"Haitian Havoc" - 01/08/2007

"Haitian Havoc"

01/08/2007

Dream #3

I was on some mountainous, island paradise, though I'm not really certain whether I was villager or visitor. I think I was the latter, because I didn’t know much about the land until someone told me about its history. This village was on the top of a particular cliff; a flat, circular area, surrounded at the outer-edge of the hilltop by large trees and hidden from nearly all other points on the island, below, it seemed. Most of us were outside and there were a bunch of children just running around and playing, having a good time. Off to one side of the village grounds, there was a large, stone building whose roof was held up by stone pillars that seemed more fitting for a museum, than a structure built way out in some remote village in the tropics.

I don’t know how this bad blood was born, but our village apparently had a long-running conflict with a large community of Haitians that lived across a small body of water which sat a mile or two away from the bottom of our cliff. (Though I don't know that the area we were in was, specifically, Haiti, I just knew that the group on the other island was known as 'the Haitians'.) We could look down over the water, and their area, but they could not look up and see our village from below, mostly because of our altitude and the fact that we were surrounded by trees, on all sides.

I don’t remember what provoked them, but somehow a long-range firefight broke out between us and them. Most of the people in our village lived in fear of the Haitians because they had superior forces and armament, but - for some reason - I think it was our side, who had intially started the trouble with them. Whatever the case, our villagers were now shooting down through the trees, off of the cliff, and raining bullets down upon the Haitian’s territory. In turn, there were a lot of bullets coming up in our direction, from down there. The women and children around us were screaming; bystanders telling everyone to hide because the Haitians would soon be coming up here and looking for blood. Everyone scattered. All of the men took up posts in the trees, as hidden away from the open circle of the inner-village as possible. Bullets were riveting into the branches of the trees all around me as the Haitians continued firing from the distant land mass, far below. I saw one of our men - whom had been shooting back at them - get sprayed with bullets, a few feet away from me. He immediately went down; tumbling, like rag doll, from the branches which once held him.

A short while after the firing stopped, I looked out over the center of the village and saw a large group of men approaching with guns. Of course, I didn’t have a gun, myself. My heart started pounding and anxiety was like a bear hug around my chest. I could hardly breathe. Still in a tree, I was in a twisted position, trying my best to lay flat with a large branch covering most of my body so that I was partially hidden from view, staring down through the leaves at these men. They quickly corralled a few of our villagers and were making 'demands' that we were supposed to meet, so that they wouldn’t come back and lay waste to all of 'our' village's women and children. They then began destroying some of our tools and weapons, to drive home their point. One of the men slowly turned in my direction and squinted through the trees, directly at me. Immediately, he swung the barrel of his rifle at me and demanded that I come out of hiding. Reluctantly, I climbed down and walked over to him, completely unprepared for whatever fate lay ahead of me.

Once I came within arm's reach, the armed man grabbed me by my neck and spun me around, shoving his gun barrel against my back. I was then herded toward the building at gunpoint, and I could hear a frightful reaction from some of our other villages as they watched me get escorted off. I had a feeling I was about to be executed. For some reason, this man pushed me into the building where most of the women and all of the children were. Surprisingly enough, this room looked like a somewhat modern, yet impoverished, school. The children stared at us, wide-eyed, watching the man push me up against a table. He was about to make an example out of me and kill me in front of all of these children.

Even though my stomach was against the table, the man shoved his gun harder into my back, pushing me forward. The table slid for a moment but then got caught on something. The man kept on pushing, as if he was literally trying to push the gun barrel into my back, like a knife. He pushed so hard that the force of my body actually split the heavy wooden table in half and fell forward, through it, crashing against the next table down the row. He did the same thing again, driving the gun barrel into my back hard enough to press me through the table, splintering this one as well. The only thing in front of me now was the wall. With my chest forced against side of the room, I felt the gun against my back again. He started to push and he kept on pushing, really putting all of his body weight into this dime-sized point in my back. Talk about pain. I think he was seriously trying to impale me with the gun barrel. The pressure was squeezing me up against the wall, my back arching against the torturous sensation. I didn’t know what to do because fear of being shot in the back kept me paralyzed. The harder he pushed, the worse the pain got until, finally, it became unbearable. A low groan from my mouth escalated into a loud, agonizing yell. Just as I felt the gun was about to penetrate into my lower back, I woke up. The once-excruciating pain faded away as quickly as my eyes had opened.