Page 193 - Dark Matter Issue5 Part II

views as favorable to himself. If present day headlines are accurate, this includes

attempts to silence those who would potentially discredit or otherwise undermine him.

Dream #2, April 2017: I drive through an urban area, followed by a white pickup truck. Its

driver’s side door is emblazoned with the words and logo of an organization that traffics

humans. In its bed, the truck carries large garbage bins, the kind distributed by the local

waste management company.

From my rearview mirror, I can see into the bed of the truck. The top of one of the bins

opens. Inside are three young female faces. One of the girls wears a red scarf around

her head. In the middle is a girl of maybe seven years old. Against the darkness of her

skin, I see the whites of her terrified eyes as she meets mine in the mirror. Her white

teeth gleam in a grimaced cry for help. Another bin opens; it holds three young boys.

Dazed and despondent, they look ahead, not seeing, the light gone out of their eyes.

Toward the front of the bed, a bald woman in a hospital gown crouches with her

husband. In the back of the bed, another nearly bald woman, gaunt and curling in on

herself, looks up into the face of her husband. He cannot meet her gaze, his graying

head hung low in what I know is his shame for being unable to save her, them, from this

fate. Foremost in the bed, sitting behind the driver, is a younger, bearded man, and I

wonder if he is a guard.

I make a plan. At the next stoplight, I will get out of my car and jump into the bed of the

truck. I will open the bins and set those poor people free.

But I keep driving. It will never work, I say to myself. I will not be able to move fast

enough. The guard might shoot me, and then what good would I be? I do not stop. I do

not help.

Later, at home, I have taken to the couch, ill – my stomach gripped by pain and nausea.

My mother and sister sit across from me, wondering what is wrong with me. I tell them

two inane stories about minor grievances from my workday. They are silent, listening,

watching. Finally, I am overtaken by guilt and shame for what I have done – what I have

failed to do – and for what will happen to those people because I looked away. I cry,