It wasn't like hadn't warned us.
It wasn't like he hadn't told us.
But we had suspected something was wrong those past few days when he....
Before I continue, hi I am Kazim and I am about to tell you a story so please show some love.
A few years ago, I had a friend whose name was Abdullahi but we called him Azim.
He was one of the cheeriest humans in the planet.
Always laughing, smiling and joyful.
He was always glad and positive.
Unlike most of us who were going through a lot of problems or battling teenage depression.
He always had a smile on his face.
Whenever we asked him the reason for his happiness,
He simply said,
"I have no choice."
But he never explained what he meant by that.
So his smiles were regular,
His laughter melodic,
His teeth always getting revealed and
His joy unperturbed.
Until...
Suddenly, everything changed.
Azim wasn't his usual self.
His smiles felt forced.
His laughter monotone.
His face became a mask of misery.
He became more melancholic and unhappy.
But we really didn't care.
We just thought he had some stuff going on like the rest of us.
So it was normal to be unhappy for a while.
Most of us, if not all of us, had our sad and sulky moments.
So we did not pay much attention to it.
We reckoned he had started experiencing some of Life's infinite and incessant troubles.
So we related with him and joked around.
But he didn't respond the way we thought he would.
He was just silent.
Over the next few days, he drew more into his own shell.
He barely spoke or smiled now.
He was just passive.
Eyebrows started raising.
What had happened to Azim?
We were getting a bit worried
But we dispelled the thought from our heads.
Azim was one of the nicest human beings in the earth
Surely, the nice guys finish last...
Unfortunately,
Bad things happen to good people.
And such was the case for Azim.
But what happened to Azim?
We got curious.
We tried asking him all to no avail.
He would either ignore, change the subject or just behave irrationally.
We even tried using pretty girls to question him indirectly
But the end result was worse.
He would either say something impudent to the females or
He would stare intently at them and say "leave my apples"
We had never seen Azim act so impertinently.
Neither had we seen him so quiet.
And what exactly did he mean by "leave my apples"?
It was quite something, you know.
Even more days passed.
We were determined to find out the truth.
We had done a good number of things to try find out but...
...they were all fruitless.
Azim suddenly disappeared and deleted all his social media accounts.
His phone was unreachable.
He also stopped coming to school.
His last message to me was "You won't expect what's coming for us."
Now, we were worried.
Something was wrong with our friend...
...but what?
And what could his last message mean?
All of this was too cryptic for us to decipher.
There was no way to meet him,
None of us knew his address.
We felt ashamed for calling ourselves his friends but not knowing his residence.
So we stayed in suspense for a while,
Full of anxiety, trepidation and worry.
Desperate, we took to the principal and asked her for the address of our beloved friend.
She inquired why we were so curious and refused to tell us.
But we were so desperate, we struck a bargain with her .
The bargain, I will reveal to you later when it is relevant.
The next day, armed with the address of our friend, we set out.
Azim lived in a street notorious for crimes and other bad stuff.
So we went adequately prepared.
I recalled myself squashing a cockroach the previous night so I guessed I was good to go.
We saw something quite intriguing on our way there.
But once again, this will only be revealed when it is relevant.
His house was quite gigantic
It stood out from the mud houses and bungalows in the area.
We approached the main gate, hoping to break it open.
But to our horror, it was wide ajar.
We went in and explored the empty mini mansion and found nothing.
Well, nothing until we checked a weird smelling room.
I absolutely cannot overemphasize this:
It smelled like someone had died in there.
Unfortunately, we were right
At least we were half right.
After we filed into the room,
We stumbled upon the head of our friend lying on the bed
The body was... nowhere to be found.
Everyone beside me showed signs of shock, fear and sadness.
We were just five in number
I instinctively knew that this was not a normal occurrence.
There was more to it.
Then we heard the sound of a cutlass striking a wall.
We all turned back.
About twenty feet away,
We saw seven armed people staring intently at us.
Now, this was serious.