Daily Money

This is not a robbery. I mean, yes, be very, very afraid, but only because you’re unfortunate to be caught here with us—me and Mr. Dim here. We have not come to cart the bank’s money or yours away. Neither have we come to hurt anybody. But I’m afraid we’re dying, and only you can help us stay alive. It’s not like you have a choice O. Because if we’re unable to find what we came for, then we all die together. Whether you work for the bank, you’re a customer, or you came escorting someone, all of us here are stuck in this together.

You people are just wasting time begging us. Believe me, it’s not us you’ll beg. Join us to beg Oga Manager and Madam CO. They can’t even agree on who is in charge here, see? Ah, look, look at them, too, begging, curtsying, and scrubbing their palms together that hard. Are you trying to make fire, sir? Ma? Don’t beg us, please, Oga and Madam. If you cooperate and we’re able to find what we’re after, then everyone goes home safely. We would probably be going to jail for showing up to a bank like this, but better jail than the morgue.

And what’s all this crying, eh?

Madam CO, you too, crying this much? Crying is not going to save you O. I have cried for four straight days, but look at me. Apart from the immense flogging I’ve received from spirits only I can see and the utter madness that I have been put through, it’s like I’ve leaked half my weight in tears. If I didn’t realize in time that marathon crying would kill me faster than my predicament, where would I have found the strength to think up this plan or the energy to carry it out? Just look at how withered Mr. Dim here is, what is left of his flesh pulled tight over his skeleton like the hide of a drum. I bet you guys are thinking we walked out of one of those UN flyers campaigning to feed imaginary hunger-ravaged kids in Africa.

You might be stronger than us O, but we are wearing bombs, okay? Don’t mind the hapless wires and the haphazard state of the vests, I assure you, they will explode. I have the trigger right here. See? At least ten of our loved ones already died because of us. What more a bunch of strangers? Any silly movements, and I promise you all these white walls and fine computers will shatter, hell will send some of its fire here, and we’ll all roast like barbecue.

For any of this to make sense to you, I need to tell this story properly. Don’t worry about the police people breaking in. There’s a sign outside telling them that the bombs strapped to our chests are only two of the twenty-two ticking around this building. Relax; we have all day.

My name is Ariyo, or you can call me Aristo. I’m twenty-six. I’m not a terrorist, nor is Mr. Dim. In fact, until two days ago, I had neither seen a bomb vest in real life nor even imagined I could make one. Believe it or not, I was a peace-loving, law-abiding citizen of the country, just like you. It all began some weeks ago when a certain babe named Blessing moved in across from my room at Dodan Villa. You wouldn’t know the house or the area. With these fine suits, agbadas, and dresses, your types only know the luxury Victoria Island buildings around here; you don’t live in rundown shitholes like Dodan Villa. Anyway, even though Blessing’s face is not all that, you should see her voluptuous figure, Manchester in front, and Arsenal at the back. She would see me and smile, flashing me bright green light. Green means go, right? So, I asked her out. But she said no.

“You think because dem dey call you Aristo, you fit afford me?” she laughed. “You fit buy me latest iPhone or take me go Eko Marina?”

Eko Marina Hotels, where the cheapest room is fifty K, and the latest iPhone that is over five hundred K. That was where I should have used my brain, but that yansh, damn!

It’s not like I’m that broke a guy O. There’s no stable job, but I do a bit of social media influencing, and even though some months bring nothing, there are times when I make as much as seventy K in one month. I dey manage myself, dey do fine boy in my own small way. And when there is money, I send Elema, my landlady’s son, to deliver things to Blessing. But after she’s done eating my JFC chicken bucket, she’d compare me to her friends’ boyfriends who are into yahoo yahoo. See, I have tried yahoo yahoo before, it didn’t work for me. Everybody thinks it’s free money. I tell Blessing that spending countless hours on the internet trying to scam unsuspecting people is actually hard work, and not everyone hits it big like Hushpuppi. That’s why most of them have started turning to yahoo plus. But she would remind me that Nancy’s boyfriend drives a Benz, and Chichi’s own just bought a Tesla. When I reminded her that those boys could have used her friends for yahoo plus, guess what she said.

“What’s there? If I see person wey go use me, let him use me O, as long as he go take care of me.”

Does she not understand that if she gets used, she could run mad or even die a mysterious death? This is another time where I should have told myself the truth and stopped trying to woo her, right? My father na Christian, my mother, Muslim. And even though I, personally, am not religious, I know that God exists. Blood money or any form of juju that will make evil spirits be chasing me all over the place was never me. I’m sure you see it too in Nollywood movies, and you’ll agree it never ends well. But Blessing’s Manchester and Arsenal were my mumu button. She was the closest I could ever come to any of those Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, or Instagram baddies that I sometimes have wet dreams about. So even though I knew I didn’t quite match what she wanted, I found myself going back to Bubbles, that popular car wash at Mandilla.

Who knows the place here? Almost everyone. That’s good, that’s very good. Oga Manager, you’re just shaking like a leaf that wants to drop off a branch. Our fate is in your hands O. Your fate too. So calm down, ehn?

I was talking about Bubbles. You see, it is owned by Charles, who happened to be a regular giraffe during exams back in the uni. Whose answer booklet did he spy the most? Mine. I might not have made it yet, but believe me, I made excellent grades, graduated with a 2:1. Charles, on the other hand, would miss classes and say that he was busy hustling, building his car-wash business, so I also used to tick his attendance and write some of his assignments. By the time we left school, Bubbles was already doing well. When I came back from youth service, it had become the talk of the town. So, a few months ago when I was badly pressed for cash, I approached Charles for a loan. His giraffe neck was now more like hippopotamus neck, fat and thick with folds, surrounded by gold chains. This guy sat me down in his AC-chilled office and lectured me on why he couldn’t give me his money.

“This my car wash na fishpond,” he said. “I no fit dey give you fish, when you fit just carry fishing rod catch the fish yourself.”

In other words, he expected me to pull on a uniform and join his boys to wash cars, then he’d pay me at the end of the day. I stared at him, my mouth trying to manufacture a response, but producing a pool of saliva instead. Someone I helped all through uni. I left there not believing my ears. But with my influencing gigs not paying in recent weeks, and with increased spending due to Blessing’s JFC chicken bucket craving, I found myself back there the following week, with my head bowed and hands behind my back like the prodigal son. My guy gave me the job O, but I still can never forget what he said when I asked when I could start.

“Aristo Baba. More like where you should start. This office. Since that your saliva, if I enter here, na so so saliva I dey smell. Once you don finish, my assistant go give you your uniform.”

An office that was smelling of lavender air spray O. He said my saliva was smelling in there. My pride grew in my mouth with more saliva. I swallowed it and got the job done. After washing a total of twelve cars that day, he paid me twelve K, the exact total that the twelve cars paid for their wash.

“Any car you wash here, the entire money na your own,” he said. “Only because you be my guy O.”

Great deal! It softened some of my anger toward Charles. So, since then, sometimes when I’m low on cash, I’m also a part-time washer over at Bubbles. That’s how I ended up washing Mr. Dim’s car last Tuesday.

A Twitter campaign paid me ten K on Monday, but I wasn’t buying JFC chicken buckets anymore, no! The one I shared with Blessing the Friday before had churned my belly all night, so much that I was visiting the pharmacy all weekend, buying Purgy Colon Cleanser and Andrews Liver Salt. Ileya—the Muslim Salah—was on Thursday anyway, so there would be plenty of ram meat going round, no need for JFC. I decided instead, I would buy Blessing something really nice, like new shoes, a gown, or a cheap phone. The ten K should rest in my account. I needed to make some more money.

So, I was at Bubbles on Tuesday morning before even the janitor arrived. My plan was to wash at least fifty cars, but over at Bubbles, it’s very much like the neighborhood barbershop. Five barbers stand by their chairs, a hundred people walk in, and they all want the same two or three barbers; the idle ones are rendered more useless than the furniture. By midday, I had only washed six cars. Dede, the star washer, had washed at least thirty. So, when Kiki the food seller came around that afternoon, I volunteered to help Dede cover his plate of beans with my used plate, as he was too busy to eat at the time. The bottle of Purgy Colon Cleanser from the pharmacy was still in my pocket, so I made sure to sprinkle some into the plate. I gave the watery beans a good shake and set it by his loaf of bread. Dede was hardly midway through his meal before a rupture of fart escaped him. He held his buttocks, half apologizing, half questioning himself, and rushed to the loo—

Hmmmmm!

Wait O. Is that poo I smell here? Someone shat him or herself. Am I the only one smelling it? Who did? You in the security uniform? Yes, you! Isn’t that a wet smear I see on your trousers? Really, with all your muscles like Anthony Joshua? Look, I don’t blame you. Just don’t kill those around you with that terrible smell before they can help us find what we came for, please.

Anyway, Charles arrived as Dede left for the loo, and I couldn’t help but lament to him about my idleness despite the incessant influx of cars. The next car in the queue was a Porsche Cayenne SUV. The driver was Dimeji aka Mr. Dim, much fleshier and more handsome than this shrunken, bomb-carrying version of him you’re looking at beside me. He looked like someone from a colorful music video. He wore big chains, the type you see on them hip-hop singers like Burna Boy and Davido. His cologne alone was an exotic statement. His frames had designer patterns on their lenses. For fear of being snubbed or looked down on, I wouldn’t dare speak to a person that rich if we had met in a different place. But here, I came to hustle, so I sold myself, telling him how much of an expert washer I was. Charles chimed in, and it was a deal.

“Whatever you do, do not open the trunk. I can wait for Dede if this is asking too much O. Abeg, do not open the trunk. It doesn’t need washing. Okay?”

Those were his words, and I had every intention of heeding them. But this fine car had buttons everywhere, and somehow, when I was working on the interior, I ran my napkin over some of those buttons, and the trunk clicked open. My heart skipped when I saw it rising in the rearview mirror. I rushed to snap it shut, but man, you cannot imagine what was staring back at me when I got there.

The bankers among you lot might not have been fazed, but I swear, the rest of you would have been as shell-shocked as I was seeing the mountain of crisp one thousand naira notes covering every inch of space in that SUV trunk. You might already be able to guess what happened next, and, yes, feel free to judge me. I judge myself now, too. But in that moment, all I could think about was getting Blessing her desired iPhone and having some more cash for myself. Plus, the stash was brimming in such abundance that I was certain Mr. Dim wouldn’t notice. By the time he was back for his car, it was sparkling clean, and the trunk betrayed no evidence that it had been pried into.

Dede also returned from the loo just then, clutching his unbuttoned shorts and looking spent like he had just breasted the finish line in a marathon. If he hadn’t dragged all attention to himself, perhaps someone would have noticed my jumpy steps, shaky hands, and general restlessness. When he announced Kiki’s beans as the culprit for his stomach upset, my brain lit up with the perfect escape idea. After all, I had eaten the same beans just over thirty minutes ago. I pretended to fill a bucket with water, pour in some soap, before suddenly clasping a palm against my stomach and bending over the foaming bucket, crying out in pain. Long story short, I was out of there in a few minutes, some bundles of fresh mints hidden away in my backpack.

All the way home, my chest pounded as though a pestle was ramming into a mortar in there. I couldn’t wait to slide the latch shut behind my door before emptying the bag onto my bed and counting my loot. Seven hundred K! As in, seven hundred thousand naira!

Whew!

Guess what I did next?

This is another junction where you can feel free to judge me. Because what broke person living in a dingy room in a face-me-I-face-you squalid house gets free seven hundred K and marches straight to a phone shop to put down an entire five hundred fifty K out of it for a phone he’s not going to use? But as stupid as it sounds, when it came to Blessing, my brain took a back seat. Senseless, right? If only I had completely shut my brain off and spent every bit of the money that day, we would not be here wearing these bombs, and you people wouldn’t be huddled in that corner, shaking and whimpering like lily-livered kids watching a horror movie.

So, what did I do with the rest of the money? I strolled into the Eko Marina Hotels and paid for a deluxe standard room. Then I took a tour of the sprawling edifice and all its jaw-dropping facilities, taking pictures and uploading them to my Snapchat and Instagram. I had called Blessing a couple of times after buying the phone. She neither picked up nor called back. I had left messages on WhatsApp. She read them and didn’t reply. But when the Eko Marina pictures hit my Snapchat, it took only a few seconds before her messages came pouring in.

Again, long story short, in a little over an hour, I was joined by a different shade of my crush, Blessing. This version of her was beaming, smothering me with her Manchester, letting me grab and rub her Arsenal. We were smooching all over the building—in the lift, in the pool, on the corridors. Even at the buffet, she had my lips in her mouth more than she had food. By the bar, she leaned in, licked my earlobe, and whispered in sultriness that made me feel like I would melt: “Touch me, baby.” My hands were quickly all over her breasts. I mean the actual breasts O, not some bra fabric, my fingers playing notes on her hard nipples. She grinded against my boner as soulful jazz floated in the air, making my hand venture beyond her waist beads into her panties, before she pulled it back out. And she, too, fondled around in my boxers, with the promise of mind-blowing head when we got back in the room. I knew that she couldn’t wait to tear open the new phone and slide her SIM card into it, and in my own reverie, I couldn’t wait to slide myself inside of her. When I asked how she would like to celebrate her phone, she asked me to order a bottle of Hennessy. The room and buffet already cost seventy K. Hennessy in this expensive place was another fifty K—more than double the price it’s sold outside. I know you’re probably not interested in this part, but when we got back in the room later that night, ready to finally do the do, she was already snoring from being piss-drunk. Or perhaps that was what she wanted me to believe, because by the time I woke up in the morning, Blessing and the phone were nowhere there. Almost as though the time I spent with her the evening before was a dream.

I called and called, but her number was switched off. The thing pain me, ehn! Did she think she would just take my phone and not give anything back? Did she already sell the phone so soon?

Those were my thoughts then. I had no idea that the phone would soon be the least of my worries. Anyway, I counted what was left of the money. Sixteen K. Feeling sober and ashamed that I had squandered such huge amounts with nothing to show for it, I came straight here and deposited the money into my account. You with the blue tie would remember me if I didn’t look so different now. Blue tie and beard, yes, you. It was you I gave the money to. That was on Wednesday afternoon, shortly before the bank’s early closure for the public holidays. And that was when my problems started.

First, it was a phone call right in the middle of me making Indomie to eat later that evening. A phone call from an uncle in the village, saying that my father had fallen from the top of a palm tree and that money was needed urgently for his treatment. I swear it wasn’t the shock, as in, I literally felt something take control of my hand and shake it vigorously. That’s how my phone ended up slipping and crashing into the boiling noodles. The entire screen was gone, and now I could no longer make a transfer from my bank app. I rushed out to the junction, hitting and cursing, hoping to use the services of Fela, the POS guy. All the way there, I kept asking myself how come Papa fell from a palm tree. Yes, he was a palm-wine tapper, but a palm-wine tapper who had not climbed a tree in over ten years. What was he thinking?

I got to Fela’s kiosk, and alas, I had left the house in such a hurry that I didn’t take my ATM card. The sensible thing to do would have been for me to rush back home and get the card, right? But I stood there, begging Fela to let me log my bank app into his phone so that I could transfer the money without having to go back home. Ten minutes passed. Then another ten—the time it would have taken me to go home and return—before Fela finally succumbed. I had a total of 27,550 K in my account. I would send some of the funds home and pay the rest to Dede as charges. People were rushing away from the kiosk, saying something about a fire, but I was too engrossed. Until a blackened Elema rushed toward me, panting, shouting that Dodan Villa was on fire.

A strange coldness suddenly descended on me, and, for a brief moment, I froze with my eyes bulging. I had left my noodles on fire and rushed out without turning the stove off!

I spent that night in a police cell, slapped hard by the hardened inmates I met in there for not hailing the cell Capo right, stung to stupor by soldier mosquitoes with straws for proboscises. The next morning, my landlady’s lawyer visited. When he left, I was moved to a kinder cell where I was supposed to be by myself. I spent the entire evening crying in a corner of the dusty room, watching white clouds float by against the blue sky in the small window cut close to the ceiling of the cell. It was when dusk fell upon the room that I realized that I had more than just soldier mosquitoes for company. If you’ve seen spirits with painted faces and palm-frond skirts in Nollywood movies and thought they only existed in there, you’re wrong. A hundred of them with torn skin and blood dripping from their open wounds came streaming from the walls that night, all bearing whips. They chased, and I ran with my eyes shut, screaming at the top of my lungs.

See, ehn? Let me not scare you, but my eyes saw shege. I was sprinting but rooted to the same spot. They were lashing me, and there was pain but no whip marks. By morning, those clueless, godforsaken police people concluded that I was mad and needed to be chained. See the chain marks on my wrists and ankles for yourselves, making me look as though I have just escaped a slave ship. God punish them, the police people.

This was my life all through Thursday and Friday while you guys were busy enjoying your Ileya public holiday. The police people said they were holding me for arson. The lawyer chimed in with a lot of other scary facts, including the fact that bail wasn’t possible until after the public holidays and the weekend. In other words, if I hadn’t received surprised visitors on Saturday morning, I would probably just be getting out now, out to die at midnight today.

Who were my visitors? Charles from Bubbles and Mr. Dim here. As you can see, Mr. Dim is in even worse shape than I am. Before he lost his speech, he told me his own bleeding floggers are in the thousands, unlike my hundreds, and that when they whip him, he feels the strokes of each of their whips. Since I took his money, he has lost his mother, his father, his brother, and two sisters. One blood relative for each day that the sixteen K I deposited here has sat in your vault. Also, he has suffered a stroke, hence why a side of his face is looking as though it will fall off. A twenty-five-year-old hit by a stroke. Crazy, right? Oh, his many homes in Lekki, Abeokuta, Abuja, and London all burned down at the exact time that my own fire incident happened. Guess what happened next? EFCC came and picked up his wife for “covering up evidence.” If she were a blood relative, perhaps she would have been dead.

I see you’re all shocked. You want to know why all these happenings are happening. This same look you all have on your faces now is the one I wore as he reeled out his tale of woe, with Charles standing at a distance as though we were lepers, his shock contorting his face such that he looked like a hippopotamus wearing a wrinkled mask. Apparently, Mr. Dim here did the dreaded yahoo plus, a particular one called Daily Money, meaning that he had spirits bring him a batch of money every day, with the condition that he must spend it all to the last penny before the next batch arrived by midnight. So, all of these tragedies are taking place because I took seven hundred K out of the money and foolishly came to deposit some of it here. Since Saturday, I have blamed him for his desperation; he has blamed me for my greed. In the end, we agreed to work together. Hence, this plan and all the bombs. My knowledge of chemistry and physics came in handy, and so did his knowledge of the deep, dark web. You’ll be surprised how motivated one can be when their life depends on it.

You all are hanging your mouths open like spectators watching Super Story on TV. Well, this particular story is not super, it is true, and now, we need you to work with us.

If Charles hadn’t seen my Eko Marina posts on Instagram, it wouldn’t have occurred to him to try reaching me when Mr. Dim went running to him on Friday, insisting that someone at the car wash had taken his money. If he hadn’t called me and gotten no response, he wouldn’t have gone looking for me, only to find out that the exact same fire tale that Mr. Dim told him had happened to me, too. I don’t know what strings they pulled, but I was released on Saturday, and since then, Charles has declared that he wants nothing to do with us both. Can you blame him? When he’s the one who gave me the news that even I had lost my father, my mother, and my brother as of Saturday morning, before the first of my sisters followed later that evening, and the other yesterday. These deaths, all within one day of each other. Since I graduated, my parents have longed in vain for the day they’d reap the fruits of sending me to school as a have-not. My brother just got a scholarship to study engineering at MIT in the USA. My first sister only got married last December. Now, they’re all gone, thanks to my stupidity. And I don’t even have a moment to grieve. I’m here fighting for my own life, just like Dimeji. But Blessing is somewhere flexing the phone I bought her. Somehow, she doesn’t get to die. That’s unimportant right now sha.

A blood relative dies every day for five days, and if the change from the Daily Money is still not found by the sixth day, then it becomes our turn to go. Today is that sixth day.

Does it all make sense to you now?

If we do not find every single note in that sixteen K I put here last Wednesday, we die at midnight when our spirit whippers return. Now, we all know that the banks have not been open since that fateful day, thanks to two days of Ileya and the weekend. Meaning that the money is still here somewhere. That’s why we’ve come so early in the morning. What Mr. Dim and I want is simple; we want to live. So, Oga Manager and Madam CO, kindly march all of us to the vault, and let everybody look for the money. Don’t worry, Mr. Dim will recognize his Daily Money when he sees it. Save our lives, please. Otherwise, we can all do the dying together right now.

Understood?