I do not like going to bed. I dread every second that leads up to it. I hate going to bed because of her. She always comes to me in my dreams and it is never pleasant. I don’t understand why she cannot tell that I do not like her visits to me and that every time she comes to visit, she leaves me upset and afraid. Grandma told me that she’s trying to take me with her. I have tried telling her I do not want to go with her. Can she not tell that I do not like her, especially when she does things like she does every time she visits?

I got up before the roosters today and although it is almost midnight and eyelids feel heavy, I do not want to sleep. I once attempted to not sleep and it did not turn out good. And Grandma cannot afford another hospital fee because I failed to sleep. I have grown to hate the very sight of my bed, although I know it has nothing to do with her coming to visit me. It doesn’t matter where I fall asleep; she still comes and visits.

I make my way to the bed and pull the covers back. I climb into the bed and pull the covers as far up as I can without suffocating myself. After about two hours, sleep finally conquers my conscious. My dream begins with my cousin and I just sitting on the veranda in our compound gossiping about the latest thing to have happened in the village. We are sitting close to the entrance of the corridor when all of a sudden, we hear someone coming through the corridor. I turn and look, only to see that it’s a man, his face covered with a cap. My cousin and I watches as he calmly walks to the backyard of the kitchen section. The backyard where the graves are. It is in the backyard that she has been laid to rest but refuses to rest in peace.

We watch the man begin to dig at her grave. He digs and digs, all without once saying a word to us. For some odd reason, we do not try to stop. We just sit there and watch him dig. Once he is done, he removes her body and wraps her in a mat. The he slowly begins making his way toward us. As I turn to look at my cousin, she’s suddenly all the way down at the opposite end of the veranda. I don’t even remember her moving. As the man keeps walking toward me, I attempt moving down to where my cousin is but for the life of me, my legs will not move. All I can do sit and watch as the man keeps bringing her body toward me. When he is close enough for me to see her decayed body, my legs suddenly get the will to move again.

As I run to go toward my cousin, I wake up gasping, “Mama.”

I get out of bed and make my way to the light switch. I turn on the light and make my way back to my bed. As I get closer to my bed, I smell what seems to be rotten meat. I reach and pull the comforters to get back into bed. There laying in a mat is the rotten, decayed flesh of my mother. I don’t open my mouth fast enough to scream.