Time was around 6:45 am when Segun heard a knock on the door, "Kpo kpo kpo". The early morning sleep was still having his way and the knock came as a disturbance to him so deafened his ear as the knock continued more rapidly which later pulled him up.
"Who's there?!" He asked amid a bit of frustration
"It's me, Hillary! Open the door joooor!"
He got up, hissed, picked up his phone, turned on the flashlight and found his way to the door. He opened it and met Hillary, a friend and a hostel mate standing and holding textbooks in his left hand.
"What is it this early morning, hope there's no problem?" He let him enter his room. Everywhere was dark and he went on to open the window and shifted the curtain to a corner allowing daybreak's light to lighten the room.
"Hmm! What's smelling in this house, is your gas leaking?" Hillary sniffed tirelessly and asked.
"Smell? I'm not perceiving anything. I guess you're perceiving that because every has been locked for a long while" Segun sniffed hard to see if he could perceive anything but he couldn't.
Hilary didn't further on that discussion, he sniffed again and concluded that maybe it was because air from outside hadn't entered the house for a while that's why, so he went to the table where Segun's school bag was kept and began to search for the textbook he came for while Segun went inside the kitchen to wash dishes.
Hillary was fully concentrated on his book when suddenly Segun ran out from the kitchen and moved past him with speed shouting "Jesus! Jesus!" with his hand holding one of his legs and jumping like someone being infected with new madness.
"What's that?" Hillary, out of fear, rushed him.
"It's gas! The cylinder is on fire and it caught my leg" Segun said fastly while blowing a breeze to the leg that was caught with fire.
"Ah ah! I said it!"
Hillary rushed outside, parked sand with black nylon he met there, rushed to the kitchen and began to splash it on the burning gas cylinder from a 2-metre distance with fear and shiverings. The fire wasn't that heavy as it had not caught the whole of the cylinder but it refused to go off. As he finished the sand in the nylon, he turned to go and get another and miraculously, two ladies, Sarah and Favour, in the hostel handed him another bag of sand which he picked from them quickly and began to pour and this time around, the fire died off. He sneaked closely with fear to the gas cylinder, stretched his hand and turned off the gas which was still producing the "shiiii!" noise.
After that, he rushed outside to meet Segun, seated on a block while the ladies applied some chemicals on the surface of the affected spot. Segun was no longer breathing hard but was still blowing the breeze to the spot.
"How did it happen? Didn't you guys observe the smell?" Sarah, one of the ladies asked Hillary as soon as he got there, her voice sounded quarrelsome like Hillary should have known.
"Are you asking me? Do I stay in the house? Funny enough, when I entered the room this morning...."
"Yes ooh! Hillary noticed the smell but I ignored it. He said it when he entered my room this morning" Segun interrupted quickly when he noticed that Sarah was about to blame Hillary who appeared in his house that hour.
"Well, thank God it didn't get passed this. Imagine if everywhere caught fire. God forbid!" Sarah said as she waved her hand over her head as a way of sealing her 'God forbid' prayer.
Going to class was cancelled for both Segun and Hillary that day as Hillary took him to a chemist to get drugs to further apply on the affected spot.
Segun couldn't thank God enough for bringing Hillary to his room at that exact moment because he believed something worse would have happened if Hillary hadn't been around.
Thanks for reading.