The Death Of Magnus

I woke up to put these thoughts down before they sink below my level of Consciousness…

This night I had a dream. Everything in this dream looked older, including my mother. I was back at the house in Mowe, Ogun State. It seemed like a weekend because the neighbours’ kids were around, including my father who comes home on weekends alone. All the neigbhours’ kids, including the fatherless and beautiful ones, those who were born to girls in secondary school and the ones that ate from any plate their stomach rumbled for – they all rushed to welcome me.

My mother was in the only kitchen outside the six-room apartment we lived while my father sat in front of it, facing the large fenceless compound where the children played and ran around naked.

On this particular day, in this dream, everyone was dressed like there’s an occasion, even the fatherless ones. I undressed from my travel-clothes, walked out of the long corridor in singlet then walked in again. This time, I walked into the single room we rented, out of the six rooms. You’d think I walked in when I saw my father but I didn’t, I had noticed my mother was cooking and I hurried inside to pick a spoon. Usually, in the real world, I’d send my brother Felix to get the spoon. Now, in this dream, I wondered where my siblings were and how come the spoons are not in the kitchen – where my mother sat before her burning kerosene stove.

The kids could see me, feel me and touch me, happily. But my father didn’t notice I was standing beside him, neither did my mother see me from the kitchen, no matter how hard I tried to make them see me…. They never saw me. Then I woke up!