When the Dust Settles

I don't know why I had this reoccurring dream or if I should be writing this story for you to see. I was only a child, trapped in the high school corridors of life, and maybe my mind needed to find escape. But escape would not be found here, here in a place the world should never know. Still, I dreamed, and still I remember. It is no more a dream now but a vivid memory that refuses to fade away.

It was always night. Fires raged in tin barrels, decorating the alleyways, and people clinging to shreds of their life held on for dear warmth. Large, yellow police tape swathed around boarded, public buildings. School was out for good, and museums were forever locked and sealed, denying the birth of free minds for a better tomorrow or today. Shadows raced across the broken streets, bent on survival, and no humanity glimmered in those dark eyes that met mine. How did we get here?

I wanted to wake up. I wanted to run away, run back to the reality that I begged to escape. My feet refused to listen. I was like a puppet being led on invisible strings, and my eyes rose upward to a barely star-lit sky. Monstrous, glass skyscrapers filled my view, and maybe this world wasn't as bad as it looked. But I passed more alleyways filled with lost souls, and my heart broke into two.

The building waited for me. It was once a symbol of strength, and it had an emblem of peace, unity. I remembered staring at the date carved in cement, a date before now, so how did it come to this? What happened to us?

War. We couldn't stop fighting with ourselves. We were always divided. When the time came to unite, nobody listened. Everybody felt empowered within their own factions, and that disbelief gave way to destruction. And too many people died for that. This place, this world rose out from the graves of those lost, and now we were united because we didn't have a choice. This was how it was.

My death waited inside. I knew better than to enter, but I didn't have a choice. My strings were pulled, and my feet marched forward. The glass doors kissed the air behind me, a kiss farewell, and the lock clicked into place. No escape now. What kind of dream was this?

A spiral staircase wrapped upward to the top floor. A glass ceiling held my gaze, but a million eyes pierced my back. I didn't want to look, but the lost souls were calling to me, people, who would never get out. I didn't know any of them, but then my family stepped into view. They failed to escape, but I could have. I didn't have to come here, but I did.

The men were waiting for me. They each took me by the arm and led me to the elevators. We were not going to the top floor. We were going to the basement. It was a place of dread, suffocated in the gas of death, and this would be where my life would end. Why? What did I ever do to them?

I wanted to wake up. Instead, I was a dead man walking. I could have run, but more men appeared, ready to overpower me. I didn't have a choice, and my strings were cut. And the chamber rose into view, and this was it. This was the world that I dreamt, and as my foot took its last step, my last breath, I woke up.