Shattered Dreams is a memorable story about the pains, fears, and dreams of the homeless…It portrays the human side of the mentally ill homeless who finds the streets their home.
Excerpt:
The sounds were driving Mercy deeper into her mind, forcing her against her will toward the other Dominion. She pulled tighter into herself, curling her head toward her knees until her neck muscles ached in protest and her lips kissed the soft dirt she knelt upon. She began to rock back and forth, trying to latch into a rhythmic cadence that would help quiet her racing mind’s chaos of predatory voices.
But to succeed, she knew that first she had to block out the all-too-real sounds that were driving her into the playing field of the Controllers. She grasped her hands even harder over her ears to forbid entrance to the hideous noises. She would have screamed, but the last strands of sanity warned her against it. Instead, she pressed her face farther into the ground until her mouth filled with dirt, effectively shutting herself up.
The Controllers had been here before. Mercy knew that they knew how to frighten her into crossing over into their Dominion. But they would rather she come over on her own free will, for if she did so, their hold on her would be complete. Free will worked that way. Their seduction today was a way of offering Mercy refuge from the cruelties of the sane world, release from the human condition. Tonight they had all the help they needed. All they had to do was force the particularly inhumane sound of human flesh and bone being brutalized past her feeble defenses. Then she would be theirs to ravage and terrorize as only the mentally ill can be.
Mercy cringed and whimpered softly into the earth when the sounds intensified exponentially within the confines of her skull. The horrifying noises rose to a crescendo of unbearable pain, nudging her closer to the Dominion. The harder she pressed her hands over her ears, the louder the sounds became. The moans and groans clawed past her desperate hands to invade and rape an already tottering mind reeling from the onslaught to human dignity, to decency, and to life itself.
The Controllers were too powerful. They wanted Mercy with her defenses shattered beyond repair. They forced her to stay in the here and now. Her reeling, wounded mind was forbidden escape. The painful cries of her friend and protector were simply too much for her to ignore.
This is all your fault, the Controllers screamed.
“No,” she whimpered. “Maybe.” She knew the Controllers were playing her. But perhaps they were right. And if they were—could she live with that? Fortunately, her reply could only be heard by herself and them.
Mercy may have been mentally ill, but she was nobody’s fool. She knew what the Controllers wanted. To destroy her sanctuary so thoroughly that she would never be able to climb back to sanity. To force her so far down into the Dominion that when they locked her up—and she knew that they would—she would stay locked up forever.
Mercy dropped her hands from her ears when she felt the first drop of what she thought was intermittent rain. Somehow she found the courage to lift her face from the dirt and steal a quick glance skywards. She trembled when instead of rain clouds, diamond-stars twinkled back at her. Her gaze drew down in confusion. Where had the drops of water come from? Had she hallucinated them? She tentatively reached out to the leaves of the bush she was hiding behind when, again, she heard the spatter of rain.
The darkness, having robbed her of sight, forced her to rub the mysterious substance that she found on the leaves between her fingers. Mercy recoiled in horror and revulsion from her own hand as if it presented a threat to her. She tore at it, desperate to rid herself of the offending liquid. It was too thick and warm for it to be anything other than the blood of her friend who lay mere feet away on the other side of the bush.
Mercy’s wounded mind was assaulted further, and she was pushed closer to the Dominion when she inhaled the sweet, sickening smell of blood. Her stomach rolled with nausea. Fighting through the sickness, she carefully moved the branches aside and peered through the bush.
Yes! Look what you’ve done! Look!
This is because of you!
You!
Copyright 2008 Ken Williams. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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