03/09/2026
A POS man found out that a beggar forgot his atm card and decided to steal money from the card but he didn't know what he. did would come back to haunt him. The next day noticed that people were running away from him... Part two.
I stood by the roadside, dusting my trousers where I had hit the floor after the Napep driver shoved me out. Passersby were looking at me with total disgust, holding their shirts over their noses and walking in wide circles around me.
“E duro naa!” I yelled after the driver, my eyes hot with embarrassment. “Me? Smelling? I bathed before leaving home this morning!”
I raised my arm to smell my own clothes, but I couldn’t smell a single thing. To me, I was completely normal but the way people were treating me was like I was a rotting co**se walking down the street.
Unable to enter any transport, I had no choice but to trek all the way to my POS kiosk that morning.
When I finally reached my shop around 9:00 AM, my neighbor who sells recharge cards across the road didn’t even let me settle down. The moment she saw me approaching, she slapped her hands together in shock, gagged loudly, and spat on the floor.
“Ah ah, oga POS!” she screamed, backing away into her container. “Wetin be this?! Wetin enter your body? You go carry dead animal put for bag?!”
“Auntie, I no smell anything o!” I pleaded, holding my hands up. “Na since morning people just dey act crazy toward me!”
“Abeg lock your shop go home! You wan drive all my customers away?!” she shouted, covering her nose tightly with her wrapper.
I couldn’t say anything. My mind went to the beggar of yesterday straight up. That must be the effect of what I did to that beggar. I just knew it.
Then, cutting through the noise of the busy street, I heard it from a distance. It was the beggar singing again while staring in my direction.
“Fún mi l’ó wó mi... Fún mi l’ó wó mi...”
Immediately he saw me standing there by my shop, his eyes locked onto mine, and he turned and started running.
“Hey! Come back!” I screamed, abandoning my kiosk and chasing after him.
No matter how fast I ran, I couldn’t catch up to him. He moved with an unnatural, skittering speed. People on the street stared, pointing fingers at me and shouting, “Wèrè! E wo oloshi!” (Madman! Look at this wretched person!)
Because of the desperate chase, I tripped over a concrete slab and crashed hard onto the asphalt. I scrambled back up, fell again, and by the time I staggered to my feet, my shirt was ripped down the side, and my palms and knees were bleeding.
Passersby stood by the roadside, shaking their heads in pity and whispering among themselves, “Ah, see person pikin o. And he was still normal yesterday o...”
The weight of the shame crushed me. I dropped to my knees right there in the middle of the dust, broke down completely, and started weeping like a child.
Just then, slow, shuffling footsteps approached me.
The mad man came back. He walked right up to where I was kneeling in the dirt, hoisted his heavy, dripping trash bag over his shoulder, and stared down at me, singing right into my face:
“Fún mi l’ó wó mi... Fún mi l’ó wó mi...”
Tears blurred my vision as I looked up at his rotten, smiling teeth.
But as I stared at him, desperate to make the nightmare stop, an idea suddenly came to my head.
I didn’t need to run after him. I didn’t need to throw his card away.
I scrambled up from the ground, ignoring the stinging pain on my skin, and sprinted back to my kiosk as fast as my legs could carry me.
I threw open the metal drawer, grabbed every single bundle of cash inside the ₦23,000 I had stolen plus the remaining sales from the previous days and rushed back out to the street.
The beggar was standing right where I left him as if he was waiting for me...
To be continued.
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