Entry #52 – The bullet in my bathroom

Just when I thought life was becoming a little bit boring and predictable I experienced a sudden rush of adrenaline 2 nights ago around 8pm when I heard a loud bang in my bathroom. There wasn’t any electricity at the time and I was alone in my flat. I walked past the bathroom (which serves as a spare for guests and is separate from my ensuite) and for a second I thought it was a gun-shot. The next I thought was that my sink had fallen apart or the shower curtain rail came crashing down…but surely it must have been a fire cracker or something. With the light from my Nokia E75 I sneaked into the bathroom and inspected the surroundings and then I tripped on something metallic. I picked it up and at first I thought it might have been part of a heavy duty nail but on closer inspection I realized it was a bullet.

The first thing I would have done at this point is call in the CSI (Las Vegas) team to do their nifty forensic work. I would let Grisham bamboozle me with words like ‘Trajectory’ and ‘Ricochet’ and the watch them as they scamper around looking for the ‘Entry point’. That night I barely slept because I felt this wasn’t random. I’ve lived in this flat for close to 6months and nothing like this has ever happened. I couldn’t help but ask myself, ‘Was someone trying to kill me?’

I had a mental list of people I suspected I had ticked-off and probably wanted my blood as payback:

  1. My recent ex-girlfriend – Looks innocent but is capable of something like this now that I think about it.
  2. My neighbour – I told her off for shouting like she was the only one living in the compound going ‘MAAARIAAA!!!’ repeatedly
  3. The Security Guard’s mate – They wine and dine with my security guard outside the compound and I don’t like the dodgy ‘I kill you!’ looks I get from them sometimes.

I found later the following day that there was a hole in my bathroom ceiling. Part of  the shape was an exact replica of the bullet lying horizontally. I expected the shape to be round. There were no holes in my window or walls so I got Googling…asking the seemingly dumb question, ‘Can a bullet go off by itself?’

I was pleasantly suprised indeed when I came across the following answer from Yahoo! Answers: “No. Something has to make contact with the primer or cause the primer to get really hot. Dropping or hitting a round, or throwing it into a fire can cause it ignite.”  So it was actually possible for the bullet to have just gone off without being in a gun chamber. By the looks of the photo above, the bullet must have been lying flat when it suddenly penetrated the ceiling unto my bathroom floor. So how could this be explained further?

If you observe in the diagram opposite, my bullet is very similar and there is actually a primer at the back of the bullet (labelled ‘5’). What could have triggered it? Heat? If so why didn’t it go off in the peak of the hot afternoon? Why in the evening after dark? Could a mouse or rat have been tampering with the primer before the bullet went off? I didn’t see any rodent body parts or blood around the crime scene. This bullet just descended by its own free will.

Thankfully I wasn’t doing a ‘Number 2’ when this near-homicide took place. Just imagine, being found dead with a bullet in your head, pants halfway down, toilet unflushed and no trace of a killer. That’s what I call a freak accident – Perhaps this can be used for the next Final Destination movie installment ( …I think they should be working on part 5 now.) But this begs the question, what kind of tenants where living in this apartment before I moved in? Drug barons?, Assassins? Ex-military mercenaries? Are there anymore bullets lying up there in my ceiling. Even worse, is there gun cache up there? a dead body? If I start to smell something funny (and I know it’s not me) then I’m going up there to investigate…

 

N.B – That black spot in the celing is the bullet hole…crikey!

14 thoughts on “Entry #52 – The bullet in my bathroom

  1. Brilliant and very amusing in the true jollof style. I have missed it (the style and humour that is). Very informative and loaded wit yet more information I’ll neva do anything with. (Bulleets going off on their own, who would eva have thot that was possible)

  2. That is utterly incredible. I think further investigation is required. If only to stimulate the interest of all of us here. Do what you can to be safe, should we somehow send the cavalry if we don’t hear from you in a few days?

  3. Yikes, everyone knows that bullets are dangerous but, they *are* supposed to be safe enough when out of the gun… …apparently not. I hope you don’t venture up there and find a forgotten arms cache. Glad you weren’t in there when it decided to self destruct, the hole in the ceiling must have taken some force!

  4. Dude are you serious ??? that’s NUTS !!! CSI Vegas team would totally come up with the answer to that mystery bullet !

    I can’t believe what a joke you’ve made of the incident .. funny as hell … and I can practically picture you (well an outline of you since I don’t quite know what you look like!)

    But yeah – go and report it – and perhaps be nice to the ex and the scary security mates !

  5. dude..if you report that bullet, believe me, u will be in for it!!the police will be all over your house like flies on s**t. and…..you’ll become a suspect!!take it from one who left her profession cos dealing with them freaky-dicky heads were causing many a migraines for me!!!

  6. When I used to live in more of a gang area, we would get “mystery bullets” fairly often. Depending on what it’s fired from and how thin your ceiling/floors are it could even be one that was fired high into the air that came down.

    On the other hand, I would be reluctant to irritate an upstairs neighbor who would/could shoot a gun into the floor!

    I enjoy your style and humor too. It makes your articles fun to read.

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