“Get on the floor!” a young man screamed. He was wielding a gun, too big for his tiny arm but he held it like an expert.’Shit’ I whispered to myself. My wife had always told me the fear she had to live with each morning I dressed in my guard uniform and headed to the bank. Now, here I am, face to face with my first ever bank robbery. And I was freaking scared.I slowly laid down as one of the robbers walked up to where I lay, he kicked me in the face and I felt my teeth rattle, those boots were no joke.”Nah you them put for here?” he asked me in the most cruel pidgin English I have ever heard. I gave him a bloody grin, he punched me in the face and I fell back down. I imagined what Kunle, my fellow guard would be thinking as I underwent this tortures.I heard a shot.It seemed like a signal, because the bastard beating me up, had stopped raising me up for another punch and let me fall again. I thanked Jehovah for small blessings.My head was fuzzy, but it seemed like the robbery went on for like fifteen minutes and then I heard it, a damn siren! And the way the sound caused a moment of silence inside the banking hall, I was sure everyone else including the idiots robbing a bank in broad daylight, with nothing but AK-47s heard it too.I heard them rush by and the voice that screamed ‘get on the floor!’ Spoke again: “Get that security man”.’Oh God!’ I thought, let it be Kunle but I knew it wouldn’t be him, when trouble comes, it comes in torrents. A hand grabbed me up and said: “Just do anyhow make I shoot you anyhow”. Oh! Good, it had to be my pidgin slinging robber friend too.***I welcomed the sun that warmed us up as we stepped out of the bank, the AC had begun to get on my nerves, I thought of saying something  about the sun but then I shut up, I didn’t want to lose another tooth in one morning, I could just imagine my wife teasing me: ‘honey, leave the meat for Bamidele and eat fish since you are toothless’ and our son Bamidele would be six months old.”Drop your weapons!” A man from the police side said. ‘Seriously?’ I thought, ‘just drop your weapons?’.I looked at the armed robbers, they were just four, that was funny I’d envisioned seven.***After a lot of boring dialogue that I’ll save you readers from, they; the police and robbers, agreed that they’d take me to a point where they know is safe and then they’ll let me go. I thought they were lying but I was looking at the brighter side: a good story, if they let me go. Only two police vehicles were allowed to follow, anymore, they’d shoot me in the head. I and the police saw sense in that.***Thirty minutes into our journey and the police car behind us, just crossed the second one and opened fire on it, they killed everyone inside. Our vehicle stopped and I saw that the police men in the vehicle, that had opened the fire all had helmets on and nose masks that disguised them. We all shared the money, eleven of us, the helicopter that came to pick us was a personal favor of a friend who hated the bank I worked for. I received the highest share, since Ilaid the blue prints of the operation. I thought of my wife that was dead with our baby that would have been six months old now, had it not been for the bastard policeman that had shot her in the back, because the bus driver that was conveying her had refused to give him fifty naira.I would have a good life with twenty five million naira, stolen or not

Written by Obinna Omotayo Jones