Sara was swimming in quiet waters behind a cabin in the mountains on a warm summer's late morning. She let the water wash away all of the cares and worries that constantly haunted her mind. For her thoughts do not just pass through her mind. Ideas grow, and hours after a seed is planted, her mind has created an entire garden, still caring for the plants and flowers that have started growing there. But with these gardens, also came a dark side. Troubling thoughts or images also grew. An idea or image that disturbed her would not just pass away. No, it would fester. Continue to grow in strength, intensifying, infecting all of the positive thoughts tended in the gardens. They constantly threatened to kill all of the flowers and the very gardeners themselves. Sara wanted to escape these hellish nightmares, but how does one escape her own mind while still keeping the garden intact.
"Just relax," she told herself. She hoped the still, soothing waters would quiet her personal demons, if only for a few moments of peace. She laid back trying to soak in some sun taking in the sweet contrast to the cool waters. But suddenly, clouds overtook the sun. She felt the drops beginning to fall. One got right in her eye, and suddenly her sight was overtaken with a dark red color. It was blood. "The skies are bleeding!" she thought. "I must get away from here."
Sara thought she might make it back to the cabin. The blood mixed with the once gentle waters and now all was becoming red. She was drenched in it, choking on it. She heard screams as she tried to make for the cabin, but it had disappeared. She felt strong fingers wrap around her left ankle and she kicked them away, but then there were more fingers, so many pulling on her, trying to pull her into the blood lake, while she was trying to swim for the shore. There were too man fingers.
"Where do you think you're going?" a voice rasped. "You thought you could forget us?" A blood-covered women, hair drenched and clumped with blood, and who wants to know what else emerged in front of Sara. "You left us! You left us to die! You let us die! Now you will be with us!" Her eyes were just dark holes but they seemed to be emitting some sort of light, more like a sickening glow than anything. Sara was pulled under as she tried to scream but instead got a mouth full of the dreadful blood and water mix. But now she felt a new hand, two hands, grabbing both of her shoulders firmly but they were not like the others. She resurfaced, as the new hands pulled her onto a boat.
"Peter!" she cried. He was sailing on a small boat. The sails had been altered to form a sort of overhead covering to keep the dreadful blood out. "How did you get here?" He had a towel ready drying off the blood. The fingers tried to reach for the boat. They all began to shake it. He picked up some sort of tool. Maybe a wrench? He began to beat the fingers. There were cries all around and the woman with black eyes hissed.
Peter came back to Sara's side. "Don't I always come?" The sky was completely black now, besides the violent lightning as the storm raged on. Peter sat next to Sara and they both held onto each other to try to stay warm and tried to use the pinkened white towel as sort of a make-shift blanket. "This is the most awful world," he said. "Is this hell?"
A tear formed in Sara's right eye, but she restrained it and hardened her voice. She said, "This is my world, my hell, maybe."
"This is far too ugly a world for such a beautiful girl," Peter thought as he took in the nightmarish storm.
"Why do you wait to come?" Sara asked. The two looked at each other. "Can't you come back with me? You are my angel who still comes to call on me in hell."
"I want to. I don't know how I got here, actually." He began to look around and a strange, cold sense of unknowing came over him. How had Peter gotten into this Godforsaken place? Where had he been before? How had he found himself on a boat on the blood river? The clouds began to churn uncontrollably, as if in some sort of anger or turmoil and the bloodied waters around him began to boil. The beings still hidden in the depths could be heard screaming in agony as they were burned and boat itself did not look like it would last. Sara was being pulled away from him. "Sara!" he cried and reached for her but she was receding into the blackness, and so was he.
"Peter, Peter, don't leave me here!" He heard her voice drifting from him.
"Peter, Peter!"
Peter jerked up and grabbed Robert's arm. "Come on!" Robert said. "We're taking fire. Didn't you hear the alarm?" Peter grabbed his rifle, his boots were on within seconds and the two men ran from the tent to the nearest bunker. It was the middle of the night, but it was still very hot in Iraq. Once inside the bunker, Robert lit a cigarette. "So who is she?"
"What?"
"Sara? What kind of dream were you having? Calling out a woman's name in a dream?" Robert chuckled. "I almost felt bad about waking you even for the rockets." That may have been the kind of dream I would like to get caught in. You know, if you die in your dreams, then you really are dead."
"That's a bunch of crap if I ever heard it," said William who was already on the other side of the bunker sitting on top of his helmet in the dark. The other two had not noticed it was their friend without any light but the cigarette. "I die all the time in my dreams, and hear I am still alive in this piece of shit country! But, I also want to know who this Sara chick is."
"I don't know. It wasn't a good dream, Robert. It was a nightmare. Worse than this place."
"Worse than I-Crap?!" questioned William. "I don't believe that!"
"No, I think it must be what hell is like. But, I don't know why Sara is there or who she is. I must have made her up, but she keeps showing up in these God-awful nightmares."
"Eh," William said. "We all have nightmares, here, but we aren't so lucky to have any hotties showing up in them."
The all clear signal sounded and the men got up and headed back to their tents. "I'm never going to get any fucking good sleep in the shithole," Robert said heading back to the tent. Peter laid back down and tried to go back to sleep. Who was Sara? Why had he made up this girl? "Am I that bad off?" he thought. He tried to sleep the rest of that night, but it would not come and morning in Iraq soon showed its ugly face.
