Wokensleep Nightmaredream19:53 Jul 15 2011
Times Read: 1,071
Wokensleep Nightmaredream
Something happened. A disaster, a destructive force swept our nation. The sky was tinged with a dirt yellow hue. The wind sludge across your skin with a pungent smell of toxicity and rotting mud. Cities was devastated and ruined. People would wander the street seeking help, but no one could nor would help the other from the pain and distraction of their own lives just being turned inside out. Whatever caused this destruction, it was jagged and inaccurate, some where fortunate enough to maintain their sanity and went out to attempt to help whoever crossed their path. Cities were starting to resemble wastelands and grave sites, those who wandered and found not help, collapsed and died on the street, on the roads and sidewalks.
My city was one of the few not hit quite so hard, but destruction was everywhere. How long ago had this happened? I don't know, but I knew it felt that I had endured it long enough to have become accustomed to the littered bodies and stench and destruction as I traveled searching endlessly for even a sliver of hope that i find that one that so care for. Desperation was consuming me, my travels eating away at the miniscule gas reserve as I drive with an unrelenting purpose. Panic begins to take hold.
Its been a few hours now. Why or how I know to search in this somewhat familiar place for her, is completely eluding me. But I don't care. I just want to find her. Know that she is safe. Abandoned cars along this highway make my search that much harder... The exit near... and sea is near... I can smell the putrid Hospital smell that has decided to pair itself off with the likeness of ocean water. What used to be the ocean. What used to be water.
There are ruined sheds along the shore... why? The absolute panic of lacking water in such a time as this forced people to take a taste for what used to be a sea-salt taste. Now, its tastes like mud, sand and grass. The color? well, I'll leave that to your imagination. Because anything you might imagine could not be worse than what i am seeing right now. But this is what we've come to live off of and use. My heart breaks.
It breaks because I see people now. Children off in the distance.... you would have thought frolicking but.. they were gathering water. Managed to somehow make a game of it though... I smile as tears build and my heart lightens at the same time that my soul realizes my search is over. Four boys and six girls carrying cracked bowls and jugs of that muck and carrying inside a dilapidated structure. I hold back from screaming and wailing as I see her now... amongst the 4 and 5 year olds. Can barely tell one apart from the other if it wasn’t for their hair color, dirty but visible. The clothing, as you would assume from my depictions of the era, are not of quality, to say the least. I hurt, so much as I slowly walk closer. I see adults now close the the broken shed, tending the muck.
One girl falls and starts to cry, dirt everywhere, her little dress... and forgotten memory of something ragged and sludged. The small pattern is yet another spy of mine in reassuring me that I found her. My daughter. I found her! She's alive, She is living in this world and time... I could not have been happier to see her crying at that moment. A girl, in her early 20s from my experience, goes to console her. She had fallen by the stagnant beach, so the woman leads her close to the muck and to clean the girls face off from the dirt concoction she fell into, she take a bit of the muck and rubs it on the girls face, to your surprise.. yes its actually cleaning the dirt off her face. I step closer. Near sobbing.
The woman looks up at me, stops and watches me then just smiles and gasps. She pushes her hair away from her face and begins to tear up, but focuses on the girl, turns the girl around and dusts her off in a purely vestigial manner. and ushers her towards me. I drop to my knees, my lungs refusing to gather enough breath as the girl shyly looks at me and tilts her head... she steps forward on her own now. The woman lets out a sighing gasp and holds her hand over her mouth as tears just roll down her cheeks and over her fingers. I gaze at my daughter as she walks towards me and begins to smile a bit... tripping on herself as he speeds up to get a better look at me. She stops dead in front of me as i stare at her my tears cleaning the dirt from my face. She exclaims in her long but not forgotten loud fashion "Pa peh?!?" and I yelp. I lost myself in her voice. and she runs and almost tackles me into the sludge. The woman drops to her knees and just stares... sobbing silently she wipes away her cascading tears as she whispers in a broken voice... " I can't believe...! I hoped, but I can't---" I listened to woman and recognized her voice... and sigh and let my tears take hold of me.
I was home. Now, My full focus on the words spoken by the familiar voice, now I wanted to direct towards the feel of my daughter arms around me. I then realized that i couldn't feel her on me anymore, I looked down, and as she was about to look into my eyes... she vanished. The pressure I felt around my side were my own arms embracing me, my knees deep in the sand and mud at the edge of the dead shore. No one around for miles, I stopped crying and held my breath. The wind began to blow hard and it carried with it a loud, childlike shriek---"Paaaa Peeeehhhh!!!" A large wave hits, knocks me down and drags me to sea... and I wake.
I am meant to not go insane. But this is what life likes me to know. My strength is weakening. Things can't go on the way they are. I rarely dream or Nightmare at all. But this??? This, is what my experiences are made of. I laugh, I play, I joke. But if you knew my insides, you wouldn't stand for the things that are done to me. That is of course, unless, you believe that i would stand by watch you drown in your own life as I call myself your friend. I'm a man. I love. I cry. I hurt. I'm weak. I confront. I question. I doubt and I believe. I care and I honor and respect. If my loyalty is worth questioning. Then just forget. I have these conversations with myself. Because I accept the fact that you simply won't. Thank you for teaching me about life.
"... in his silent gaze, while shackled and the tide waters rose. The prideful screams for aid were loudest as the tears his cheeks rode."
COMMENTS
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Slain
03:59 Jul 16 2011
OKAY!!!! so yeah... Its just plain PAINFUL to read that.
The misspellings and horrible grammar errors were something that I managed to miss 5 times in a row. This is unforgivable and thus I shall leave it up to double as a mark of shame as a writer.
Bad, bad, Slain.