I awoke from my nightmares of dying children, brutally tortured or slain by a sneaking pedophile because I had failed to warn them of the lurking dangers.  I sacrificed them as I saved myself.  I ran in fear, leaving the girl to find her own way and hid in the crumbling mansion, pretending nothing was wrong.  But when I stepped out on to the front porch, she was there, strung up from the balcony and dangling like a sausage in the early morning sun.  I screamed and all the sadness and regret and self hatred for what I had done came rushing past my barricade of denial and tore me in half.  I ran screaming and crying to her and clutched her swaying legs to my chest.  And then she turned around and cried for me to cut her down.  He hadn’t hung her.  He’d tied a harness around her and let her dangle from that.  I was so relieved as I cut the thick ropes from her chest and neck and dropped her to the ground, begging forgiveness for not protecting her.  But still the danger lurked and none of us were safe.  Every room had at least two doors and it was impossible to guard them all or to see all corners at once and so the only hope seemed to be escape.  Escape from this terrifying block of houses, but where to go that would be safer seemed an unanswerable question.  I gradually gained consciousness from this tormenting sleep and thought to myself, Russ told me to have good dreams last night and I said, I think I will.  Ha.  I guess some other part of me thought I won’t.

I ate lunch on the beach in the warm sunshine.  The beach looked disgusting and beautiful.  The tide was high, obscuring all but the narrow strip of sand that was littered with driftwood, trash and rotting kelp.  Empty beer bottles and filthy ashes from countless bonfires smeared themselves across the beach, leaving a crust of black in their wake.  I picked a relatively smooth spot of relatively golden sand that didn’t appear to have any rotting carcasses of sea lions close by and sat down.  The sand was warm against my legs and the breeze brought me the smell of salt and water.  I laid down, turned my face to the sun and drifted off to sleep.  The vast expanse of the beach and the drone of the waves protected me as I softly snored in the afternoon light.  I felt invisible there and utterly alone, despite the people that I could see running or walking their dogs or sitting quietly staring at the ocean.  I noticed that everyone behaved as if they were alone.  The brilliant sun turned the people into silhouettes and shapes moving haltingly along the shore.  This open space, this violent light hid us all and gave us peace.

Copyright © 2001 Sarah Frankfurth