Ahmed Haidar

 

Mama Wants To O2

I wake up in my old class room with my high school math teacher smiling down at me with his peculiarly white teeth and almost luminescent obsidian eyes and as I turn around I see the class room is filled with my old schoolmates all paying intense attention on the black board where an old black and white movie is showing.

It's a cold afternoon and I can feel the hairs on the nape of my neck standing on end.

I hear my math teacher talking to me about starring in a horror flick, apparently trying to convince me it was a great role for me.

I smile and before I can decline I wake up again- this time in my sister's room and its almost four in the morning- I could tell by the glow of my old phone.

It's dark everywhere save for the diminutive glow of the hurricane lamp in the corridor outside seeping in from under the door.

I get up to open it.

I almost scream when I open it and find a tall slim black man wearing a tailored pinstriped suit with a matching fedora, a pipe dangling between his lips and a walking stick clamped under his armpit saying, "....

I wake up a third time like I'm stuck in a loop and find the same scene unfolding again, except this time, I find a young woman wearing a "lapa" tied around her hips, tumbling all the way down to her ankles and nothing but a bra on.

She is leaning slightly to the opposite direction to balance the baby she is carrying on her left hip.

Her eyes, it seemed had seen several eternities and I could see they'd been crying as she leans on the threshold of the door.

Her voice- broken down to a whispered scream, is yelling at me, " mama wants to O2 but she can't!" over and over again and I run.

I wake up again and this time it was all really a dream