Dream

Dream

I was in my old block of flats except on a first floor balcony instead of my usual third floor one. It was raining and foggy, sheets of water everywhere. There seemed to be immigrants running around, throwing furniture from their balconies, trying to save them from something like a non-existent fire. Everything was cheap, barely stable furniture, and people were wearing dull second hand clothes, yelling in their mother tongues about keeping the furniture steady. There were five children for every grown up. Each dripping, rain soaked. One little girl will a bowl of black locks, brown skin and dark eyes, pulled at my shoulder, then tugged a handful of my hair. I looked down, thinking how I didn't want to be with all these people, but put on a facade of happiness. I picked her up and cooed at her, asking her name and smiling with fake interest. “I'm not good with kids”, is all I could think.

I stood there with her, surrounded by other scant looking children. All standing in the rain staring at the commotion. There was suddenly a man by my side, and I knew him, I was scared as I saw the wrinkles from worry appearing on his forehead. He gestured to where all the people were running and told me to go. I was then running with the people and being herded into trucks. I was scared, felt alone and unsure of what I was doing. Everyone was panicked and grabbing onto their family members and items they could save. I sat there soaking, knowing no one. They passed out books that were colourful and had tabs and graphics in them - colours that contrasted with everything that was happening. I looked inside and found out that they were Bibles.

Hours later we got off the trucks at a place that looked almost like an island. There were tropical trees, palms and makeshift wooden bunkers in the centre. Beyond that there was rivers running through the white sand. I saw the man I knew, trudging towards the men in the trucks, I ran to him and grabbed his shirt and cried, "Please don't leave me, stay with me, I'm so scared!". He stopped and looked down at me with a frown, he removed my hands gruffly and said something to the effect of, "You're in my way, useless, I can't help you". For some reason I accepted this and bowed my head in acknowledgement, but still followed next to him, in the direction he was walking, just needing the company of something safe. A few seconds later another man came up to me and shoved me in the direction of the women and children, waving his arm in a warning gesture. I fell in the dirt and mud coated me. I sat there in the rain and watched this man I apparently knew walk away without looking back.

Eventually I got up in state of chock and hiked my way through the thick mud, towards the bunkers. The bunker was made up of one narrow passage way, leading from one end to the other. Every few feat was a door to the left, showing bunk rooms that women and children were quickly possessing. I walked on, in search of an empty room, for some reason thinking that I deserved it, that I wasn't the same as these struggling people. A woman ran from behind and knocked me into the passage wall to get passed, she was running to one of the last rooms and fighting for a bed.

It was like a realisation dawned on me. These were the last clothes I was going to get to where, and they were my only possessions that I owned now. I was a prisoner without rights and that I was one of these people who had nothing.

I got to the end room and decided to give up. I went in and realised it was the smallest room, there were about four of us (grown-ups) and some children. There were two beds, but I was the last into that room. I would be sleeping on the floor. I felt a little bit of hope, "at least the wooden floor is dry."

We lived like that for a few days, and I got to know some of the younger mothers and women. We talked and moaned about the weather as if this had been our entire lives, as if we had nothing else before this, nothing to regret and look back on.

The sun eventually came out and I and four other women stripped down to our necessities and walked out to the white sands and strange rivers. The sun made me so happy, it was like a light of hope and happiness. The women and I splashed water at each other and laughed, moaned about our bedraggled hair and talked small talk. Suddenly speed boats appeared coming on the river.  
We stood back, not knowing what to expect. As the boats passed we saw the men, wearing straps holding guns and belts loaded with bullets. They looked unflinchingly forward as if we weren't there. Some of the men were injured and had dirt caked on their faces. As one boat went passed I saw the man I knew lying in it. He had blood trickling down his face. I don't know if he was dead or not.

I stayed there for a while watching all the boats disappear in the horizon; it was in a hazy moment. I then looked around me and saw the four women walking around the bushes and trees, which surrounded the part of the river that the men had come through. Suddenly there was a fire, roaring and smoking. I stood there and stared as three of my friends came running out, burning on fire with blackened skin, clawing at themselves and screaming. The one woman who had not been caught in the fire, ran passed me covering her mouth and crying. She couldn't watch them suffer and die. I did, though.

A few hours later I was standing there in the same place, the sun was setting and it was getting cold. I was alone again, and the new life I had settled with had been literally burned away.

I walked back to the bunker and into my room and looked across the dirty floor. Children sat there waiting for their mothers to come home. I sat between them and held them as if they were my own and decided, "There’s nothing to live for… maybe I can help them have a better life."