Sometime in 2012, I went to a party that gave me the scare of my life.
I didn’t even get an invite personally. I was just bored, and my friend who got invited dragged a bunch of us along. He said it would be fun and there would be girls. That was all it took to convince us. In total, seven of us tagged along.
The party happened in a rough neighborhood I had never visited in my life. We showed up early, the birthday had just started, and some activities were going on already.
People played games, food went round, but I knew why my guys tagged along. Nobody came for the cake. We all came for the dancing, the girls, and the rocking part.
Since it wasn’t time for the dancing yet, three of us decided to hang outside across the street and just watch things from a distance. I watched the street closely. A couple of guys smoked in the distance, and the party started to get wild. The dancing had already started.
Our small group lost interest in the party, so we stayed where we were, watching the others have fun.
Darkness started creeping in, and I considered heading home. I wasn’t interested in the party anyway, and I had no reason to stay out late. Just as I mentioned going home to the others, a couple of guys walked up to us.
They looked buff, bigger than any of us, and they carried a dangerous air around them, something that made it clear they weren’t people you wanted to mess with.
“Which group una dey?” the one in front asked in pidgin, meaning what group were we in?
He barely finished talking when one of my friends bolted off like he had seen a ghost. That single action incensed them, and they quickly signaled to their crew, the other guys who smoked by the side. Before we processed what was happening, at least ten of them surrounded us.
They accused us of being rival cultists who always came to disrupt their parties.
“We no dey any group o, na just party we come,” my friend tried to explain. He tried to explain that we were just regular guys who came to chill, but they refused to believe him. They felt sure we were lying.
“Why did your friend run if you’re innocent?” they asked. We had no answers. They ordered us to sit on the ground first and demanded our phones. They said they would check through them to confirm if truly we weren’t with the other cult group.
I knew I had to play smart. Cultists had never stopped me before, but I’d heard the stories. They acted brutal, lived dangerously, and sometimes killed without pity. If anything happened to me, I was on my own.
My brain worked twice as fast as I searched for a way to escape.
“Let me sit down first, before I drop my phone,” I told them, my eyes scanning for an opening. As I started lowering myself to the ground, I saw one: A guy stretched his legs and shifted a little. That was all I needed. I bolted, left my shoes behind, and ran as fast as I could.
Risky? Yes. But better than staying at their mercy.
They chased me like their lives depended on it. I told myself, “This is a race for survival,” because my life actually did depend on it. If they caught me, they would only stop a breath away from killing me. I prayed to God with everything in me, begging, “If you just save me from these guys, God abeg.”
I don’t know if adrenaline, the wind, or my guardian angel carried me, but I had never run that fast in my life. Every glance back showed the distance growing until, eventually, they gave up the chase.
I branched another route home, and once I felt safe, I called one of my friends still at the venue. He told me they had beaten the guy who ran first, and the cultists demanded that I come back. Apparently, I was the one they really wanted.
Come back? Not in this life, I thought. Eventually, my friends managed to convince them we weren’t cultists and had just come for the party. They even had to give them some money because the cultists seized my friend’s phone and refused to give it back.
After that night, I stayed away from parties for almost two years. The fear stuck with me. I spent the next few days looking over my shoulder in fear that I might come across one of them and they’d recognize me. It took me a few days to get over the entire thing.
Of course, I returned to the party scene eventually, but that hot chase, and the run for my life, is something I’ll never forget.
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