Fiction: Whispering Dreams

By

Dami Lare

Sickness had always been a cycle to you: get sick, take medications and get well. Then Aliyah convulsed to death without signs of falling ill, meat cleaver in her twitching bloodied hands, and your algorithm failed. Your imagination ran wild and you with it. You began to fret, connecting dots that hadn’t existed. That was when you remembered Farouk.

The first time the story came up, you ignored her, drunkenness they called it, an experience common to neophytes; but the second time was hilarious, who would think of a wedding in a hut house, dirty drainages and poignant smells, much one attended only by a man in a wrapper. It was just a dream you jeered.

Then she started whispering the name from sleep, like one in feats of struggle, moaning the name out from under the duvet. But it wasn’t anything you hadn’t seen, nothing more than the replay of a passionate incident. You even managed a chuckle. The outbursts came next: fitful paroxysm and sudden mood swings. Course load for new intakes could take its toil, Hebatullah spat out. Stress, you’ve seen worst in some freshmen you assured her. Diazepam and Tramadol would surely douse the uneasiness.

However when she asked if they would help keep him from her, you became slightly troubled.

Who you had asked, she said Farouk, the name she kept whispering, twisting beneath the duvet. You simply said oh and flashed a knowing smile. Just take them you told her.

You began your little investigation.

Nobody knew Farouk, not even Mobola or Jenice. You became unsettled, more when you found out she had no male friends. Was she making up for this lapse with imagination? You left classes early that day.

Farouk has a receding hairline. He is chubby with long tribal marks, and he likes to smirk, she fessed up to you. It was hard to believe Farouk would prefer wrappers to Jeans or slacks. She was quite imaginative; it was time she met real men. You took her to Options that night and she laughed heartedly.

That was the last she laughed.

You figured she would come around; if not, you would make her visit the school’s clinic but not before exams.

Then you came back from your last paper and met her screaming “Farouk” with a meat cleaver making clean swipes through the stale air, blood spilling in its wake. You found yourself screaming along.

Farouk lay motionless, hacked in a million places, dripping blood like an eel out of the deep. Only it wasn’t Farouk, in that gory state, you could still outline the face of Bamidele, the boy you both send on errands.

Days after, you found yourself in a little hut house consoling Aliyah’s mother. Then you hear the name, Farouk, again, only this time accompanied with response. Someone with a receding hairline, skinny but with long tribal marks answered. He wore a worried smirk.

You find yourself scuttling through the door, running as far as possible from the hut and its dirty drainage and poignant smell, from your friends, and from Aliyah’s mother with tears welled up in your eyes.

The signs of her sickness were there, you just didn’t see them.

Dami Lare

Dami Lare is a radical thinker who writes like his life depends on it. Some of his works have been featured in several  anthologies  and publications such as Lunaris Review, Commonline Journal, Ironology and his blog Undyrated’s Blog.