STORY: FRANCIS IS ALIVE - EPISODE 13 [BY LORD EBAY]

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Mustapha jumped out of bed and grabbed his Colt45 semiautomatic as the hotel door burst open.

Thank heavens it was Samuel, it was a dangerous time and doors bursting open like that could be ominous. Agent Samuel came in with indifference to Mustapha’s trepidation, dialing numbers on his cell phone and placing the phone to his ear, checking the screen again and returning the phone to his ear, whoever he was trying to call was either not answering or the call was not going through at all.

“What is it?” Mustapha enquired gingerly.
“It’s Michael Livingstone’s…” he frowned at the phone screen again, tapped on it, seemed to be typing a message.

Mustapha went over to him, wiping his face, it was 10:02am and he was just waking up.

“Michael’s what?” he asked curiously.
“Michael’s friends,” muttered Samuel, finally pocketing the phone and facing Mustapha. “They’re reported missing. The police have picked the odour of chloroform in their house and that could only mean one thing, they were abducted. The neighbours reported it. They said the duo had received a female visitor yesterday who had claimed to be Michael Livingstone’s girlfriend. They’re showing the kid who had seen the woman a bunch of wanted criminals’ pictures that fall into his description as we speak.”
“Both of them?”
“Yes, both of them, they’re gone.”
“Chloroform!” Mustapha scoffed and shook his head worriedly. “I’m just afraid of… have they informed Mr. Livingstone about it?”
“They’ve not been able to reach him.”
“What about Francis Whyte and the man he’s holding? They found them yet?”
“Negative.”
“Look at that! I wouldn’t know what to do again, seriously. Shouldn’t they have rigged the house with cameras since after the attack on that house? Those criminals wouldn’t just go like that, would they?”
“No, it’s not like that. Since Michael Livingstone has been identified to not be the Francis everyone is looking for, why would anyone be planting cameras in his friends’ house. Police patrol was stationed at the street. That was supposed to be enough.”
“And where did they say they were when this abduction went down?”
“They saw the woman. They said they thought since she wasn’t hiding from them or anyone for that matter, she was a friend of theirs.”
“Bunkum! If I were to do that kind of thing, wouldn’t I try to look clean too? Coming down from their car to ask her a few questions should’ve been enough to detect a certain threat, how careless!”
“Time for complaints and blames are over for me, Mustapha, we have to get out of here and do something momentous.”
“Was there a time we did something meaningless?”
“It’s more than looking for Francis Whyte now. It’s also about protecting the President of this nation from assassination. It’s about finding who killed three police officers.”

Silence…

“What have you found out? Where do we go next?”
“You know this country better than I do. None of these guys can hide. They’re different in appearance. So, why can’t you dress up and let us continue from where we stopped? We can find Francis Whyte, I know it.”
“What about the kidnapped guys, Majeed Akintola and Olawunmi Oni?”
“Let the police look for them, we’ll look for the masked guy. Sending the CIA out of the country has made it difficult but we can do it, this is what I do best, finding people.”
“Okay, can I at least take my bath first?”
“Of course, but be fast.”

That same night, unexpectedly to everyone, immediately after the police dropped the Nwanyanwus back at home after rendering their help, Boris’s crew pulled by and drove everyone away; father, mother, and the three children. No, you got it wrong. It wasn’t Xia who kidnapped Majeed and Olawunmi. It was Sonican Dale, an assassin who used to be Francis Whyte’s girlfriend. Right about time one wondered, is Michael Livingstone Francis Whyte? Well, Papa Bella and his family were gone too; it would be all over the news in the morning; the Boris’s crew must have considered them valuable too since they heard that some other crew had taken Majeed and Olawunmi. Assassins were beating the police, all the killings and abductions and no suspect was in custody. Not even one yet.

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As Olawunmi’s eyes slowly opened, she was looking at a ceiling different from the ones she had known. She lay calm a bit, craned her neck and saw Majeed still sleeping. Well, he’s always like that, sleepy ass. She yawned lazily, spontaneously trying to put her hand to her mouth; that was when she realized her hands were tied.

She screamed!

Majeed was consequently spurred to consciousness, both discovering they were in their nightwear but on a strange bed in a strange room, hands and legs loosely bound.

“Stop—stop, stop screaming,” Majeed snarled. “Stop screaming, we’ve been kidnapped.”

She stopped screaming convulsively. “But where are we?” she hiccupped, teeth clattering.
“Just keep quiet for a start, will you? I can loosen these ropes.”

Their hands weren’t tied to their backs. So, he put the ropes to his mouth and after an effortless struggle, the rope came loose. He unknotted that of his legs too and then pulled Olawunmi off the bed they had found themselves lying on. He undid her ropes too and they began to survey the place twitchily.

They were in a room painted in complete white, nothing but the bed was in it. There was a window upon which a thick blue curtain toning with the colour of the bedspread lay. And there was a door too.

They went for the door and found themselves in an extremely tight corridor leading to another door at the right end and a staircase at the left end. Music was coming from behind the closed door but fresh air and ray of light from the staircase, so, instinctively, they progressed stealthily towards the staircase, tip-toeing, being sure that they had been abducted and confident that they could escape even though Olawunmi could burst into a loud cry any second. She was inflated with fear and was surely flexible enough to burst soon. In fact, she was surprised Majeed had not shed any tears at all. What kind of devil could be living in him?

The staircase brought them outside as hoped, but they were even more frightened as they found themselves on a moving boat. It was quite a big boat and they were only at a tiny section of it, water everywhere, distant sound of life barely audible.

And then, there came the laughter high behind their heads. They turned around swiftly to look up, and they saw the lady from their house, Sonican Dale, the one who claimed to be Michael’s girlfriend. She was laughing at them with some nameless cocktail in hand.

“Please do forgive me,” she cackled. “I do have passion for the theatrical, I agree. How awkward! I thought giving you a feeling of hope would introduce you to what I represent, hope. That was why I had the twines loosely tied.”

She was mad, Majeed instinctively concluded. “How did we get here?” he asked, shuddering.
“You’re on my boat and we just left the harbor, silly.”
“How did we get here? What are we doing here?”
“Oh shit, how many times do I have to repeat myself? How else could you get here if I didn’t bring you? Is this how you talk to your friends?”

“What are we doing here?” he asked for the second time, Olawunmi’s hands in his, mouth scattered, about to cry.

“Whatever you’re thinking,” said Sonican, “don’t think I abducted you. Of course I did get you here without your consent, how awkward, that’s what I do. That’s why Francis loves me.”

Majeed would’ve asked, “Francis?” but the lady spoke on.

“If I hadn’t taken you, you would’ve been abducted by other men anyway, men who aren’t in any context as reasonable, interactive or as nice as I am. So, you should thank your stars that I saved you. I’m not Jesus Christ though; I’m only doing it for a friend who has refused to see me for years. How awkward! Now if you don’t mind, go back into the boat, a door at the far end, that’s the door into where you’ll find the fridge, food’s in there, you’ve been sleeping since yesterday, I guess I used too much of that shit on you guys, you must be starving by now.”

Silence…

“Oh no, I said you should go and eat, how awkward!”
“Who are you?” Majeed asked timidly, still shivering in fear.
“Sonican, remember? I thought I told you my name like a million times already.”
“Where are you taking us? What did we do?”
“Holy shit! Will you ever stop? I’m taking you to Francis, you know, Francis Whyte in the news. And no, you didn’t do anything, how awk—”

The video of a guy sitting at a table littered by shattered human brains opening his ass to the camera played in Majeed’s head, and at this point, he was truly terrified. They had been abducted and were being taken to that man!

“Why?” he still managed to ask.
“Because if I don’t, he won’t ever agree to see me, you’re my ticket to seeing him. He won’t hurt you, he’s a good man, you guys said so yourself. For how many weeks was he with you?”
“It was Michael Livingstone that was with us, not Francis… Whyte?”

Silence for a short while and then Sonican laughed.

“Oh my fucking ass, Francis and his dramas! Michael is Francis, silly! In twenty minutes, we’ll get to where he’s waiting for me. How awkward!” She faced another direction then and shouted to an unseen audience. “Aleksandr, speed up the boat!” and then she turned back to them again. “Now if you two do not want to starve yourselves to death, I’d advise you go and find yourselves something to eat. Wine is in there too, so… I don’t know… drink responsibly.” She winked.

The idea of calling the police would be ridiculous; they knew if their phones were not left behind at home, Sonican Dale would’ve taken the phones from them. So, after Sonican withdrew from the balcony from where she was looking down at them, soothing breeze blowing at them, quiet fear of Michael truly being Francis clutching on their hearts, hunger witchingly munching on their stomachs; they retraced their steps down the staircase and walked down the tiny corridor to the door at the far end, food was said to be there.

Whatever was happening, they were beginning to not have the idea of what or what not to be afraid of, what to expect and what not to hope for. They realized for that moment, they could simply settle with obeying instructions, and the current one was to eat, and… Olawunmi should just stop sobbing.

...to be continued!

Written by: Lord eBay (and his action series, 2017)

Twitter & Instagram: @lordebay

Email: dearlordebay@gmail.com

ABOUT AUTHOR:

Lord eBay is an Author with a taste for Romantic, Political and Paranormal Fictions. His goal is to join other writers in resurrecting Reading/Writing culture in Nigeria. 

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