Remembering the Past (Dream Threads)

          It traumatized me for life. I was there when they died, in that house with them. I smelled the smoke, felt the heat of the flames that licked at my door. Their screams of shock and panic and pain filled the air, almost drowned out by the roar consuming the walls. I remember feeling trapped, like there was absolutely no hope of escape. Eventually the screams drifted off, and that silence was what had scared me the most. Then they came, those big men in the yellow and brown suits. Those men that carried me out, through the haze, and handed me to another man standing in the back of a truck. I screamed and fought, determined to get back to them, to go and see them, to find them so that the big men could pull them out, too. But what I didn’t know is that they had already found them. Now I linger in bed a little longer and will myself to remember their faces and love, even if it is only my imagination.