Captive
This one felt strange because for most of it I was a ghost. In most dreams, obviously, I switch characters seamlessly and hardly notice that it's happening. This time however, I consciously make the decision to become her.
We are in a small basement apartment and is an entirely new construction, which is odd for me. Most houses are, in some way, ones I
have lived in. The walls are dark red, the carpet beige. Immediately to the left of the front door is the bathroom, three steps in there's a couch sitting across from a loveseat. There is a floor lamp with a simple glass bell shade. I'm crouched by the loveseat.
On the couch is a thin woman in an ankle length light brown dress. She has extremely curly hair, it's a wispy pale brown. A man pins
her to the cushions, she is still mostly clothed, so is he, but it's still obvious that he's raping her. She issues soft, breathless sobs and negations, her blood smeared hands push ineffectually at his shoulders and chest.
I want to bash his face in. I urge her to grab the lamp shade and hit him with it, and after a moment she looks at it and considers following my suggestions. As she is reaching for the neck of the lamp, he finishes and stands up. I get a view of his back as he zips up his fly and tucks in his shirt. I glare at him. She watches him with fear and uncertainty. She sits up, lowering her skirt back over her knees.
He says that he has to leave for work, and explicitly outlines what will happen to her sister if she tries to leave. He muses that she can't
possibly expect the police to believe that she was held captive and raped, after all, he is a police officer. He turns to face her, looking out the high narrow windows, buttoning his cuffs. He's about 5'7" with short black hair, a cruel face with black, dead eyes. She can't stand to look at him, and when he begins to walk toward her, she darts for the bathroom and slams the door behind herself.
We can feel him on the other side and how little her flight has affected him, how very little she can do against him. She feels like
screaming or crying. We hear the front door shut and lock, apparently it locks from the outside too. Just in case she became adventurous.
My eyes settle on the single window above the toilet. I urge her to look out. She pauses to wash her hands and then does as I say. She
has to climb up onto the toilet to look outside. The bathroom, like the rest of the house, is painted red. The window is more like a screen on a hinge, and on the other side is a cramped tunnel.
I watch as she stares outside, between the hedges to where he's standing talking to my boyfriend. I hear him say that he has lost his car keys. Which is true, but he's also a police officer ((complete fabrication)) from out of state. Something has made him suspicious, but he can't put his finger on it.
"Sorry buddy, I can't help you. The manager inside might have a phone you can use."
My boyfriend heads inside the apartment building. The woman's captor stands beside the car there, talking on his cell phone.
Her hand falls limp to her side. I press my boyfriend's keys into her hand. She doesn't even question how she got them. I urge her to go, but she's too terrified. I step up and become her. I open the window and squeeze myself into the tunnel. It is a little more than one length of my body, I scrape my elbows wiggling forward. I reach the other side and wait until his back is turned, I separate from her and watch her crawl out. I follow after. We hide behind a solid backed bench on just the other side of the hedges.
She freezes, and she can't anticipate his movements like I can. I join with her again. He pivots and we go to hide behind a black Dodge Avenger. We hear our captor get into a car and drive away. For a moment I'm confused, and think I'm looking for my boyfriend's old car, a teal Sunfire. I hesitantly click the unlock button on the key and the Dodge Avenger bleeps from behind me. I separate from her hand urge her to get away before my boyfriend comes back. She opens the driver side door and slips inside...
Battlestar Galactica
The house we're sitting in feels like my childhood home in MA, except that it is only one level, and beside the front door there is a
raised part of the floor, like a single step. Across from that is a low, dull gray table.
I am Cally, Chief Tyrol and Boomer sit on the raised section of floor, grimly regarding the table. I walk to the Chief on my knees, my eyes are burning and my throat feels thick. Our story has run its course, and yet we find ourselves here all over again. Running from the Cylons. I get a sense of where we are in the story, sometime before the settling on New Caprica.
Chief has his arms cross. I tug one of his arms free and he looks down at me with mild surprise.
"Cally." His voice holds the trace of a warning, but now is not the time to worry about appearances.
"Chief, could I...?"
He lifts his arm and a curl up by his side, he drops his arm across my shoulders.
"Chief, does this mean that we have a chance to do things differently? To make better choices?" I ask, it's difficult to speak.
"Yes, I suppose it does." He replies thoughtfully.
The relief that brings me is amazing, it's such a gift, to start over. The chance to treat people better. Knowing how the story ends, would we make the same choices?
"She should be here soon." He says softly. We lift our eyes from the table to the darkened doorway on the other side of it.
Starbuck appears, there's something wrong with her face but I can't figure out what it is. She's also pregnant. Just far enough along that it's obvious. She leans heavily on the table then lays down on it, clutching her belly.
I leave Chief's side and go to hers. Hesitantly, I stroke the hair away from her face.
"Are you feeling alright?"
"I think I'm miscarrying." She says. The look on her face, and the fact that she's Starbuck makes me wonder if she's making a joke.
"Are you kidding? Is she kidding?"
"Help me sit up."
I oblige her.
There's a lapse. I'm standing in front of Starbuck who sits with her legs dangling off the side of the table. Another woman has arrived
but I can't look straight at her, even out of the corner of my eye she disturbs me.
Starbuck trembles violently and then her mouth moves of its own accord, speaking words I don't understand.
"Avre ein en Novem-ah."
The disturbing woman laughs at her. "Oh yes, your vast knowledge of forgotten history is astounding. You only speak of the Novem, how can you possibly know what it is to call the Novem friend?"
Starbuck can't seem to look straight at her either. Her eyes shift away uncomfortably. The disturbing woman doesn't speak again but I
get a sense of timelessness from her, wondering at the vastness of her existence that stretches across aeons. Starbuck may know these things too, because of the child she carries, but she has not lived it. Not like the Queen. This knowledge deeply chills me. This is the house of eternity, there are other paths to walk besides this one.
Then I am outside. I am a fit and unpregnant Starbuck. Admiral Adama gathers us to him on the lawn and we walk together to the road which is wider than I remember. There's a 5 foot tall wall where the woods should be. It isn't smooth, it has uneven grooves all along its length.
We walk to where the crew has broken through a 3 foot thick ice road block. We file through the ragged opening.
The oddness of what stand on the other side strikes all of us. The wall curves gently, to the right of the wall is the ocean, to the left is a dusty courtyard with a rickety wooden structure that has a roof and thin support poles, but no walls. At the far end of the enclosure is a leaning ladder of long branches, fastened together.
"What is this, ice?" Adama says, touching the wall as though we have never seen it before.
"Bet your ass it's ice, I like it!" Colonel Tigh exclaims, picking up a handful of slush and throwing it. His reaction doesn't seem child-like or whimsical.
I wonder what they were doing, obviously the wall holds back the ocean. What were they doing, forcing the ocean to recede?
We fan out and walk toward the ladder. We all start to climb it, but the top of the ladder is no longer tied down, so people keep falling off. I'm Starbuck though, and I'm certain I can climb it. So I haul myself up. I can feel the texture of the branches under my hands, and how the ladder sags outward. I reach the top as Admiral Adama and Tigh do, trying to figure out a way to leap the gap from the last rung to the next section of ladder.
I drop down and run a few paces back, where there's a thin twist of rope. I grab it and lift myself up with one arm, it holds my weight but starts to fray.
I had hoped that I could use it to cross the gap.
I wander away and start taking note of other things under the canopy. Maybe there are things that we can take away, supplies. There's a pick-up truck parked in the corner and a chest. They're full of yellow bags of dog food. Who were the people that came before us?
I watch the others, frowning at their behavior.
The next part I can't remember very well. I see flashes of what happened to the last people who found this place. They were a family of three, and a couple of farm hands.
I watch the mother, a tall brunette with short hair, wearing a red shirt, command her eight year old son to find the secret of the letters they found carved in the wall.
The task sounds like a threat. His father has gone missing, and at least one of the hands has died.
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