Funky D
by Kasimma
…I jolt awake on my bed. My pillow, my face, my hair are soaked in sweat and tears. The air smells of sand and ammonia and despair. I leap off the bed, and my feet plop into liquid. I flick the switch. Light pours into my room, on the wall mirror, on my swollen, wet, red eyes. An amber lake pools under my wooden reading table and slides under my bed. The front of my shorts is wet, but my mattress is not. I am alone. But I was not. They were here. The demons. And, no, I am not dreaming, was not dreaming, did not dream it.
I know because I was dreaming of Clementina, that silly girl who is neither clement nor thin. In the dream, I was making headway, and I mean that literally, up her you-know-what, for the first time ever, whether in the dream or reality. I was this close, this close! when unfriendly taps fell on my shoulders. I ignored them, not sure if they were in the dream or reality, not even caring. But they continued.
I awake. Here they stand—at the joke of space between the foot of my bed and my door—dressed in orange, silky, hooded gowns. Each of their feet is as big as an elephant’s, but their legs are sticks. The space where their faces should be is totally black, dark, perhaps empty. I circle the maze of my memory. Where might I have crossed paths with them, whether in dream or reality? Null.
“Arise and shine, dear! We’ve been tapping you since,” one of them says. They hiss. “You think we have all day, dear?”
But is it day? I shift my curtain. The sky is black but for the mercy of the moon and stars. I am lying on my bed, sleeping, perhaps dead, because I am neither moving nor snoring. Yet I am standing here, opposite them. They are barefooted, and between their slightly parted feet are, I am certain, their tails.
They point to the chair, but one says, “Sit, zaddy?”
There is no Zaddy at my reading table, within my faded blue walls, attached to my rain-stained ceiling, on my white tiles. It’s just us three. Their faces slowly emerge from the emptiness. They resemble “Lion” in the movie The Wiz, except their eyes are completely pepper red. Their lips tear into grins. I cringe at the sight of their burgundy, pennywise fang teeth. My heart takes off without me. A wicked chill from nowhere quilts me. Meanwhile, my body is still peacefully asleep, or dead, on the bed.
“I will not repeat myself, dear,” the second one says.
I wobble to my wooden reading chair and level myself. They raise their right shoulders, moonwalk to my table, and sit on its two edges, sandwiching me between them. They smell like sand sprinkled with water. They rest their elbows on their laps. Their nails are short and very clean. They grin.
“So, here we are, zaddy? Speak.”
The ammonia-scented liquid trickling down my leg is hot enough to fry an egg. They fling their heads back and say, Ha-ha-ha! They frown. They fling their heads back again and repeat the triplet, Ha-ha-ha!
I am ashamed as well as annoyed by this not-dream-not-reality state. I can wake up from this. I look back at my bed. I am still there. My blazer still hangs on my wardrobe door, just as I left it when I returned from Enugu the day before. My black shoes are still beside my door; my black socks still stick out of them.
The two figures point at me, and one says, “We are time-bound, dear.” They drop their hands. Their actions mirror each other but not their words.
“If you don’t tell us why you called us before our time runs out, we will enter inside your body and wait for you, zaddy?”
Inside where? Jesus! Yes, Jesus! I shut my eyes and pray aloud in tongues. I snap my fingers, shake my head, bind, and cast into the bottomless pit.
“In Jesus’ name, zaddy?”
“Amen, dear!”
What did I just hear? I open my eyes. They are grinning.
“We are not joking, zaddy?”
They look at their wrists as if they are wearing watches. One says, “Once our time is up, we will wait inside you till this time in the morrow, dear.”
They frown. They grin. Their pennywise fang teeth scare the living daylights out of me. With these toothy disasters, won’t they eat up my organs?
I stammer, “Who are you?”
They stamp their right palms on my shoulders. The “zaddy?” one says, “Are you now a stammerer, zaddy?” They laugh their stupid Ha-ha-ha! They frown. They withdraw their hands from me.
“We are demons, dear.”
I shudder. Hot urine pools in my urethra. I let it flow.
“With the rate at which you are pissing, won’t we drown, zaddy?”
Ha-ha-ha! They frown. They look at their wrists. I remember that time is not my friend.
“What do you want from me?”
“But we should be asking you that, zaddy?”
“You are the one that called us, dear.”
“I did not! I never!”
Ha-ha-ha! They drop their heads to their left and shine their pennywise fangs.
“But you have been calling us, dear.”
“You hardly pray without calling us, zaddy?”
It’s bad enough that this fool is calling me Zaddy and, on top of it, calling it with a sexy, sleepy, drooling, questioning y sound.
I say, angrily, very angrily, “Leave! You have no place here.” I attempt to stand, but they pin me to the chair. They grin.
“We determine when this meeting is over, dear.”
“You say we have no place here, zaddy? It seems as though you have set up a place for us, that where you are, there we may also be, zaddy?”
“Because you’re always calling us, dear.”
“I said! I never! Called! You!”
“No need to shout, dear.”
“But you did call us, zaddy?”
Zaddy places their palm on my left temple. Dear places their palm on my right temple. They do this simultaneously. A vibration shoots into my head like voltage, bright and silver. My eyes snap shut, and I see a replay of my yesterday. I am sitting in a bus going from Enugu to Abuja, clutching my Bible, leading in the prayer. Father, in the name of Jesus, come and take us safely to our destination. All witches and wizards on the road, blood-sucking demons, may they not see us…. The demons’ hands leave my head. The vibration stops, and my eyes open to their awful dentition. They shrug.
“We heard, ‘Blood-sucking demons see us,’ and we did, dear.”
“I said, ‘Not see us.’ I did not say, ‘See us.’”
“But it is the same thing, dear. We do not know what ‘not’ is in the spirit realm, dear. All we do there is abundantly obey the last word of command, dear.”
I let that digest: blood-sucking demons, may they not see us. Dear’s words widen my eyes with realization. Zaddy and Dear touch my temples again, and I am flung back to my night prayer. Protect me as I sleep. Cover me with the blood of Jesus. Let no night-marauding demons find me. They leave my head.
“Behold your blood-sucking, night-marauding demons, zaddy? Where shall we lay our heads for the night and forevermore?”
Where shall who lay which stupid heads? But I know better than to utter that. I know better than to think that again. Urination number three occurs.
Ha-ha-ha!
“It’s your blood we came for, not your urine, zaddy?”
Ha-ha-ha!
“Why have you been calling us for so many years, zaddy?”
I shake my head furiously like a dog shaking water from its furs. “It’s a mistake. You misunderstood me.”
“But there are no mistakes and misunderstandings where your thoughts go, dear.”
“I did not mean it that way.” I start to cry.
“What did you mean, zaddy?”
“All I was asking for was God’s protection.”
“So why didn’t you just say so, dear? Why didn’t you simply say, ‘Protect me, God,’ and leave it at that? Why drag us into it, dear?”
“You have recognized us for years, zaddy? Now we recognize you only once, and you are crying, zaddy? Pissing, zaddy? Why, zaddy?”
I lower my face into my palms and bawl. “I’m sorry! Please! I will never call your name again!”
“Meaning you don’t want to see us again, dear?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“But what are we going to do with the gifts we brought for you, zaddy?”
I raise my head. They grin.
“What gifts?”
They touch my temples again. I see myself praying again, in a church this time. God, please, don’t leave me with this sickness. They leave me. I open my eyes to the sizeable orange bag on the table between them. They tap the bag.
“This is the bag of sickness and poverty you have been asking for, zaddy?”
“You mean you want to suffer us to carry it all the way back, dear?”
I open my mouth to its widest capacity and cry out loud. I cry out loud! I cry out loud until my voice cracks.
“Puhlease! Have mercy on me! Pleaasseeee!” I bury my face in the cup of my palms and mourn.
They laugh in a continuous, rolling, uniform Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha! Their laughter loops and rings and fades until all I am left with are the sounds of my boohoo, the darkness of my room, the silence of the night, the pool of my urine, the stench of ammonia, until…