Dreams

11 - - The Purge

A purge is performed in my home town. Dunno why. But it basically just becomes a way for people to commit mass murder free of charge.

When the alarm first started ringing, we didn't know what was going on. My cousin (James) and my sister (Sarah) looked outside and online. I found out from the hundreds of alerts on my phone.

"Hello."

"This is going to be your favorite holiday soon."

"If you survive this minuscule glimpse..."

"...into what life is really like."

"For the next 24 hours, anything and everything one thinks of doing is legal."

"Anything."

"Once time is up, cleaners will come 'round the town and put everything back to how it was."

"If anything is done after time, even the smallest of grievances, whomever committed the act will be punished for everything that occurred during this Purge."

"Everything."

"So, happy Purge, and don't go over the time!"

I couldn't believe my eyes. My body took power over my brain, and I locked every possible entry point in my house. My dogs were moved to the basement so they wouldn't give away that people are in here. All but one light remained off.

Yet, still, somehow someone managed to get into my house. You guessed it, a close family friend that I trusted. Grayson was with me when the purge started, so I had no idea he'd turn against me. He grabbed a lamp from beside the couch and waved it in front of himself, daring any of us to approach him. James went for it and got dome-rocked hard. He crumpled to the ground, a knot already forming on his forehead.

Sarah ran out the front door with Grayson hot on her heels. I wanted to wait for her to come back in, hopefully blocking Grayson from coming back in. Before she could come back, though, a woman with fiery red hair saw me in the doorway and ran toward me. I shut the door as fast as a terrified, shaken little teenage girl could and turned the one source of light off. I crawled over to the kitchen (to avoid the windows) and opened the door into the garage. I shut the door behind me just as I heard a loud BANG from the front door. She'd broken in. I locked the door and scrambled to the basement stairs, almost falling down them in my attempt to get away.

When I got down, the lights were on and the dogs were missing. I tried flipping them off, but the light switch didn't do anything. When I gave up, I looked around for a hiding place.

Now, you've got to realize that my basement floods every time it rains, so we didn't have anything of value down there. In fact, the only thing we had was a mattress on top of some plastic crates and a few old, torn up blankets. Well, that was my only hiding spot from the lunatic in my house.

I heard a banging, then wood breaking - that crackhead had just broken the door! I ran to hide behind the mattress, doing my best to hold myself still, but there was no way she wouldn't know where I was. She started talking to me.

"This time, Reagan thinks she'll skip the monologue where she tells you everything she went through to get here," the woman professed to me (herself?). "Reagan thinks she should just get it over with and brain you. Or should she slice you up into little bitty pieces? Guess we'll find out." She stabbed the mattress, effectively pinning me to the wall by my calf. I somehow managed to push the mattress off of me and into Reagan, pulling the knife out with it. In my adrenaline-aided state, I didn't even feel it pull out of my leg.

I took advantage of her being stunned and pulled the knife out of its place in the mattress, keeping the crazed woman away from me. She grinned. It was a bloody smile, with teeth sharpened to needle-tip points. She lunged at me, and I cinched my eyes shut, slashing blindly into her. I heard the knife slice through her skin, then a sickening crunch as her head hit the ground. When I opened my eyes, I saw that the knife had left a gash in her throat.

I just killed someone. In my basement, a woman took a knife from my block in the kitchen and stabbed me, then I killed her. Then, the blood was noticed. It covered me, and gushed out of her neck in spurts. I stumbled over to the blankets and took a few o cover her body and soak up the blood. I grabbed the knife and pulled it out of her neck. The sound made me sick, and I couldn't hold it in no matter how hard I tried. A blanket was also placed on top of the vomit so it could be cleaned later, and I left the mess to go upstairs and wash the knife.

I tottered my way up the basement stairs into garage, where I saw it was light outside through the back door. I turned to the kitchen door, and went inside. The light was on. Numbly, I moved to the sink and washed the knife. No matter how much scrubbing I did, though, I could not wash the memory of slitting a person's throat from my mind. When I finally gave up, I turned on the lights and walked to the living room.

Everything was as it was before the purge started. Everything. The lamp was back in its place, standing guard over the couch. James and Sarah were sitting on that couch, watching some movie that I didn't bother to identify. Both on the dogs were there, one sleeping and the other playing with a squeaky toy. Even Grayson was there, scrolling on his phone. Was the purge finally over? Was I down in the basement for that long? With a start, I remembered the body currently emptying in the cavern beneath our house. I ran to the kitchen, through the garage and into the basement to find that the body was still there, bloody blankets and all.

Did I kill someone... after the purge was over? Because that body was definitely still there and I didn't think it was going anywhere. Sirens could be heard in the distance, and my suspicions were confirmed when the garage door burst open, and guns were aimed at me. I could see where they were coming from, catching me standing over a dead body in my basement with efforts made to cover it up. The slash in my leg would make no difference... I was done for.