When I cry, no one sees my tears. I sing to myself with tears flowing down my cheeks. It’s just so hard to wrap my head around what she said; it’s turned my life into a living hell. I can’t get any sleep; it keeps coming back to me every time I close my eyes.

To think that when she told me earlier, during the week, I laughed in her face as if it was some sort of joke. But now the more I think about it, the more it scares the life out of me.

I mean why me? Out of all the people in this small circulating planet – me – being raped! Nkhensani, the rape victim. How do I live my life knowing that in the days to come I’ll be raped? It’s just so hard for me, harder than I thought it would be when I laughed in her face. My life is a complete nightmare.

How do I tell anyone any of this? I ask myself knowing very well that no-one will answer me. But one thing is for sure: they will all laugh in my face, too. So best strategy was for me to just keep what she said to myself.

But each time I closed my eyes, I would see her face, grieved with worry.

“Nkhensani, I had a vision and you were in it,” she had said earlier in the week.

“Oh yeah, what did you see? Me winning the lotto? Or winning the prize for the best Maths student in Gauteng?” I laughed so hard that I ached.

“No, nothing like that,”

“Oh I see, Prince Gift and I riding off to the sunset,” I had mocked.

She stopped in the middle of the road and looked at me with a sombre face. I stopped too, now worried, more by her expression than what she was about to reveal to me.

“What is it? Tell me,” I said looking at her. But she looked away from me. I remember how I had to walk three steps towards her, just so I could get her to face me again. “Lebo, please,” I begged.

“In the vision…. I’m sorry, Nkhensi, I truly am,”

“What the hell did you see, Lebogang?” I shouted, shaking her a little.

“You were being rape!” she yelled back. “In my vision… I saw you being rapped.”

I had laughed at her then. So loudly that she walked on without me, living me standing there laughing my head off.

That was until I got home and started to really think about it. At first she had a vision of my friend’s phone being stolen, which was proved to be reality. And then she dreamt of her uncle being in an accident, then he was in an accident. And now I’m afraid that I, too, will be in her ‘came true visions’ list.

I know now that I shouldn’t have laughed, or begged. I shouldn’t have pressed her to tell me. But my curiosity had gotten the better of me. And now, it has proved the saying “curiosity killed a cat” true – it has become the end of me.

I can’t eat, cant’ sleep. I’m a zombie. When I try to sleep I am now tormented by strange dreams.

“Ahh! Somebody help me! Help! Somebody help!” I scream in my sleep, sweating and soaking the bed. I wake up shaking, lying on the cold floor with nothing but PJ’s. Khani, my sister, is the one who suffers most from my nightmares. She always wakes up, woken by my screams, and tries to wake me up.

“It’s nothing but a bad dream; I’m fine, you go back to sleep,” I would answer her question of what’s wrong? She would then cover her head and return to Lala-land. I would sit on my bed, unable to fall asleep, and wonder why.

Why do I, too, like my friend have reoccurring dreams of myself being raped? But wondering never gives me any answers so I somehow fall back to sleep.

***

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