This was his 5th time in the Oil rich City of Port Harcourt and every preceding time he had come to the city he had seen exactly zilch. On the past four times, he had stayed at the same Hotel (Airport Hotel) and the reason was the company with which he had been working with always had the minimalist approach to everything,meaning everything they ever always gave was quite minimal and so Olugbenga Daniel (OGD as he was fondly called,in reference to the SouthWest former Governor with whom he shared the same name) always ended up seeing Port Harcourt from the airport straight to the Hotel and from the Hotel back to the Airport, never enough time to even venture into the Oil rich City which was reputed to have a very active night life as well as beautiful girls who didn’t really need too much persuasion to show you their inner sanctums.(It was said that unlike Benin, Port Harcourt girls were not even really into it for the money)…

And so this rainy day in May, OGD found himself in the Oil rich City but this time he was on his own for his former company had recently made themselves former and without any prior warning Alecs had terminated his appointment, leaving him very confused and scared about what the future held…in fact that brought him to the reason he was in PH in the first place, after moping about for the first 2 weeks and spending all the one month’s salary he had been given(he had even been owing). He had steadily applied for a job and they had invited him to PH for the interview. The problem was they had stated that they were not going to pay for accommodation except he was successful and hence his present predicament, he had no known friends or relatives in the PH area , he could only barely afford to stay in the Hotel for the 3 nights required for his test and interview and so his plan was quite minimalist and this was first get into town and stay at the one place he knew, for the first night, which was the Airport Hotel and then by the second day he would go into town and seek more appropriate which meant cheaper accommodation for the next 2 nights…

Gbenga was really quite tired and combined with the stress of travelling by road all the way from Lagos and the nervousness of the test the next day, OGD found he was extremely tired and so at about 7pm he was already fast asleep only to jerk awake at exactly 3.26am. He checked the time on his cell phone and decided to stroll downstairs to the pool bar to maybe get a bottle of Coke and meat pie because he was so quite hungry and realized he hadn’t eaten anything since the previous afternoon, slightly before he began the journey….

As he gently found his way down the stairs to the reception of the Hotel, the room four doors away on the next floor opened and he saw a female hand (by the painted nails) drop a pillow outside the door and shut it immediately. Gbenga found that quite strange but thought nothing of it, except who dropped a pillowcase outside a Hotel room door at 3.35am in the morning? I mean a dirty plate, yes or empty bottles, YES but never a pillowcase and so out of curiosity he simply checked and Olugbenga Nathaniel Daniel received the shock of his life, what he presumed was a pillow was actually a pillowcase full of money that was not what caused the near cardiac arrest, what caused it was that the “pillowcase” was filled with dollars!!!!!

He gently picked up the pillowcase and tiptoed to his room upstairs, all thoughts of coke and meat pie erased from his mind…

He got to his room and locked the door and then went into the bathroom and locked that door as well and then upturned the pillowcase, the mint bills all in hundreds total $280,000…..woooooooooow.

Gbenga found himself drenched in sweat. His mind could not even begin to convert the money to naira and he realized from the shaking that he was truly afraid….what if this was a trap? What if it was ritual money (he had heard about such things)….

He couldn’t get much sleep, but after a couple more hours of him just staring at the pillowcase full of money, he decided to do the only thing any self respecting person would do ………..

About Torpedo Mascaw: Spoken Word Artist | MC | Founder: Freedom Hall Nigeria| Adventurer| Bookclub Member

Twitter/Instagram: @torpedomascaw