"Ahhhhhh"! I heard a loud scream outside. Abruptly, I jumped out of the chair I was relaxing on in our spacious lobby. Hurriedly, I made my way towards the doorway that led in the direction of the panicky noise. Before I could make it there, my younger brother, Ndudu, ran inside to meet me, trying to run out.
Without saying a word, my petrified look told him all I had to say. "Anita, the visitor fell inside the well". He said it with a shaky voice.
"Geez"! I screamed. My heart sprinted faster than the best athlete.
Before I could think of how to get someone out of a well that was dug to reach the water table, my kid brother rushed out again, pantingly saying, "I need to get her out."
I followed him slowly because the news drained all my strength. From a distance, I watched him throw a rope inside the well for Anita to hold and climb out.
The heavy frown on his face and the veins popping out brought a glimmer of hope. "Anita is still alive, and she must be trying to climb out with the rope," I thought to myself.
I doubled my steps to lend support to my brother, who seemed to be about to expend the last drop of his energy. But before I could reach him, he'd been overcome by Anita's weight as he fell into the well, too.
Without thinking, I tried to save my beloved kid brother by throwing another rope inside the well in the hope that he'd hold it and climb out.
Luckily, he started climbing. Veins, muscles, sweats, and blood—in fact, everything was pulling out of my body as my brother was trying to pull himself out of the well.
I didn't know how I was going to hold on anymore. My heart flew out of my chest as I began to sink into the well. The deeper I go into the well, the blurrier my vision gets. It got blurrier until I was covered in utter darkness. I saw nothing, heard nothing, and knew nothing.
Bright rays of light fell on my eyelid. Unsure of what was going on, I remained still. Then I started hearing a faint, incoherent sound from a distance. I made an attempt to shade away the darkness by trying to force my eyes open, and at last I succeeded. My eyes are wide open. I'm breathing fine even though I'm covered in a pool of water.
"If this isn't hell or heaven, then I'm in less danger than I anticipated," I reasoned within me.
With every passing second, my courage grew until I became bold enough to inspect my environment. Slowly, I turned to the direction the light was coming from; to my relief, the view looked familiar.
I turned my gaze to myself, and, relievingly surprising, I realised that I'm slumbering on the same chair I was sitting on before the whole chaos. And the pool of water is only my sweat.
Like a wind, the realisation flew into my brain. "Gosh! I have been dreaming in a hot afternoon."
Just as my mom taught me, I knelt down by the chair and uttered some words of prayer, saying that nothing similar to what I saw in the dream should occur in real life.
Days passed. Time eroded the memory of the terrible dream. Life continued as usual.
A family friend came visiting at a time when no memory of the dream remained. The well in our courtyard was our only source of water. Anyone staying with us will inevitably have to draw water from the well.
One afternoon, while relaxing in a chair in our lobby, I heard a disturbing sound outside. Before I could step outside, my brother came in to inform me that while our visitor was drawing water from the well, the bucket she was using fell inside.
He left me and went to the well to try bringing the bucket out by putting hangers on another bucket and suspending it into the well. He'd spin the suspended bucket when it got to the bottom of the well so that the bucket that fell inside the well would hang on it, and he'd pull both out.
He succeeded in making the bucket that fell in the well hang on the one he was holding with a rope he fastened to it. But before he could pull them out, the rope cut, and both buckets fell back into the well.
I went to the well, used another rope, and tried doing the same thing my brother did. I was closer than he was to pulling the buckets out. But just as I was about to finally support it with one of my hands and take it out, they both fell back.
Feeling helpless and seeing three buckets inside the well, I remembered the dream, but I was somewhat happy that unlike the dream, it's only buckets that fell inside and not humans.
Till this very moment, each time I remember that scenario, I can't help but ponder the kind of mystery dream I had and the accompanying mystery event.
