Escape

The air can’t fill my lungs fast enough as I sit, gasping, sweat drenching my thin nightshirt, blankets strewn across the bed and the floor. My heart is still pounding, my blonde-brown hair hanging in strings down my wet cheeks as I shake in the dim beams of the street lights. 

It was not a dream, it was a sign. 

I whisk away what is left of my sheets, government-issued and pathetically thin as they are, and pace my one roomed housing cube. The dream is slipping from me now, like water through cupped hands. There he stood, waiting for me by the ship. The ship in all its glory, as the acid rain pelted its massive metal hull and the hurricane howled in the distance. What had he said? There had been words, shouted to me through the howling of the wind, but I could not catch them now that I was awake. 

I had to leave. 

Grabbing a tattered bag, woven from strips of torn fabric, I collect my belongings. Two pairs of light canvas pants, one puny t-shirt, a bra, an overcoat, three ration packs, a toothbrush, a bar of soap, and a hard plastic canteen for water. All go into the bag, or tied around my waist, with the exception of the hat. My hat is precious, one of the last things he ever left me before he told my mother he was leaving to join the army, create a way off this rock and into space, where housing cubes didn’t rise hundreds of feet from the ever-rising waters, where people didn’t start riots over the rare two headed animals that stumbled into towns, unaware of the food shortages everyone faced. 

I was seven when he left, my older brother still young and healthy then. It was less than a year after that when my brother, only thirteen at the time, disappeared. Some said he had run off after he was caught stealing food from a vendor, but others claimed he had fallen into the rushing floods of deadly polluted water. My mother had died not long after that, forcing me into a life of government labor and hardship at the local plastic factory. 

Slipping out the plastic door to my housing cube, I rushed down the dark and leaky hallway, scurrying down the stairs. If he was real, offering me a chance to escape from what Earth had become, I would take it. Even if that meant risking chances of capture by the young soldiers that lined the streets. 

I took the stairs two at a time, my old work boots squeaking with the wet steps as I sloshed through the water, deeper and deeper, as I neared the exit. 

If it had only been a dream, if I was risking this all for nothing, what would become of me?

I shivered, pausing at the door. I had always feared leaving the cubes, even for work, and now I wished I had someone to urge me along, console my fears and help me push the boundaries until I was safe in space, far from the wreck of a rock that floated ‘round our sun. 

“Fear is the rope that holds us back.” My eyes snapped open, kinking my neck as I spun this way and that. The deep voice… “Courage and determination are the knives that cut you free from it.” 

My father. 

Ducking my head down, I barreled out the door and onto the street, loping out of the waist deep water and up the stairs to the elevated stone walkway. The street lights cast eerie shadows as I ran, faster than I’ve ever gone before, down the road and past an alleyway. 

There were no stars above my head, no trees or animals dotting the city like the old texts had always promised. It was empty, empty but the mountains of trash and the towers of housing cubes, all dark and gray in the stinky black night. 

I had to get to the airport, leave all this, and no one would catch me. Not this time. 

I twisted through alleys and dodged past the dirty and penniless people, sleeping on corners and against poles wherever they could. My grimy hands clutched my bag until my light knuckles were white, the cold of space leaking through the torn ozone layer and freezing my tears on my cheeks. 

I’m coming, dad.

The military base sat, its ships tremendous in the spotlights. A figure waited by one, a man who seemed to be looking for someone. 

I would not hesitate any longer. Scrambling through the barbed wire fence, tearing past the guard’s post, I ran towards the ship. 

Escape, the whistling steam seemed to whisper as it hissed from the tubes of the factory. Escape! Leave this place, never return. Find your father and escape! Escape!

I’m trying! I wanted to shout, tears still spilling from my eyes as I twisted under ladders and darted behind ships. This wasn’t my fault, the climate changes and world poverty and advanced technology and all of the factors that had shaped the Earth to the state it was today. Why did I need to live the bad reality of someone’s poor choices years ago? Why did anyone have to suffer because of the choices our grandparents’, or great grandparents’, generations had made?

I would escape. I would not let fear hold me back. I would run as hard and as fast as I could, and I would not stop until this reality was only the past. 

Escape! The dense, polluted air screamed. They’re coming! Escape!

Gasping for breath, I turned corner after corner, found the figure, and ran to my father, sobbing uncontrollably. I could hear the shouts of soldiers now, closing in behind me, determined to stop the fugitive who ran for her life, ran as fast as she could with all the courage she could muster in this messed up world. 

His arms extended towards me, reaching to catch the little girl he had left behind, and as I collapsed into them, closing my eyes from exhaustion and hearing none of the yells or steam, opened my eyes to see my father. 

A wind whistled gently through my window, cooling my wet cheeks and stirring my few belongings in the dim light from the streets. My breath shook as I took in my surroundings. My housing cube was the same as it always had been, dark and grimy like the rest of the world, and somewhere through the window there was space. Space for each being, no longer needing to pile together on the streets or sell themselves to the government for a job that would over work their bodies, worsening the already awful air and sky, polluting the sea and earth, and creating even more problems. 

Poverty, hunger, weather, plagues, wars, human rights, climate change. Everything was deeply affected by another, all connected in a delicate balance thrown off course in the developing world. There was no going back, no true escape from the nightmare that had become reality. 

I sighed slowly, wiping another tear from my cheek, and watched the rain begin to fall on the waking city. It would create pockets in anything it touched, I knew. The acid burned away everything but the military’s finest ships, a fleet awaiting their rich leaders for escape into the unknown terrains of space. Rubbing the dimples on my own white skin, scars from the rain, I stared longingly at the ships. 

My father had always hoped I could escape. Perhaps this dream hadn’t really been a dream, after all. It was a message, some warning. 

He was waiting for me, by the ships. I could escape, my chance finally here. I could not let fear hold me back any longer. 

I began to pack my bags.