This is Tomorrow

Alina was lost in a massive crowd.

Her small stature offered no support as adults ran past her, shoving her back. She extended her arms forward so far that she could see her wrists peering out from her dark grey coat. With one hefty swing, she flung both of her arms out in an attempt to shove people’s legs aside. It worked, but only for a short while. Alina had just run into the beginning of a storm, it only worsened as gunshots rang out like thunder. She felt her heart drop into her stomach and churn, begging her to run but also keeping her frozen in her place. Her father was in that crowd, and as the gunshots became more frequent she became more worried. Prying her feet off the pavement, she ran deeper into the crowd calling for her father.

“Tata?!” She yelled, frantically looking back and forth.

More adults came charging her way, blocking everything. Pushing herself through the crowd became more and more difficult, especially since now the wounded were joining. She passed men and women with gunshot wounds in their arms, legs, and chests. Blood spilled onto the friends that carried them and stained the pavement below her. She could feel the pools of blood beneath her feet and the way it seemed to seep into her worn shoes and feet. It would enter her bloodstream and pump through her veins, giving her a strange sense of power and grief.

Alina needed to find her father.

Whether the people around her were wounded or not, Alina violently shoved harder until she made it to the scene that started the whole fiasco. Men from the Securitate, or Secret Police, stood at the end of the crumbling street, basking in the destruction. Their faces were cold and unmoving as they watched people being beaten and detained. The military style uniforms they wore were as stiff and unforgiving as they were and they wore it like a badge of honor. Those proud Communists loved to watch, they loved the rush, they loved it so much it made their hearts rot and slowly decay inside of them until all that was left is the empty husk where their souls once shined. Out of the corner of Alina’s eye, she noticed a police officer raising his gun at someone. When she turned to look, she found her father at the other end of the barrel.

“No…” Alina muttered. Tears welled in her eyes, but before any of them could roll down her cheeks, she lunged herself towards her father.  The closer she got to him, the more she noticed the details around the scene. Her father’s black suit was torn and his brown hair fell in front of his face, coated in a thick layer of sweat. His tried desperately to put on a brave face, but Alina could see the fear in his forest green eyes. Those were the same eyes that greeted her in the cold, early mornings when she didn’t want to get up and go to school. They were the same ones that slowed her frantic heart as thunder crashed above her home, the late nights she’d clumsily waltz into her father’s tiny study and watch him smile before she even opened the door. Alina watched as the fragile glass that coated his eyes cracked the moment the police officer cocked his gun. Alina quickened her pace, and before her father or the officer had any time to process what was happening, the gun went off and Alina jumped in front of her father. Just as the bullet was about to pierce her, everything quickly went dark.

Finally, she jolted up, almost falling off of her bed.

After several moments, Alina felt her heart restart abruptly and made a sound that was a cross between a wheeze and a choke. She clutched her chest and tried to bury her fingernails in the clammy skin that felt like it was vibrating. The night was cold and silent but Alina could not hear it. Instead, she listened to the blood coursing through her ears, the loud and overwhelming sound wrapped itself around her brain and squeezed as hard as it could. Alina sat between the white sprawled bed sheets that felt like waves swallowing her whole and tried to still her breathing.

“It was just a dream. It was just a dream. It was just a dream” she repeated to herself.

Soon, the cool blanket and bed sheets that enveloped her didn’t feel as aggressive or hot. Now they calmly caressed her body to settle down in the mattress. Goosebumps popped up on her skin as she felt her heart slow down and her hearing become clearer and clearer. Everyday it seemed like reality became clearer and clearer to her, the fragile barrier that followed her as a child was getting cracks. Sometimes she’d stare at it during school lectures or when her parents were quarreling in the kitchen and she’d sit in the living room and feel herself drift. The cracks appeared slowly and gradually, and each time one appeared or extended, Alina could feel her heart wretch. She also discovered that there was no way to repair those cracks, no amount of glue, no amount of sticky dough her mother made for pastries, no amount of wishing, there was nothing to be done. Alina always wondered what would happen once the barrier broke. She wondered if another one would come up in its place or if she wouldn’t be granted the privilege of having another. Alina could see the barrier in front of her bed and right in the middle a large crack appeared, much bigger than any of the ones she had seen before. This time her heart didn’t wretch, it remained still, but now an unsettling silence flooded the room. She backed up onto her pillows and buried herself beneath her blanket. Alina welcomed her bedsheets to swallow her whole and drown her in their sea, but they wouldn’t let her. Instead, she cried enough tears to fill a river and pulled the covers tight around her body until it felt like the outside world could not touch her anymore.

[This is an excerpt from the first chapter of a novel I am writing about life under communism in Romania.]