gag slipped off his mouth.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Timmy turned his head and snapped his teeth at the hand holding his collar! But he missed by a very slim width. The hand had already left his shirt and he was now sitting very close to the priest, with the hole between them.

He quickly looked up to see the priest giving signs. Immediately, the chord binding his hands were cut. But instead of jumping up and running away, he sat there stunned and open-mouthed. The priest had moved forward and was staring directly into his face. Timmy’s heart skipped several beats and even his breath was held in fear.Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

“Hmm,” the priest snorted and withdrew to his original position, shaking his head in disapproval.

“Oya, get out, get out,” Oga whispered, waving dismissively at Timmy.

Understanding that he was now free, Timmy staggered to his feet.

“Eh?!”, one of the young men shouted, startling him. He looked around and found that the priest was pointing steadily at one of his kidnappers who was looking like he’d just seen a ghost. There was a bit of a quarrel and then suddenly, the young man jumped off his seat and fled from the shrine into the forest!

“What are you looking at me for?”, Oga shouted angrily at the other young man who was seated beside him. “Come on, go and catch the idiot!”

The young man obeyed immediately and ran out of the shrine in pursuit of his colleague.

“Don’t come back here without him o!”, Oga called after him.

Timmy, on the other hand, stood half-dazed, watching the entire drama like someone in a trance.

“Ogbeni, what are you looking at?”, Oga whispered harshly to him. “I said, get out! Or do you want to die?”

At the sound of the word ‘die’, Timmy was jerked back to reality. Without thinking twice, he darted out of the shrine and ran blindly into a large tree. He fell on the ground, but jumped up immediately and continued the race deeper into the forest.