Day 84 - by Tomilola Adejumo

I left work before three. My head had been aching since morning, and the air conditioner in the office made my fingers cold. The noise in the room, the emails, the laughter that kept rising and falling like waves, all of it pressed on me. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone. I just packed my bag and left. I wanted home. I wanted quiet. I wanted to see if Mama had remembered to eat.Outside, the sun hung low and mean above the roofs. The clouds had gathered but held their silence. The air felt heavy, breathless, like Lagos was waiting for something. I knew it was Thursday. Mama had written it on the torn corner of an envelope and stuck it to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a pawpaw: Pharmacy. Thursday. Collect drugs.I boarded a keke at Iyana Oworo and got down at the junction like always. The vulcanizer was not outside, though his bench was there. His tools were spread out like he had just stepped away. The small kiosk beside his shed had all its biscuits and gala still displayed, but the curtain that usually shaded the seller from the sun was tied up and still.As I turned into our street, I noticed the silence more clearly. The kind that isn’t silent at all, but heavy with a hush. The kind that makes you feel like you are being watched. When I reached the compound gate, it was open. That was not unusual. Sometimes the children forgot to close it when they ran out to buy sweets. But there were no children running. No voices.I stepped inside. The air was hot and still. Clothes on the line swayed slightly, not from wind but from a lizard darting through them. There were pots on the small outdoor table behind Mama Ngozi’s kitchen window. Soup was bubbling gently in one, the steam still rising. I paused and called out, a little laughter in my voice at first.“Hello? Anybody home?”No one answered.I called again, louder this time. My voice bounced against the compound walls and came back to me, but nothing else did. I began to walk from door to door. The Adesinas’ door was wide open. Their living room fan was on, spinning slowly. Two plates of half-eaten rice were still on the table. Slippers everywhere. The boys had been home. But they were not there now.The old Alhaji’s flat was next. His radio was playing Quran recitations, the voice calm and steady, echoing against an empty wall. His kettle was whistling softly on the gas burner. I turned it off without thinking. Something about the sound felt too loud.Upstairs, I opened the door to our flat and called for Mama. I checked her room first. Her scarf was still tied loosely around the pillow where she had been reclining that morning. The wrapper she wore to bathe was on the back of the chair. The cup of tea I made her was full, untouched, and cold. Her phone was beside it, still charging.I opened every cupboard and drawer. I looked under beds and inside the store, even though I hated the smell of camphor. I checked the bathroom, the kitchen, the veranda. Nothing. No note. No sign of departure. No sign of struggle.By the time I returned to the compound, the heat had shifted. It had that strange evening feel Lagos sometimes gets, where the sun is still up but the world feels like it’s going to sleep. I walked through the compound again. Everything was still running. The TVs, the fans, the gas. A baby’s bottle sat full of milk on a bench outside Mama Ngozi’s window. The milk had not yet gone sour.I sat down on the step beside our flat and tried to remember how many people lived in the building. Nine families. Twenty-six people, not counting regular visitors. Every one of them gone.I kept trying to rationalize. Maybe they had all gone for a meeting. Maybe some compound event I had forgotten. A burial? A birthday? But who leaves food on the stove and doors wide open to go for a burial?I pulled out my phone and began to call. Mama did not pick. I tried Uche, my cousin. I tried my friend from work. I tried our neighbour from across the road. Everyone’s phone rang. No one picked.When the sun began to slide behind the fence, I turned off all the gas burners. I unplugged TVs. I began to close the doors of every flat one by one. I don’t know why. It felt wrong to leave them open. It felt like the compound was too exposed, like something might crawl in.I didn’t sleep that night. I sat on Mama’s bed with her scarf in my hand and waited. I kept listening for footsteps, a cough, the squeak of a child’s slipper. I even turned on the radio. It played like nothing had happened. Advertisements, news, songs. But there was something wrong in the way the presenter laughed. It didn’t sound like it had a listener.The next morning, I went outside.The street was not empty. That would have been easier to understand.Instead, it was full of people. Still, unmoving, trapped in some moment I couldn’t grasp. A man stood mid-step near a danfo, his foot slightly lifted as though he had been walking and simply paused. A woman sat with a bowl of fruit in her lap, her eyes open and looking forward, but not blinking. A child crouched beside a bucket, reaching for water that wasn’t moving.I screamed.Nothing changed.I touched the woman’s arm. She was warm, but still. I put my ear close to her mouth. Her breath came in the faintest whisper, like a radio playing in another room. Not quite alive. Not quite dead.I ran home.And for days, I stayed inside the compound. I boiled rice. I swept the compound every morning. I fed the Adesinas’ dog with whatever I could find. I watered the plants in the old Alhaji’s garden. I played Mama’s gospel tapes and sat in her chair with the scarf still in my hand.I kept thinking. The gas had been left on. The soup was bubbling. The rice was half-eaten. Phones were still charged. The radio was playing. The fan was spinning. The dog had not stopped barking. It didn’t make sense. People do not vanish in the middle of normal. Not in the middle of cooking. Not in the middle of praying. Not in the middle of laughing.And why me? Why had I been spared, or forgotten, or left behind?I tried not to think about it too much. The questions had no edges, no answers, only more questions waiting behind them.After the first week, the silence became a sound. I could hear it when I walked around the compound. I could hear it pressing against my chest when I lay on Mama’s bed. It was not just that people were gone. It was that the world itself had turned its back on me.As the days stretched, I began to notice strange things. The heat didn’t break. Not once. It stayed thick and oppressive, like something holding its palm over the city. The radio hosts laughed, but it didn’t sound real. I opened a book one night and every page had the same line, over and over. “You were not chosen.”At first I thought it was a misprint. But I tried five different books. Same thing.I stopped reading after that.I found Mama’s old chalkboard from when she used to tutor children in the compound. I began writing the names of everyone who lived here. Alhaji. Ngozi. Tunde and Tunji. Chibuzor. Mama Esther. The twins upstairs. The little baby who was just learning to walk.I said their names out loud each morning. I carved them into the side of the wall by the kitchen, using a nail. The words were uneven. Some scratched too deep. But I wanted them to last. I didn’t want to forget the sound of their names. I didn’t want to forget my own.I started marking the days too. One line per day, drawn into the wooden door of our flat. After a while, the door filled up. I moved to the wall.At first I thought I was managing it well. I woke up at the same time every day, swept the compound, cooked small meals. I even laughed once, at something I can’t remember now. But after a while, the days began to blur. I caught myself stirring water instead of tea. I found my toothbrush in the freezer. I would open the door and forget why. It was not madness, not exactly. Just a quiet loosening.On the eighty-fourth day, everything moved at once.It happened just after four in the afternoon. I was in the compound, feeding the dog. The rice had just finished steaming. I was humming a song Mama used to sing when it began with a sound I couldn’t place. A low, electric hum, like something warming up. Then a sharp snap, quick, almost like a spark, and everything moved. The fan overhead began to spin. The baby upstairs screamed like it had never stopped. The kettle in Alhaji’s flat let out a piercing whistle. A pot toppled somewhere and rolled. The world resumed itself as if someone had pressed a button. The noise was sharp, real, ordinary. But nothing about it felt right.A door slammed. A car passed.I turned toward the gate.The Adesina boys ran out of their flat, laughing, pushing each other. Mama Ngozi shouted something about the baby’s milk. The old Alhaji’s kettle screamed.The world had returned.But no one looked at me.I stood in the middle of the compound, mouth open, heart pounding.I shouted. No one turned.I ran into our flat. Mama sat in her chair, adjusting her scarf. I touched her arm. She did not move. I shouted her name. She did not hear.For a moment, I thought she would look at me. Her eyes passed over mine. Nothing registered. It was worse than the silence. At least the silence held the possibility of return or even normalcy.I wandered the compound for hours. Doors opened. Conversations resumed. Everything moved like before. But I was no longer part of it. I tried to sit beside the old Alhaji. I tried to join in with the twins upstairs. I tried to help Mama with her tea. Nothing worked. Their world was here again. But I had been peeled off it.They had come back.But I was the one who had gone.

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