100 Dreams

Dream 10

I'm sitting in the third seat from the driver of the school bus. I'm on the right side, and to the left of me is another quiet, leave-me-alone attitude kind of girl. It's pouring outside, and the windshield wipers are trying their best to keep up. I have no idea where we're going, or how long we've already been driving.

There's a boy with pink and blue striped hair sitting behind me. He keeps pushing his knee into the back of my seat. I'm almost tempted to turn around and yell at him to stop, but I know it'd do no good. So instead, I keep my headphones in, hoping I can turn my music up loud enough to drown out the noise in the back of the bus. In the mirror above the driver's head, I can see a couple making out a few seats away from me. I hear someone yell at them to get a room. I wonder how so many sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen year olds can be so immature.

I lay my head against the window and try to look out past the streaks of rain. There's so much water, we may as well be driving on a lake. It's a dreary and beautiful scene to look out at. I'm starting to enjoy myself, and yet my brain keeps telling me, "She's going too fast." "It's slick out", and "She's not paying attention." "Her eyes aren't on the road." And they aren't. Her eyes are locked on mine, and she has the ghost of a smile on her face.

An image flashes through my mind. An enormous fire spreading through the forest. Its flames licking up the needles and leaves in its path, kicking aside the trees too big to eat when standing tall. The oranges and reds devouring anything in their wake. A steady rain falling against the blaze. And first it appears as if the rain will do nothing, will have no effect on the growing tragedy. But slowly, it begins to damper the monster. Soon there are only infant flames, deprived of their mothers, they can no longer grow. They too begin to die off. When the fire and smoke clears, there is a shadow in the middle of the empty, scorched land. A baby. A baby with the bluest eyes I have ever seen. A baby with nothing but the wild to raise him, to teach him, to love him. He makes no noise. Not a cry or a whimper or even nonsense talk. He can't be more than three months old, and yet he is contempt in his chaos.

When I focus back on what is happening in the bus, I begin to wonder if that baby boy could be the soldier I had seen throughout my dreams. I look back up at the driver and am surprised to see the seat is empty. There's no one driving the bus, and we're heading down a long hill that leads straight into a brick building if you don't turn. There's no time to grab the wheel. We hit a patch of snow and ice, and the bus turns 180 degrees. The back of the bus hits the wall and crunches in on itself. The back two rows are completely smashed in and everyone has been jolted out of their seat. A girl who had rolled herself into a ball on the floor is flung straight ahead where she lays at an unnatural angle. The boy who was kicking my seat is now two seats away from his original seat. His left shoe fell off in his other seat, and his tibia is sticking through his skin. He's screaming, and there's blood everywhere. Not just from him, from everyone. From me too, I realize. Looking down, there's a fist sized chunk of glass sticking out of my back. When the windows caved in, pieces must have been projected everywhere. I can't see a single person who isn't hurt, and the bus driver is still nowhere to be found.

I stumble into the walkway, trying to make my way to the door. My phone shattered in the accident, and I need to get help. The doors won't budge. Neither will any of the emergency windows. We're stuck on a broken, caved in bus, bleeding, suffering, and we have no way out. I search everywhere for a first-aid kit. There isn't one. The kid with the blue and pink hair is still screaming. The kids who weren't smashed during the crash are too shocked to move. The quiet girl who was sitting beside me is on the floor. Her nose is toward the roof, and she's as pale as the dead. Her chest is rising and falling at a slow pace, and her eyes are closed. There's already a bruise forming at the right side of her head. There's blood too, and a lot of it. Her hair is already soaked and matted with it, and her white V-neck is now crimson at the shoulders and collar.

I'm trapped on a bus of dying, suffering, scared teenagers, and I can do nothing to help them. My head is spinning. My vision is blurring and fading black. My blue shirt is now black. My heart is picking up speed and losing its pace at the same time. I've never felt colder in my life and my teeth begin to chatter. There's goosebumps covering my body, my headache is long forgotten.

There's sirens in the distance. A knock at one of the windows. A man yelling, asking if we're alright. That we're going to be okay. I would be okay, as long I could hold on. But I don't want to. I like the silence that has reached my ears, the dizziness, the rush in my veins. I don't feel cold anymore. In fact, I feel perfectly warm. The kind of warm you feel when you stand out in the sun for the first time since winter. The kind of warm you feel when the person you love tells you they love you too. I'm peaceful. Content. Ready. The world goes black.

And I wake up in my twin bed, in my run down room, in my failing house, with my broken family.