Chapter 12: Remembering Mr Andrew

I continuously rolled uncomfortably on my bed as I couldn't go back to sleep. My mind was messed up with different thoughts as I wasn't sure if what I had was a dream or nightmare.
The mere thought of forcing myself back to sleep frightened me, and I didn't have a single thing to do to keep myself busy. I stood up from my bed and walked to the butterfly chair in my room where I kept my phone before I slept. I took the phone from the chair and walked back to the bed to lie down.
Logging into my whatsapp, I scrolled down my contacts to check if Ben was online. He was the kind of person that always sleeps early and wakes up early. I got to his contact name and discovered that he was indeed active.
"Hey man, how are you?" I typed. It took only some seconds before he replied with a, "I'm good bro. You couldn't sleep?"
I looked at my phone screen and wondered if I should tell him the reason I woke up. "No." I finally typed. "I had a really strange dream!"
Ben replied with a funny emoji that said, "You better not be kidding me."
"I'm dead serious, I practically woke up sweating. And I can still feel the eeriness I felt in the dream." I typed back.
"Oh!" Ben replied almost immediately. "I'm so sorry man, you wanna talk about the dream?"
"Yeah, I really wanna talk about it. But it's rather we go out and grab a drink once we're discussing." I typed back. "Besides, I'm not very comfortable talking about it through cyber."
"Okay." Ben typed back.
"But we can meet at 2:PM today to discuss it, just stroll to the Nickel bar." I replied, typing.
I waited for some seconds and chuckled when Ben replied with a "LOL" and promised that we'll meet at the Nickel's bar at the agreed time.
I then typed "Bye" to him before he went offline. I flung my phone back to the chair I've earlier took it from.
I wanted to choose the bar in which we saw the black werewolves but I changed my mind at the last moment because of Ben. He might have a stroke with just the mention of the bar name talk less of the thought of going back there to drink.
I was a little more comfortable after the chat with Ben. He was the only person who understood me in and out and one of the only friends who stayed when other's didn't.
Ben still went to college, he didn't stop when I stopped. Mainly beacuse he had been given a scholarship for excellent performance in the school since his parents couldn't afford his tuition fees.
My body took a last roll on the bed to gather some warmth before I fell to the deep well of sleep.

****
I woke up to the shouts of our wide mouthed neighbours, they always seemed to have a topic or discussion to argue about every morning, especially on Saturdays.
I turned on my bed as a means to gain some strength to stand up, and then I noticed the pain on my neck which I sometimes have anytime I sleep with my head facing the house roofing.
My mom didn't come to welcome me back to the land of the living as she always said. She always joked that I always looked like a corpse in my way of sleeping. I jumped off my bed still in my night wear and rushed to my private bathroom to clean my mouth.
I was done within a minute and I came out of my room to know the reason my mother didn't come out to say "Good morning" to me like she always does; even though I've told her countless times that the young person is supposed to be the one to greet the elderly one before he/she gets greeted back in return.
Walking to her room, I found it open but didn't find her in. It was very unusual of her to leave her door open even though she was inside her room. I rushed down to the sitting room of our house and I still couldn't find her there. The house now looking like a prison cell with me as the only cell mate.
"Mom?" I called; concentrating silently with my mind and ears to see if I could hear her heartbeat. But the only thing I could hear was the sounds of birds and insects chirping at an elm tree not very far from our house.
I suddenly ran to the kitchen, thinking that she would be there preparing early breakfast like she sometimes did. But I didn't see her there as expected because I could have heard her heartbeats if she was there.
I ran outside the house in panic, looking around the places we kept our plastic chairs and at the small visitor room we had outside. I still didn't find her. A strange feeling of fear suddenly coiled up in my heart when I thought of all the possible things that could possibly have happened to her.
But I suddenly turned my head to the house as I perceived her perfume. A new light of hope shined in my body as I knew she wasn't far from me. The scent started from the left corner of our house and I followed it to the backyard. I sighed in relief when I found my mother there but flinched when I noticed that she was crying.
She was sitting at the tiled floor of the place my foster father was buried, crying and sniffing into a white handkerchief like a person in so much pain.
I could no longer feel air in my lungs the moment I saw her situation, a part of me which I hated blamed my late foster father for demanding to be buried outside his private house and not in a cemetery if he died.
I was suddenly angry at him for making such a decision and forgetting that my mother would always come to the backyard to shed tears of pain anytime she remembered their shared moments together.
I quietly walked to her and greeted, "Good morning." She looked at my face and her cry got worsened like my face somehow reminded her of Mr Andrew's even though he wasn't my biological father.
I patted her head without talking as she cried, my heart burning from pain as I couldn't bear seeing her like that. I was about to ask why she came out there when her crying reduced a little but my stomach grumbled.
My mother smiled knowingly as she blew her nose with the handkerchief and stood up. "We should go make some food." She said before she kissed my foster's fathers grave tomb and I said "Hi" to him before we both walked back to the house, holding each others hand.