Last week's Saturday evening around 6:00 pm when I was rounding up to shutdown for the day, I saw one of my neighbours, Nelson whom we are close to each other, returning from work with his backpack tightly fixed on his back and was walking very fast.
He walked past where I was with his face thrown at the opposite side and didn't even alter a word of greeting as he normally does anytime we see. Upon noticing what just happened, I paused what I was packing and let out a smile.
"Could it be that he's acting strange due to what I told him yesterday?"
"No no, he's mature enough not to behave like that. I guess he's rushing to his house to pick something hence the reason his sight and mind didn't get to my direction".
My instincts pondered and I decided to settle with the last one in order not to think it too much.
That night around 8:00 pm, I walked out of my room and headed out to the phone charging centre in our street to collect the power bank I gave out to charge when I got to his door side, I banged on the door knowing fully well that he's inside haven seen his footwears outside of the door but no, this guy didn't open, he remained silent and I was very sure he's inside the house.
I let out a smile and moved to where I was going. He has gone away with the fairies due to what I told him on Friday morning when he came to drop the bet number for me to help him out to play in the betting shop located a bit far from my house and I had to tell him to compile all the codes together to save me from leaving my workspace every day to go the betting shop to play games for him. Oh yeah, he was coming every morning to drop codes for me to play for him whenever he was leaving for work and that Friday morning, I politely told him to save me the stress of walking to the place every day and little did I know that he picked offence.
I'm the type that's always occupied with work and activities to let such things border me and after all, I didn't do bad by telling him what I felt, so I didn't give it much thought, I just let him be.
Sunday morning came and when I rushed out of my house around 6:20 a.m. to rush to church, I met him sweeping the compound, I threw a loud greeting to him, "Good morning ohh!"
He heard it because I was very loud with the intention that even when the broom he was using produced noise, my voice would be able to swallow the sound which I'm sure my voice did but he didn't answer and that's unusual of him because, on a normal day, he usually stops me for one or two gist even when he knows I'm already late for church. That was a Sunday and I shouldn't let irrelevant thoughts crawl into my mind, so I waved off the thought and went on with my church movement.
Returning from church that Sunday afternoon, I met him seated and relaxing at the empty shop in the compound, with his shirt hung on his shoulder.
"You're back, welcome" He greeted and it sounded weird to me.
"Yeah, good morn.... oh, good morning afternoon" I responded quickly while stealing time at my phone to see if it was actually afternoon or if we were still in the morning. I left him and walked into my room and as soon as I entered the room, I heard my door make noise, I turned and saw him entering my house. I was trying to calculate what was happening and he brought out his phone and requested, "Please come and help me send this SMS"
Nelson is not a phone person, he's very difficult with phones even as low as sending SMS. I picked up the phone, typed the message and sent it to the number he gave to me as well.
Still, I wasn't into things of familiarity at that hour because I was damn hungry so when I expected him to leave the house, he pushed out the plastic chair shoved under the table in my room and sat down and he began to tell me the football club bet to win the match between Tottenham and Manchester United. It was obvious his senses were back, so I played along with him.
Thanks for reading.