Short Stories and Poetry

Dreams from Ashes

They'd narrowly escaped Syria, narrowly escaped Malaysia after that and now they were narrowly making it to Australia. The country of all their dreams. Too bad some of them would never see it.
Nadya, her family and the motley crew of other refugees from Syria had spent weeks on the old and rickety wooden ship, making small talk, rationing out their limited water and food and huddling together during the dark and cold nights where they all would shiver. Nadya took care of all the children on the boat, keeping them occupied from the dire situation they were in.
And then sickness struck. It spread like wildfire, viciously and uncaring about which victim it chose. Pirates came after that, killing everyone but Nadya and a boy a few years older than her called Sayid who were below deck at the time. Nadya and Sayid worked together to stack the bodies in a pile together near the bow.
She heard Sayid crying, "Land, land!". Nadya rushed from below deck and into the burning sun, silently grateful for her darker skin that resisted the sun much better than others'. Sure enough, in the distance, was land. Red and speckled with the occasional green, which she assumed were trees. But another thing caught her eye. A fishing boat coming straight towards them.
"Hide," Sayid muttered in Arabic. During the ride, everyone had been conversing in English to practice, only changing back to their mother tongue when there was no word to say what they meant. Nadya had been taught by her mother, a rebel back home, so was good at it and had spent her waking hours teaching the young ones. The sudden switch back to her mother tongue was tough.
She turned herself around in a circle, searching for a hiding place on the empty deck. Below deck would be the first place the people on the boat would check, so that opinion was written out. But Nadya saw a pile of rope and tied herself up in it, convinced that nobody would be able to see her. 
The cabin cruiser then pulled along their ship.
It was minutes before Nadya saw someone climb aboard, but when someone did, there were two of them. Men to be specific, one of them nearly into their thirties and the other was in his early twenties. She had full confidence that Sayid could take one of them down.
The two of them searched around below deck for a while before coming back up. That was when Sayid struck. The pirates that wrecked their ship had left a rusted machete, and that was what Sayid wielded with the strength of the soldiers fighting back home. Although the man was wide and large and strong, Nadya was sure he could overcome the man with his small size but massive strength.
The problem was, he didn't. Nadya watched as Sayid thumped to the ground and stopped moving. She was the last survivor now. Nadya had to hold in a gasp as not to be found in her little bundle of ropes.
"Oh my god! Elliot, what did you do?" asked the second man, as he walked onto the deck, his eyes flicking between the corroded machete on the ground and the still man beside it. Elliot's answer was a basic shrug.
"What does it look like? He was going to kill you, you dumb bugger."
"That's bullshit!" responded the man, who was still flabbergasted at the sight that beheld him.
"Come on, he had a machete."
"Yeah, but..." he cut himself off, no more things to say. Elliot had a point, Nadya thought. She would fight back if someone came at her with a knife.
"Don't be a dickhead, mate. I just saved your life."
The men continued talking, but Nadya hung her head and blocked any other sounds out. Australia was supposed to be a haven for them all, a home for them all, away from war that had driven all their families away from their homes. But now Australia would never be that for her, not with her family, or her friends.
Nadya looked up just in time to see Elliot and the other man hauling Sayid over the edge of the ship. She nearly screamed, loud and high pitched to distract them, but knew what her parents would have wanted, what Sayid would have wanted.
A gentle splash rocked the ship as he dropped into the water.
Both men moved towards the railing and whispered something between each other while their own cruiser pulled up. They tied a tow line onto the refugee boat and hopped off. Then she felt the boat moving through the water towards the land.

× × ×
They had found her after a few days. Having no one else to share the food with, she had resulted to binging on the food, knowing that one day soon Elliot and his group of goons would find her. Nadya just didn't know that it would be so soon.
On a hot day when the sun would stream through the holes in the hull of the ship, a car raced across the beach, sending sand flying in the sticky air. It had been a week since the boat had been brought in and 'beached'.
The car stopped abruptly in front of the boat, on the land side and the men jumped out. Nadya knew Elliot would be one of them.
A sudden crack sounded out across the hull of the boat, and Nadya knew they were breaking in. She looked around for the second time to save her life, but this time there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Evidence of her existence were scattered across the area, so there was nothing Nadya could do, except to be found.
The axe cracked through the rotten wood of the ship, brightening the dark area where Nadya was huddled. Another crack, and another and another and then the people fell into the hull. Then they stared at her.
"We need to take her," one of the men said, one who wasn't Elliot.
"Back to her home or to the hospital?"
"Whichever one is easier." Nadya recognized the voice. It was Elliot, though he didn't know who she was. "To the hospital, we can deal with her then."
A man walked up to her, younger, and grabbed her by her waist. She screamed a kicked against the man, but he would not yield. Over the days she had been alone, she had decided Australia wasn't her home, and would never be her home. But now, these retched people were taking her away from something that had grown as part of her identity.
She was still kicking and wriggling when a metal object inserted itself into her neck, the liquid filling up her body until it became too overwhelming to bear, and she succumbed to the darkness.

× × ×

An air conditioner blew warm air into the small hospital room. There were no other inhabitants of the room except Nadya, curled up on one side of the fresh-pressed, sanitized bed in her baby blue paper gown that had become her only clothes over the past week. A drip fed into her arm, and when food came, she was tube fed. She rebelled every day when the overweight nurse came around to her and asked, "Tube or no tube?" in her strong accent. A combination of Scottish and American, one she had heard a docksman use in Malaysia. She came to the conclusion that it was Australian. Every day she shook her head to the useless question.
The only times she enjoyed was when a thirty-something year old with dirty copper hair named Loraine came in and told her stories while she rested. Stories about outback heroes, about dragons from mystical lands, and stories about female warriors standing up for themselves. She liked the latter the most. Whether Loraine knew that Nadya was awake was a mystery.
One day, at the time that Loraine would sneak into the cold hospital room, Elliot came in. He wore a blue suit, with a golden badge. ELLIOT BUTCHER – POLICE FORCE was written on his badge. He sat down in the visitor's chair next to Nadya's bed and started asking questions.
"Where are you from?"
"Who are you?"
"Do you understand me? Do you understand us?"
The final question unnerved Nadya. She could understand them, very well actually, but refused to speak to any of them, even nice Loraine. She probably seemed like an idiot to them.
"If you don't respond, I'll take you away," Elliot whispered into her ear. He was threatening her, actually threatening her to respond. She shook her head and writhed against the small bed when he placed a clammy, unyielding hand on her dark skin. His nails cut into her skinny arm as he picked her up in a wedding hold and dragged her out of the hospital.
For the first time in days, Nadya felt the sun against her skin, and it burnt.
Elliot opened the passenger door of his cop car and threw her into the caged backseat area, locking the door behind her. He hopped in the driver seat and started the car. Already, sweat was gathering on her brow, dripping down as if she had just come out of a hot shower. The car moved and Nadya was thrown against the cage, hitting her ribs, and earning a groan. There would be a bruise there by the morning, if she even survived until then.
It was a ten-minute drive to the old mining site; Flaherety's Curse, as the sign said in front of the old weatherboard house. She was led into by Elliot into a large 'lobby', where a rusted metal pole ran from floor to ceiling. Butcher clipped silver handcuffs onto one wrist, swung the other cuff around the pole and clipped it onto her right hand. Nadya knew it was useless to fight back against the full-grown man.
The pole clanged as she threw herself against it, hoping that a link in the chain connecting the cuffs would break. There was no luck.
"You'll be good here, I trust, for the next few days. Hopefully then you'll be cooperative." Elliot then spun on his short heal to the door. Nadya heard the engine of the car start and then the it pull away, the distance increasing between them every second. She screamed, but stopped, realizing he hadn't left any water for her, and she was already parched to the bone from the trip to this horrible prison.
Actually, this whole island is a prison, she thought.
Although it was uncomfortable, Nadya lay herself down on the concrete floor, the sand that had blown in through the open door for decades digging into her back through her paper hospital gown. The ceiling was full of graffiti, things like ARCHIE WAZ HERE and hearts with initials in them. This whole house had a history, the whole town had a history, and if Butcher just let her wither here and die, she would be part of the history.

× × ×

Days passed, governed by the sun and the moon just like her ancestors told the day, and sure enough the policeman came back for her. He seemed to tease her, drinking water only five meters away from where she sat, her arms behind her head and her back resting on the pole so that she had somewhere else to rest instead of the floor. He saw her longing eyes and said, "You can have a sip if you answer some questions. That fair?" She nearly answered him, but knew that any answer to who she was would get her killed like Sayid, but not answering would also kill her.
Nadya stayed quiet, passing the minutes that Elliot kept with her staring at the ceiling reading the graffiti above her for the millionth time. He eventually left, mercifully, and with the water.

× × ×

He didn't come back until a few days later, seven days later, just when she had given up on life. A storm followed his as he walked in. A set of keys glistened in the dark light, and Nadya instantly knew that Elliot was unlocking her, for better or for worse. Would he throw her out into the rain for a few blissful moments and then cage her again like an animal? Or was he freeing her to leave and start a new life?
Elliot gripped her firmly by the wrist and led her out into the rain, the mud sticking to her shoe-less feet and the rain straightening her long hair. She was spun around by him and he punched her square in the stomach. The air was knocked out of her for a couple of seconds, but Elliot didn't stop there. He punched and kicked at her until her skin turned red despite her dark complexion. He did it until she was panting on the ground, her hands gripping the ground for anything, anything to save her life.
She knew she would die.
A punch to the side of the head was all it took, and then she was falling. The tyrant had won, no matter how many times Nadya had been told that love, heroism and loyalty saved the day. Her head thudded against the ground, and she was down. She could have gotten back up, fought for her life, fought for everything, but it was no use. Elliot would beat her every single time.
Crazy, I was crazy once, they locked me in a round room. I died. The worms drove me crazy. Crazy, I was crazy once... swam around in her head, repeatedly, lulling her to death. It was a story that her mother had taught her to calm her down, the repetition helping to still her.
For the final time, Nadya breathed in and out, and she dreamt.

***

All of these characters belong to Anthony Eaton, the author of A New Kind of Dreaming. I wrote this for a class assignment. I recommend you read A New Kind of Dreaming after this, it is such an amazing book! I hope you enjoyed.