#LagosWaka: The day you either fight or fold
II
His alcohol-stenched mouth announces his presence before his face does.
You look up to see him galloping towards you.
They soon become two. Both with visible fight scars.
Short and rotund, the first one has a stitch that shrinks his receding eyebrow. The other, much taller and lankier with slender arms, has dreads with obvious dent on his scalp.
Here you are bespectacled, clean-shaven and sporting a starched shirt and creased pants. You easily come off as a soft target. Or are you?
They must have told themselves “dis one na ajebo”, you think.
It is getting dark, and it's one of those nights that the streetlights refuse to work.
You know you stand little chance against these blood-eyed urchins who are charging toward you with threatening cuss words you can barely pick out.
Your heart pounds and everything around you blurs, but you tell yourself they must not know.
You remember how dangerous this particular road is. Your memory replays the day a phone is snatched from a moving vehicle in traffic and the thief gestures at his victim with a beckoning sign and says something like “catch me if you can”.
The attempt to catch him was like catching the puff from a cigarette sniff.
Now you are the catch. You either have to fight or fold.
You tuck your phone away and tighten your bag strap, rummaging it to be sure you can still feel the cold metal you keep there.
You carefully palm it and rub its knob fondly.
They are now a few steps away from you with their menacing stagger.
You size them up as they look to pounce.
Slender is too bony to absorb a deadly stab. Shorty is fleshy, and though the louder, but your guts tells you he's the weaker link.
The fear you mask he shows.
They try to outflank you on both sides. To your left are makeshift pepper stands and to your right is the busy Mile 12 expressway with the Kosofe pedestrian bridge looming ahead.
If they box you in their middle it's game over, so you need quick action to make them doubt their chances.
So you deploy the multipurpose tool in your hand to reveal a sawed knife with a pointed tip and 154cm blade steel.
Shorty flinches. Slender slows. Both split.
Armed with the knife on your right you close in and swerve your hand across Shorty upper arm. He ducks.
Now some steps behind his accomplice, Shorty is left to put your resistance down. But you quickly take advantage of his slouched body to shove him to your right.
You sprain your wrist in the process but that's the least of your worries.
Another battle on the streets of Lagos well negotiated, you tell yourself.
You flag down a bus heading your direction and quickly collapse in a seat close to the window to occasionally look back at the night scare.
As you disappear into the night's vanity you try to catch your breath, wondering where that audacity comes from. You continue to think what would have been if things had gone wrong.
You smile, knife in hand. Your seatmate recoils when he sees the blade. Your gaze locks. You smile wryly. He shrugs.
If only he knows.
…to be continued
