The Party on Abudu Smith Street

Chapter I

CJ had not heard that voice in a number of years he cared not to remember. His stomach insides gave him an unpleasant 'good morning' sensation that portended a runny bowel day.
He knew trouble had called his doorstep.

Inside his room was the familiar setting of a dark cozy bedroom at 5am with 6 amber lights that signified where all the on switches were.
Just one minute before that phone call, his life was bliss. He knew that he would be up any minute from then so he was just coasting in his final bed seconds. The usual adjusted nine-to-fiver.
But...

That voice. It changed everything. It took him back instantly to a really dark time in his days of University when he was in dire need of help. Why now? Why ever? As soon as he graduated from Delsu, he adopted the idea that he was free from all the ties he had with Onku Abel and the whole gang.
He promised to pay the favor back, surely he knew that, but when a promise lays dormant for 7 years, one tends to think that they've been acquitted of it.
But here he was remembering a sinister time and potentially in a position where he could find himself in the same kind of situation, possibly worse.

He sat on his workout mat with his hands buried between his thighs. Thoughts of the three gunshots in the woods behind Oduduwa Maple Hall rang in his head and he could feel his legs shake just as they did that night when he couldn't even bring himself to run.

A hot slap hit him from behind.

"Òdè! Run!"
"Run!!"

He couldn't remember if it was the burning slap on his face or the thunderous sound of Abel's voice. It was a frightening night. CJ wished he had not picked up that gun. He wished he had not asked Abel for help.

*
*
*

CJ took longer to get dressed this morning but still managed to be all done by 7:00. The whole day had been potentially ruined by that singular phone call that didn't last more than 10 seconds, possibly less. Just yesterday he was totally fine, he had worries, yes, but only of the kind that would not have to make him feel like he ate a bad dinner and had now consistent loose stool.

He got into his car and just as the car finally provided that vacuum silence that kept you encapsulated from the noise of the world, he felt his soul do the final drop.

CJ cried for ten minutes.
He knew he was screwed.

By the time he got to work, he had completely failed at his job of composure. A light-skinned 6 foot tall handsome Igbo man with diastema and a wide smile, became a drab 9-5er with a gloomy face and eye bags. It was like a singular elephant in 5 miles of dry arid land.

He excused his gloomy looks to a throbbing migraine that started the night before and hadn't gone. There was no escaping formulating a story because he was incontestably the catch of the office as far as young men were concerned. He was an 8-5er so a migraine would always sell. After the 10-minute caring sparrow dance was done, real life was back in action. CJ was faced with the fact that his thorn in the side was not to go away like the following, real this time, migraine he would be getting later that afternoon when Abel would call again. He thought he should be more careful with his words at that precarious time. It appeared to be a fertile time for darkness to grow and encapsulate.

At 2:00 pm, CJ was nose-deep in weekly reports - his favorite thing to do on a Friday afternoon because of the two-day rest it portended. Anytime he would think of Folu and the party later that night, he'd smile and seem to work a little faster like he couldn't wait to leave. He still felt the stabbing pain lingering from the knife Abel left inside him at 6am and somehow Folu was his analgesic, to whatever capacity, he held onto it like air.

On the way back from his last toilet break, he heard an iPhone ring. It was a large office so it could have been anyone's phone but something inside of him told him it was his iPhone. And that it was Abel.