....I ignore them and continue to walk only this time in a rapid pace. My mind is telling me that something is not right with this setting. It is an eerie setting for want of a better word. ‘Where exactly you going?’ a voice inside my head asks. I ignore the voice and continue to brisk walk. Few seconds later, I see the same children, like dejavu, only that this time they are in front of me. Shocked, I feign manliness, even though my heart is in my mouth now, I put up a brave face and try to manoeuvre my way around them. Just ahead of me, after the children, there is a broad expressway. My plan is to navigate my way around them, emerge on the expressway and disappear into thin air. If I can make it to the expressway, I will run as fast as my legs can carry me I am thinking. I decide in my mind that as soon as I set foot on the expressway I will evaporate right there before their very eyes and then, minutes later recondense inside my room. As I pass by this group of children, one of them, a diminutive and threatening little creature around the age of six or seven, looks at me directly in the eyes. As we locked eyes, something like a spell dispatches from her eyes and hit me hard so that I quickly remove my gaze from hers. She is dreadlocked. Her hair unkempt, her eyeballs red as though she is high on weeds. Her skin is almost as wrinkled as that of the old woman from few seconds before. She looks tiny, as if it is an older person crammed inside her small stature; like an outsized corpse in a body bag that is too small to hold it in. Her visage expresses urgency that was just enough to refrain from devouring her frozen treat. She abruptly pulls her hand from the hand of another girl in their circle, thus breaking the chain, and leaving her group of friends she begins to run after me. Fear takes the better of me and I increase my strides. Yet she catches up with me. Grabs my hand. Her tiny hand is as cold as steel. I break free from her grip more out of fear and reflex than out of a calculated attempt of an adult who knows what he is doing. She continues to run after me. Moments later, unable to catch up with my gaits, she yells at me,....

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