THE NIGHTMARE
Something was off. Ayo knew, but he couldn't place his sweaty hands on what it was. The rowdy, noisy Oshodi market was unsettlingly quiet. And as an experienced Lagosian that he prided himself to be, after barely seven years in Lagos, he knew there were places that were never peaceful. It was simply an aberration for those places to lack disarray. The noise, hassling, bustle and musical horns blaring from all the vehicles around gave these places their identities. Oshodi was one of those places, and it was never quiet.
Humans who used to crowd the pathways in Oshodi market, littering the market with their sweaty bodies and drowning out your thoughts by the unending plethora of voices emanating from every corner seemed to have assembled at some hidden place. Those bored conductors, and desperate hawkers, who gave the market its color were missing. It wasn’t just a little reduction in the population of vendors and customers, it was a total blackout of human light. There were no animals nor humans. It was just him in the huge market.
Ayomide unplugged his earphones to see clearly. The previously soothing songs his girlfriend had recommended were suddenly too loud and they were preventing him from seeing. His eyes darted to and fro, surveying the market. Stalls were filled with several wares ranging from fruits, beverages, sweets, to phones, okrika clothes, phone batteries, wristwatches and almost everything sellable. They were lacking in just one thing – the sellers. Those who would shout at you pathetically, tugging at your shirt or whatever piece of clothing they could get their desperate fingers on, desperately pleading for you to take just one look at their wares, hoping that you might patronize them. They were all absent. The market was frighteningly quiet.
The silence echoed in his ears, but he had always been a lad ruled by good reasoning and common sense. Just like when the fire alarm went off in secondary school, and all his classmates had taken to the windows. He had calmly remained to survey the situation. He had noticed that there was no smoke, and everyone else had been too frightened to figure out what exactly had happened. Even his Indabosky principal had taken to his heels, like a chicken fleeing the knife. But Ayo had eventually found out that it was just a false alarm and that had earned him a heroic award. It had also earned him Bola, his girlfriend. He was courageous and he knew better than to panic without a valid reason.
So, now, instead of giving over his peace of mind to the terrifying thoughts that plagued him as he walked through the market, he allayed his fears with the conclusion that there was a reasonable explanation for the seemingly deserted market. There was always an explanation. Or at least, that was what his Philosophy lecturer had said. “In the long run, logic always wins.” Those were his words, while explaining the obvious reasons for God not being in existence. Ayo remembered his father’s reaction when he declared the course of his dreams.
“Philosophy! Not in my house. You’re just bent on embarrassing me, you this boy. You want to join all this people to start spitting rubbish all over the internet, abi? You want them to tell you that there’s no God and an ape is your forefather. That’s what you want to hear, sheybi? Ehn?! Answer me na or are you now deaf too?”
As a Nigerian child nurtured in a Nigerian home, Ayo had learnt that when your Nigerian parents were angry and requesting for a reply, the best way to save your head was to ignore that request and nod remorsefully. So, when his dad had rained down all those questions, Ayo knew he couldn’t reply. His dad would not want to hear all the thoughts that plagued him. His dad would not want to know that he had never really being a Christian. His dad would not want to find out that the church was never in his heart. He wouldn’t want to discover all of Ayo's jottings about evolution and the Big Bang Theory. He wouldn’t want to read his blog posts on why there was no such thing as a Supreme Being. So, Ayo had kept quiet. Logic always wins.
“Maybe they have a meeting somewhere," he said. “Or maybe they were all summoned by the governor," he added when his doubts seemed to mock his explanations. “I’m sure something would have happened.”
Dissatisfied with logic, he tried resuming his casual brisk pace but the whole situation was unsettling. He couldn’t lie to himself; something had gone horribly wrong.
The Sunday School lessons he had taken when he hadn’t yet gotten his independence and so, couldn’t refuse going to church came back to haunt him. That woman’s voice resounded in his mind. He had joked with his friends that she was just trying to “scare them out of hell” but the market now mocked his memories.
"Jesus is coming back again. And when the trumpet blows and He comes, it’d be too late for anyone who did not give their lives to Him. They would suffer on this earth for a long time before judgement finally befalls them. All of God’s people who lived holy lives would ascend into heaven while the sinners remain on this earth. Markets would be abandoned…” The woman, who had once claimed to see a vision of hell never frightened Ayomide with her stories. They never got to him. He believed that hell and heaven would not matter once you were dead. But how would he know? He had never died.
He stopped as he remembered her words. Markets…. Markets… All his efforts to calm his pounding heart failed woefully. His long legs took control of his body. He was running. Running as fast as his legs could carry him, he hoped that when he got to the bus-stop, he would meet human beings like himself and all his fears would finally go to sleep. He got to the bus-stop panting and sweating profusely. Wiping the tears and sweat from his eyes, all he saw were empty yellow buses. The impatient drivers, the energetic conductors, and the dramatic passengers were all missing. What exactly was happening?
Had God really decided to step down from Heaven and teach him a lesson? Had his father’s prayers for Deliverance finally been answered? Was today the day he’d descend into hell too? Would he get a second chance? What was to become of him? Ayomide knew one thing and one thing only. THAT WAS THE END OF THE WORLD. He was doomed. What was he to do? Was there a way out for him? He was definitely doomed.
He began to hear voices coming from the street down the bus-stop. Voices. Voices could only mean humans, and in one last desperate attempt to remain sane, he ran again. His sole goal was to get to where the voices were coming from and maybe he’d see where everyone was hiding. He ran and ran, the beeping on his wristwatch reminding him that he had been running for over an hour. He stopped when his watch beeped again and looked around. There was no living soul in sight.
Tears flooded his eyes as the voices filled his ears. Had he run mad? He continued running. But a cold hand reached his arm, stopping him dead in his tracks. The lump in his throat was now heavy. He couldn't cry. The tears refused to come. The hand tapped him again. He felt the hand but there was no human around. His heart was now making loud drumbeats in his chest, threatening to jump out. It was as if his heart was saying, "You're going to die. But I'm not dying with you," over and over again.
The hand tapped him continually, until he woke up. In a pool of sweat, amidst the loud pounding in his chest, he saw his sister who had saved him from the nightmare and he managed a weak smile.
“Of course, it was just a dream. Jesus is not coming back anytime soon,” he muttered to himself and gently went back to sleep.