THE HOSTEL DETECTIVE

I’ve always hated you, I hate your guts and everything you do. These were the words of my roommate to me during a silence but fierce argument. Wiseman stood there ready for a fight while I sat on the up-bunk looking at a tall guy with broad chest and shoulders to match his height. For a moment there I felt like David staring at Goliath, but I was not ready to back down, nor show how intimidated I was. Although looking him in the eye, I looked like a pencil standing near a white board. I knew if things got too heated and he decided to deliver a punch with those huge arms of mine, it would send me directly to the emergency room. So even though I was being brave, I tried to be cautious not to allow the situation to escalate. Besides, I wouldn’t want to go into the ER for taking a piece of paper out of a notebook.

The tension started when a course came hurriedly to our room while we were all trying to relax. There were eight of us that shared a room with four bunk beds and two people on each bed. 5 out of the eight of us were hungry, I had not eaten since the morning of the last day and was trying to reserve every bit of strength I had in me. We all knew of each other's predicaments, but two out of the three had been able to eat due to the help of friends in the hostel. The last guy however who we all knew by the nickname wise man was one known to always have more than enough but never willing to share even a bit. No one cared, no one bothered to ask, but every one of us secretly wished he would just have mercy on one of us and help that person out while the rest of us keep waiting for a miracle. At least hunger would not kill us all in time.

The news of a test was distressing for all of us. It was distressing because we had been saving our strength, we had been trying to hang on to every bit of strength we had hoping for one person’s parents to call or send some money. 7 out of the eight of us tried to live together in harmony, we shared almost everything we had so everyone had something to eat and survive with. That we had all used our allowances for the week because of an emergency practical that came up the week before. Trying to go through that week, three of us couldn’t call our parents for money due to how strict they were, and the remaining four had issues of their own that was making the money delay. It was worse for two out of all of us because we needed a piece from a long note which we would usually call a foolscap paper to write the test but we had used up the last one for the last test.

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In a desperate move to write the test, we saw Wiseman had left his long note on his bed and rushed to class but refused to give it to us when we asked him. So we decided to take it anyway and damned the consequences. We weren't ready to miss our test because of someone's stinginess. Coming back from a tough test, wiseman was angry because he didn’t do well and never got help from anyone even though he was asking for help. When I entered the room, I saw him shouting on top of his voice because he counted his notebook and saw two pages were missing. He smelled the rat was one of us and demanded the person be brought before him but no one paid any attention to him. That was when he came to me because I had asked him for a foolscap sheet. I denied taking it but he insisted I was the one treanthing to report me to the school authorities. I told him to do his worse and when he saw I wasn’t ready to give in, he started staring at me with all furiosity and I sat up and stared back like I was telling him to do his worst.

That was when he started talking about how much he hated my guts and angrily left the room. Unknowingly to him though, I followed him quietly, something I had been doing for days because there had been a lot of stealing going on in the hostel, and I could smell a rat in my room. Luckily for me two of my roommates managed to get money from their parents which we all used to eat dinner that day, but because Of the long period I had been hungry for, my body was restless. Had seen wiseman earlier in the day around the computer lab, but I didn’t give much thought to it as students often hang around there, but that night he was acting strangely as though checking if we were all asleep. Luckily I pretended to be sleeping while he checked on me and I was him sneaking outside. I followed him secretly and noticed he was heading to the computer lab. I watched him unlock the lab gate and noticed he had a box with him. Seeing everything I immediately threw a stone at the security people on guard so the whisper wouldn’t be traced to me, yet alerting them of what was going on. Turned out Wiseman was the thief all along and I went back to my room feeling proud of myself. He was caught and arrested that night, while everyone got to know in the morning seeing him all tied up facing justice.

THIS IS MY ENTRY INTO THE INKWELL CREATIVE NONFICTION PROMPT #134

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