Waking Dreams.

Muna raised her hand and scratched at a delicious itch on her chin.

When it stopped itching, she put her hand down and turned over on her side to sleep better…

A sharp flare of pain bloomed without warning on her calf. She reached out irritably to rub that too.

Less than two seconds later, the side of her knee started to sting.

Muna jumped up and slapped at her leg in frustration. A drunk mosquito flew away and escaped into the darkness of the night.

Irritated, and fully awake now, Muna sat up in bed. The spot on her chin began to itch again. She moved quickly to soothe it.

As she rubbed at her face, Muna realized two things. One, she was getting a pimple. And two, there was more than one mosquito in the room. The second miscreant caught Muna’s eye as it swayed through a bright beam of moonlight. The first one, after its brief tangle with death, was on the wall beside her bed; apparently still determined to feed on the sweet red blood in her legs. The spots where they had bitten her were like tiny flares of needle-like pain.

She rubbed viciously at her legs and let out a vicious hiss, then glared down at the form sleeping beside her bed on the mat, as if it had brought the offending insects into her room with it; there had been no mosquitoes in her room the night before.

Muna sighed, then lay down again in the darkness.

The night was a lighter kind of dark outside her windows, so she turned to face the bright panes of glass and saw that she had left one open.

She was the one who had given the bloodsuckers access, after all.

The air was tolerable; there was a waft of a ghostly breeze threatening to settle into heaviness. But the cold, playful air that had lulled her to sleep earlier was gone.

She sighed again and shifted carefully in bed.

Sounds floated in from outside.

Clapping. Singing. The hollow sound of a voice passing through a microphone. Two voices. Three. The voices increased and decreased, drawing nearer and further away, as though a crowd of nocturnal church worshippers (at a vigil?) were shimmying forward and backward somewhere in the night.

She imagined a line of men and women in traditional wear — ankara, agbadas, iro and buba — shaking tambourines, eyes closed, hands raised, hips swaying, bodies trembling, moving at a Holy Ghost pace down the hill from where the nearest church sat.

Past the mouth of the street where her house was and on into the night. Tirelessly righteous.

Saints for Christ.

Defying demons.

Taking the night… for Christians everywhere.

Muna burst out in giggles and quickly caught herself in horror… Such blasphemous thoughts.

Then she closed her eyes again and thought of work.

She resisted the urge to check her phone (she’d rather not know what time it was) and tried to remember, instead, where she had kept the can of insecticide. She would fill her room with insecticide first thing in the morning… or rather, last thing in the morning. Just as soon she was ready to leave for work.

She yawned again. Was that the second or first time? And thought of that steep hill that led down to her street and up to the top of the road.

She thought of the view up there — an even skyline of multicolored roofs, stretched out in every direction. As far the eye can see.

Just before the slope of the hill, just before the steep drop to the bottom and the unfortunate turn of her street, anyone could pause and see an endless valley of homes.

Hundreds of roofs. Hundreds of homes. A sea of houses stretching out to the end of the horizon. She sometimes wondered how long a person would have to walk or drive to reach the end of it all.

She thought of the road beyond the hill. Of work tomorrow morning and the bike she would have to take. She thought of the sun and the heat. The dust that was everywhere in this city. She thought of what she would eat for breakfast. She thought of the parts of Ibadan she had become comfortably familiar with… The mild harmattan mist — a gift of January — that she would meet.

She thought of her white shirt, pressed and hanging on the wardrobe. She thought of the form sleeping on the floor and hoped he wouldn’t be there when she woke up, so that she could get out of bed and have her bath in peace.

She thought of night and morning. Cold and heat. Sun and dust. Her chin itched. Her legs stung. The air became heavier.

Muna fell asleep.