Chapter Three - I'm Not Your Fairy Godmother

Olarenwaju

Disclaimer: Names of companies and persons used are purely fictional. They have no connections with any person, living or dead.

The minute I said the words, “I don’t want to die, I want to be saved.” Morenike grabs my hand, the one that is hanging onto the rebar and pulls me up with such strength that a woman her size should not ordinarily have.

“Now that we are on the same page,” Morenike says so nonchalantly as if she did not just rescue a man who was about to fall his death, the smile on her face stretching into something more genuine.

I lie on the floor, taking deep, heavy breaths, swallowing mouthful of rainwater in the process.

I almost just bloody died. Good gracious God!

“Please confirm the following details: Your name is Olarenwaju Abolore Sulaiman. You are thirty‐seven years old and you have no children or family.”

“How the hell did you know that?” I ask through heavy breaths. I struggle to sitting position and look up at her.

“Seriously, you are still asking dumb questions. Just confirm the details so we can get out of this blasted cold,” she says with hands on her hips, looking down at me like a mother scolding her errant child.

“Yes,” I answer finally. And without warning, she places her hand on my chest.

Her palm is so warm it feels like it’s burning right through my soaked shirt. I suck in a sharp breath. The heat spreads, winding through my arms and legs, down to my toes. Perhaps it’s just the adrenaline of nearly plummeting into the raging river, but this feels different—like some force is surging through me.

“All right,” Morenike says in that maddeningly calm tone of hers. She helps me to my feet as easily as if I weighed nothing. The wind whips around us, rain striking us with needles of cold. She brushes her dripping locs off her forehead. “We’ll need somewhere dry—somewhere quiet. Follow me.”

I stare at her in disbelief. The entire city is drenched, lightning slicing across the sky. Everything is gray, ghosts of skyscrapers looming in the distance. “Follow you where?” I croak. My earlier suspicion had returned and the heaviness of it weighed on me.

“You appear out of nowhere, save my life, and now I should follow you like a lost puppy?”

Her lips tilt in a small smirk. “Yes, exactly that. Unless you’d prefer to slip back into the river. With just a snap of my finger, I can reverse all this and take you back to the moment you were dangling from the bridge. It would be like I was never even here.”

I open my mouth to retort, but something in her eyes stops me. There’s a quiet confidence there, as if she’s been through storms far worse than this one and still carried the battle scars from those wars. And there’s a curiosity too, an unmistakable spark that makes me wonder who—or what—this woman truly is.

“You choose. At least Ori can see that I did my best.” Morenike began walking away.

In silence, I follow her off the bridge, my sneakers squelching in the puddles. There’s no one in sight for miles. This area was condemned years ago, left to rot. Morenike seems to know precisely where she’s going, though: moving along half-broken sidewalks, beneath half-collapsed arches. Now and then I catch sight of a stray dog slinking away, or a sudden swirl of trash caught in the wind bring with it the horrible scent of whatever dump it was whisked from, but otherwise, it’s desolate.

At last, she leads me into what appears to be an abandoned structure—a crumbling one-story building whose doors dangle on rusted hinges. Rain seeps through cracks in the ceiling, and the stench of wet concrete hangs heavy in the air. She turns to me, her dreadlocks heavy with rainwater whipped behind her.

“Sit,” she commands.

I almost laugh at the absurdity of taking orders from a total stranger in a ruin like this.

A thought crossed my mind—maybe I have died and I was now being punished for taking my own life. Because none of these makes any sense, from the moment the words, “do you believe in the spiritual?” filtered into my ears till this moment standing in this uncompleted building. Nothing makes sense!

Still some part of me—some desperate part—obeys her command and I ease down onto the least wet spot on the floor. Morenike crouches in front of me, black eyes glittering. The hush that settles between us amplifies every drop of rain that seeps through the battered roof.

“Confirm again,” she says in a low, measured voice. “Name: Olanrewaju Abolore Sulaiman. Age: thirty-seven. No wife, no children, no close family.”

I swallow. “That’s me.”

She nods. “I told you I’m a shadow, but I’m more than that. Let’s call me…” She tilts her head, as if searching for the right phrase. “…an agent of destiny. Like many other agents, I serve the Yoruba deity, Ori. I don’t exist simply to haunt bridges. I exist to intervene for those who’ve lost themselves. And you, Olanrewaju, are lost.”

I scoffed at the last statement, “you want a gold medal for stating the obvious?” I bristle despite myself. “Maybe I’m lost. Maybe I don’t have anything left. That doesn’t mean I believe in…in all this. I don’t know what you are, or what you want.”

I looked at her sharply as a thought I had not considered but I should have struck me and I burst out laughing. “You know, I get it now. Nice performance by the way. All that agent of destiny nonsense. Which of the loan companies do you work for?”

“Excuse me?” She frowned pretending to be confused. It was the first time she was showing a different emotion apart from “unbotheredness”.

“Padimonie, Kwikiemoney, Loan Now Now, which one of them sent you?” I kept my face passive, not buying her bullshit story anymore, agent of destiny, my foot.

She cocks her head to the side, a slow smile inching across her lips. “Oh, you mean the companies you are owing a total of… let me see,” she pauses dramatically—I assume it's for effect—as she checks her note before saying, “a cumulative total of 50 million Naira, with interests growing daily.”

“Aha! I knew it, they sent you, abi? After posting my obituary, embarrassing me among my neighbours, friends, and family, that one is not enough abi. You people won't let me die in peace. You know if I die, you can’t get your money back, nice try. All of these is your fault anyway?” I spat.

“It’s no longer Adenike's fault?” My head snapped up at the mention of Adenike. “It's now the loan companies’ fault? You have a penchant for blaming others for your own doings,” she added.

“How did you…”

“Know Adenike?” She finished for me.

“You see,” Morenike began, “that’s the beauty of it—I don’t need you to bbelieve.I just need to do my job. Your desperation brought me here, and your words—‘I want to live, I want to be saved’—that sealed our contract.”

“Contract?” My voice sounds too loud in the vacant building.

“Life and death must remain in balance,” she says evenly. “For some, choosing death disrupts that balance. So I intervene when the thread is not meant to be cut. But, Olanrewaju”—here, her voice softens, sounding almost sympathetic—“that doesn’t mean your troubles magically disappear. I’m no fairy godmother. I can only guide you to places where you can begin again. Whether or not you heed my guidance is up to you.”

Her words were a heavy cloud hanging over me. For a moment, I can’t speak. I think of Adenike—beautiful, ethereal Adenike, the woman I worshipped as a goddess, never guessing she was capable of destroying my life so thoroughly. Pain clenches my chest, an ache so deep it’s hard to breathe.

A flash of lightning illuminates the space, and in that split second I see the outline of Morenike’s form, her soaked clothes clinging to her body, the cowries in her locs shimmering. She looks like she belongs to the storm itself, a living embodiment of night and thunder.

She breaks the silence first. “Do you have anywhere to sleep tonight? Any friend who can take you in?”

I shake my head slowly. The truth is, I burned all my bridges long before I found that decaying one to jump from. No one wants anything to do with me—Adenike made sure of that. My chest twists at the memory of her manipulations, her false sweetness. The scandal that followed was enough to strip me of every relationship that mattered.

Morenike nods, unsurprised. “Then you’ll stay with me.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “You just said you weren’t a fairy godmother. Now you’re offering me lodging?”

She laughs, a throaty sound that echoed off the dilapidated walls. “Don’t misunderstand. I don’t have a luxurious home waiting. But I’m no stranger to sleeping in cramped places. I only have a small room I borrowed for the time being—a place I stay when I’m…on assignment. But it’s better than curling up in here and catching pneumonia.”

I start to protest, but realize I have nowhere else to go. And truth be told, some battered, hidden corner of me is grateful for this bizarre lifeline. I rise to my feet. My knees still tremble, exhaustion threatening to drop me where I stand.

She offers her arm, and though I hesitate, I grab it. Together, we step back into the torrent. Her presence cuts through my fear like a beacon, though I can’t fathom why I should trust her.

We walk another few blocks until we reach a narrower street. Faint light glimmers from a single bulb hung near a battered gate. Morenike produces a small key from her jacket and unlocks a side door, gesturing for me to follow. Inside, the smell of mold and damp earth assaults my nostrils. The tiny corridor leads to a single cramped room—bare walls, a threadbare mattress on the floor, a single kerosene lantern hissing in the corner. I had not seen a kerosene lamp in years, since I was a child.

“Make yourself at home,” Morenike says with a wry half-smile. “Not quite the Ritz, but at least the roof doesn’t leak much.”

I glance around, shivering. “How…how long have you stayed here?”

“As long as I need to. My assignments change.” She speaks as though that explains everything, then kneels by the kerosene lamp, adjusting its wick. A gentle glow fills the room.

I’m too tired to pry further, so I sink onto the mattress. My clothes are still plastered to my skin, my hair dripping onto the floor. I can’t stop thinking about the moment I clung to that rebar and realized I wanted to live. Morenike stands quietly, arms folded, studying me with an unreadable expression.

“You should rest,” she says softly. “Things will look different in the morning.”

Before I can stop myself, I ask, “But why are you doing this? Why save me?”

She takes a step closer, so close I smell the rain on her skin and something faintly sweet—like cloves or maybe ginger root. Her eyes glimmer in the lantern light. “Because you called out for salvation, and I was there to answer. It’s what I do.”

My heart clenches. All my life, I’ve prayed to a silent God, cried out to empty streets. No one ever answered. Now, she stands in front of me—someone who calls herself a mere shadow—I still don't understand what that means—yet somehow pulled me from the brink of death.

She kneels, her gaze locked on mine. “Olanrewaju, you said you want to live. Are you prepared for what that means? Are you prepared to face your demons and fight for your life back?”

Fear knots my stomach. The shadow of Adenike, the chaos she sowed, is ever-present. The irony of having to fight for a life I nearly surrendered an hour ago stings. But Morenike’s question hangs in the air, demanding an answer.

“I don’t know,” I manage. “But…I want to try.”

For the first time since I met her, her tough façade softens. She nods, pressing a gentle hand to my shoulder.

“Then rest,” she whispers. “We begin tomorrow.”

I close my eyes, listening as the storm outside pounds the tin roof. Despite the cold and my sodden clothes, a spark of warmth unfurls inside me. I’m aware that I’ve stepped into something bigger than myself—something dangerous, maybe even otherworldly. But in this moment, lying in a stranger’s cramped room, I feel strangely…safe.

I drift toward sleep, her final words echoing in my mind: We begin tomorrow.

For the first time in a long while, I look forward to the coming dawn.

To be continued…

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Guysss, we can't keep doing this. We need a title for this story, so far so good, give me suggestions, please 🥹

Thank you for reading this week's episode, I look forward to sharing new episodes with you every week. Please pardon any typo you see, I'm self-editing.