The first time I told them about the fire, they made me sit outside.
It was a small dream. A house with yellow curtains. A kitchen with a kettle screaming on the stove. A match lit too close to the edge of a plastic table. That was all. No blood. No screams. Just heat and the whimper of melting things. I was seven. My voice still squeaked. I told Mama as she peeled yam in the kitchen, her fingers moving fast and sharp. She froze for a second, then said, “Don’t speak such things out loud. The devil can hear.”
Three days later, my uncle’s compound in Sango caught fire. They said it started from the kitchen, though no one remembered leaving anything on the stove. Nobody died, but the baby had burn marks on her thighs that never quite faded. The skin healed darker, tighter, as if it had to stretch itself over pain that refused to leave.
Mama stared at me differently after that. Not with fear. Not yet. Just something unsure, like she was trying to remember if she had seen me before.
She began to sprinkle holy water on my head at night. She said it was for peace. That it would wash away bad spirits from my dreams. But I saw the way she hesitated before touching my forehead. I heard how she muttered prayers under her breath like she wasn’t sure they would work.
By the time I was nine, the dreams were regular. Not always violent. Sometimes, they were just strange. A boy in my class falling into a gutter and laughing as if he had found treasure. A woman in the market calling her son’s name over and over until her throat bled and people started backing away like her grief was contagious. A bus that refused to stop moving, even when it hit something. Once, I dreamt of rain falling upwards, splashing against the sky until the clouds turned red.
When these things happened, two days later, sometimes two weeks, Mama stopped making me go to church. She said too many eyes could confuse a blessing for a curse. Instead, she bought me a notebook. She called it a diary, but she said not to write anything about myself in it. Just the dreams. Only the dreams. That way, if anybody found it, they wouldn’t know whose head it came from.
I filled four notebooks before I turned fourteen. I kept them hidden under my mattress, in plastic bags to keep them from dampening. Sometimes, I reread them, hoping to find patterns, warnings, explanations. But there were none. Just fragments of places I had never been. Faces I didn’t recognize. Voices I could still hear in the morning, saying things that never made sense until it was too late.
The first time I saw someone die before it happened, I was fifteen. A man on our street who walked like a hinge breaking. His left leg dragged behind him. His right arm was always tucked close like he was holding something invisible. In my dream, he climbed a ladder to change a bulb and fell. His head cracked like a dropped bottle. I woke up shivering and told Mama. She said we don’t speak on death. Words are invitations.
He died three weeks later. Not a ladder. A generator exploded while he was fixing it. They said he didn’t even scream. Just dropped, like God switched off a light.
Mama didn’t look at me for days. Not out of anger. It was worse. It was caution. Like I was something she needed to pray around. She started placing my food outside my door. Covered, still warm, but always outside. She said I needed space to commune with light. I stopped asking what she meant.
I grew careful with how I said things. If I said I see, people stiffened. If I said I feel like, they relaxed. Feelings were allowed. Seeing was not.
I tried to write poems instead. To clothe the visions in rhythm. To soften their edges. But they didn’t fit. The dreams weren’t beautiful enough for that. They were jagged. Ugly in ways that didn’t rhyme.
Once, I saw a boy vanish. Not die. Just vanish. In the dream, he walked onto a football field, waved, and became mist. Nobody screamed. Nobody chased him. He was there, then he wasn’t. I wrote it down, assuming it was just nonsense. But three weeks later, a boy from the next town went missing. They said he had gone to play ball. They never found him. Not a shoe. Not a shirt. Just an empty field and a mother who stopped eating.
I stopped writing after that.
People say silence is peace, but sometimes it feels like a kind of violence. Like being the only one in a room with the lights off and knowing exactly what’s crawling on the floor.
I no longer tell people about the dreams. When I was younger, they thought I was mad. Now that I’m older, they would think I’m cruel. A woman who carries the future in her teeth but does not shout it out. A witch with manners.
I live alone now. I work at a bookstore no one visits. It used to be a pharmacy. You can still smell iodine when it rains. The books come from second-hand sellers. Some pages are missing. Some have margins full of notes. I find comfort in that. People trying to mark what they don’t understand.
My mother still sends me messages on Sundays. She doesn’t ask about the dreams anymore. Just sends Bible verses. Sometimes, a link to a sermon. She signs off with “Remember who you are.” I think she’s trying to be kind. Or trying to remind herself I’m still her child.
Some nights, I forget my own name. I say it out loud, to make it real again.
There’s one dream I keep having. It’s quiet, which makes it worse. In it, I’m standing at a window. A woman is walking toward me. She wears a red dress. Her mouth is moving but there’s no sound. She carries something wrapped in blue cloth. She walks closer and closer, but she never reaches me. Her eyes are wrong. Not evil. Just empty, like she forgot what she came for. I’ve had this dream eleven times. It’s always the same.
The last time, the woman looked exactly like me.
Two months ago, I dreamt that a man walked into the bookstore and asked for a specific book. I told him we didn’t carry it, and he smiled and said, “Yes, you do. You just haven’t read it yet.” Then he handed me a page. It was from my old diary. My handwriting. My words. I woke up sweating.
It was real. Word for word. I found the diary, page sixty-three. Dream dated June 18, 2013. The handwriting had faded, but it was still there.
Last week, a man walked into the shop. He asked for that exact book. When I said we didn’t have it, he smiled and looked at me too long. I told him to leave. He didn’t argue. Just said, “Maybe next time,” and walked out like he knew something I didn’t.
I’ve started writing again. But not on paper.
I speak the dreams now. Softly, into the walls. Into drains. Into mirrors. If they want to live, they will find a way.
Last night, I dreamt of fire again. Not in a house this time, but in a mouth. A woman preaching. Her words were fire. People clapped, not knowing their hands were burning. They swallowed her sentences like soup, not realizing their throats were bleeding. And still they clapped. Still they cheered. Because truth sounds sweet when your ears are melting.
When I woke up, I felt heat in my own mouth. I drank water. It hissed.
I see visions. I dream dreams. I don’t ask for them. I don’t like them. But they come anyway.
And every time they do, the world tilts a little.
Someone forgets how to come home.
Someone swallows a match.
Someone writes my name without knowing it.