The fire in his eyes rivalled the raging flames before his eyes.
The man looked on with a satisfied smirk as he watched the fire engulf the building.
Actually, calling it a building was putting it lightly. It was a compound. A school. A boarding school.
Ewelewe High School.
And he was not only an alumnus, he was also the Principal.
But he couldn’t be more happy to see it destroyed.
That was what the school deserved for destroying him as well.
Anyone who found out he did this would probably label him a monster… And they would be right.
But monsters weren’t born; they were made. And Ewelewe High School made him who he was today.
The school was simply experiencing the consequence of what it did.
How? Some might wonder. Well, let him start from the beginning.
Ewelewe High School was the pride of Ewelewe town, and the only secondary school in a town of roughly 1000 residents; just like Ewelewe Grammar School was the only primary school.
And Ewelewe was the clichéd town where everybody knew each other and their business.
It probably wasn’t his town’s fault that he had been birthed by the town’s drunk and the village prostitute, who spent more time wheting their appetite for cheap drugs than they did caring about their son.
Perhaps, they didn’t have anything to do with the fact that his mother had dropped him as a baby, permanently disfiguring his face.
It really wasn’t their fault, their tongues had just loved to wag about it.
Kids are mean. He’d known that then and he knew that now.
But he hadn’t envision the sort of venom that came out of them because his story wasn’t conventional.
Things had probably not been as bad until Babatunde Lagelu joined the school in JSS 2 to stay with his grandmother.
He had been called “Opelenge Orí Iroko” since ever because he looked skinny with a bigger head.
But when Lagelu, as all the teachers called him, joined them, he had quickly become the actual butt of the school’s joke.
Older, and considering it in retrospect, Lagelu had probably been just as miserable as he had been. He had probably just been looking for who to unleash his misery on because Lagelu had to come live with his grandmother because his parents divorced and according to rumours, they had been violent before that.
Although not wanting materially, Lagelu, being the only child, had likely been very lonely and traumatised by his parents’ violent marriage and subsequent divorce.
So, Lagelu had come to Ewelewe looking for a partner in misery. And it hadn’t taken long to realise he was the best bet.
Really, it was obvious to all that the child of the town rejects was the easiest target.
And it had been easy to carry the other students along because of the influence he wielded coming from money and the city.
His life that had been barely bearable before became actually unbearable.
It was still forgivable though; they were kids and didn’t know better.
What was unforgivable was the adults joining in.
No, they didn’t mock him to his face like his fellow students did. They whispered loudly behind him though, so loud that he could hear the snickers and derision.
Besides that, they did nothing to stop the students, especially nothing to Lagelu, who had them all wrapped around his stocky fingers.
And that had been the most shocking thing. Lagelu himself wasn’t prince charming. For lack of more flowery words, he was short and stocky. But as usual, it didn’t matter how you looked when you had money.
However, it hadn’t escaped him how Lagelu had the guts to mock him for his looks. For all his money, he must not have owned a mirror.
Whatever the case, it didn’t matter. Lagelu had been the town’s prince, both the teachers and students worshipped the ground he walked on. And that had consequently resulted in him living a life of misery.
That was why, when he turned his back on this town after secondary school, he vowed never to come back.
All that changed though when he watched a movie about revenge. The look of satisfaction on the actor’s face called to him. It aroused deep-rooted anger and brought up the bitterness that he had thought was gone. He imagined himself in the actor’s shoes watching with satisfaction the destruction of Ewelewe. And that was it; there was no stopping him.
Why should he let Ewelewe town go scot free for what they did to him? Why should he forget about the hurt and anger they caused him? Why should he be the only miserable one?
No, they had to pay.
After that resolve at 18, everything he did, every decision he made was aimed at making sure he got his revenge.
He endured all sorts of hardship and abuse to get his college of education degree, became a teacher and came back to Ewelewe.
Getting a job as an alumnus was easy and so was moving up the ranks.
He became an exemplary teacher deliberately for this moment. Every time, he woke up early to go to school while the other teachers came late, every time he attended all his classes, even as he intentionally made sure to become the students’ favourite, it was for this moment.
Getting to the position of power and watching it all go down before his eyes.
He waited in anticipation for the sweet revenge. And he was sure it was time two weeks earlier when Babatunde Lagelu became the chairman of their local government.
That cemented the revenge in his mind; there was no way he could let it go now.
So, while men slept, he plotted. And while men slept, he executed.
And now, the pandemonium as people ran helter skelter, trying to find the source of the fire filled him with joy.
He lived not too far from the school, so he could see the rampage, even as he waited silently to be called out as the principal.
Yes, Ewelewe deserves this destruction and he was just getting started.
Lagelu should watch his back. The monster of Ewelewe has been unleashed.
