Nightmare 2

My breath comes in great gasps. I stand panicked but subdued in a long, thin, dust filled communal toilet. Several of the buildings in our street have been lost to bombs in the past few days, and the dust seems to hang around like a fog.1

The white and dark blue tiling on the walls and floor reflect the remains of the daylight, which plays with the Brownian dust particles. As much is hidden by the dust as is revealed by the light.2

Both of my daughters are here in the room with me. I wish with all my soul that they were upstairs in our home. 3

The elder, blonde one is standing before me, to the side of her captor. Her hands are bound in front of her. 4

The younger brunette is sitting crumpled on the floor behind the two soldiers at the far end of the room. Their grey uniforms blur into the dust, concealing most of the detail. The occasional glint off of metal badges or rifle butts lends a glimmer of life to the dimness.5

The blonde daughter who looks like me is in more trouble than she can possibly know. Even so, I think she can guess that things aren't at all good.6

She is trying her damnedest to hide her fear and be brave in front of these invaders, but her seven year old body isn't strong enough. She can't show her defiance here by slamming doors and screaming I HATE YOU DADDY like she would have done at home. 7

Only a matter of weeks ago, she and all of her friends had been playing and laughing at school.8

Now school is a crater, and most of her friends are dead. I thanked God for her cold that day, whilst cursing him for the evil that men do.9

Still I see her strength as she doesn't cry, even as one tear slides from her eye, cutting a clear line across her dirty cheek.10

My heart breaks.11

"She is a thief, and must pay the price," the head soldier said in his own language. The distaste and resignation in his voice tell me what he means, even if the words themselves are unknown to me. His firearm is all too obvious in its holster at his side.12

I've always thought of myself as a strong man, but still I find myself pleading as I have never done before. I find myself unconsciously taking off my flat cap and trying to wring the life out of it in my anguish. 13

"But sir, she's only seven, she doesn't know the difference!" I say, straining against the desire to wring the smug grin off this evil mans face, half imagining that my cap is his neck.14

"That is your wrong," he says, switching to a close approximation of the language that I speak. "You should have teach." 15

"But she's starving! Little girls like this shouldn't have to starve - we've barely had a full meal since you invaded us. And it was only two slices of bread. Please show her some leniency."16

"Leniency?" he said, trying the taste of the word in his mouth. "Leniency. I like that word. Thank you." I was surprised that he had let the word ' invaded' go, as his masters insisted that they were not a conquering nation.17

Out of the corner of my eye I see one of the soldiers light a cigarette. He passes it to his friend as they chat quietly.18

I catch the eye of my younger daughter. She looks just like her mother. She has been crying since she had run through our front door to tell me that her big sister was in trouble. 19

The tears have all but dried up now, her crying having calmed down to a sniffle. There is still fear in her eyes. I force myself to smile a quick smile, hoping to reassure her. It doesn't seem to help any.20

"....... ther?" 21

"I'm sorry, I missed that," I say as I turn back to the head soldier. I don't know what his rank is, but he is obviously in charge of the other two. I can tell by the mans demeanour, his uniform and the fact that he has a sidearm instead of a rifle.22

"Where is her mother?" he asks again, talking slowly so that I won't miss it this time.23

A rod of steel seems to form inside of me, so I take a deep breath and try to relax.24

Coldly I say, "She was killed last week outside the Townhouse."25

"Ah, one of those protesters?" he asks, nodding his head knowingly.26

"No. She was coming home with a loaf of stale bread - the only food that she could manage to find in the shops. She hadn't even reached the protest when your men opened fire. She was killed by a ricochet."27

"I'm sorry for your loss - the death of innocents is never our intention," he says, speaking the party line.28

It is my turn to look at him with distaste.29

"But if we allow looters to take over then we will have anarchy," he says to cover his discomfort. I can tell that he is himself disillusioned with the party line. But it is not up to him to question.30

"LOOTERS?" I exclaim. I can feel the two soldiers turn their attention back towards me. I force myself to calm down. "She's a seven year old girl who recently lost her mother. Her world has been turned upside down. She has not enough food to eat. What should she do?"31

"We must have order. The sooner you people realise the better," the head soldier says emphatically. He needs to gain the upper hand again. And then a curious look passes over his face.32

"Are you willing to change places? Your life for hers?" he asks.33

The blood in my veins runs ice cold.34

"I would gladly change places if their mother was still alive. But who will look after my children when I am gone? I have no other family. No-one wants more mouths to feed." 35

I would gladly send my soul to eternal damnation if I thought it would save my children. But I know that neither will survive if I take her place. You hear stories of occupying forces. Some say that death comes slowly even to the young.36

At least I can make sure that one survives.37

My beautiful blonde haired daughter speaks for the first time.38

"I'm sorry daddy. I didn't mean it. I was so very hungry. We were reading in religious studies at church today that stealing is bad. I know it was wrong but I couldn't help myself. I was going to share it with you both. I love you." She realises what is about to happen. "Look after the little one."39

I can't help but break down in tears as I fall to my knees.40

"Please sir, don't do this. You don't have to do this. You don't have to.....It's my fault - I should have been at church with them...." I say through my sobs.41

I notice through my tears that the daylight has all but disappeared. The room is in a dusky darkness.42

I have never begged anyone for anything, but I am powerless to do anything else. I would crawl across a field of broken glass if there was even the possibility of it working at this moment.43

"What can I do?" I ask.44

"Teach your other daughter better," comes the reply from one of the soldiers.45

I can hear the two soldiers at the end of the room laugh at my discomfort. I understand that they are young stupid boys playing at being men, but I will never forgive them.46

"Do you want your other daughter to see this?" the head soldier asks quietly.47

I realise that he is unwilling to lose face in front of his men. We have all heard stories of how unforgiving his army is to their own.48

I shake my head, and push myself up to my feet. "Thank you sir." I can't think of anything else to say. I have not the strength to fight them. I have to salvage what I can. I wipe the tears from my eyes.49

I walk over past the two soldiers, noticing that they're barely old enough to shave, and bend down to pick up my youngest daughter. "Shhhhh," I whisper at her, the universal attempt at calming.50

She looks at the state that I'm in and bursts into tears herself. I can't imagine what I look like.51

I stand up with her in my arms, nestling her head into my shoulder. I turn and throw a last quick smile at my beautiful daughter. I love you, I mouth at her so that she won't hear the pain in my voice. The tears start again, blurring my vision as I almost run out the door. The picture of her smiling calmly up at me will live with me forever.52

Behind me I hear her say, "Don't worry. God will look after me and mummy."53

Outside in the hallway I stop 5 yards from the door.54

I bend down and place her on her feet against the wall.55

"What's happening daddy?" she asks.56

"Shhhh," I say. "In a minute you'll hear a bang and the soldiers will come out. Stay here and don't get in their way." I take a deep breath.57

"I will have to go back in and ..." 58

My voice cracks as I think about what I will find when I go back in. I pray silently for a quick, clean shot.59

Author notes

A few notes for the reader.

The reason that this story is called Nightmare 2 is simply because it is the second nightmare that I have had recently that I have written about (see Not A Good Day for the first).

This one I had only three nights ago.

In my dream I was in one of the Benelux countries, probably Belgium, circa 1940, and the invaders were the Germans.
The daughters were actually mine, but a few years younger than they are now. More innocent possibly.

I left information about the army, names of daughters and towns etc. deliberately vague so that the reader could picture any army they wanted - the only things that gave some indication of age, I thought, was that I mentioned rifles and communal toilets.

You choose - Iraq? Palestine? Belgium? Africa? Just about anywhere at any time. A planet of your own choice in a time of your own choice?

I don't know if this works or not, since I have a picture in my head, courtesy of my nightmare. Let me know if it does or not.
Remember, a lot of the fun in reading is using our own imagination . Otherwise we'd be as well watching telly.

The other thing that I'm not sure if it works, is the ending.
At that point in my nightmare I had to drag myself up to wakefulness so that I didn't hear the sound of the rifle shot.
I was gasping for breath, as scared as I have ever been in my life.
I didn't want to hear my little girl die. Because I knew that was what was going to happen next.
I hope that comes through in the writing.

Hopefully I'll get around to writing about something other that nightmares soon.

GoNE 23/11/06

A contest entry

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Comments

1 - 18 of 18

  • ElfSong
    April 2, 2008

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    That was pretty sad. First of all, I'd like to say that I disliked the way you described the daughters as simply being blonde and brunette. It dumbed it down too much. I would have liked full length descriptions. That aside, I really liked the way you portrayed humanity's faults in this. I felt the ending was a bit abrupt though. There weren't too many mistakes, and the story was enaging and very readable. The descritions at the start were really good. You drew us in to the setting and then suddenly revealed that the daughter was captive, bringing us back to reality in a jolt. Great job and good luck.


  • darkangel7567
    March 13, 2008
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    That was so sad! It brought tears to my eyes. This is a dream you had? That's amazing.


  • Arcularis
    January 12, 2008

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    I'm not sure if you read all about the Heartbreak contest, but this story really isn't what I'm looking for. I didn't see any of the type of heartbreaking situation that I was trying to get writers to put into their stories that they entered in my contest. So unfortunately, I will have to remove the story from the contest. If you think you've got something else, I encourage you to try and enter again.

    This was an over all pretty dang good story.


  • Andrew Timothy
    December 15, 2007
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    NIghtmares...

    They're never pleasant. Heck, I've had my share--yours, about a terrible thing, was told wonderfully. In fact, the only thing I'd reccomend is perhaps lengthening the paragraphs, joining some of the short ones and blending them.

    The emotional content was well-done... A true tradgedy...

    Thank you for entering and goodluck.

  • abba12
    October 29, 2007
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    youve avtually made me cry... good work...


  • Jennywinnie
    October 13, 2007

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    This is Great! Great description in the beginning. This really speaks to me as I've two little boys and frequently have nightmares about a catastrophy and I'm running and I can't carry them, they are two heavy and one slips out of my hands. I wake up in cold sweats with that.

    I'd be careful with using present tense, it's really hard to pull us into the story with it, especially if you resort to a flash back later on. It's much less confounding if you start out with past tense- but that of course is my personal preferrence. I know that using present tense does keep us in the moment, but there are ways to make past tense just as action packed and we don't feel as confused about the timeline of events, as readers. Anyhow, you're the writer and it's your choice.

    Wow, great idea here! I love the emotions you are whelming up between this father and daughter. The story runs very deep! Great job!


  • sodancewithsoda silver member
    April 20, 2007

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    *is amazed*

    You have a way of drawing your readers in, and I LOVE how you do not use overly large or deep soundings words to emphasize certain things THe emotions here, the situations.. just really puts me THERE. Inside the story, as if it was written specifically for me. And the ironic thing is I don't even have children *claps*

    This actually reminded me of Les Miserables, where Jean Valjean (I forgot how to spell his name) stole bread to feed his nieces and nephews... Hmm... makes me wonder IF the ends DO or SHOULD justify the means.. or.. what.. x.x (you made me think all deep now )

    Your author notes are quite helpful too.. I suffer from nightmares as well.. x.x which makes this all the more relateable.
    I imagined this as a tribe of sorts.. for some reason x.x yeah I have a weird mind

    One thing though:
    "You should have teach." -> teach should be taught

    Thanks so much for sharing this! ^_^
    Good luck with the contest ^_^

    • Ghost of Numf-El
      April 23, 2007
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      Thanks for the kind words sdd. I'm glad that you could feel the emotions. And I'm glad that you enjoyed it.

      I am unfamiliar with Les Mis, so can't comment on it. What, I think, I was thinking about (it was a while back that I wrote this) was actually New Orleans, and the difference between your normal looters - stealing TVs etc - and the people that were so desperate that they needed to steal to eat, to live. And I imagined that being invaded would create a similar situation.

      The reason that I used an inexact tense of the word teach is because "he switched to a close approximation of the language that I speak", so there would be errors in the way that he spoke.

      A tribe of nightmares - good name for a group.....

      Cheers,
      GoNE


  • Kyoku Luv
    April 3, 2007

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    I really did like this....this story actually WAS sad.

    I actually felt emotion in this story. I didnt just read it. I FELT the pain, and the feelings.

    The details were great, I could picture every horrid moment.

    Going through that must be horrible...ecspecially if like...you could have saved a little girl. But knowing if you had, that your own child would not have survived. Any of the things that went on in your story must be horrible...I cant even imagine going through that.

    You had this in a dream of yours? *shudders*
    I would be up for nights if I had dreams like this...Thank goodness that I, actually, do not have nightmares.

    You did well on this, very well written, and heartfelt.

    Wonderful job, and good luck in my contest.

    • Ghost of Numf-El
      April 4, 2007
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      I'm glad that you enjoyed it, and that the emotion came through the way that it was meant to.
      Thankfully it's not often that I have nightmares.

      GoNE


  • KingWolf
    March 30, 2007

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    A fathers worst nightmare and one I never hope to share... A chilling tale that made me want to cry at the thought of my own father having to put up with such a possibility or even myself.. Your story made me want to cry.. Very powerful. Thank you for entering my contest and good luck.


  • Forbidden Romance silver member
    January 24, 2007

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    Really quite a nice story. I liked it! No mistakes or anything that I can see but I read fast so...who knows. Anyway the only thing is the ending is a bit abrupt.Thanks for entering and good luck!


  • The Imagined
    January 23, 2007
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    This is very good, well-crafted and detailed. It's so sad when the girl says not to worry, because God will look after her and her mother. You did a very good job with this. Good luck in the contest!


  • Thwack
    December 11, 2006

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    Wow, GoNE, you've outdone yourself with this story. Very well thought-out (even if just a dream) and plotted. Love the inner turmoil you painted with the father and the feelings of despondency and helplessness. Even if it's not contemporary, I also liked the immediacy of this story and the little stories it tells in turn.

    • Ghost of Numf-El
      December 12, 2006
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      I'm glad that you enjoyed the story, Thwack. Thanks for reading and commenting.

      Respect,
      GoNE


  • TheLittleOne-Paul
    November 24, 2006

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    Skillfully told story

    Thank you for taking the time and for investing the effort to enter my contest. You have done so with a very interesting and intriguing submission. One that I fear will not be well appreciated for the amount of thought and work that is evident that has been invested in this piece.

    You have chosen to write about a type of abuse that is so often seen in the world which we live in but which often goes undetected as such. The abuse of power. The sheer capability to abuse others for whatever reason simply because one has the power to do so. This is a very good use of the contest as a forum to bring attention to this form of abuse. Very well done.

    You have walked a very tricky writing line in order to approach the telling of the story in the chosen manner. There is a great deal of missing detail and description that necessarily has to go untold in order to make this story applicable to any generic given situation according to the readers interpretation. You have also chosen to take a very high risk in how the story will in fact be interrupted by the reader and are banking on offsetting this risk with the belief that high reader interest and investment in the story will balance this risk in favor of the story. Never have I read a story that contains so little, tell so much of a storyline. In this regard your story should be considered to be successfully working. You pulled it off. This is a very well designed and executed story. A job well done.

    Your reader hook that is driving the ending is producing a rather unique result that I think you may not actually realize.
    While I believe your intent was to imply that the daughter does in fact get shot in the end, I believe the way in which the ending is constructed multiple interpretations are possible. For instance, I chose to interrupt the end of the story to be that the father had a change of heart and was preparing to rush back in and fight for his daughter’s life regardless of the consequences to the daughter being left behind. I think what this told me was the ending was very supportive of the very nature and style chosen for the writing of the storyline. Not only was there a twist in the end but a twist that could take the reader down any number of ending paths to the story. This is excellent technique.

    This is an excellent contest entry and I certainly hope it gets the reader attention its talented author rightfully deserves.

    Paul


  • Pray For Me
    November 24, 2006

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    This was very good. I thought it was very well written and it was full of imagination. I really hope you keep writing because you are a good writer. To be honest, I didn't really see any mistakes.

    Take care!

    October


  • Mai4ever
    November 23, 2006
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    Great story! You have a very animated imagination that's full of livliness. It reflects on the story here. Very well done and well-written. Keep it up!

    beginning: 4, language: 4, plot: 4, ending: 4, dialog: 4, characters: 4.

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