Rain on the Rooftops

It rains here often. I can hear it sometimes, if all is quiet and still. It reminds me of something, a sad poem, maybe, but I can’t remember. I can’t remember much anymore. Not after what they did to me. It seems like it has been forever ago, but I asked the nurse and she said that it has only been a few months. It will be Heaven’s Day soon. The world came to an end that day, but Prime Minister D’Garn came and rebuilt it back up. They say that he is the Savior of Kinasa City and even all of Naise. But I don’t know if I agree with them. His smile frightens me.

I used to be somebody once. Somebody important; somebody with a name. I’m only a number now, or sometimes I am “girl,” depending on who is here. I asked the doctor once what my name was and he gave me a simpering smile. He is a cruel man; I can see it in his eyes. He doesn’t like me or the other people that are here. He thinks I don’t know that there are others here, but I hear things. I know things. Some of the other nurses and doctors aren’t like him. They sympathize with us as much as their job allows. I think they are good people, just people forced into bad places. A lot of the world is like that, I think.

I don’t see any of the world anymore. All that I know of it comes from the newspapers that the nurses bring in and read to me. The newspapers are always saying how great the Prime Minister and his friends are and how much good they have been doing. If they were really doing good, though, I don’t think that the newspapers would be telling us all that. We would be able to see the good, wouldn’t we? There aren’t any windows in this room. It gets hot and dark here sometimes, and I can’t see any of the Prime Minister’s good in the world.

The lights in my room are too bright. They hurt my eyes. People are always whispering about my eyes. I asked one of the nurses once and she showed me in a mirror why they whisper. My eyes are golden colored. I asked the nurse and she said that gold eyes are special. There are only a few people with gold eyes and they are all in this building. Sometimes I can hear them scream, the people with golden eyes. The sound wakes me up at night. I can feel their screams through the walls and floor. It makes me hurt for them. Sometimes, I scream with them too. Everyone with golden eyes screams here.

I hear lots of things at night, when everyone thinks I’m asleep. I hear people talking. They like to whisper secrets when they think they are safe. They talk about us here, and the Prime Minister, and the war. They talk about their medicines and who hurt the most that day. They like to hurt us, I think. Their hands are rough and hard. They like to beat us, too. I lay awake at night unable to go to sleep for the pain in my body. I tried to fight them once. They beat me to the ground and strapped me to the bed. Their hands hurt and touched worse than ever before that time. I didn’t try to fight them again.

When the doctors don’t talk, I can hear even more things. Sometimes I can hear the other people’s thoughts. I can walk in their dreams. I can’t walk in the doctors’ dreams, though. They keep me out and try to catch me. I’ve never been caught before. And when there are no dreams to walk through, and if I listen very hard, I can hear the rain. That’s what the nurse said it was. Rain. She said that it falls from the sky more during certain parts of the year more than others. She said that the rain on Heaven’s Day is supposed to clean the world of all of its sorrow, and pain, and hurt, and the people love it because it is lucky. I don’t think the rain is lucky at all. It is a sad rain. The rain makes me feel lonely and cold. I cry sometimes when I hear the rain.

I died in the rain once. That’s why I’m here. I died. Everyone else with gold eyes died also. They have dreams, too. That’s how I know that I died. I walk their dreams when I’m not in my own. They are always the same. Alone, frightened, and cold, we feel. I asked the nurse and she calls them nightmares. We all have nightmares here. They are always chasing me in my dreams. They want to hurt me. It is always dark there, too. Dark and cold. They always catch me and blind me with their light. When I wake up, I’m wet with sweat and the nurses have me strapped to my bed again and prick me with needles and syringes. They say I scream and fight when I am in my dreams. They all scream in their dreams, don’t they?

Heaven’s Day is soon. The nurse said that the Prime Minister would have a big surprise for all of us here on Heaven’s Day. I don’t think it is a good surprise. The doctor was smiling more and the nurse was thinking sad things. It makes me sad, too. Like when the rain falls. But I will be happy when I receive my gift, for on Heaven’s Day I will have a name. All the people with golden eyes will remember their names. And then they will kill us.

Once you remember your name here, you can never go back to your room. They take you out and you never come back. I walked in the dreams and thoughts of a person who remembered his name. Jas, I think it was. They took him to a small room in the bottom of the building and killed him. Twenty one bullets and a world of pain and agony. And then it stopped and I couldn’t dream with him anymore. I heard them take him out and put him in the truck to be sent away.

I remember it because the rain fell hardest that day. I fainted and the doctor had to be called in and his hard hands pressed a long needle into my arm. I didn’t tell them what I had seen because while I was walking in the boy’s dreams, he saw me there and smiled. And he whispered my name to me.

My name is Kalei Taleene Le’Kierre. I am sixteen and the Prime Minister is going to kill me again. Tomorrow is Heaven’s Day and tomorrow the rain will fall and I with it.