THE DREAM CATCHER

27.

I couldn't have been sleeping more than an hour. The sky looks exactly as dark as it did when I fell asleep. I'm embarrassed I let my body rest in such a deadly danger. But I couldn't help it. I could have got caught because of my disobedient, exhausted body. But I didn't. And the suspicion of this situation gives me shivers. How come no one found me? I am so close... But now I feel slightly better, at least I don't feel like I want to spit my stomach out so I try to get up, struggling with my heavy limbs. I peek out from behind the wall. Empty. There's no one here, no guards, no security. No one. I'm alone, realised to be free, to run away. And I am no fool to believe it. But I can't stay there, freeze and wait for them to come back to their senses. Or I'll lose mine too. I push the thoughts of my dream at the back of my head. I can't be thinking about it now. Not now, when I have to run for my life. So I slide as slowly as I can against the wall, bricks piercing and scratching my skin to the flesh. When I finally land a almost leg breaking jump on the ground I break of running. I don't know where. I have no idea where I am. The surrounding tells me nothing. I've never been there. It's strange. Looks like a abandoned district of factories, located few meters from me, separated from the place I found myself in by a space of deserted, dry ground. It looks like an unfinished model of a town. It tells me nothing. I don't know where I was put. I don't know myself, I don't know my mind or my family. I can't go home, it's going to be the first place they'll check looking for me. I can't go to Valentina's place, I have no idea how to get there. But I have to run. Run as fast as my broken legs will let me. Run for my life, for my breath, for my mind that I feel slowly slipping away from my fingers. I overcome the distance between the asylum and the strange city in seconds and I'm wandering around old, neglected, metal buildings. I turn around once in few minutes making sure no one is following me. It's going to be easy to vanish in the crowd of people that occupy the main street. All kinds. Baggers, drug addicts, dealers, murderers, children. But all of them have their eyes widely open, searching for danger, tiptoeing quietly around the streets. I see some homeless people gathering around a burning pile of a trash bin, I see some others pushing each other and exchanging cuss words behind a block. There are tons of people. Everywhere. And they are... different. They're not all the same. They're mixed. I can see mulattoes, half asians. I'm not in the white ray. I'm not in any ray at all. I'm in between. The legends were true. There are people living there. I refused to believe it. I refused to believe it for so long. That those who didn't belong had to find their own place. The city, or a camp, looks like nothing I've ever seen. The suburbs of rays are heavens compared to this one. I try not to look at dead bodies against the metal buildings that must have been factories. Steel stairs hug them, leading high to the top. It looks like a abandoned city, bombarded during a war. In my worst nightmares I've never seen something so hideous. And the people... They terrify me. They are like an extinct specimen, something that I was told that died decades ago. But it was all a lie. I shouldn't be surprised. My whole life was a lie. But I can't fight the breathtaking fear of being locked up in this place. With the people I was thought they do not exist anymore. I haven't seen them for so long. I haven't confronted people other than white since I was ten. And it is like it was in the other lifetime. They are like aliens to me.
I feel claustrophobic. I see too many faces too scared to hold my gaze. I must look terrifying dressed in dirty, ripped, hospital coat, tangled hair, scratched face and eyes as widely open as theirs. Or maybe they are used to this kind of views. Suddenly a horrible scream pierces through my head. I slow down my run just to see a mulatto man, few meters from me, laying against the wall with a dagger placed in his heart. And no one reacts. No one. No one approaches him, no body even looks in his direction. A man is dying in front of their eyes and no one even bothers to come closer. Everyone who occupied this side of the pavement left and is now circling a dying man, not daring to come close. It's only me and his dying body. And there are three options. One is, that I'm too stupid to let him die miserably alone. Second, I'm absolutely insane and third is, that I won't let anyone suffer in front of my eyes anymore, because I became too god damn sensitive. I've seen Noah suffer. I've seen my little self suffer.
And even though it was only in my dreams I can't let myself be useless again. I can't and I won't allow for anyone to endure so much pain in front of my eyes ever again. So I run towards a man and kneel down in front of his body. I can hear muffed breathing, so trembling and so drowned in pain my heart is breaking in million pieces. The man is middle aged, he may be 50. His whole, caramel face is soaked in sweat and his shirt in blood creating a puddle under his body. I look at a dagger helplessly. My appearance here can't help him a bit. I'm just causing more danger for myself.
,,Please..." I hear a whisper of a dying man inches from my face. ,,Please, finish it." He spits out words and blood on my pounding chest. And then he lets out a bubbling laugh of grief and sorrow. ,,I'm so useless I can't even kill myself properly."
I don't know what forced me to grab a dagger and spin it, still stuck in his bleeding chest. But as he lets out his final breath and gifts me with a smile of relief I wrench a dagger out of his body and jump strings to my legs. I wipe a blade of my coat and stuff it down my boot. And I run. I run once again, not caring if anyone is looking at me, not caring if anyone is following me. I'm so blinded by the terror, fear, exhaustion, panic, helplessness. I just helped a man take his own life. My world is falling into small pieces, burying me alive under its rubble. I'm shattered. My soul, my body, my mind is shattered. Maybe I was locked in the asylum for a reason. But I don't have time to think about it. I reached the end. There is nothing in front of me but a deserted space of nothingness. Far away I can see a forest. Possibly sector 19th of forest where Noah said goodbye to his presence on this earth. But nothing more. The camp for mixed is located in the middle of nowhere. I turn around to face the town. It looks almost medieval. The smoke escapes few of the working factories' chimneys, smoothing the air around me. People are walking like ghosts, look like ghosts too. There's an abandoned building at my side. I can see the doors slightly opened. And I have no choice but to hide. I rush to the opened, steel door trying not to pay attention to the mayhem surrounding me. The inside is dark, smelling of death. My footsteps echo from the metal walls. I wait for a few minutes, ready to run away if I hear any noises from the inside. But I don't. I'm completely alone. So I close the steel door and slide down them. I rest on the floor and get my dagger close to my chest. It's going to be a night full of surprises and a possible fight for life.