Five minutes

For about five minutes, I was unable to move. I just sat there as I recovered from my journey. I was alone in the house, so no one was there to see me freeze. Freezing was something I did often as a child. I would suddenly stop what I was doing and just stare into nothingness.

I planned to return to understandable reality when I heard a knock on the door. My mom and Dad were very security conscious, so opening the door was only done after confirming who was there. I got up from the couch and headed for the door.

If your days are predictable, you live in a world very different from mine. The person at the door was the same old man who recommended me for the bank security job. Just how in the world did he get here? How did he even know where I lived?

He was practically a stranger. Not because I didn't know who he was, but rather because I knew who exactly he was, and my mother would be horrified if I let him into the house. As far as my mother was concerned, he was the one who got me in trouble.

The logic my mother would use to interpret the situation at this point was that, it would be wrong to open the door to the one person who almost got me killed. As though the man behind the door heard every word that went through my head, he began to speak,

"so sorry to bother you after what happened at the bank, but you need to know that before school resumes, your battles for this time period will be concluded."

He said this and walked away from the door, without even waiting for my reply. What was he talking about? What did he mean by saying that my battles will be concluded before school resumed? To be sure of what I was calculating, I picked up my phone and looked at the school calendar.

I was as correct as I thought. There were only two weeks left until the school resumed for the second semester. Was he saying that all the battles would end within two weeks? And he said "battles". Just how many battles should I be expecting at this point?

The fact that he also said "for this time period" meant that there were probably going to be more battles in my life as time went on, but I was probably going to get a break from time to time. I didn't know what to do, and I didn't know what to think.

As I ruminated over the events that followed each other, I realized that this old man knew what was happening to me. The chances that he knew the answers to the questions In my head were seemingly high at this point.

I wanted to step out of the house and chase him, then beg him for answers. The first thing I would like to know is how I got these powers in the first place. While my mind began to arrange questions in order, my phone rang. It was an unknown number, but in the atmosphere of the unexpected, I picked up the call.

"am I speaking to Master Jones Olarenwaju?"

"yes, this is Jones, who am I speaking with?"

"my name is Francis Okong, I am a psychiatrist and I was informed we would be meeting soon"

It had been a while after the incident, and I had almost forgotten about the fact that I was meant to see a psychiatrist. The call ended with us fixing an appointment for the next day. I told my mom about it, and surprisingly, she acted indifferent.

My mom believed that everything that was happening was just a chain of miracles after miracles, and whenever she heard or saw something strange happen, she would just be grateful to God that I didn't die. Apart from the bank incident, there were minor accidents that took place around the house that my mom interpreted as miracles.

On one of those days, while my mum and I were in the kitchen, a kettle of boiling water fell off the stove and bathed my leg in the boiling water. What moved that kettle, we still do not know to this very day. My mom expected my skin to peel right off and I would be screaming in pain. But apart from the heat of the boiling water, I took no damage.

She went to the church the next Sunday to share the testimony. You should have seen how many people came to me to tell me how amazed they were at the miracle. If they knew some of the other "miracles" that were occurring in my life, they might become hesitant to share them as testimonies.

The psychiatrist had a large office in a really good looking building, and the session was drenched in confusion. As it turns out, when people hear voices and start seeing things, the voices usually tell them to do bad things, or to do things that will be of harm to them. My experiences were not linked to any of those.

I was narrating experiences that seemed like dreams to the average man, so the psychiatrist didn't know what to believe. He finally came to the conclusion that I was experiencing something spiritual. That was very interesting because I thought psychiatrists would give you pills instead of agreeing to the fact that spirits can cause damage.

We spent the most of the time conversing, and the guy was basically using the time to get to know me more. He was paid by the police to run a check on me and see if the event had scarred me, so he had to earn the pay. However, when the two hours paid for were done, he offered to pray with me.

What's the harm in praying with a psychiatrist? I gladly obliged. The moment he held my hands, he froze for about three minutes, with his eyes closed. I was starting to wonder if he was also a psychic. He took a deep breath after the three minutes were done and he pulled out a notepad.

He looked me straight in the eye for sixty seconds straight. And yes, my awareness of time is really spot on. Finally, he opened his mouth.

"I don't know what this means to you, but listen, Red will return"

Red will what? I thought that guy learnt a lesson not to mess with me anymore. Why is he still coming after me again? Does he want his entire body to be covered in wounds? And then it hit me, that was what I saw. Red, all covered in wounds. He would probably keep going until he died.

Why are certain people so stubborn? The psychiatrist was not yet done speaking.

"the man who has his wealth in darkness will also come for you, and so will the family of the dead"

At this point I realized that through one means or the other, the psychiatrist in front of me had access to information about my reality. Was he a Christian? Was he working in the gift of word of knowledge? Or was he also on the dark side? I had no idea.

When he was done, he wrote out everything he told me on a piece of paper and gave it to me. He then smiled and said,

"most people walk out of here with a prescription, you walk out of here with a note. Take care of yourself Jones."

"thank you sir"

I walked out of the building and realized I needed to use the toilet, so I walked back in. The toilets were close to the entrance, so I went in to urinate. The moment I stepped into the toilet, I saw water flowing down the wall as though a pipe had broken. I looked up and there was no pipe. I think we all know where this is going.

Once I noticed that the door behind me was gone, I didn't bother waiting for the water to fill the room. I put my hands under the flowing water and washed my face. The moment the water flowed over my face, I was on that battle field once again.

Instead of Goldie and the gang, I saw a tower as high as the heavens. It was so high that I couldn't even see the top. At the side of the tower was a door made of wood. The moment I noticed it, I started to walk towards it. Before I could take four steps, a man walked out of the tower with a scroll in hand.

The man that walked out of the tower looked just like the psychiatrist that had just attended to me. But he was dressed like Goldie and the gang, he also had their height. He walked up to me and gave me the scroll, then He the pointed straight ahead and said to me,

"they all approach from the north, in two days they will all be here"

"who are they?" I asked.

"The Red one, and the family of the dead"

When he was done speaking, he walked back into the tower and I heard his footsteps as he went higher and higher within the tower on the stairs.

I looked at the scroll he gave to me and I opened it. Inside the scroll were all the instructions the psychiatrist had given to me, but there was more. As I unfolded the scroll, I began to see faces. Red, chief Olams and the two members of Ikulore's gang that got away.

As I closed the scroll, it became the note that the psychiatrist gave me. I looked around, I was back in the toilet. I did my business, and I went home.