[Must Read] Short Story - When Things Go Wrong

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Tunde and Tosan had been married for two years and lived in their Ibadan home. They had the typical look of the young and happy couple, everything was perfect. Tunde was a top manager in the Lagos firm where he worked and Tosan owned a clothes store somewhere close to the University of Ibadan. Tunde had to go to Lagos on Mondays and return on Fridays because of his job, and it was during one of such work trips that something that was already wrong went even more wrong.

Jide Badmus had three wives and seven children between them. He had plenty of money too and really didn’t have to work actively anymore. At 56, he had worked hard in his youth and now had several steady streams of income, investments and partnerships yielding huge dividends. Jide had plenty all the time and all the money in the World to live as he liked.

He was getting old, but remained young at heart (randy too). He didn’t like the way society called big, rich men like him ‘chief’. He didn’t like what it connoted, and he wasn’t a chief anywhere anyway, so he stopped people from referring to him as chief. ‘Simply Mr Badmus, please’, he would always insist.

The sad thing about collectors like Mr Badmus, is that they seem not to ever get satisfied and don’t know when to stop. Mr Badmus had 3 beautiful wives, but they didn’t satisfy him. Badmus had eaten and was full, but he was looking for bekun bekun*. He always had his eyes open for fresh fish. It was on one such occasion while he was keeping his eyes open for worthy prospects that he met Tosan.

To cut the story short, Mr Badmus and Tosan started ‘dating’. Tunde’s job presented the perfect opportunity. Whenever Tunde was gone between Monday and Friday, Mr Badmus would keep Tosan company. Sometimes he would go to her house for day visits, other times, he would tell his family he was going to Abuja or Lagos for business, but his driver Dosunmu would to drop him off at Tosan’s house on Tuesday morning and to return to pick him up on Thursday or Friday morning.

On and on it went for months, everyone was playing their parts in the script perfectly, until one day, Tunde went out of character. He was to have a business meeting with a client in Ibadan on Friday afternoon, so he decided to go home that Thursday night after work. Tosan and Mr Badmus were goofing around in bed when she heard the horn of Tunde’s car.

In the shock and confusion that followed, Tosan hurried a half-naked Badmus into the guest room, locked the door and hid the key before going to welcome Tunde. Tosan struggled to maintain her composure through the night so as not to arouse suspicion. After Tunde went to bed, she waited for some time to ensure he was sound asleep and then went to unlock the guest room to free Badmus.

The sight she saw was too much for her to contain, Tosan stumbled against the door and screamed. Her scream woke Tunde up with a start, he jumped off the bed and came running to see what was wrong. When he reached the guest room and looked in, what he saw was a shocked Tosan leaning against the door and a half-naked dead man lying prone on the floor.


What do you think happened when Dosunmu came to pick his boss early the next morning?

*Bekun bekun is the Yoruba expression for greedy indulgence.