Dreams - 5/25

Most of Alex’s gang had left early in the morning to search for supplies with Marcos, leaving only Rachel and us bedridden people inside. It has now been half of the day, and I start to doubt they are coming back at all. It’s for the best if Marcos leaves us, even after the whole gun thing, or maybe especially because of it. I think it seems a little cruel to leave Rachel behind after claiming she was capable of taking care of herself.

I left someone behind. Who am I to judge?

Thinking about the others, I turn and inspect the odd scene I have been left behind to witness. A now almost unrecognizable woman was braiding the child's hair in the back of the shelter. Coma girl had perked up around the child to the point that thinking of her as coma girl in the moment felt very wrong. I’d have to come up with a new name for her eventually. Outside of Rachel, though, she still seems oblivious to the rest of us.

I continue my makeshift exercise routine, stretching each part of my body until exhaustion. My minor movements feel even stiffer after sleeping on the concrete floor. As my life had been in the tent, there was not much for me to do but stay inside and wait for people to return. I doubt I could get over the entrance slab anyway, and escaping for Marcos’ sake felt like a conflicting idea now. Not that I mind it too much.

The inside of this building is much cooler than the tent had been, and even has enough openings in the structure for air and light to creep in, giving it a nice cozy glow. Somehow, after barely a day, this already felt more like a home.

A home with three people sitting on stone beds and ragged blankets, being monitored by a child.

Maybe it felt more like a nursing home.

We had left my books back in the tent originally and hadn’t had a chance to get them, so it feels like days have passed before the sun begins to set. Slowly, the meager lighting dissipates around me, leaving just enough dim light to see the others nearby.

It feels more like the hallway from my apartment now.

I look down at the picture of Julie. I’d been using it as a bookmark, but still brought it with me even after leaving the books behind. I hate seeing it, but it didn’t feel right leaving it behind. Even though I am sure Julie had died the first day, I still feel I owe her dad to carry her memory.

Not that I can get rid of it anyway.

Rachel and coma girl were asleep next to one another in a quiet embrace, while Lan just sat looking out the crack in the wall near him, silently watching the outside world. I wonder again if Marcos would even be coming back, maybe Lan does too.

At least we had eaten some food in the morning, but it had been long enough since that my stomach was protesting loudly more often than not. If they didn’t come back, Rachel would have to bring us food, but she had yet to leave coma girl's side, let alone talk to me.

I had tried to nap a little earlier to get through the day, but only managed to sit in a cold sweat after barely drifting off, having been immediately greeted by Julie and her symphony of alarms. Without any distractions, the silence is unforgiving.

Now, finally, as the light dims and early night air blankets me, I am able to try once more to wade through a nightmare-filled sleep as I wait for my caretaker's return.

Julie’s screams fill my head once more, louder and louder, pleading for help.

“Get up! Run!” she yelled to me, her eyes pleading in a way only dead eyes can. She grabs my arm and pulls, but I remain motionless on the floor.

Why is Julie in our hideout?

“We have to run! It’s falling!”

I continue to look at her, wanting to apologize yet knowing I don’t have the right.

“Just leave me alone,” I plead, the weight of my guilty conscience pinning me to the floor more than any rubble could. There were no alarms to be heard yet, but I knew they were soon to come, following the collapse of the building, as I would watch Julie die in front of me once more. There was nothing I could do but join her, over and over again, as she did. A nightmare I could not escape.

I deserve it.

It hurt even more that she was trying to help me this time, flickering between herself and the visage of her father as she does. She had died to save me before, even if not by her own choice, and now she was doing so again.

“Just leave, let me die,” I scream, crying to the darkness.

Her hand strikes me in the side of the face, eyes emblazoned as she echoes her father’s words. Their voices morphing together as they yell,

“Say that again and I will kill you myself.”

As the line echoed along the spectral hallway, more joined it, lashing out at me. Some I could not place, but some stood out among them.

“Selfish,” Alex whispered.

“You killed us,” Jasper follows.

Each line fades into the walls around me, becoming the wallpaper of the box in which I am contained, wrapping me in a cocoon of my failures, with Julie’s pleading face in front of me. Not blaming me, but begging me to get up, to run. As the room began to tremble, I knew it was time for her to go, for both of us to be enveloped and pass.

Unlike my dreams before, there is no reprieve from the collapsing room, it simply shakes while Julie yells, struggling to be heard over the phantoms who rage along with the violent shaking.

I sit staring at the face of my first victim, unable to look away or even blink. Her desperation grows to a crescendo so loud that I feel I will go deaf. Until a final plea rings out, not in a voice in Julie’s voice, or one of the angry phantoms, but in a new one. I struggled to place it as Julie goes silent, frozen in the moment, as the new voice fades into only the rumblings of the earthquake that remained.

Once more, it rings out.

“Run!” Rachel’s voice tore through my dreams, ripping me out of the nightmare and back into the derelict shop.

Jolting awake, I realize the shaking is not isolated to my dreams this time.

Looking over to where I hear Rachel’s voice, I am greeted by the vision of the small girl pulling desperately on the arm of come girl, who's not lying in her bed, but standing enraptured next to where it used to be, a pile of rubble in its place.

Our new home is not the safe haven that the tent had been.

My eyes scan the rubble pile at her feet, where the dim lighting illuminates the remaining part of a body, crushed beyond repair.

The world continued to shake. The groans around me became louder, as if the entire building was stretching for the first time in ages. It was a sound I was all too familiar with from inside my dreams.

A building was about to come down, and nobody was here this time to save me.