Mischief

Mischief By: J.Ifeme Elo
“Hello good people, this is your girl on radio, P-E -A-CH. You are right on 107.2 Megahertz, FUN FM – your number one radio location. Hey, don’t touch that radio, because you are hooked to the very best, and we assure you nothing less. Good deal, huh? That is what I am talking about, fun all day,” her satin smooth voice could make even a hard core gay start reconsidering. “It is a beautiful Friday morning. Beautiful, beautiful sun- filled day, blue skies all the way.” She lets in a little of the latest soul music.
That is her style, and they love it like craze. She is the one and only PEACH; the smoothest and juiciest of them all on radio, and this is how she flies.
She likes the early morning show the most. Though she worked the night shift, she is in the least exhausted or bored. Radio is where she has found, not only her passion, but her sanctuary. The fact that her fans are out there and listening, thrills her. They adore her voice. That is very important.
As the music fades, she slips back on air, as smoothly as a finger sliding on buttered Formica. “Straight from the weather unit: the city will remain sunny, at maximum temperature of 31 degrees – should ‘a been a Sunday, don’t you think?” she releases that killer throaty chuckle she is so aware drives a million guys crazy out there. She loves flirting on radio, and thinks it’s very cool. “The time is 7:30 am. Thank God it’s Friday. No one does it better than FUN FM, we…”
A rigorous knock on the studio glass partition brings her to her real self, Margareta Odonowo. Why would anyone use such names on radio? Huh? She turns the music on again, repeating the same track. That should take care of her fans. She yanks off the big ear phones and microphone that ties her to the broadcasting gadget, ready for a fight. She is a really tall black girl; just a tall black girl and nothing more. That is the impression she leaves with those few of her fans who finally get to see her in person. Somehow she knows she is not what they expect, so she limits her meetings with them to chance encounters.
“What?” she demands from her colleague, Greg, who is soaked to the skin. And pants like a bad dog that just escaped a reprisal mob. While on radio, he likes to talk like he has hot yam from pepper soup in his mouth, and that is off the hook for him.
“It’s raining cat and dog out there,” he gasps.
“Shit!” her real voice leaps out, “but the weather report says… oh my God, I’m…”
He gives her that look that says; to hell with the weather report, to hell with FUN FM, they won’t even give a raise. He looks himself over on the glass wall. Oh, well, I’m Greg on radio; thank God it wasn’t my voice they heard, hehehe. “Hey baby, it happens. Calm, ok?”
And he walks away.
It is such a day.

Fahde woke up feeling rather awkward.
Out from the bathroom, naked as Adam on the day of creation, he pulls a drab shirt over his back without toweling. Buckling his trousers, it vaguely occurs to him he hasn’t put on any underwear; he settles that with a hiss and heads out to his garage.
There stands his regular Toyota Celica, and a twenty five year old, or more, Land Rover, reluctantly bequeathed by his late father, a wise man. The old man was so in love with the scrap he wanted it next to himself in the grave, he said the Rover never stopped being nice to him. But Fahde gave him assurance he would take good care of it. Fahde was actually thinking of the cost of digging additional space for a Land Rover, oldest of all the models.
He jumps into the driver’s seat, joggles the ignition with a metal serving the purpose of a key, and the engine groans, then roars into life; discharging thick, white smoke which rushes out the exhaust like some formless angel on rescue mission into the room where his wife and two children still lie snoring. Usually he shuts the window before starting his car, but this morning is simply berserk.
He makes a face at the mirror. No, this frown isn’t mean enough. He dresses the muscles of his face until he gets the meanest. A slam on the throttle and he is flying along the minor street. People expectantly hurry out to know what will happen next. You know that ominous screech before a smash.
Suddenly, he is enjoying the way everyone gives him way. Usually he had to hone and wait and get upset. Today he is doing sixty on such a jammed road and all the people could do is frantically give him way. This is amazing. He looks at the mirror for assurance, “isn’t it amazing?”
A spoil spot appears. Vehicle inspection officers are positioned barely two hundred meters ahead. A sneer crosses his face as one of the officers bounces to the road and starts waving him down. This is all the more interesting. He pushes harder on the throttle and the speedometer glides up steadily; seventy, eighty, ninety, and he sweeps past the fleeing officer, daring them to follow him.
“Go after him, officer,” the inspector yells at the driver.
“Did you see that face, sir?” The driver wails back in horror.
“Face, what face? Get him, and stop being stupid!”
“You get him, sir.” He retorts defiantly, and tosses the key at the inspector.
“Huh?” He wants to remind the driver he is the superior officer here, but becoming indignant doesn’t get anywhere with this pig head. What is happening today, anyway? “Well, let him go.”
The driver looks at the inspector, first in relief, then in glee. These silly fresh university officers should wait to learn the job before they start farting from the mouth; couldn’t he see that guy is on a suicide mission?
“He will meet his end. We see a lot of that, don’t we?” The inspector says more casually than he feels.
“Yes, we do, sir.”
He hates this guy’s gut.

Fahde just hit one hundred kilometers per hour and suddenly realizes he really has nowhere going. He looks at the time, 7:30 am. Shit.
He needs to return home, but first he has to slow this whining Rover monster down. But did this scrap really just hit one hundred? He can’t believe that just happened.

The ticket clerk is absent, the office locked, and dozens of people queue up for a bus ticket in front of the unopened office. There are four buses waiting, but no one gets on a bus here without a ticket. The right thing to do is: come in like a gentle man, it doesn’t matter if you are a woman; go to the nice girl whose nice job is to collect your money nicely, and hand you a ticket with a nice smile.
The bus conductor lets you onto the bus nicely; lets you pass through a metal counter which job is not to care if you bought the wrong ticket. Then the driver doesn’t say a word but be sure he will get you to your destination safely, but if you are nice, you could say hi, and he is a nice man too.
At least that is not far from what the government wants to happen in the new yellow bus, which is why nobody should hawk, or preach, or insult the driver, or anyone, while on it. Don’t even think anyone will step on your foot, there is enough space; the manufacturer had good thinking.
However, the only person whose job annoys is the security man. Each day he sits at that lonely spot where he doesn’t get talked to. Not because he is not nice, but no one is being nice to him. He has a stern face, not by desire, but he needs that as long as he is here. The people who employed him do not think it is a nice thing for a security man to be grinning. He hates being neglected. His name tag says John B.U. But no one ever uses that except his supervisor. All the silly people that come here do is call him ‘security’, like they are blind or can not read.
But today something bizarre is happening. First everyone seems to be looking in his direction, and then suddenly they are all talking to him.
Hmm, talking to me?
But he wouldn’t talk back.
After one year on the job he now knows all the regulars to this bus station, not because he is paid to know anyone, but because they are so annoying.
“Where is the ticket clerk, security?” a girl in a revealing a green top and tight jean queries him.
Like this one now, he thinks, silly girl! Does she ever look at the mirror before she wears those revealing clothes? Disrespectful piece of crap; “where is the ticket clerk?” as if I can’t keep her in the house and... Ah, no! Not with all those stretch-marks. And she is always coming from who knows where.
“Security, where is the ticket person? Or are you not a part of this office?” A big guy in a black suit demands with an air of authority.
Criminal hands! Do I have to look to know it’s him? Each time there is a pick-pocket here, he is never far from the queue. I have my eyes on you, like a dish to the sky. You just wait. Someday soon your sunny days will be over, and I will be the first guy by your side. Believe me your size won’t matter on that day.
His stern face isn’t making the slightest show of his resentful thoughts.
“Please officer, talk to us, we are running late.” A decent looking old woman intervenes.
Oh, nice little woman. “Please, officer,” but would you have talked to me if you weren’t stuck? You are getting nothing, zilch, zip.
He is not going to say a word to any of them.
Day in day out they come in here sticking their noses up at him like he is some piece of shit, today is his day to shit on their faces so they can smell real shit like it’s on them. The ticket clerk is somewhere in the main building taking care of herself, they can wait for her if they want; case closed.
It is 7:30 am on the dot and the first bus should now be leaving but there is no one in any of the buses yet. In annoyance, the drivers punch at their hones and forget their fingers there, and everything goes crackers.
Meanwhile, the nice girl who is the ticket clerk is in the restroom weeping. How is she supposed to go out there and tell the world that the office keys have fallen into the toilet?

Constable Jabir has just taken over from where electricity left off. It is the civic obligation of an officer of the law to help ease traffic jam whenever it is no longer sensible to wait for the traffic automated system, and he is doing quite well. A teenage street boy observes with keen interest. He has darting eyes and a twitching mouth. A ball of cotton wool soaked with a solution for patching bicycle tube is plugged to one of his nostrils. He thinks if it’s not there something just may go wrong with the world, or his legs. But now they are fine and he is sitting on a half-fallen wall dangling them. His black T-shirt has an inscription which says, ‘yarobanasorigima.’ He doesn’t want trouble. He watches and sniffs.
It is easy for Constable Jabir to start with a part of the road he considers the North in his mind. When the line on the lane eases, he lets the East go, then the South, and finally the West. That way, all the vehicles simple go on their courses smoothly. Except for a couple of minutes delay before the next turn to go, everyone is happy. He has been doing that for thirty minutes now, and the motorists are not complaining.
Some even toss crumbled notes at him through their windows as a show of gratitude, but he simply neglects that. He is a good police officer.
The street boy watches. The boy doesn’t like the police, or anyone, that much. There are two things he likes very much, one is the substance he puts in the cotton wool, because it makes the world seem alright, and the other, the police have a lot of it, and if God helps him today, he will get one.
Suddenly, a sensation of exhilaration comes over Constable Jabir and overwhelms him. This feeling makes him think he is some kind of a god; it is so powerful being in charge of order. With these hundreds of men and women under his command, he must be a god. This must be something. It suddenly strikes him to try out something new.
He looks around in some kind of fervent passion, perspiration cladding the uniform tightly to his body. The sun will be merciless today, but that will be later. He is one of those few officers whose uniforms are still worth looking at, and he is not fat. Only that deep inside he wishes he were a little taller and fairer skinned. And he believes that if anyone is to quit wearing this black uniform first, it should be the rank and file and not otherwise, for the obvious reason that they are the ones in the hot sun and shouldn’t have been in black, in the first place.
He looks right, the North lane is waiting. Left, the South lane is waiting. The last vehicle from the East just rushes past. He raises both hands, his brain pounding in his head.
North and South, now!
In that split second no one seems to notice his prank, and vehicles from both opposite lanes swiftly charge out in the manner of wildebeests in migratory rush. In seconds there are shattering glasses, metals and plastics flying and bouncing off, cars skidding of the roads.
Constable Jabir looks on in bewilderment, as if he doesn’t expect himself in the mist of it all, his hands still in the process of coming down. It suddenly dawns on him what a horribly thing he has done. What a first day on traffic duty.
All, he hears his mouth say is, shit!
From the look of things there are no immediate casualties, and all the people abandon their cars and come after him like vampires baying for blood, some pulling out their wheel spanners. Only a tree hears it will be hacked and waits. That is what wisdom says. Constable Jabir takes to his heels, first losing his cap to the wind, one of his shoes, then the other, but he doesn’t even notice.
The street boy thinks this is a miracle, and this sort happens just once in along while. He is sixteen and has just witnessed one. The crazy policeman did not turn off the ignition of his police motorbike.
In the commotion, the boy goes for it. He has never rode a big police motorbike before but there is always a first day. He mounts the seat like he has seen them do a hundred times before, grabs the handles, pulling down the clutch. He engages the gear and zooms off.
O’ haven, this must be you/if it’s not you/what then is you? Some string guitar inside his head is playing wildly.
Two police officers in a Peugeot car are heading in the direction of the scene at a neck break speed, and the boy is too excited to look.
The collision happens so fast that all one of the police officers will later say he saw is a police motorbike flying in the air, and the other will be having some physician telling him what is, or not, good for his head for quite a while. Some one turns the little street boy over, and he utters some barely audible words that will later translate into “Shit…I didn’t…” and passes out.
When a man whose scrotal sac is laden with hernia starts desiring potbelly, someone should think his days are numbered. That is what some belief. The little street boy will have to find some one who will believe all that he wanted is have a short nice ride on a police motorbike.
Constable Jabir is leading a growing marathon of an angry mob down the South lane. No one knows how long the lead will last, yet. The time is 7:30 am, on this same day of mischief.

A pure work of fiction, the characters and events are unreal and do not, in anyway, refer to any person(s).