BEST SERVED HOT - THE MYSTERY

‘A TALE BY

JIMMY ARNIS’

It was common knowledge that Chief was rotten. In fact, not so much common knowledge as a deep rock steady belief that he was a nefarious incarnate. Jokes even flew around that he should have been cast as Gru in the cartoon Despicable Me, except while the cartoon was okay for a five year old, Chief's activities would corrupt a man way into his thirties. 

Suffice to say that if Gru was the Disney definition of the word despicable, then Chief was all the dictionary definitions. And trust me when I say those are not pretty.  But as Terry Goodkind rightly said, 'People are stupid’, and when you do come to think about it, yes! They are. It is common knowledge that smoking kills and alcohol is a menace, yet we have a large percentage of people who liberally engage in that stuff ,without a scintilla of thought for the outcome. And so even with possession of the knowledge that Chief was so flagitious, he probably had more maggots in his psyche than a month old overripe apple, some people still patronized him.  

What did Chief sell? He sold money. He was a loan shark.  Take a moment to attend your dictionary and check the meaning of that word. Chief didn't really care about the exorbitant rates of interest; that was really just a camouflage to get students under his thumb for his various heinous activities. And as we all know, students are very versatile, especially when under pressure. 

Which was why it came as a glorious and horrific shock to all of us when we heard that Patrick, my best friend had gone ahead and borrowed money from him. The number of what the fucks and other expletives that had flown around in response would have curdled milk and made Barbosa blush. The question was evident; why?  

Now, Patrick was a 400 level First Class architecture student, whose mother had died of a car accident a few months back, leaving him custody of a sister who had just written JAMB, another job seeking sister and an irrelevant father. It was the so desperately needed school fees that he had, against all telencephalic orders, borrowed from Gru... Sorry Chief. And as expected, once the deadline was past and he was unable to pay up fully, Chief rolled out the ultimatum; come work for me or I'll make your life a synonym of Tartarus.  

That had been a month or so ago, and Patrick had been resisting the forces of evil, taking the occasional persuasive beatings from Chief's henchmen while slaving away to get the money. His grades dropped, his babe turned vile and left him, his temper soured, he gained a more Frankenstein-ish pallor everyday and the fact that the interest rate climbed a little higher everyday did nothing to help. And to crown it all, he refused all help from us.  

I was in class on that fateful day when my phone started ringing. For the first time ever, the lecture was actually approaching a margin of interesting, and so since it was on vibrate, I just let it groove on. I'd call the person later, I thought. It rang one more time, then silence. Good, I thought. The person took the hint. Class was over in about half an hour, and I checked the missed calls: Patrick. 

I dialled his number immediately with a sense of foreboding, but my airtime was exhausted. Quickly, Dave's phone. Patrick didn't pick up. The dread intensified. Immediately, we left the faculty, half-walking half-running. We even took a cab, which was something we would never have been caught dead doing under normal circumstances, all the while still dialling. The cab dropped us just outside the school gate, and then it was a race to get home. 

All of a sudden, the call was answered. But instead of our friend's voice, we heard the sound of profanities being exchanged. Patrick and Chief. We yelled the former's name, but no answer came forth, or even any indication that he heard. The receive button had probably pressed itself in the tight confines of his jeans. The cascade of verbal vitriol increased in both volume and heat, then a scuffle ensued. A female voice was screaming in the background and all the while Dave and I were equally yelling to stop as we ran and the entire neighborhood watched us go with that special stare usually reserved for the mentally deranged. 

Then there was a grunt, followed by another and another, and the screaming voice rose to peak at a very high level,  that you would only hear  from a banshee and it caused several chills run down my spine. Dave's face was pale as a cadaver. We cut the call and ran harder.