Two Worlds Season 1

Season 4 years ago

Two Worlds Season 1

Richard didn’t want to believe his Venon perfume had been stolen from his shopping bag. He probably forgot it on the checkout counter before heading to his Honda, but here was the cashier saying no perfume was left on the counter, that Richard should go check his shopping bag properly; or worse, it might have been stolen by some of the boys who loitered around the store premises, waiting for someone to walk out of the store with a fat bag, so that they could dip in their hands and slid out something.

If it were a boy standing by Richard’s Honda, Richard would have suspected him to have the perfume, but it wasn’t a boy. It was a young woman in a tailored, yellow gown. She seemed to be viewing herself on his side window as though the window was a mirror that actually showed her reflection.

“You could use the side mirror,” he told her, and the woman quivered. The bag slung over her shoulder fell to her elbow. Without readjusting it, she strode into the street.

Richard shook his head. One of those scary, jobless women who thought every man that talked to them was trying to woo them. No sane man would try to woo women like her who wore solemnity on their faces.

When he had driven near her, she looked to his car and increased the length of her strides that morphed into a scurry, her legs stretching her streamlined gown to its maximum that Richard feared it might tear from overstrain. She glanced at the distance between herself and his Honda with the frightened face of someone being chased. The woman had done nothing against him that he would chase her. She could be mistaking him for someone else. He wanted to park his car somewhere, call out to her, and tell her he wasn’t who she thought he was, but it didn’t seem she would stop from her run even if he called out. She was already close to the main road. Nothing would stop her from hiring a taxi to continue her run.

He was veering into the main road, ascending from a pothole that held water from the previous day’s rain, when a commotion erupted at his far right. People began clustering around a spot. Some wailed in Yoruba, some murmured, and some watched with wrinkled faces. He peered through his side window. A woman was spread on the tarmac in bits of blood. A drive further gave him sufficient view. It was the same woman, bag on the ground with its items shattered, including broken bottle pieces. He stepped out of his car and walked to the crowd, only to see the broken bottle pieces were in the midst of a spilled liquid that diffused out a fragrance. The same fragrance of his stolen Venon perfume. It was the woman who stole his perfume; how much he had tried not to believe that. And now, everything looked like a punishment from God. A man hurled her onto his shoulder and scurried out of the crowd, her thick, crimson blood dripping on his pullover.

“Bring her in here,” Richard said.
The onlookers directed eyes to him.
“A car will be faster to the hospital,” he said.

The man carrying her hurried to the backseat and settled her there. “It was a car accident. She got hit while running. The driver zoomed off. Hurry, there’s a hospital at the next two streets.”
“Maybe you should come with me.”
The man hastened to the front seat. Richard entered and fastened his seatbelt.


He avoided looking at the backseat, but the reflection on the rear-view mirror made him try to manoeuvre traffic. The man pointed to the hospital, a bungalow with fading white paint.

The Honda bumped up the stony way, forcing Richard to reduce speed until he stopped at the hospital. They rushed her out of the car and Richard heaved her into his arms and hurried past the entrance. Two nurses wheeled a stretcher to them and helped lay her atop. No bloodstains stuck to his suit, only short hair strands, which he dusted off with his handkerchief.

The receptionist table had tiny holes filled with sawdust. He managed to fill the forms without contacting the table.
“Isn’t there a better hospital around here?” he asked the Good Samaritan, who then gave a rundown of how she was losing blood. However bad the hospital was, it would render good first aid.

Women and children with ill faces filled the rows of chairs. Richard found a spot on the second row and sq££zed himself there with the Good Samaritan. They talked about the accident and how heartless the driver was for leaving the woman alone on the tarmac. The talks ended, and the Samaritan rose to go pick his children from school. He pulled off his blood-stained pullover and revealed a white polo shirt.

Richard asked a nurse for the doctor’s office, and after having a talk with the doctor, he began for home.

Driving to his carport, the knocking of the generator from its cabin deprived him of the radio reporter’s final words. He parked and turned his head to the backseat. Parts of the leather had reddened, not by any other blood but one belonging to a thief.

The gateman ran to the carport. “Welcome sah. Ek’ale.” He opened the backdoor and dragged out the bag of beverages. Richard took it from him and asked him to wash the seats.

The door crackled before he could punch the doorbell and Ezinne appeared, passing out her soap’s apple fragrance, her towel tied to chest level. A drop of water from her weave-on fell on his shoe as he stepped in. Much of the water clung to her hair, giving it a darker coffee than her skin.

He opened the fridge and brought out a chilled Malta Guinness. Questions would come, but it should wait until after his drink.
“You didn’t reach the stores,” she said.
“I did.” He gulped some of the Malt and settled on a couch.
The forming wrinkles on her face straightened out. “Where’s the Venon perfume?”
“I had bought you the perfume, but before I could take it to my car, it was stolen.”
“Stolen?” Her eyes grew bigger, bigger than envisaged. She sat on his couch’s arm and folded her hands. “Rick… how was it stolen?”

Her question was too direct to achieve a good enough believable answer since not all truths were believable. He downed the last gulp of Malt and explained his ordeal with the woman at the shop’s premises. She must have somehow slid the perfume out of his bag without his notice.

Before he could finish with his explanation, Ezinne rose to go check the jollof rice on the cooker, whose aroma had begun to force its way into the sitting room. He promised to buy her another Venon, if that would win him her smile.