Coincidences!
Diary; it is Tuesday, 26th December, 2017. 1:33PM. I think someone is going to die.
I had the canned beer, "33", yesterday, Christmas day. Victor gave it to me. It was my first time of drinking that brand of beer.
I had series of dreams last night. Not good ones. Dreams that were so twisted that my brain still can't decipher any.
In one, I saw my father's picture [or should I say a man's] with "preemption cremation" as the name [on facebook, I think] in this dream.
Coincidentally, everytime I woke up last night it was something ":33" [9:33, 10:33, 1:33...3:33] three hours difference apart from the last time which was the next day. I began to ask myself "What's it with the number three"?
PostScript: Please, God, let it not be someone I know or love, especially my parents, that will die – Amen
PostScript: No sleeping around with girls[you will get into trouble]
I like to sleep with the light on and lay on the bed facing my wall clock. Not because I like to, but because I have to. I dream a lot, but not good dreams. So whenever I'm jolted back to reality from my sleep, I'm consoled with the reflection of the light on my face and then I document the experiences in my notebook which I keep beside my bed, taking note of the time I awake from such dreams. People don't know how hard it is to live knowing what will come, what has come, and worse, being uncertain of how you can change the bad ones—those events that will leave tongues wailing and teeth gnashing when they happen—to good ones.
It is not a thing of pride that I know when a loved one is about to die, no, it's not. I get scared, a lot, and guilt washes over me when it finally happens. I remember seeing an aunt from my childhood return from work one evening. Everything seemed strange; the way she walked, how she ignored our greetings and how she never came out to give us money to buy biscuits (as she normally does) until we learnt that she had been killed by her son some days ago. That was when I began to have this feeling, seeing strange things, dreaming scary dreams which eventually came to pass. Most nights I wake up crying due to the horror I witness in these dreams. I am not happy. I feel like I have a hand in their deaths.
The second time I had that feeling was before Aunty Ekamma's surgery. She was my aunt. I was only but a child but I knew she wouldn't survive. I just knew it. My father had began to become suspicious of me, he said I was possessed—I liked to sleep facing the window and usually cried in my sleep. So saying what I felt or had seen (but couldn't remember when) would spell another round of beating, deliverances, and perhaps increase my father's fear and hatred for me at that time - knowing fully fully well that he is a clergy man. So, I kept quiet.
When my mother, with her heart full of joy for the success of the fibroid surgery, came to us and told us to speak to her – pray with her and rejoice with her over the successful surgery, I had told myself it was a lie – what i believed. And everyone's joy was short-lived, she died some hours later. I was frightened than I had been on the night I had seen myself swimming in that water with that scary looking woman calling out to me (I had ran to my parents room, begging them to save me). That day had been a Sunday, the first time and only time I was taken to 'Jehovah Sharp Sharp', a prophetic church in Lagos where we live. After hearing the sad news from my mother, I had told myself that it was my voice that had killed her, that I shouldn't have spoken with her on the phone. I have lived with this guilt till now.
Then it became dreams I could remember. The dreams were clearer, as though I was supposed to know but do nothing (because really, I could do nothing).
Papa Dianabasi had travelled to the village. I had seen myself in my dream playing in the children's room with Kokoette, my cousin, his last child. His wife had come back, crying. She'd mentioned his name. It all looked all wrong, I could easily decipher a bad omen cum ambiance. I went to Kokoette that day, I told him I dreamt about his father. He said he did too. I didn't go into details with him but he wasn't happy with his dream. That day (or was it the next?), the news came: Papa Dianabasi was dead. Kokoette was but a young child then. I cried because he was the one whose car we were usually driven in to church on Sundays and because I felt bad for Kokoette who would not have a father like I do again.
Before my grandmother died, I knew a death was on the way. I didn't really believe in God that time, neither could I pray. So I waited until my mother got the news from her brother that morning when there was light. I had been in the room she shared with my father and watched her cry, for the first time. That was in 2013.
The deaths never stopped coming and I never stopped dreaming.
Sometime late last year, before I became a final year student, I had a dream. I can't remember it but I had been in the Okpo's family house at Aka-Etinan road, Uyo, and my sister had been at Kaduna with my rich uncle, Dr Ukpong, to get some money to pay her law school bills. Uncle came at the nick of time, when all hopes had been lost, when my sister had began to doubt if she would go with her mates that year.
In that dream, I had seen an elderly man die, can't remember what I saw. I had told myself, "now you know God and believe in him and so do these people, tell them and pray with them to prevent this one death from happening". I'd told the Okpos and they prayed for my father, Daddy Okpo and Dr Ukpong, because they were the elderly men in my life then. I called my sister who was over there and told her to pray for my uncle. In less than three months, Uncle Ukpong died. But he'd paid for my sister law school and even gave her additional money for upkeep. She had had plans of eating more from him but death had cut her joy short. I don't know if she thought I had something to do with it because all of a sudden, she changed. Even though she was mad that he had died because of a selfish reason, she seemed to look for opportunities to lash out on me. I withdrew from her. Now we only talk when she wants me to run errands for her. No one knows how frightening it is for me to sleep alone. They don't know I'm scared that I will lose another soon, scared that even prayers may not save them.
The warning for uncle Ukpong's death came twice. First, I was uncertain who would die. Then I knew it was going to be my uncle. I'd called her, my cousin, a few weeks before the surgery my uncle was to undergo and told her I saw death. She had told me to keep it to myself. She sounded irritated like she does now, whenever I'm with her.
The last one was recently, October 2017. I knew I was supposed to pray but I had been too weak. It had been on a Tuesday, a week and a day to my seminar presentation. I had had a dream, I didn't cry, instead I had written it down as a fictional write up:
"I see things before they happen, bad things. But I am a pessimist. A sadist. So I just wait for these to happen and smile proudly at my reflection in the mirror and say boldly: I am a seer. And I will continue to see them cry; grieving and wailing, asking Aba since (God) rhetorical, funny questions and delight in their pain."
The next day, I fell terribly ill; that day, Daddy Okpo died in his sleep.
The memories of this fortuitous twist of fate is ever fresh but could this gift - clairvoyance be a blessing or a curse? 😭 😭 😭
Thank you 
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