The Waiting Game

chapter six

The Kings Society welcomes you on campus.

A shaky hand reached out to peel the flyer carefully off the tree it was pasted on – thankfully, the glue was fresh and it came off the surface easily. Three boys chatting loudly walked past her, one of them turned his head to stare at her and then the paper in her hand.

He turned his head and said something to his friends in a lower voice than the one he’d been using before. She caught the end of his words.

“—another cult, a new one.”

She turned her attention back to the flyer. It was flashy, bright blue and words filled the square page in the same damned Liberator font; The Kings Society welcomes you on campus. It was a slap in her face and she wanted to squeeze it in her fist.

Joshua Phillips had done this. She was sure of it; he’d turned her vendetta to a game. It made sense and fell in line with everything she knew about him. No, he would never bite the bait she’d set out for him and he wouldn’t go out to war against her – guns blazing. He was smarter than that.

So he’d taken the name that she’d created for her cause and he’d turned it into his own. He’d guessed right that the name ‘The Kings Society’ was a name with meaning so he’d in turn belittled it. He’d made it hers and he’d set out a bounty hunt for her head.

She took in a deep breath and folded the sticky flyer carefully, making a mental note to get a new manicure job. She was going to send a message of her own, but first, she had a class to attend.

Flyer simmering at the back of her mind, she quickened her steps, she still had one more stop to make; pay her school fees. There were several cyber cafés on the other side of the road leading down to the Sports Centre just ahead.

She hated the sound her shoes made as they marched on the sidewalk covered with fallen leaves. In a month or two, Harmattan season would make the leaves so dry that they would crunch even louder when she walked on it.

Minutes later, she was inside one of the cyber cafes, she’d deliberately chosen a less full place so she would be attended to quickly, she was grateful that that there were up to ten cyber cafes alone in the area that she could find one that was scanty. Because the Sports Centre wasn’t particularly near any faculties (the closest was the Faculty of Law), there were usually lesser crowds of students needing to print assignments or making photocopies of textbooks.

However, three women beat her to inside and were accosting the owner of the café with their requests; they wanted to make photocopies. At first, she thought they were postgraduate students but one of them wore a staff identity card around her neck.

“The police have made a few details about the investigation public,” the shorter woman said as she handed the elderly café owner a thick bundle of papers stapled together. “Front and back.” The woman added hurriedly.

She jolted; the mention of police in the past year caused her to tense.

“Yes, and have you seen the flyers on campus this morning? It’s the same name the murderer called themselves!” The second woman exclaimed.

The third woman leaned against the photocopy machine and shook her head.

“Campus Security is working to remove all the distasteful flyers.” The woman shook her head again. “But the damage has been done, everybody has seen it, taken pictures of it already. God, what is this school coming to? Tell me that this is not the work of a cult. Those dead boys were probably part of it.”