Dark Water

Nightmares

She awoke with a start, sitting up in bed with a cold sweat.  Memories of her dream flooding back to her.  Shaking her head, she wiped the sweat from her brow and threw the covers off of her.  Anna Lee knew she wouldn't get any more rest tonight, so she stood and started pacing the floor of her small moonlight room. Twenty one years had passed since she escaped from her nightmare, but had she really escaped it? The dreams which plagued her every night told a different story.  She recalled the last one vividly...his hands on her neck, her bloody nose.  Every night she wrestled with the feeling of drowning as the nightmares kept coming back.  The bruises were difficult to forget, though they were long faded.  Anna Lee recalled one of her favorite toys when she was younger, pondering where it could be now.

She stopped pacing, biting her already too-short fingernails.  Contemplating the scar on her wrist, she turned and began pacing again.  It was too easy to recall that desperate moment when she tried to escape the hell she had been living, and failed.  Here she was now.. safe, but years after she still felt the opposite.  More like a caged animal, terrified and filled with undeniable rage.  Anna Lee thought about that rage for a moment, wondering if that rage would never subside.  Rage like hers was all consuming.  Victim's rage.  The kind of rage that derives itself from helplessness, being in a position for so long of being unable to protect oneself. Being unable to retaliate.  Unable to realize any sort of revenge.  That kind of rage, she understood, was a slow burn.  Embers beneath the surface laying waste to any hope of living a normal life.

She sat back down on her bed in defeat, a wave of exhaustion rolling over her.  Lying on her back, she closed her eyes.  Tears threatened to roll down from her tightly closed eyes as she struggled to breathe, her breaths coming in short gasps as her body seemed to spasm, fighting against the sobs that threatened to break free from deep within her.  Anna lay like this for several moments before succumbing to the exhaustion she felt and falling back into a deep uneasy slumber.