From the my dream diary (aka the second lecture of my Music History class):
It was a prison camp of sorts, but not like the one college students go home to during their breaks. There was no mother to feed and clothe you, no father to ask if you had enough money to spend and to tell you to keep away from the boys. In this prison, you knew to keep away from the men.
We were kept in an empty storefront, a building with only 3 walls. The door was wide open–in fact, that particular wall had been knocked down years ago, an open challenge to us prisoners. Run, it seemed to say, run and see how far you get. That unwritten taunt seemed to be more daunting than any concrete wall could have been.
I had a room upstairs that I had randomly stumbled upon by scaling stairs and fire escapes. They didn’t know that I was sneaking off for hours at a time and that always seemed to give me a most thrilling feeling. I had long considered escaping on the rooftops but I didn’t think it could be feasible. In hindsight, I’m sure that she had snipers on the roof, but at the time, I think I was just worried about the unrealistic length that I had to jump to safety.
The guards, the soldiers, the men who kept guard leaned against the walls to the left and right of the prison, arms crossed over their chests, unperturbedly conversing with their neighbors. They never looked at us, but always at the street as if expecting one of us to just appear halfway down the street. The men were lined up in a row around her, wearing their smirks like I was wearing my don’t-notice-me body language, waiting for on her finger for instructions. She was intense–she had to be, as the leader of these men. Rocking some black army boots, surrounded by the very men whom she ruled, her projected persona was enough to deter me from entering open space.
I eventually made friends, 2 of them, a white boy who gave me the impression he was from Australia and another one whose face I can’t seem to place (I think I liked him less). One day, the nameless and faceless one tried to escape and I followed him, thinking that it would also be my chance for freedom. We ducked and dodged bullets flying at us and I remember thinking that I was definitely going to be shot. I’m not proud of it, but I stood behind a man and used his body as a shield–he had either seen the two of us run out into the open and assumed that he’d have a chance to escape or his body was just one that had been shot at over the years and left to decompose.
We ran into a Chinese restaurant across the street and I seriously reconsidered scaling the rooftops to escape but before I could move, the woman was there. She looked at the Chinese restaurant owner and asked him where we were. He gave up our location quickly, after she threatened to kill his family, all of whom were in the restaurant at the time. Afterward, thinking about it, I may have been a little disappointed that he was of my ethnicity and that he had indirectly sanctioned our death.
Long story short, we (including my Australian friend) were captured and brought to a large auditorium-sized room. Inside were children with special needs and children with developmental disorders–scores of individuals she had deemed unworthy of living. We were brought to the front of the room and told that everyone in here was to die. She wanted to euthanize us (and wrongly so) in a way very very vaguely reminiscent of Hitler’s desire to wipe out the Jews. And then I woke up in the morning to that revelation!
Here’s to hoping someone discovers this as a possible script for Hollywood and then gives me some royalties!
