Recent nightmare

I’m observing a ball at the queens quarters and realise I’m not in 2022 anymore I’m looking at the strange red coats and yellow sashes and wondering which era I am in, trying to memorise the guard coats and fancy dresses. I’m so taken by the yellow sashes and I notice the guard is actually stepping down from a stage.

The stage opens up into full view with cancan dancers dressed as daffodils; all in bright yellow with strangely painted faces. Surrounded by raucous laughter, they parade themselves for the others who are wearing ball gowns and evening suits.

Now I’m observing a woman being dragged from the hall, feet scraping across the wooden floor and braided hair messy, she is thrown outside into a dirty puddle and called a whore. She is wearing a white underdress and looks stricken with fear. No one else seemed to pay any attention to her.

Two burly women come out from a nearby wooden dwelling, lit by torch light, crossing the muddy street and grab her arms, she’s screaming, they tell her she will never have a baby again.

(Graphic content warning)

The woman is pinned screaming to a stone table in a small room and one of the other women pushes her forearm inside of her, grabbing and twisting, blood is pouring from the table and the woman in white faints. Red spreading across the mid and lower section of her white yet muddy garment.

The two aggressors, knowing they have done their job, throw her back out into the puddle and the rain water mixes with blood as she lays there unconscious. I see her face and the red blood mixing with the brown water.

I wake up panicked. I daren’t go back to sleep because what I just witnessed was so horrific and real. I’m scared if I sleep I will have to see it all again. I stay awake thinking about the poor woman in the bloody puddle and if she survived.

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