OKEZIE

[UNEDITED...TAKE IT AS YOU SEE IT...STILL TEST RUNNING]

...continued

Days passed by and no opportunity came up. Nobody committed lose-guarding. From time to time, Nkechi came around and stirred up his passion to ‘take something’. Then one day, an opportunity presented itself.

                Okezie was at work as usual when he noticed a brown envelope in a drawer. He looked around but no one was there. He touched the envelop and it felt like money. He went and locked the main entrance door so no one would come in suddenly. Then he went back and picked up the envelop. It was not sealed so he opened it and was shocked by what he saw inside it; Bundles of five hundred naira notes. He counted the bundles in a hurry, they were eight. He thought what to do. Should he take or not.

  “This is the opporotunity you have been waiting for,” a voice told him. He remembered what Ebuka had suggested. Thoughts of Nkechi falling for him flashed through his mind. These made his resolve stronger. Immediately he removed some notes from some of the bundles and put into his pocket. Then he closed the envelop properly and finished the cleaning in a hurry.

                Moments later, people office staff started coming. Okezie thought of how he could avoid being caught.

  “If they start looking for the money,” he said to himself, “they will ask me first because I was the first to enter the office,”

                He decided to feign sickness so they would let him go home. That he did. He sat at a corner and shook himself as though he had fever. He barely responded to greetings.

  “What is the matter with you?” they asked him.

                He managed to say he was not feeling well.

  “But Oga is not here yet,” Okoro the second cleaner told him. “Maybe you will wait till he comes then he may let you go.”

  “But who will clean for me in the afternoon?” Okezie asked him, with the intention of trapping him.

  “Don’t worry. I will do that for you.”

                Okezie turned his face away and smiled to himself. He just hoped the missing money would not be discovered till he was gone.

                Soon his oga’s assistant came and he released Okezie to go. Okezie shivered and left amidst ‘sorry’ that everybody kept telling him. When he was far away from the office, he walked fast and kept looking back to know if someone was running after him to call him back. At the major road, he entered taxi drop back to his house.

...to be continued

Chinedu Isaac