"What is an illusion"? He asked me. "An illusion is something that is not real", I answered, wondering where he was going with this. " You are an illusion to me. I see you, I touch you, I perceive you, but you are not real". I smile at his perfect attempt to make my existence seem like a paradox. I reach out to touch his face but he shoves my hand away. I sigh. He heaves but holds his breath in. He whispers incoherently to the air and stands up, heading for the door. I make to follow him but he quickens his pace and shuts the door on my face. I try to call out his name but the words don't come. After battling within myself whether or not to bang at the door, I do the one thing I am still capable of doing. I leave.
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Time does not freeze. It moves on regardless of the event, person or place. It doesn't wait for one to absorb the happenings around him. It just flies across like a wind, bringing to disorder the already arranged things in one's life. But today time froze. It stood still for so long, waiting for me to absorb what had just happened, to react, to move, to release my emotions. Despite this rare luxury time had so generously given me, I stood still. It was as though time and I had aligned, we both didn't move. I couldn't feel myself neither could I feel my surroundings; I was in a trance. I could see bodies shoving past me, lips moving in seemingly incoherent sounds, but stretched out so widely that it was certain they were screams. Then time stopped waiting, it grew impatient and lost its sense of empathy. I opened my mouth and let out a guttural sound. I didn't know why I did that. Was it because others were also screaming? I had barely gathered my thoughts when I felt a pair of hands on my shoulders. I was being pulled out of the room where screaming people were. Surprisingly, I did not resist. I allowed these hands take me away because I was not yet fully myself. I was still immersed in the screams that my eyes had not had the chance to grasp the situation at hand. It was only when I got downstairs that my senses came to me. I could see smoke everywhere and my skin felt pricked with intense heat. My clothes had an ashy smell and people were trooping out of the building. It was on fire. The three storey building I had lived in for sixteen years was gradually being turned to a rubble of dirt as the fire seemed to have no desire to spare even an inch of it. I thought of my mother, who was in the hospital, still nursing the wounds she had gotten from the loan sharks who barged into our home two days ago, seizing everything that seemed to still have value, and eventually breaking a table on her head which resulted in her admission into the hospital. Life had not always always been so bad. Dad was once a constant presence in our lives. He bought us suya and palm wine on Fridays when he returned from work, took us to the cinemas every Sunday after service and taught us the apostles creed which we sang till our lips could not forget the words. Then one day Chiadi had a headache and died. Dad yelled at mom for not giving him panadol and mom yelled at dad for not giving her money to buy panadol. Dad left the house and never came back and all I could think of was how everything was panadol's fault. If it had strategically placed itself on mom's dressing table, she would have given it to Chiadi and he would be alive. If Chiadi had not slept without taking panadol, he would still be here, asking me if the lice in my hair had begun eating my eyebrows and I would spit on his face and tell him that the worms of the rings would feast on his face and leave him with ringworm. I was desperately trying not to think of what mom would do when she found out that we were now homeless. Would she go berserk and rip the bandage around her head off? Would she wail until her fellow patients become peeved and yell at her? Or would she say "God knows best" with a faraway look in her eyes?