The Empire's Descent (First Draft)

Chapter 47: Lucid Dreams

LUCA'S POV

"What are those?", she asked. I don't know her, but I knew I knew her.

"They just keep sticking to me. It's like caterpillars or something. I just squish them out and keep it moving," I answer her as I swipe at the neon green and neon blue "caterpillars".

"I think they're snakes," she grimaced and took a seat on the torn up burgundy, cushioned two-seater in the unfinished concrete house with no windows, just spaces for the windows and no doors, just spaces for the doors.

"I think you're right!", I raise my voice in panic and look at my hand that was squishing the snakes with the gelatinous integrity of caterpillars.

She cringed away from me into the couch.

"Why di fuck yuh tell everybody seh we a work yuh like guinea pig?", she stormed in from behind me, as my back was to the space that should be a front door, and accused me.

"I didn't tell them that!", I defend, not knowing who was everybody, but I knew who they were.

"Liad! Liad! Yuh just lie like wah!", she screamed hysterically and swung her arms at me. Is she Jamaican?

I dodge and spun so she and I switched positions. My back to the space of the front door and her back to the children who had come in and sat around the conjoined medium-sized picnic bench to do the homework I was doing. It was a little boy and a little girl.

"How dem can do it and don't complain, but you have to tell everybody seh yuh overwork and we call yuh guinea pig?!", she questioned, her tone and body language, accusatory.

"Me say suh"?!, I wondered, bewildered.

"Yes, di whole neighbourhood know," she informed and though I couldn't see her face, I knew she gave me a dirty look.

"Eeh, man. Likkle work an' yuh can't do it? An' me a baby and can do it well! A tell everybody seh yah guinea pig!", the children mock me and show off the simple arithmetic homework we had.

I spun around to them harshly.

"I didn't say that! I said I felt like a cute little guinea pig, just busy away with the work that I'm doing. With my little hands and cute fat body, just busy," I realize this is not my body. It's a young teen's body. I am a teenage girl.

This is not my dream!

I look to the side and another space where a door should be led to the side street. I could escape.

"Kill him for me yah, man. Just kill him!", she instructed to her man that comes in behind me. I don't see him, but he takes up the room and makes everyone small. I am small.

His big bear-like hands claw my shoulders and drag me out the front door space. I don't feel anything, but I am manhandled and my feet scrape against the hot asphalt as he drags me towards a big white house.

"No, no!", I look around frantically for help, but the neighbourhood was a ghost town, but I knew they were there. Watching. Never wanting to be involved. It wasn't their business. It had nothing to do with them. They were safe in their multi-storey houses. Behind their picket fences.

The man disappeared. I don't catch my breath. I tear down the street and past the mansions with their long, green lawns. Past the unfinished, ground-floor house with a yard of gravel.

Where to go? Where to go? If I go up the hill, they'll see me for a long time before I ever get to some cover.

I turn right, past two, one-storey houses with yards that have banana trees, orange trees and mango trees.