When nature meets negligence

On a gloomy Monday morning, Theo woke up around 6:00 a.m. to meet a heavy downpour. Instead of getting off the bed to start preparing for work, he stayed put and hid himself in the folded, thick duvet, wishing the rain never stopped to automatically call off work for the day.

"Oh!" He just remembered that his phone was still on. He reached out and turned it off to avoid calls from his workplace. He threw the phone in a corner of the bed and buried himself in the duvet while enjoying the soothing rhythmic patter of raindrops on the roof.

Just about 10 minutes into his cool time, he heard a fairly loud voice and a knock on his door.
"Ooooh God! Who's that this early morning? Is it not raining for you to have come knocking on someone's door at this time?" He said aloud, hitting the bed so hard out of frustration. Just about to leave the room to the door on the parlour, the knock came in a radical manner. It piqued his curiosity, and he made his way to the door, squinting through the obscured glass to discern the mysterious visitor. It was Philomena, a light skinned lady in her early 20, his neighbour from across the hall, her face etched with urgency.

"Goodmorning, dear Philo."

"Goodmorning, sir. Please go to your car and see." With a pointed gesture, Philomena directed Theo's attention to his cherished possession, his car, parked not far from the adjacent derelict building that had long been an eyesore in the neighbourhood.

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"What happened to it? It's raining; I can't go inside the rain"

"Take this umbrella and go see for yourself." Philomena handed him the umbrella she used to pass the rain. "Your car is damaged by the ruins of this house"

Horror swept over Theo as he rushed outside to inspect the calamity. The ancient building's foundation weakened with time; a little part of it collapsed onto his car, shattering the windshield and inflicting substantial damage.

Fury surged within Theo, a culmination of his futile appeals to the absentee landlord, who had callously ignored requests to either demolish or fortify the crumbling building.

"Philo, please take your umbrella." He gave her the umbrella as he walked under the downpour with a boiling heart. The heat emanating from his heart was hot enough to neutralise the coldness of the rain.

As Theo confronted the landlord, a stubborn dispute ensued. The landlord, entrenched in his belief that the catastrophe was an act of nature, refused to accept responsibility for the damage.

"Can you just listen to yourself? What if it was a child that the bricks fell on? Would you be saying this?" The conflict escalated as Theo, determined to seek justice, pressed charges and detained the landlord at the police station.

Theo was ready to let go of the matter, but the fact that the owner of the building was blaming nature as the cause of the awful scene got him really mad.

The evening of that day, while Theo was at home trying to glue himself to his Desktop computer, he heard a knock on the door. "Who's there? I'm coming!"

He got up and walked to the door to meet two elderly men in their 50s dressed in native attire with cross chains around their necks and with Mrs. Igwe, the wife of the landlord.
"Yes, I hope it's not because of Mr. Igwe that you're here because, as for me, I'm not granting bail until he accepts his fault." He boldly said this, not minding the calibre of the people before him.

"Sir, please calm down; can we just go inside and have a talk?" one of the men said with lots of smiles on his face.

"Theo, please allow us in; let's have a talk," Mrs. Igwe added, robbing her palms.

"Hmmmm, okay, come inside."

They entered after Theo, the three of them sat on the three-seat couch while Theo sat in a single one. "So what's the issue? I'm all ears."

One of them cleared his throat. "Thank you for allowing us in. We are deacons from Mr. Igwe's church. We don't want to argue with you about who's wrong or who's at fault. We just want to make peace because that's our watchworld... we're from Peace Chapel."

"Hahahahaha! You mean, Mr. Igwe fellowships in Peace Chapel, and he's like that!" He laughed out loud mocking the nonchalant attitude of Mr. Igwe and again, not minding the feelings of the people before him.
"Oh! Please forgive my manner; I'm just joking." He adjusted and sat innocently looking at their faces hoping they didn't feel bad via his laughter.

"Anyway, like I said earlier, I could have let everything go and repaired the damaged part of the car myself if only he had accepted his fault, but he kept blaming the rainfall as what caused the ruins. Meanwhile, I've met him several times to either destroy the house or fortify it to avoid situations like this, but he never listened."

He sighed and continues, "There's no problem; this is all I need; just accept responsibility. Since you've come to realise the error, I don't have an issue. I'll call the police right away to let him go"

"Just like that? We are here to settle the bills," the man asked, looking surprised, as the three of them glared at each other.

"Yeah, you can go; I'm cool; no hard feelings at all." Theo got up and switched on the music system in a bid to let them know he's cool.

"Haaa! Thank you so much, Mr Theo; I never knew....." Mrs. Igwe began to drop tears while on her knees and as Theo turned his back, he rushed to her and raised her up and cleaned off her tears.

As they left his house, Theo put a call to the police and had him released.

He laid on the couch, thinking Maybe it's his attitude toward absenting from work that ruined his day.