Jack And The Residents – Episode 8

Jack And The Residents Episode 8

© Kayode Odusanya

He woke up with a bad headache. There was a hand around him, and something soft poking his back. The white walls and white lights were blinding and he had to shut his eyes for a few more seconds before opening them again to take in the unfamiliar room he was in. He noticed he was just in his boxers short. Slowly, he removed the hand from around him, and turned around to see Damilola sleeping beside him in her bra and panties; her voluptuous breasts almost out of the white bra she had on.

The last thing he remembered was stopping at a bar for a drink on his way home. After the incidence with Mr. Salami, he had needed to do some thinking. “Damilola.” He said in a low voice, and she moved in her sleep, but didn’t open her eyes. The whole place was quiet, and from the look of things, it was still really early in the a.m. He tapped her upper arm a few times, and she opened her eyes. “What did you do to me?” He asked.

“What?” She said as she rubbed her eyes lazily and sat up in bed.

“How did I get here? Why are you undressed?”

She was silent for a few minutes with her head bowed, as if trying to gain full consciousness, and then she said, “I saw you staggering on the road when I was driving home after the party yesterday.” She grabbed one of the pillows and covered her chest with it. “You were drunk and saying gibberish.”

“Shiit! I must have gotten drunk at the bar.” He said with his head low in embarrassment.

“You were talking a lot, and loudly. I couldn’t take you home, so I brought you here.” She looked at him for a while before saying, “I managed to get you in the room with the help of the receptionist, and then you threw up on my clothes.”

“Shiit! I’m really sorry.”

“Then you threw up on your clothes too.”

“Damn!”

“I washed our clothes with the bath soap, and let you get everything out of your system by the toilet before I let you get in bed.” She stopped talking and let it all sink before saying, “Then you woke up shaking around midnight. I switched off the air conditioner, but you were still shaking.”

“Yea, I get like that when I have a bad hangover.”

“I held on to you, you stopped shaking after a while, and fell asleep again.” The room was silent for a while before asked, “So what did my dad do to you?”

“What?”

“You kept saying my Dad did something to you but that you couldn’t tell me about it.”

He looked down for a while, trying to think of a way to wiggle out of this. “I can’t remember seeing your Dad yesterday.” He lied.

“Then why were you going on and on about what he had done?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I bring old memories from the past when I get drunk.”

“Mmm!”

“It could be something else my brain was just trying to say. I don’t know.”

“Mmm! Okay. Anyway, we’re stuck here till our clothes get dry.”

___

They left the hotel around midday, and the drive back to the house was a quiet one. She tried getting him in a conversation a couple of times, but gave up after a few monotonous answers from him. All that had happened in the last few days were out of the ordinary for him, but what happened with Mr. Salami yesterday was the most disturbing one of all. He didn’t know if he could keep living in the house. There was no way he could unknow what he already knew about Mr. Salami, and the incidence in the car would haunt him for the rest of his life.

He saw Mr. Salami’s car when they drove into the compound and was glad that at least the man didn’t ki*ll himself yesterday. All his life, he had thought of homosexual men as people that acted feminine, like the Instagram sensation, Bobrisky. Never would he have thought that a macho man like Mr. Salami had uncontrollable sexual urges for men; urges he couldn’t turn off even if he wanted to. With children from different women, no one would ever know what he really was. “Are you okay?” Damilola asked him, and he realized he had been sitting still in the parked car for far too long.

“Yes. I was just…just lost in thought for a minute there.” He said and opened the car door. The pair of jeans he had on was still damp and he couldn’t wait to get out of it. He greeted the gateman and leaned on the car roof to face Damilola. “Thanks for everything.”

“It’s the least I could do for putting you through what I did.” She said and smiled.

He returned her smile before walking off.

……….

After changing into dry clothes, he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking of his next move. Damilola had bought him brunch at a fast food joint on the way home, so there was no need to prepare any food right now. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his Itel. There was someone he needed to call.

“Hello, Mr. Ajanaku.” He said into the phone when the line connected.

“Good afternoon Mr. Afandolo. Hope no problem?”

“Umm! Well, I wanted to find out if I could sublet this place to someone else.”

The man was quiet for a while before saying, “What’s the issue sir?”

“Nothing; I just changed my job and need to move.” He lied.

“The interesting thing is that I just got off the phone with someone that had wanted to pay for this place before you came along.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes. If you are sure about this, I can call him back.”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay. I’ll call him and get back to you later in the day.”

“Thank you.”

“Okay then.”

“Okay. Bye.” Jack said and ended the call.

He lay still for a while, and then an idea popped into his head. He got off the bed, went over to his writing table, opened his laptop, and switched it on. He cracked his knuckles as the laptop computer went through the start up process. When it was fully functional, he clicked on the Windows icon on the bottom left of the screen, and then navigated to Microsoft Office. Jack stared at the white blank page in front of him, running ideas through his mind.

After a few minutes, he typed the words, Truth is Stranger than Fiction. He deleted it, and typed, Jack’s Crazy World. He pressed the back space button and kept his fingers suspended above the keyboard for a few seconds before typing, Jack and the Residents of No. 7 Cole’s Street. He sat back and read the words in his head several times, smiled, saved the document, and closed the laptop.

The End.
Thanks to Kayode Odusanya for sharing this story with us, kindly drop your comments