TDM 003: Art is Never Finished, Only Abandoned

[rookshire_hill]

[Welcome to the TDM! This month is a short one, but feel free to do with it as you please. As it is a dream, all powers are turned off.]


They were familiar. Family, or as close to it as one could think of. A position of power, someone to be trusted, to be leaned on, to be loved. More than that, it was supposed to be a fun trip. An outing for restful things and to put aside the hustle and bustle of the world crowding closer and closer. A drive to the middle of nowhere, music playing and the sound of happy chatting overlaying it.

Or maybe singing.

Or how about laughter.

Gates ahead, huge wooden things set in a brick wall that kept prying eyes from inside. Past them, and all sense of familiar is gone. Left behind like lost baggage at the edge of everything that was known. Along side it was the gaiety at had been enjoyed up until the moment of crossing. No more chatting. No more singing. No more laughter. Instead, those who had been so familiar and open turned cold and silent, saying nothing even as the vehicle rolled up the winding lane.

Another fence, this one chain link and barbed wire, the double gate system meant to be traveled on foot instead and the heavy steel slammed shut behind with a jaw clenching finality. Up the short cracked path into a building that had once looked comforting but now only looked cold and once inside....it was a matter of a few short, clipped words and an exchange of signatures between the familiar and the faceless....and then they were walking away.

Familiar. Family. Comfort and happiness and joy and....silence. Nothing from them on their way back through the door that would take them back out to the sunlight, hands keeping you from giving chase no matter how hard the struggle. Impossibly strong

-or perhaps inhumanly-

and before the silhouette of safety was gone from the doorway, those hands dragged backwards. Past doors that moved sideways, down halls and hard luminescent lights, all of it blurring together until, finally, movement stopped and there was a room. A room with cold concrete walls and a hard concrete floor, and a dozen or so faces all as stricken and unsure as your own facing you.

You'd been left. And so had they.