Must Read: Theophilus the cultist [completed] Season 1

7 years ago

Must Read: Theophilus the cultist [completed] Season 1

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“The wages of sin is death…”

The words catapulted him from sleep into the realms of consciousness. He shot up in bed, streams of sweat oozing from every pore of his 6ft-frame. Like a canine whose attention was pricked by the faintest of sounds, he looked frantically right and left, got up and surveyed his environment.

All seemed well. The room was as it was when he came in around 2 a.m. in the morning: a scattered assembly of clothes, shoes and the empty bottle of Pastis he’d drank before bed. The bed bore the semblance of one that had been fought in. Ruffled, and disorganised, a silhouette of sweat on the area which he’d just jumped up from. His eyes rested on his naked bedmate, Bisi, her back to him, fast asleep on the far end of the bed. At some other time, her dark, smooth, naked body would have aroused some longing in his g---n. But now, nothing mattered except the words that woke him up from deep sleep.

“The wages of sin is death…”

He checked the time: 4.20 a.m. He’d been asleep for barely one and a half hour. He’d come home with Bisi and they’d had steamy s-x till past three, he remembered the time because he was just getting off her when his wall clock chimed 3 a.m.
“What’s happening?” he asked himself, “after all, i’ve heard those words severally, why does it haunt me so?” He remembered those were the exact words Sister Titilola had said to him three days ago when she had unexpectedly walked up to him in the Lecture Theatre. He’d shrugged it off, knowing fully well the beloved sister dared not pursue things further. He was not the number three man of the dreaded Snakes confraternity for nothing; his reputation was top-notch, enough for him to be touted as the next number one of the deadly cult.

Being highly placed in the campus’s elite cult group came with its benefits. But she had been bold; very bold indeed. Very few of those supposed Christian brothers or sisters had the guts to come preach to him, yet she had, even left a tract with him.

The tract.

He snapped out of his reverie and started scouring the house for the 4-page leaflet. He hoped the leaflet was somewhere in the house for he slept in different places each night.

He looked through his pockets then the reading table he’d dropped his things when he got in earlier, but he could not find it. He racked his brain for pointers to where he must have dropped the tract. Then he remembered. He had used it to smoke ganja two days ago when he couldn’t find rizla anywhere around. The paper was very light and it was the closest to rizla he could lay his hands upon. He wished he still had the tract but he had no time to regret anything.

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He collapsed into the only chair in the room and closed his eyes. Her words ran into his thoughts again, like an unwanted interruption during sleep.

“Brother, the Lord loves you and he has told me to tell you to desist from your evil ways sir. If you don’t sir, His wrath might come upon you for it is written that ‘for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.’”
He remembered the boys had burst into laughter, but he hadn’t found it funny. This was a lady he’d known as a spirikoko for years and who for once had never approached him for anything like that.
“The Lord told you to tell me?” He had asked, somehow interested.
“Yes, he came to me in a vision and showed me what would happen to you if you don’t repent now.” She answered quickly, the words dropping off her mouth like someone in a trance.
“So what did He show you?”
“The Lord directed me to the book of Romans 6 verse 23,” she paused to open the portable bible she held in her hands, ‘for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.’”
“Is that what He showed you?”
She nodded fearfully.
“Ok. Thank you.”

Her words had stuck in his mind, accompanied his nights and dogged his days. Every night since then, he’d been woken up by those words.

They had become a haunting nightmare to him.

The reason, he never knew.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”
“The free gift of God is eternal life? Through Jesus?” he asked himself, confusion threatening to overwhelm his sanity.
“Baby, are you alright?” It was Bisi, sitting up on one elbow, her full b-----s hanging from her b---m like ripe pawpaw fruits. She looked worried even in her state of semi-sleep.
“I’m fine.” He answered firmly.
“You sure about that?”
“Uhn uhn.”
“Come to bed then. I want you baby,” her sultry voice prodded, the come-on very clear.
“I will in a while. Give me a few minutes.”
“Alright,” she yawned and collapsed back on the bed.

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The residents of Princess Hostel were used to her loud prayer sessions. One only needed to stay in the hall for two straight days to know her worship schedule. She would start at exactly 4a.m. and praise-worship till 5a.m. After which she’d embark on an hour of relentless prayers, speaking in unknown languages interspersed with the known. She was to the hall a bastion of spiritual fortress. There was a feeling of security that came with staying in the same hall with her.

Her hall mates used to complain of her prayer schedule, especially when she got into those tongues, but since she’d twice ‘seen’ and prayed against two different calamities that would have befallen two hall mates, they’d learnt to deign to her spiritual abilities.

That Thursday morning, when her praying pattern digressed from the usual, the whole hall knew something was not right. Not only was her worship session heavily punctuated with loud wailings and supplications to her God, every word of prayer she said was forced, hurried and sad unlike the free flow of unknown tongues they knew her for.

“Mercy, Lord. Mercy. Give him some more time, Lord.” A few lines of unknown tongues followed before they heard her say, “Your words say you do not want the death of a sinner; please Father, please.” They heard her say, amidst sobs, continuously and persistently. No one knew why she prayed that way. Was another hall mate in danger? No one knew what troubled her. But she knew. And He knew too.

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