Dreaming of Escape.

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Yesterday night I dreamed that I was a tall, slender, dark haired, slightly olive skinned young woman.

I was a captive. A slave.
We - there were many of us - were being kept in a walled/fenced 'community' that consisted of several barn like buildings and a few open spaces of grass/mud land. There were various wild stock - cows, chickens etc -  meandering around. There were many men - guards - patrolling up and down. And there were us. The women.

Why exactly we had come to be there, I don't know; details were blurred sketchy. It wasn't classed as a prison, though prisoners we undoubtedly were. The men guarding us called us "girls", regardless of age. Their tone and manner when they addressed us was leering and condescending at best, and brutal at worst. Most of the time they were brutal.

There were so many of us; young, middle aged, old...and we were trapped there. We worked the open spaces - farming type duties; what exactly we did was blurred and sketchy, just as the reasons for being there were - and washed our clothes and ourselves in tin baths filled with cold and grimy water (the guards watched the cleaning of ourselves), and huddled together at night on bare mattresses for warmth and comfort.

A single man lorded it over all. It was this man that decided who came and went, who said and did what, who lived and died. And who bore his children...

Many of us - including me - were heavily pregnant. We were his 'wives' and he had us any time he wanted. No woman, young or old, was pardoned. The actual having was something the dream lacked (thank goodness), but the bumps were there for all to see, and the shame and fear and anger and despair reverberated through the commune. All children born - those that survived the pregnancy and birth that is - were whisked away from the mother within seconds never to be seen again. No-one knew what happened to them, though rumours abounded. We knew there were other 'communities' that The Lord (that was what we called him: The Lord) ruled over; maybe they were sent there.

Nerves were jangled and there was an air of living on a knife edge. Nobody was safe, not woman nor guard, from the Lord's  wrath. If you displeased him, you suffered. If you displeased him enough, you died. The methods of death and torture were whispered about and sent shivers of terror running down the spine.

The only women spared death or torture were those who were pregnant. This was temporary, just until the child was born. Any transgression declared to be a 'crime' was punished as soon as possible after that. Many mothers were executed seconds after the child had been pushed out and taken away. But while the fetus grew in the Girl's belly; nothing happened to her. Nothing.

So just nine months of reprieve. Nine months to do whatever you liked before you went into labour and after losing the child to heaven or The Lord you most probably lost your life.
To most of us, that meant the opportunity to try and escape. And we did try. Over and over. Frantic and insane plans were thought of and then put into action. The details of each individual attempt are blurred (again), but many of them involved me and the end result was always the same: with me, looking up at the sneering face of a guard, and then being brought into the presence of The Lord. Each time He looked at me, lips pursed, eyes cold and glinting. He said nothing, just looked at me, then he waved his hand to the guard at the door and I was taken away and placed back into the 'community'.

With every passing month I got bigger, as did many of us. During a transportation on a bus from one 'community' to another I and another woman - an elderly lady called "Withered Girl" - led an attack on the guards and forced the driver to pull over. The majority of the guards recovered in time to grab most of us, including me, but a few escaped. Withered Girl was among them. She hesitated at the door of the bus, looking back at me as I struggled in the iron grip of the man holding my arms. I urged her, urged all of them that hadn't been grabbed, to run; run as fast and as far as they could, and may whatever deity that may have been watching over us have mercy on them and grant them safety somewhere...

For me, that bus ride was the beginning of the end. The guard holding me, loosing his temper with me as I kept struggling, threw me down to the floor, where - to the horror of everyone watching - he kicked my eight months swollen stomach, as hard as he possibly could.
I felt a searing pain, and a few moments later felt the blood seeping down between my legs. I knew then that it was over. He had killed the child inside of me and it was over.

It was over. The guard would be killed, I knew, as well as me; to kill an unborn baby was a crime punishable by hanging drawing and quartering. I wasn't certain what my fate will be, though I knew death would be the end of it, and as my dream faded away to nothing I should have been afraid, but I wasn't.
More than that, I felt - as I lay there in a blooded, aching mess - that I had won.
I would die.
Heaven awaited me. Soon, very soon, I would be free; and I would never be caged, dreaming of escape that could never be, again.
Never again...

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So there you go. That was it.

Incredibly depressing, huh?

*shrugs* 

Hopefully tonight's venture into the lands of slumber will be happier. We'll see.