Atowobola – A Short Story

Her parents named her Atowobola, a name meaning “the one who dips hands in wealth”. She had no answer to the questions people asked every time they wanted to know her parents reason for naming her such. She eventually got rid of the alphabet “A” and making it sound like a nickname, she became “Towobola”.

The name had something to do with her personality as she was skilled at dipping hands into peoples wealth till all they could feel was the empty floor of their once loaded vault.

The sound of the whistle was music in her ears, for the past one week, her best time of the day was “time to go home”. She picked her backpack, emptied the bottle of water, dropped it in a nearby bin, connected her headphone and started her long walk home with the music from her headphone as her only companion.

Soon, she was in her apartment, the one that thieves would never want to rob if they judged the book by it’s cover, she had chosen the environment because of every good thing it lacked and had managed to make her apartment a paradise.

Chief Babalola’s seventieth birthday party was to hold a few weeks from now, racing and many other activities were being planned to make the day a memorable one. The Chief owns the organization where Towobola works, he had invented her department the day she was brought into the office, she was the only employee in her department and all she did was “nothing” all day.

Being on the field was a means of averting bulging eyes that followed her each time she swayed into the chief’s office. This same eyes always followed her into the MD’s office. “That’s their headache” she would say to herself each time she heard their whispers and murmurs.

She had no friends within her business location for the fear of so many things. She had principles that guided her actions, and one of them was that “the cookie jar only opens when the vault is swept clean”

Chief had opened this jar severally and his vault was yet to feel her hands. The Managing Director however, was yet to taste the cookie, yet his vault had become empty.

As Towobola laid in the pool of her own blood staring at the lifeless bodies beside her, she remembered the knock she had mistaken for that of the little boy who helped her with her chores, she saw anger written in bold font all over the face of her guest, she saw the scars that told her immediately that her guest was a victim of battering. She saw the face of the man who was now lifeless in a pool of his own blood.

The man, her MD from the office pleaded for mercy but this woman she had never seen, who now seemed like his wife silenced him by pulling the trigger of the gun, she shot Towobola on the chest before kissing her forehead with a bullet.

Filled with regret, she knew she had dipped her hands in the wrong wealth, tears strolled down her eyes as she drew her last breath.