A Very Short Story by Tamara Halbritter

And Then You Wake Up
by Tamara Halbritter

I had a dream last night. The kind that wakes you up, gives you chills and sends you right to the liquor cabinet. Where you’re sweating and it’s only 50 degrees. Where you inventory body parts. Then you look to see if they’re really yours, and if they could’ve been at that place.
With those people. Those awful people.
They had taken your child away from you, saying she’d be safe. They had forced you through a doorway and . . . now you can’t remember what happened. So you try to go back before the doorway. Before they took Anna.
A sound hammers at your ears, like a ratchet striking metal. Nonstop noise and pitch black, broken only by shards of light slashing your dirty shirt. You look around for a way out.
Watching the mud along the floor, you see a shadow rise up against the wall.
Next, you’re eating dinner in a café with three strangers. They are cold, like the rigid leather chairs. You look at the clock, wanting to pick up Anna. The waiter never returns. You wait and wait. The conversation floats around you, dull sounds waft into your ears.
The three strangers don’t notice that you can t hear them. One is gray and sits up straight. The others are younger and slouch against the booth. Their dank odor assaults you. Hand shaking, you set down your glass. You want to pick up Anna.
A corridor before dinner, walking through a corridor to get to the restaurant. The gray one marched ahead. Photos lined the wall, black and white photos of people that all looked the same. Whispering from the other two echoed and grated against the tiled surfaces. Stiffly, you followed.
You smell bergamot.
And you give Anna a hug. She reaches for your neck to stay and shrieks when they take her. They carry her through the doorway and shove you back the other way. She cries and stretches toward you. You can’t reach her.
She’ll be safe. She’ll be safe. She’ll be safe.
Your heart ricochets off its cavity walls, sending wild blood. You can’t get enough air. You are trapped. Your throat aches from trying to scream through the fabric, the handkerchief. The chair won’t budge. Chilled and sweating and terrified, you wake up.
Still gasping for breath, no marks on your wrists, real tears. You clamber out of bed, walk down the hall to Anna’s room. You peer through the doorway. She’s not there. You run to her crib, tear wildly at the sheets, and slump back. She’s at her father’s tonight.
She’ll be safe, you think.
Shivering, you head to the liquor cabinet and reach for the brandy.