Leslie picked up the paper and put it to her lips. She kissed it. Then she leaned down and kissed the man she had loved so much.
They had loved each other deeply and with his last thought...with his last breath he had wanted her to know. She looked down at the paper again. She looked at the name of the child that never was. The name he had written was Benjamin. Leslie looked at that name and it destroyed her.
Leslie and Patrick never had children. This made for a lonely life for Leslie taking care of her husband. He told her once of the image he had seen in the picture. He had told her of Benjamin. Leslie had smiled and nodded but his words had chilled her.
Leslie had never told Patrick something. She had never told him that years ago when he left for a music tour on the West Coast that she discovered she was pregnant. The news had excited her.
One afternoon she was keeping herself busy organizing the cabinets in the kitchen. She tried to grab some paper towels from the top shelf of the cupboard. Leslie was short and the shelf was high. She climbed on to one of the lower shelves. She stepped up and reached to grab the paper towels when suddenly her hand slipped. She fell back and hit the floor. She hit it very hard.
She immediately knew something was wrong. She called her friend Megan and asked her to take her to the hospital. There Leslie discovered that she had a miscarriage.
It was amazing how life could change based on one simple decision. Her life had changed because she had decided not to get a stool when she tried to get paper towels from the top shelf of the cupboard. One decision changed everything. That one simple decision was something that Leslie would spend her whole life regretting.
She often wondered what life would have been like if she had made a different decision. Before the moment she fell she was excited and enthusiastic for what was to come. Her life was perfect. She told herself if they had a son she would name her son Benjamin. It was a name that she liked very much. She hoped that Patrick would agree to it.
However, because of one choice that Leslie made Benjamin was never meant to be. It happened because Leslie was determined to reach the top shelf of the cupboard.
Leslie swore her friend Megan to secrecy and she never told Patrick about her miscarriage when he returned. They tried to have kids after that. It never happened. Leslie wondered if there was something wrong with her. She wondered if fate was punishing her for one silly decision.
Now Leslie was a widow and she was alone in the world.
She kept the slip of paper she had found when Patrick died. She kept it with her always. It was the piece of paper the man she loved had written his last words on. It was a piece of paper that made no sense yet made all the sense in the world.
It was a piece of paper with the name of their child that never was.
***
Sarah Guzman lived a good life. Her life was all she had expected it would be yet different at the same time. The details in life are odd. Plans and reality became different things. Sometimes they have similarities but they became two lines that intertwined and danced together at times yet remained separate. Sometimes this dance made you proud of your achievements, and sometimes this dance made you sad.
When Sarah looked back at her life she understood that she had always been focused. She studied hard in school. She graduated as the valedictorian of her high school. She then went off to college at Northwestern University where she graduated Kuma Sum Laude. From there she went off to Harvard Law School.
Many of Sarah’s dreams came true just like she thought they would. She was praised by her professors. Upon graduating with her law degree she was offered positions at many prestigious law firms. She turned them down. Instead she went back to South Texas. She began practicing civil rights law and immigration law. The money was not as good as it could have been. However, the work was something she was very proud of. It was her life’s passion. She knew the work she did was important. She knew her work mattered. This reward was greater than money.
All was according to plan. But plans were big things. It was the details in between that made things different. Sarah never settled down. Life was pushing her in a direction of being alone. She tried to date but she found it hard. Life spun by so fast that it was hard to live and focus on the now.
At night Sarah was often haunted by a dream. It was a reoccurring nightmare. She dreamt that she was a little girl. She dreamt she was back at her old house sleeping in her bed. She would wake up and see a man in her room. He was a large man, with a bald head. He smiled at her when she opened her eyes. His eyes frightened Sarah. Those eyes had a menace to them. They danced with delight as they looked down upon her. The man would lunge at Sarah in her dream. In this nightmare he would grab her and smother her. Sarah would often wake from this dream screaming. It was a scream that she could never get out in the dream.
When she woke she would sit in her bed shaking and trembling. Her sheets would be covered in sweat. Even though she had this dream a thousand times she still would look around her bedroom when she woke to check her surroundings. She needed to make sure there was no bald man with crazy eyes in her room.
These were the nights that she regretted being alone the most. She would start to hum in the dark. It was a tune that her mother used to sing to her. It was a song from Winnie the Pooh.
Sarah’s mother died of Leukemia when Sarah was twenty-seven. Sarah missed her mother very much. Her father had taken the loss hard. In her heart Sarah knew her father was becoming an alcoholic, but she didn’t know how to stop it.
Perhaps this is why she was alone. At night the humming would comfort her. She liked the melody of I’m Just a Little Black Rain Cloud. It made her think of another time and another place.
The dream was the only constant in Sarah’s life. Wherever she went the dream followed. Her therapist told her it was because she always felt a need to be in control of her surroundings. This made sense to Sarah.
Sarah sometimes felt that she was not in control. She sometimes felt that she was in a prison of life that was spinning too fast. It was a life that took her mother from her. It was a life that was turning her father into an alcoholic. Sarah had succeeded at all her goals but life was more than that. Life was the details. Sarah was strong, brave, and free. However, in life we are all free but not free. We are at the mercy of fate and circumstance.
Perhaps this is why she dreamt so often of a man coming to take her. Perhaps he was a specter of inevitability.
He was what she feared the most. Sarah feared having no control of her life.
***
At night Catalina sometimes heard voices in the hallways. She would take her candle with her and she would peer down the corridors of her house. The light made the shadows on the wall dance and for just a moment Catalina thought she could see shadows of people that were not there.
Then the moment would pass.
Catalina would return to her study and read in the candlelight. As she read she wondered about the books she read. She had so many thoughts and ideas that she wanted to share, but she did not dare. Ideas were dangerous things in this age. Tradition was the ultimate authority and it was not to be questioned.
Catalina’s father had taught her the place of a woman was piety to men. To question was to sin. So, Catalina lost herself in books. Her father had a large library which he did not permit her to enter when she was young. However, when he was away she would sneak into his library and take some of his books. She taught herself to read. She got lost in the tales of Chaucer. She loved the writings of the Greeks and their tragedies.
She often thought of Oedipus. He was the King who learned one cannot escape their fate.
The Gods created the world and we simply followed the course they established. In her country the inquisitors sought to find those who would question the will of the one true God. In a time when questions were crimes Catalina kept her thoughts and questions to herself.
After her father passed his wealth went to her. She married and her husband re
ceived all her father’s lands.
Catalina’s husband was away often and she was left alone in her large Villa with her books. She was left alone with her thoughts.
In her solitude she heard voices in the night. From the hallways she heard voices of people speaking to her. She felt as if she knew them, but she did not.
Sometimes she imagined that she was brave. She imagined that she stood up for herself and shared her ideas. She imagined that she defiantly challenged the incorrect logic she at times saw.
Sometimes she would walk along the hallways at night and she would see that she was walking down the halls of a university on her way to some class. She imagined a world where she was brave enough to share her thoughts and her ideas.
However, that was not the way of the world. Catalina’s thoughts were for her and her alone. The voices of what she could have been did not matter.
***
The Philosophical Principles of Death. The Scripture of Farinata Uaegli Abertio.
Gospel 006765
At night we dream and each night is a new death. In our dreams we slip into a new life. We wake into a new world. We wake into a new existence. We dream of worlds beyond.
God visits me in dreams and we commune together. He blesses me with his wisdom. In my dreams God is shadow. God is light. In these forms he tells me what is required of his chosen people.
I once dreamed of sunlight. In this darkness I know the sun was a dream. Warmth was a dream.
Now I am awake in the darkness…
Verse Three: The Open Doorway
Prisons are walls and to a prisoner inside those walls there are two universes. There is a universe within the walls. This universe becomes everything to the prisoner. This universe inside the walls becomes their life. It is composed of what they can know and what they can understand. It is a place of stability and certainty.
However, the prisoner knows there is another universe. It is a universe that is based in part on reality and part on imagination. The prisoner knows there is a universe beyond the walls. What exactly is occurring in that universe beyond the walls is unknown to the prisoner. The prisoner takes the memories they have of the past when they were outside the walls and they try to move those memories forward. They try to imagine the movement of the world outside of their prison, but in the end they understand it is a true unknown.
Sarah had lived in her prison universe for years now. She was not sure how many years. She had spent countless days in her prison where she was looked after by Joshua and the strange old woman.
Sometimes she awoke to find books in her room. With nothing to do she began to read. Some of the books were adventure stories. Sometimes the books were of science or math. Over time the worlds in these books became additional universes to Sarah. She was able to escape the universe she knew and live in new realities in the pages of these books.
Sometimes Sarah stared at the walls and she tried to see beyond them. In these instances she could see her mother. She tried to picture the life her mother was living. She tried to picture how her mother was moving forward from the last time she had seen her.
Sarah communicated with the others in the cells around her. She began to know them well. Isiah was closest and they talked together often. At times she was able to escape into his universe in her mind.
Then something very strange happened. As she was communicating with the other children she heard a door open. The sound was followed by the sound of light footsteps. The sound did not sound like Joshua or the old woman. The years had made Sarah familiar with the sounds those two made.
Sarah heard a voice.
It was startlingly close.
“Sarah?”
After a moment Sarah replied to the voice. “Yes?”
“It’s me…it’s Catalina.”
Catalina was a girl several doors down from Sarah that Sarah had come to know over the years. She too was a prisoner. When they talked through their doors Sarah could not hear her well but she knew the sound of her voice and her name.
Sarah peeked through her keyhole and she saw a young girl standing outside her door.
Sarah felt her heart pounding in her chest. “How did you get out?” She asked.
“I don’t know,” the girl replied. “I was asleep…and I woke up…and the door was cracked open. They may have forgot to lock it.”
Sarah’s heart started pounding in her chest. She felt a strange sensation wash over her. It was a sensation that she had not experienced in so long that she had forgotten it existed. She was experiencing hope.
“See if you can get our doors open,” Sarah said.
Catalina reached for the door knob to Sarah’s room. Sarah saw her door handle jiggle but it did not fully turn.
“It’s locked,” Catalina said. “And there’s a bolt on it.”
Sarah heard Isiah’s voice. “Then you need to go Catalina. Go and get help.”
“I need to get you out,” Catalina replied. “All of you.”
Sarah thought for a moment.
“Isiah’s right,” Sarah said. “This may be our only chance. Go get help.”
After a moment they heard Catalina speak. “Ok…ok…I will…I will…I’ll come back for you…I promise.”
Sarah heard Catalina run down the hallway and she heard her walk up the steps. Sarah felt joy wash over her at that sound. One word echoed in her brain. Freedom, she thought. Soon she would be free. She tried to picture what Catalina was seeing. She pictured her escaping the prison that had housed them for so long and finding some kind person to come and rescue them all.
However, what she heard next made her blood run cold. Catalina had been gone mere minutes when Sarah heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Sarah realized that Catalina could not have gotten far.
Sarah peeked through her keyhole. What she saw horrified her more then she thought possible.
Sarah saw Catalina walking back down the hallway again. She walked as if she was in a daze. The most frightening thing was she was alone. Joshua was not forcing her back to her cell. Instead she walked towards her room like a sleepwalker might.
“Catalina!” Sarah screamed. “Catalina…what happened…what happened…did you get help?!”
Catalina didn’t say anything. She continued walking very slowly towards the only room she had known for years.
“What happened?!” Sarah asked. “What happened?!”
Sarah saw Catalina stop walking for a moment. After what seemed like an eternity Sarah heard Catalina say, “You…you have to see.”
Catalina then walked back to her cell. A moment later Sarah heard a door slam. Confusion and fear washed over Sarah. The door that was slammed was Catalina’s door. She had gone back to her cell and closed the door.
This was the most terrifying moment Sarah had yet experienced. What had caused Catalina to go back to her room voluntarily? What had made her turn away from the freedom of the outside world?
In the coldness of her cell Sarah kept thinking back to Catalina’s words.
“You have to see,” she had said.
***
The next day Sarah awoke and saw that now it was her door that was open.
As Sarah opened her eyes she saw light from the hallway streaming into her room. The door was cracked slightly ajar.
Sarah stared at the open doorway in fear. Her heart began beating furiously in her chest. She stared at the door for what seemed like an eternity. It was strange but Sarah was afraid to go near it. Sarah had spent years hoping and dreaming of this very moment. Now here the moment was, but Sarah was terrified. She was afraid to see whatever it was that Catalina had seen. She was afraid to see what had driven Catalina from freedom back to her cell.
The fear almost overwhelmed Sarah, but in the end how could she not go through the open doorway?
Sarah stood up. Slowly she approached the door and pushed it fully open. She went to the door where she knew Isiah to be. “Isiah,” she said. “Can you hear me?”
A m
oment later she heard Isiah’s voice. “Yes…yes I hear you. Did you get out?”
“The door was open,” Sarah replied.
There was silence on the other side of Isiah’s door. They both knew what that meant. They both knew this is what had happened with Catalina.
“See if you can get me out,” Isiah said.
Sarah looked at his door. There was a hard steel bolt on it with a giant lock. She looked to see if there were any keys nearby. There were none.
“There is a bolt on the door, Isiah. I don’t think I can get it open.”
“Get help, Sarah. You need to get help.”
Sarah took a deep breath. She knew he was right. Sarah turned and saw Catalina’s door. It was not bolted. She went to it and turned the doorknob. The door opened.
She had heard Catalina’s voice for years but she had never really seen her. She saw her now. Catalina was sitting in a bed hugging her knees. The look on her face was gaunt. It was a haunted stare.
“It’s me, Sarah,” she told Catalina. After all this time she was not sure Catalina would know who she was.
Catalina did not look up. Sarah saw that Catalina was very pretty. She had dark hair like Sarah’s hair. Sarah approached her and sat on the bed next to her.
Sarah stroked Catalina’s hair. They were friends. They were friends after years of sharing the same plight.
“What happened?” Sarah asked. “What happened yesterday?”
Catalina did not look at Sarah. Instead she continued staring at the wall. She tried to form words but they seemed to defeat her. She was trying to articulate something. Finally, she said, “I don’t know…you…you just have to see.”
Sarah nodded. She knew Catalina was right. Whatever was awaiting up those stairs Sarah would have to see for herself.
She kissed the side of her friend’s head. She then got up and began to walk towards the hallway. She stepped outside of Catalina’s room. The hallway was lit by two rows of lightbulbs that hung along the sides of the ceiling.
Prisons of Stolen Dreams Page 6