The Strange Room

The night he called everyone to tell us not to enter that particular room beside the sitting room instilled a serious wave of fear in us. We had just packed in. Our minds ran to many things. Like the similar scenes in a Nigerian movies where the father would forbid the household from entering into a particular room. And it would turn out he was a cultist.

We became really afraid. For one week, nobody neared that room. Every night, father would enter and come out the next morning. We became convinced he was a cultist. The following week, mother ran to the church and came back with our pastor. Father pursued him with a cutlass.

We lived in fear for weeks. Mother couldn’t take it any longer. She woke us up one night for night vigil. We prayed round the room seven times. Then finally summound up courage to open the room.

What we saw left us in shock. We were totally wrong. The room was totally different from what we had envisioned it to be. It was a huge room decorated beautifully with a plasma television. There was a movement. Father came in to meet us. He stood there laughing very hard at us.

“Oh, you thought I’m a ritualist?” he asked.

Nobody answered. We were too shock to answer. I mean we have been scared for nothing?

“I just wanted a room where I would watch the football matches alone without disturbance. That’s the reason I said no one should enter the room,” he said.

A slap landed on his cheeks. It was from mum.

“Don’t play this joke on me again.”