Bad Dreams

• Lily Duffey, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2018

Charlotte tosses and turns, trying to get comfortable. Nothing works. She lay this way and that way, slows her breathing, even counts imaginary sheep. But nothing works. She can’t get to sleep. She can’t forget the horrible things that happened two years ago…

Sleep falls upon her and the memories come flooding in.

“No Ella you're doing it all wrong. The blanket goes here and the basket goes in the right-hand corner!” Charlotte says with a slight giggle in her voice.
Charlotte and Ella lay on the checked blanket eating chocolate covered strawberries and making flower crowns out of wild daisy. The birds are chirping and the deers are dancing around the forest. Ella and Charlotte lay under the shade of an old oak tree measuring the length of each others head. Nothing can be heard except for the giggles of the girls and the songs of the birds.
“What was that?” Charlotte exclaims
“I didn’t hear anything. It’s probably just a deer in the bush’ Ella says, but it is obvious she heard it as well.
“There it is again,” says Charlotte, now standing up. The two girls stand up cautiously. They turn around to where the noise came from but nothing is there.
“See. I told you it was nothing” says Ella.

All of a sudden movement erupts from the bush. I group of five middle-aged men and women appear dressed in strange red suits. Charlotte jumps back in fear, but not from the people, from what they are holding. The red men and women are holding a machine gun each.
“We are sorry,” says one of the men in a raspy voice “but it what must happen”
A bullet whizzes out of his gun and collides into Ella’s chest. She screams out in pain. Charlotte stands there helpless. She doesn’t know what to do.

The people disappeared as fast as they appeared, leaving no sign that they were there. Charlotte fell to her knees where Ella lay lifeless just feet away. Her pink floral dress now stained with red.

Charlotte wakes up. The smell of sweat covers her and her eyes are wet with tears. She swallows hard and tells herself to go back to sleep. It is just a distant memory now. She closes her eyes and allows sleep to swallow her.

Then the memories start again…