CHAPTER 1: NIGHTMARES

Each night, I sleep in expectancy, but no matter how many times I have this dream, I never get use to it, I wake up each night screaming like a lunatic. And it became a norm for my landlady to yell and bang on my door every night.

'Bang! bang! bang!' "Sekani! can you turn it down??! holy moly! I'm trying to get some sleep here, you know, I've had it with your nightly disturbance! If you can't contain your madness, then go stay in the mental asylum where you belong! urghh!"

Just as I thought.

I consider myself unfortunate and unlucky to have gotten a room just next to my landlady's; if only that could be called a proper room, but it was a room at least; a storeroom made of a plywood door and that made poor security.

I knew that as long as my nightmares persists, she will continue her embarrassing act, I mean, other neighbors could hear her for Christ's sake! I can only hope for the nightmares to stop, by my hope was beginning to waver because it's been 4 years ever since it began, but I'm still hoping anyway.

In these 4 years of been haunted by a mysterious nightmare, I've considered undergoing some therapies, and I've tried saving up for it too, but since I've never had a stable source of income, that goal was never actualised, I end up using the savings for my feeding and weekly rent.

Such has been the routine of an orphan poor me. I just got out of the orphanage 3 years ago and still trying to find my feet on the ground, had never met my parents and had lived in the orphanage all my life, until last 3 years when I finally got kicked out.

As you might have already guessed, my nightmares were part of the reason I got kicked out. I would wake up each night with deafening screams, causing the babies and toddlers in the orphanage to cry and wail to the detriment of the orphanage's nuns and attendants.

Before my nightmares began, I was nicknamed 'the witch' because, well according to them, I was too beautiful for a human child and I had eyes that were like that of a cat.

Then when my nightmares began, they prefixed 'haunted' to my already existing nickname, hence the nickname, 'haunted witch'.

One would wonder why they didn't get rid of me the day they discovered me at the orphanage's gate, because of their reputation of course, but they never spared an opportunity to give me up for adoption even at age 10, they even offered my for free at a point, but I never got adopted, my eyes were a turn off for every parent that came to the home for adoption.

"...oh! what an incredibly pretty child, if not for her eyes that looks like that of the devil I would have taken her" they would always say.

I learnt with time that the real reason I got rejected so many times and hated by the nuns was because, they believed I was possessed by an evil spirit and later on, my nightmares confirmed their assumption; I was indeed haunted.

But since they couldn't get rid of me, they made me do most of the hard chores from a very tender age. At 7, I was already babysitting all the babies in the home and helped out in the kitchen.

"This is to make up for the years we had and still have to spend with you and put up with your witchcraft. Lower your eyes child! spare me the horror of having to gaze into your unholy eyes!" Mother Cecilia would always say to me each time I complained of tiredness or exhaustion.

The 'lower your eyes' phrase was a constant usage for her and the other nuns, only one nun was compassionate towards me, even though just like the rest, she still believed that I was no ordinary child, she believed that it was no fault of mine that I was born that way.

"Oh poor child!" Sister Gloria would always say to me, and when I looked into her eyes, all I saw was pity and sympathy, those were the only feelings closed to love that I have ever gotten from anyone.

Well my misery continued up until my 18th birthday when they finally threw me out, cos in the eye of the law and the society, I was a full fledged adult, and no one could speak ill of them; there conscience was satisfied.

I was grateful for one thing; my freedom, I finally get to experience the outside world and what it meant to be independent, not like I haven't been standing on my own, but I can now get to fend for myself.

However, I missed the shelter and free food I had back then at the orphanage; now I value them.

I sighed softly as I ended my reminiscence, all thanks to my unsolicited alarm; my nightmare, I won't be able to sleep again, that's it for today. it was like an acute insomnia.

I looked at my side clock, it was only 3am in the morning and that meant that I had to stay up till 5am when I have to start preparing... I mean searching for work. I prepare that early cos we only had one bathroom and toilet on this part of the building.

There are a total of 3 bathrooms and toilets in the building, one for the A unit, one for the B unit and of course one exclusively for the landlady.

At around 6am, we experience what I call 'the bath rush' it was usually crowded and we take turns to bath, so the struggle is not something I want to get into because most times, fights usually break out amongst them and I'm not a match for any of them; I'm usually being bullied as a matter of fact, so it's safer to avoid it totally, hence I devised this means to outsmart them.