Five Hours to Die
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5 Hours To Die
Daniel Olas
Copyright 2015 Daniel Olas
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
04:59mins
04:35mins
04:00mins
Chapter Three
02:00mins (In Nigeria)
01:20mins
01:05mins
00:45mins
00:25mins
00:05mins
00:00mins (Zero Hour)
Epilogue
An action Thriller by This Author
…the death that kills men hovers around me and I can smell its scent all over me. It aura alone snuffs life out of every man’s soul. With death I now walk hand in hand and he said to me; “Aint you afraid of me?” And I answered; “Why should I? I’m only afraid of you when I haven’t seen you but now… you are my close friend!!!”
INTRODUCTION
“I just want to end my life… I’m tired of living!” Mr Thomas had told me one day but I never took him serious. I had taken his words to be the common words of the wretched that finds it difficult to survive daily and passes the night under bridges and sheds. Mr Thomas works in a factory where I also work. It’s a soap producing factory that has managed to ward off competitions in that area. In short, it’s the only business setting in the whole of Magbon—a very remote area in Lagos, Nigeria. We mixed the chemical while some other categories of staffs take the mixed chemical to where its further processed… from there, we don’t know what happens again; we only know that after some hours, we see soaps already packed and ready for delivery.
I wasn’t too wrong about my presumptions. Mr Thomas has been working in this factory for eight unfruitful years. According to his story, he joined this factory as a manager and for the next two years, the factory managed to produce five hundred soaps due to some financial constraints—too bad! The management accused him of embezzling the factory’s money and was given the choice of either going to jail or staying back here in the company for another seven years as a labourer staff and on a half salary—that’s worst than jail. The choice he chose kept him here. With a wife and three grown children, Mr Thomas last resort is to commit suicide and die. But death isn’t sweet… it’s easy to commit suicide with your mouth than your hands… I guess Mr Thomas has not been finding it easy to do this—he could only say this with his mouth; but that’s not enough to die.
The suffering he has been through in this factory for the last five years should be equal to the seven years he would have spent in jail. I heard that most often, for five months, his salary would be withheld just for no reason. While his colleagues smile home after the month, he cries home. I was so full of pity for this man but my own case is worse. I did my findings if truly Mr Thomas was responsible for the financial breakdown of the factory and 95 percent of my result was negative. He was implicated. The real embezzler of the money was the account manager—a friend to the CEO of the factory. So, he was actually suffering for the sins of another person. Hope he gets vindicated one of these days.
Stories like this are common. Go around the town and the cities and you will see people been punished for what they did not do. It’s normal in this our country seeing thieves walking gallantly around the town while the innocents dodges and hides in their closets for fear of being caught as the thief. Hundreds of people goes to jail everyday with very few among them committing the actual crime they are been prosecuted for—it’s no longer new.
Mr Thomas was an average man. At least, he has never owned a big organization that dictates the economy of the nation to an extent; he was only a manager in an infant factory. He was just like every Nigerian who fate works against. But me… the heavens were against me and the earth never wished me good even though I tried to live a life of simplicity and modesty even in my state of affluence. But just as the notion has rightly said… “Good things often don’t happen to good people.” I had never dreamt of working as an employee not to talk of a labourer in a factory; but I stopped living while I was still alive and that day, I became a dead man walking. I killed myself while the elixir of eternity surrounds me like bees would to the nectar. I knew the real difference between being rich and poor within five hours. There and then, I knew how fast wealth can travel from one man to another man. Within five hours, my beautiful image became a silhouette—only my shadow could be seen. I became dead while I was alive in just five hours!
“There was a man whose story I would like to share with you!” I said as me and Mr Thomas sat on one of the containers used for transporting the soap after the production.
“Really? But you know we are late already… we should be going home now and my wife would have being waiting for me.” Mr Thomas said not really ready to go home. I guess he said that so that I can hurry up and cut my story short.
“I won’t delay you then!” I said re-adjusting myself on the container. “A man once lives…”