Project: Dream Genesis, Enigma - Chapter 1

For what seems like an eternity, you stare at the ceiling of your small bedroom, trying to establish its reality in your mind so that the humdrum existence of wakefulness that it represents will replace the alter-existence of sleeping and dreams that you are so passionately frightened of. You are one of six billion people on this earth who have awoken with your heart thundering inside your ribs, your skin coated in a feverish layer of now-cold sweat and your eyes darting about a darkened room that, with nightmare still clinging to your consciousness, is disturbingly unfamiliar. Achingly, you sit up and look about the room with a hesitant, cursory glance, afraid that if you look at one thing for too long, there will be something horribly wrong or out of place: a spatter of blood, a toppled porcelain figure, the shadowy figure of a ghost or demon. Satisfied in finding nothing out of the ordinary that didn't have an explanation containing your own skittish paranoia, you flop with sheer exhaustion back into your awaiting bed but find yourself too afraid and too disturbed to actually close your eyes and return to sleep's misleading embrace. No matter how much you dread to, your logical mind clambers to remember the nightmare- the source of your late night wakefulness and your fear. It finds nothing. Your terror is empty, and this makes it even more acute: you cannot confront what you cannot identify. You cannot use former knowledge to defeat the enigma. 1

An hour passes. Your own perception of time would lead you to think the period that you lay there longer, but the clock on your nightstand is sure and true and is one of the only things here in the darkness capable of holding you to your sanity. It does so efficiently with its deft, mechanical fingers of evenly spaced, predictable and rhythmic ticks. After awhile, you lose count of the minutes and the steady sound rocks you down, dreamlessly, into the darkness. This first horror of the night is the beginning of a chain of frightful events, but in your future tellings of your story, it will never be mentioned because it occurred only once and a great deal, in your mind, before the actual unfolding of chronological events. Your own remembrance begins several months later as you watch, with veiled interest, the terrorist boy with dark, dark eyes. 2

He sat quietly through insult and battery, his face lowered in contemplative endurance of the words spoken. All eyes were upon him, including Gaberielle's, though her own gaze was obscured by tendrils of her limp, brown curls. She would hate to be accused of staring, (however unlikely that was, seeing as every other student in the classroom was doing likewise and most of them not even polite enough to at least keep quiet like herself). The teacher stood paralyzed at the head of the class, her face smudged with chalk dust where she had, exasperated, wiped a hand across it. For the past twenty minutes she had pleaded with the class to settle down, but it was hopeless. This was the beginning of a new school year and it had been an entire summer since any of her students had been able to ratify their own superiority through the insult of others. The terrorist, as they called him, had provided them with easy prey. 3

Gaberielle, unlike the majority of her classmates, half-admired his courage while at the same time looking down her nose at his naiveté. She understood him, of course. Most of the students who didn't partake in the jeering more than likely did. Although foreigners would never know it from the media, not all American students felt any sort of obligation toward that gaudy flag hanging at the front of most classrooms. Gaberielle herself belonged to that group, finding fearfully that no pride lay in her heart when she laid eyes upon that flag, though there was no sort of malice, either, as with some other students. There was a gaping absence of any sort of feeling when confronted with those stars and stripes and all they supposedly embodied. Despite this, every morning Gaberielle still stood with the rest of the class and cast her eyes upon the flag, mouthing, instead of reciting, the familiar words of the pledge of allegiance in time with everybody else: just as she'd done since her first day of Grade one after the novelty of the words and their accompanying feelings died away. Though she never held any sentiment for the words, she always played along with the act: she was no trouble maker, not like this boy; who while everyone else stood, sat quietly at his desk and stared, always a martyr, always contemplative, straight ahead at the board. 4

"No matter what their original nationality," the teacher was desperately saying, "every American has the right to pledge allegiance to the flag and not feel misplaced or unwanted." 5

The boy looked up skeptically, his dark, nearly black eyes catching onto the teacher's with a suffering expression as he scratched the black stubble of the pubescent beard at his chin in his own brand of exasperation. "I don't think you understand," he too was pleading, exhausted, overwhelmed, "that this has nothing to do with not feeling it to be my right, or that I feel misplaced, or unwanted, or anything else. I just. . ," and with slow emphasis, "don't want to." 6

"You fuckin' Aladdin!" jeered one boy, echoed by a group of nearby friends and then followed with raucous laughter. 7

The boy's face twinged in a barely perceptible wince in response to the slur. Gaberielle winced as well. His lineage was an obvious and painful liability in this situation, reflected not only in his skin and features, but also in his very accent, holding him accountable of being not only of middle eastern ancestry, but also labeling him as a recent immigrant into the country. The teacher pretended not to hear the comment, turning her intentions instead to a group of girls across the class talking amongst themselves. To protect the boy now that he'd placed himself in this predicament would cost her reputation to the rest of the student body. Once again, she told the boy that past wars meant nothing and that all citizens were welcome to take pride in what was now their country. 8

This is when the boy does something you would never expect. He stares right at you with those dark eyes, and like none before him, holds onto your gaze and traps you in his own. You see multitudes in those eyes: lifetimes all played out to the same bitter end, little fragmented moments where ages of experience were bestowed, treachery, and trust, and bravery and sympathy and innocence without naiveté. He's pleading with you through that look, begging you to understand and support: begging for just one ally. You do nothing but look away, and the moment passes, like so many others, into the far-reaching corners of your finicky memory. 9

He stood slowly, then, his lower lip shaking, his entire body trembling like a drop of water about to plunge to the soil. "I pledge Allegiance," he said in a brave, emphatic voice, "to the flag of the United States of America." Everyone breathed a sigh of relief in unison; none quite so haughty to ignore the feeling of tension disperse and comment on his submission. When the last words of the pledge were finally said and each student returned to his or her respective seat with a too-loud clatter, the attentions of the class quickly dispersed into a quiet aftershock of murmuring. The boy, who was the subject of so much attention only a moment earlier, slumped back into his seat and, to complete his withdrawal from his cruel outer reality, pulled the dirty hood of his black sweatshirt up and over his curls so as to hide his face in the embrace of shadow. His shoulders sunk, his head lolled forward so that chin rested on chest, and the slightest snort of a snore betrayed him to be asleep at once. 10

Gaberielle finally turned away from her observations, resting her gaze upon the teacher who had quickly gotten over the morning's drama and returned to proper routine. As the moments passed and the teacher’s words blurred together in their monotony, she found herself slumping forward over her desk and even as she was resting her head in her arms, she was awakening at the class’ end, just in time to see the last student stumble out the door in a slight flurry of black clothing. The teacher, taking a stressed swig of coffee now cold, caught her gaze as she slowly moved to stand up.11

“Don’t start this year off badly, Miss Lewis,” was all she said.12