Bisola had endured a recurring dream since the incident.
In fact she'd had this dream so many times now that whenever it started she knew exactly what it was but somehow she couldn't just stop it from happening. She couldn't even distance herself from it. It was like that moment after you've lost your footing, when you know you're going to have a nasty fall and there's just nothing you can do about it except let it happen and assess the damage after.
In the dream, to begin with, she's usually in her former cubicle.
From the very start her heart is racing and in her hands she's holding the documents for a presentation. She knows what presentation it is. Knows it inside out since she designed it from scratch herself. The original was digital but for some reason the version in her hands now is in the form of a binder full of carefully color coded print outs. In the dream this binder is the only version of her presentation that exists and her palms sweat as she clutches it tightly.
Then, suddenly, she's seated between colleagues in the 11th floor conference room.
With one wall almost fully dominated by windows looking out over Victoria Island traffic, the room is bright yet she can't make out people's faces well. She just knows that the various Heads of Department and the GM herself are in attendance because the client is a BIG one.
Usually someone higher up in the hierarchy presented to the clients of this stature but Bisola finds herself, nevertheless, slowly standing up with the binder in her hands.
She hears someone muttering, "what is she doing?"
Bisola pushes back her chair, straightens and turns to find Aina is in front of her blocking her way. Aina looks amused and embarrassed and she says clearly, "Biso, you can't"
Bisola dodges around her, her heart beating loudly in her ears. "I have to," she thinks she says. It's hard to tell because her voice is so muffled. She will have to shout to give this presentation.
The room stretches forever as she makes her way to the front. She doesn't know why but her clothes suddenly seem too big and loose and keep sliding off her so she's adjusting them while holding on to the folder like her life depends on it and trekking to the front of the room. The room watches her strange and clumsy progress silently.
At last she makes it to the front. She places the folder on the table in front of her and she's praying because she already knows what will happen but she can't stop it.
Her clothes are now like heavy, slippery, satin bed sheets still trying to slide off her. She cannot imagine why she chose to wear these particular clothes on a day like this. She pushes and hitches one sleeve of her blouse up with difficulty and opens the folder.
As expected, it is empty except for a few sheets of foolscap paper with a few childish graphs scrawled over it and... nothing else.
She looks up sweating.
The room looks back. Unfriendly. Aina stands to one side, holding back laughter behind pretty hands and shiny, dark pink nails.
That's when Bisola loses the war with her clothes. They slip right off her and pool around her feet, leaving her exposed in her rattiest, most mismatched underwear, the laundry day ones with the sags and bleach stains.
Aina loses it and screams with laughter and the room joins her.
Bisola finds that every time she bends to try and retrieve the slippery mess of fabrics that were her clothes she inexplicably misses and the room laughs a little more hysterically. It's an aggressive wall of sound that makes her stomach feel hollow and her eyes smart.
As always, in the dream she tries to will herself into some form of control but the laughing doesn't stop. The person closest to her suddenly snatches at the folder and holds it open for the room to see and the laughter gets even louder and still more savage as her feeble foolscap sheet with the crudely drawn graphs floats down on to the conference room table in front of them.
Walk out, she tells herself. Just walk out. It's a dream, you can do that much.
But she can't. Instead, she looks down and big fat tears plop onto the lenses of her glasses, blurring the pool of fabric at her feet.
She hates this dream from the bottom of her soul.
"Are you quite done, Miss Folorunsho?"