The Death of Garage Snail

Garage Snail or Le Garage as he was popularly called by all inmates of Cell nine, was a stout, thick middle aged man. In all of his great stories that he told of his luxury exploration of life, he never mentioned his age, that was one of his many ways to gain loyalty and respect from everyone in the cell, even the older men with gray hairs. When I first got inside the cell as a new inmate, I was nervous and to tell you the truth, I was sick for a week. I never for once thought to myself to be confined in a four by four concrete casted room with iron bars and no windows, no fans.. When I counted the bars out of boredom, they were twelve pieces, 4inches apart and if I am not mistaken, as I am not so good with measurements, they were about 8feet high, as thick as a newborn baby's arms. And I know this because each time I held the bars, like most prisoners do while waiting for their names to be called when waiting for a visitor or waiting for their turn to be called out to go to the courthouse for a judge to hear their cases, all I thought about was my new born baby girl. It felt like I was holding her hands and then, I found myself pressing hard to see if the bars would break so I could just find my way home. But they never do.

The cell seemed at the time to be a new building as cement still looked freshed, there were six men inside the room and two foams. With my arrival, we became seven. Of the six men, there was Lome, a light skin colored, 5''7ft tall man with a hairy body, he never  spoke of himself, rather he was fond of asking others questions about themselves. Then there was Mogo, fat and tall with a huge potbelly, he was a former director of finance and the federal ministry of education, from what he told us later, he was framed up by his colleagues for not accepting a bribe.. Which was a lie as I found out later when I got out. Then there were Venin, Little monkey the errand boy, Balo the priest and Le Garage.
Le Garage at first glanced, was someone you couldn't want to relate with. His looks were mean, yet he had a handsome fresh and clean face. He had a mohawk hairstyle, his dressing was different from the other inmates, even his smell was different, you could tell he wore very expensive colognes each with lavender scents. He had a gold ring on his left hand index finger. After the guard had pushed me in, locked the gate and left, he stood in front of the gate staring at everyone, searching for a safe corner to hide. When I found a corner at the end of the room and was trying to make my way there, a voice from the rear, with a thick local Yoruba accent yelled at me in proper street Nigeria broken English.. "" So o, you go just walka enter here, you no fit greet abi""
And being that I was born and raised in Niger Delta, I understood him well, but the terror in the voice made me trembled...and I started fidgeting not knowing what to expect.." abeg bros no vex, na my first for inside prison cell" I murmured with fear, still not knowing how to address the general audience with all eyes gazing at me.
"wetin be your crime, wetin make them arrest you?" The voice spoke calmly and with a different accent than the first speaker. From my knowledge of my fellow countrymen, this one was more educated than the first speaker.. So I turned towards the voice and tried to identify the speaker before I answered, it was Le Garage. When I was now shown who was speaking, I said " well I had a business deal that went bad", "na so everybody they talk na.. No criminal they every agree say hin commit crime, see tribal mark face like President Olusegun Obasanjo, ah boybi knee there joo, you go hear am hot today"

My first day in the cell almost went bad if not for the intervention of Le Garage, he gave the order that no one should touch me or maltreat me in any way, and to tell you the truth, I am not sure why he did this but it saved me a great deal of torture and depression. For the first three days I refused to eat, drinking only water, hoping my nightmare being locked up would end the next day but that next day lasted three weeks.. Longest weeks of my life. But my friendship with Le Garage soon changed my feelings and I started blending with the others.
The first story that he told of himself that captured my attention was his luxury lifestyle and lavish spending in Dubai. He said, while visiting Dubai with his other rich friends, he booked an apartment at Burj Khalifa Hotel for a house year, paying $5000 every single night. When I heard those figures for just a night, I became angry at this stupidity and lies, what a liar this guy is.. Those were my first  thoughts. First I have to tell you, I have never been to Dubai, nor have I seen or know the price of any hotel in Dubai, so you should understand why I had my doubts. As if that wasn't enough, he claimed he bought a designer watch called Richard Mille for $200,000, and two Presidential watches for $350,000, giving one to his girlfriend. "see ehen, make I tell you something, when me and my crew ball out say we one ball, we dey shutdown the full club" he was now narrating a story of how him and his friends spent $500,000 in a single night at a club in Dubai, buying the most expensive champagne bottles and spraying strippers. He had a very sweet tongue with sweet words. When he spoke everyone listened, I tried hard to believe him but somehow I felt he was either a terrible liar or he was simply just good at telling stories. He never finished a story before jumping to another, leaving the whole inmates to wonder and use their imaginations to fill in the missing pieces.

On the tenth day of my stay in the cell, while we were up playing cards before lights out, he asked me a question that I thought was rather weird but still in tune with the trending society changes.. "Family or money, which will you choose? " I took some time to think, I am not close to any of my family members except maybe my older brother, nor will I say I don't love my other siblings or relatives.. On the other hand I won't consider myself a money lover as well, as I am always content, even though I need money to enable me to fund my dream business.
So I said to him, "if I die today, I will die alone, with no family or money, so to me they both count to truly enjoy life" but then he insisted on me picking one, so I went with my family. And then his mood all of a sudden changed, the smile on his face was gone, all I could see was a sad man. For three days he didn't talk to me, he just would stare at me and occasionally force a smile. On the fourth day after our conversation, he came up to me at the shower and said, "I liked your answer, but trust me, when you don't have money, your family will see you as parasite, when you have money they see you as their savior, even when they don't know the source of your income, or how at what length you've gone to make the money, all they want is a piece of the money daily, with fake smiles and affection ". After he said this to me, he just took his towel and left. I knew he was right and it made me think about my option for days.

On the eve of my last start, he wrote me his number and he gave me his Instagram account username to follow him, that on his page I will confirm all he had been saying. He stressed the need for me to reach out when I get out, and I promised him that I would.. And truly I visited him every Thursday by 1pm, for three weeks. When I got out the first thing I did was to open his page and browse through his profile. It was filled with luxuries of all kinds, from the most expensive cars to the most expensive shoes and all sorts of luxury designer wear.. Places I don't even know existed on this earth, he had over 10million followers, and he was a cheerful giver who does giveaways on Friday nights, as it was shown on his posts.. His comment sections were full of different  account numbers, I honestly was surprised at myself that I never heard of him until our meeting in the cell. On one of my visits, he requested me to give him my full personal details, and that he will arrange for me and his lawyer to speak. That he needed my help, I said no problem. Whenever he needed me he would ask the lawyer to call me. I dropped the fruits I bought for him and I left.
A week later on a very hot afternoon, while I was at the Ikeja under bridge bus stop waiting for the bus that will take me to the Island, a strange number appeared on my phone, at first I was very reluctant to pick up as I was getting annoyed with the weather conditions, but after it rang four times and the caller kept calling, I had to pick up out of frustration, and yelled the hello so the listener could hang up but he didn't, "is this Prudie?"  "You called me and you are asking me for my name, are you alright?" I yelled angrily and I hung up. The number called again and I shouted "who be this?" "good afternoon, please we are calling you from the the Ikoyi prison on the Island'' when I heard prison, my breathing changed, my heart started breathing really fast, I started wondering what I had done wrong this time around, it took me a few seconds to respond to that and I finally said, "okay, how can I help, why are you calling me from the prison?" then the voice said, “please we need your attention, one of our inmates wrote you as his emergency contact and he need you right away"
As soon as he said that, I knew it must be Le Garage. When the call ended, I started wondering what this emergency was about and how I could be of any help, I am just a writer looking for my big break that is never coming, so what form of help am I going to be for such a wealthy guy.

It took me 3hours to get to the prison yard from when I got the call, and upon getting there, I was met with a lawyer and a police officer, who took us to a waiting room. After a couple of minutes, he then came out with a thick file and then asked us to follow him to his own office and we did. At his office he opened the file and said, "you both are here because of Garage Snail, there is no other way to put this but he hung himself last night, today was meant to be his judgment day in court, and somehow he was able to find the easiest way out, the judge wanted to give him 40 years for Internet fraud and racketeering, bribery and kidnapping and murder of one Elizabeth Townhall"
When I heard all of these, my eyes popped out, my body went cold and I felt instantly like I needed to make use of the restroom. He asked me to sign a few documents, so the body can be released to me, as he was not a state prisoner yet but only a suspect at the time of his death. At first I was shocked but the lawyer said I shouldn't worry that he will explain to me later, so I did it and we were taken to the morgue, the lawyer had already made the necessary arrangements like he saw this coming.

After all was set and done, I got into the lawyers car and he drove towards Banana Island, where the richest people in the society have residences, on our way he said, he only knew his client for six month during his arrest, all he knows is that he is from Imo state, in Eastern Nigeria, he gave me the address and some other details of how to proceed with the burial arrangement. I felt these must be a joke, and I was telling myself, I am just hungry and probably after I must have eaten, all these idiotic thoughts will go away, but the more I thought it a joke the more the reality was setting in. When we got to his mansion (Garage Snail’s mansion, that is) at Banana Island, it was like heaven on earth, the fleets of cars, gold plated furniture, everything was speaking of money. The lawyer went upstairs and came back with a brown envelope, and said when I get to his village, I should handover the envelope to the oldest person I meet in the compound . I was petrified and nervous, shaking with disbelief of what was happening and how fast it was happening as well. He then asked when I would be free to make the trip, a question I couldn't answer and then he said, I think you should go on Saturday, it's two days from now, so you can have time to prepare yourself. I neither agreed nor disagreed, I was just quiet and still as my dead friend in the bus parked outside of his own house.

That night, I couldn't sleep much, I tried to call a few buddies to explain what was happening but then, there was no one I could trust, so I sat up thinking of the various approaches I am going to take when I get to the village, what will I tell his people and why didn't any of them come to see him when he was locked up? This question suddenly took the center stage of my thoughts, and I became more and more restless and angered at my stupidity for making this dead man a promise. At four am when the bottle of whisky was finally done, I made myself comfortable on my mat and slept the night away.

After two days of restlessness, at 5am on Saturday morning, I called the lawyer and told him I was ready, and he asked me to meet him up at the hospital where the body had been deposited and I did, I got there at 7.30am because of the traffic, he was already there waiting with the coffin, neatly arranged in one of Le Garage’s luxury Mercedes benz bus, with a driver. We left the hospital at 8.00am, and we got to the village at 5pm. The driver was an extremely fast driver who never let himself be overtaken by the other cars, despite the heavy traffic at Niger Bridge between Asaba and Onitsha. When we arrived at our destination, I suddenly became sad and angry with my dead friend. The village had nothing to speak about, no modern facilities or fancy buildings, from the noises of the generator you could also tell that there was no electricity, since no lines were visible either. It was a sorry sight, then I thought of his luxury lifestyle, the golden plated furnitures, luxury cars and the expensive watches, the popping of expensive champagne bottles and all the wild expensive lifestyle he spoke about, and then I shook my head, murmured underneath my breathe, what a waste of resources. This man had all the money to fix this community and the people will sing his name for eternity as their savior, but here he was in a coffin at the back of a 46million naira bus.

When we got to the compound that we were shown was his family compound, I started to cry, not for my dead friend but for the condition of the compound itself, it was a mud house with tattered roofing, a well at the center of the compound, a cassava farm on the side, a mango tree with fresh fruits waiting to get eaten by the owners, a bench underneath the branches of the mango tree, two old ladies playing ludo, wondering what such a car is doing in their compound and a beautiful slim girl in her probably early 20s dressed in a skimpy skirt with unkempt hair.

When the car stopped in front of the well, everyone started staring, I could see the tension in their faces as they wondered who it was. I came down from the bus and walked straight to the elderly ladies first, and greeted them good evening and then responded in a very polite manner until I told them what had brought me to their compound. At first they were dead silent for a couple of minutes, and no one said a word. All they did was stare at the car and look to see the coffin through the tinted glasses of the customized Mercedes-Benz bus. And then finally the oldest among the two ladies spoke, "so you say na my pikin coffin dey inside that motor? ", I answered with a "yes ma", and then she proceeded with another question, "who are you to my pikin?"  "I bin hin friend, na for prison when me and am dey, we take meet"
Unknowing to me and the driver, the young girl had gone to call few young men in the village and some elders as well, who came with a rage I had never seen before in my life, they demanded to know why we brought the corpse of a boy who neglected his family and killed his twin brother for money ritual was doing in their community, when all he does his throw money at burials and birthday parties..
After few minutes of raving and hitting of the bus, the mother was able to calm them down, and the corpse was brought out the car, when it was opened the mother began to cry, "see my pikin when comot house three years ago, na me sell hin papa land give am the money when hin say he k e use am do one business, ah!" the "ah" came with a loud echo and tears that moved me to tears.
From the whispers of the young men, gossiping among themselves, that I learnt he was only 25 years old, and he left and never came back, after he was given money to do business that will lift the family from poverty, and after a few months when he left home, his twin brother died mysteriously with no complains of any illness, he slept and never woke up. Being that it was his twin, when he was called for the funeral, he never came, only for them to learn from people in the city that he was already a mademan, buying  mansions and expensive luxury cars.

All of these stories came to me as a shock, I was paralysed where I sat, not able to move a muscle, at the cell when we were together, he had told me he was a major financial investor, who invested in bitcoin and made a huge fortune. And suddenly I became afraid, I started getting uncomfortable and worried of what these people are probably thinking of me, this is not my community and I am a long way from home, anything can happen and no one will hear of it, so I quickly snapped out of my sorry state and dropped the envelope and the keys to the bus for the mother as instructed by the lawyer, and I told the old lady I had to go back to the city that night, as it was already 7pm and after saying my farewell to my dead friend and his angry family I left with the driver.

That night at the hotel were we lodged in Owerri, the state capital, all I could think about was Le Garage, I have heard of money rituals before and how young boys go  extra mile to gain fame and fortune using black magic, I used to think it was all lies but then with the death of Le Garage, I started rethinking, he had so many followers online but no one even knew of his death. This sad reality of gaining wealth in this modern day society, where everyone wants to show off their wealthy styles of living online, has truly inspired many youths to go astray to commit the unimaginable deeds in making money. His bank accounts were of course frozen by the authorities, his death at such a young age was definitely a huge loss to the family, but the question I kept asking myself was Why? Why make so much money and not be capable of spending it on your family? Why commit suicide after going through such disturbing path to create such wealth, only to hang and be spat upon by your own kinsmen?.. The questions kept coming through my head and my whole body was full of resentment towards my dead cell mate, with no answers coming forth.
And then I remembered the bible verse from my grandmother's teachings, "what does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul"

Eggy Jones

28/12/2021

02.28am to 05.16am