My Landlord is an Armed Robber

The house was a storey building, well built, with a massive gate at the entrance, it was colorfully painted in a deep chocolate and cream color and the manner of the painting was such that, the house looked like a giant chocolate cake ready to be eaten and indeed i was ready to eat up the house literally because as soon as i stepped into the compound i fell in love with the house and i knew i was going to take the house , after waiting for about ten minutes with the estate agent that brought me to the house, the landlord came down to meet us, he looked to be in his forties, with a large build, he was thick set and looked more like a wrestler than a house owner.

He welcomed me warmly, he seemed happy to see me and was oblivious to the presence of the estate agent, perhaps he had seen the man way too often and his presence mattered less to him, he took me round the apartment, it was a two bedroom apartment with a large living room and two bedrooms en-suite, the apartment looked really neat like it was recently cleaned, he told me he just recently moved out of the apartment to the upper flat having recently completed the top flat, which explains the neatness of the flat, we soon deliberated on the price and other payments, including monthly security fees and power supply bills.

A week after my deliberations with the landlord i paid for the apartment and moved in with my wife and two year old daughter, my wife loved the apartment and my two year old daughter had plenty of space to play around in and she was obviously enjoying herself too, subsequently i met the landlord's wife and his two boys, not long after i moved into the apartment i noticed that my landlord wasn't around most of the time and it was only on weekends that i get to see him and even then not so often, i thought him to be a busy business man, his wife was not a full time house wife because she went to work every morning, leaving the children with their house help.

It wasn't long before i found out the kind of work my landlord did, i and a couple of my colleagues from work had been drafted to go for a training workshop in Port Harcourt, Rivers state, i took time out during the training to go to the bank to effect a transaction that needed to be done to get a payment through to my boss, minutes after i got to the bank, we started hearing gun shots outside the bank not sure what to do we customers and bank staff alike started panicking, not long after the gun shots started ringing out, the security door of the bank was blown out by explosives and a dozen armed men stormed into the banking hall, and ordered everyone to lie face down, the robbers didn't have masks on and the voice of the man that led the robbers sounded familiar to me and in that quick instant before i laid face down i saw the man's face and immediately recognized him as my landlord, that realization got me covering my face even better, because if for any reason this man discovers that i was in that place i would be in trouble, for the sake of my wife and my daughter, i covered my face the more knowing how much my life depended on it.

I laid down there wishing this was all a dream and getting up would get me to wake from my slumber, but after 30 minutes the robbery was over and the reality of the whole incidence dawned on me, i just saw my landlord lead a gang of armed robbers to rob a bank, i was more confused and in a state of "what the heck just happened" than the bank manager who was running around checking on staff and customers to be sure everyone was fine, the remaining days of the workshop was difficult for me, i couldn't tell anybody not even my wife, besides i didn't want her to start panicking.

I returned to Lagos that weekend and suddenly started feeling uncomfortable in that house, we had only stayed there for just two months, i am at least glad we paid for one year, i have since not been able to tell anybody that my landlord is an armed robber, now i see my landlord in a different way now, he laughs and jokes around the house but all i see is an armed robber, what to do now i don't know but what i do know is that as soon as my rent expires i will be leaving this house for good but until then, i remain a tenant in the house of a nice landlord who happens to be an armed robber