The Dream

This morning started like all the others. Tori got up and began to dream of the world she heard stories of growing up. The stories her mother would tell her each day she placed a heart shaped locket around her neck. The locket had an inscription of numbers around the inside edge. Tori's mother would never tell her what they meant. As time passed, Tori would go walking through the tunnels where they have lived for so many years. She explored miles of tunnels that seemed to go nowhere.

One day while walking through the tunnels, Tori found what appeared to be a crack in the wall. Being the great explorer she was she decided she would bring a pick with her on the next trip down the tunnels. She wandered if that might be the way out. After several days of picking at the wall she was able to create a hole she was able to see through. She could see through and it appeared to be another tunnel. After several days of digging, she was able to climb through. The tunnel was very dark. She noticed that the tunnel seemed to go up at an incline and began to get very slippery. As the days passed Tori dreamed of where the tunnel might lead to.

She thought it could be a passage to another colony or maybe to one of the underground trains she heard about in her mother’s stories. She didn’t go back to the tunnel for several days as her mother’s health was declining rapidly. One day while sitting by the bed, her mother began to ramble about how Tori's father just ran off. He said he found a way out and tried to get the community to follow him. The community held their ground and would not follow him. When Tori heard this, she wandered if her father closed the tunnel off because he was angry with the community.

After her mother’s passing, Tori grabbed everything she could carry and headed down the tunnel again. She walked for more than a day when came upon a locked door. That was the end. She sat by the door and began to sob. The sobbing became tears. She pulled the heart shaped locket out of her pocket to look at the picture again. She dreamed of finding her father and asking him why he left. Why would he just leave and not fight for her and for her mother? Why would he not fight against the community? The photo then began to fade.

The paper started showing a pattern of some kind. She looked closer and figured out that it was actually a map. The map seemed to follow the same path that she took to get to the door. But something was different. There was, what appeared to be a turn in the tunnel that the one she took didn’t have. The paper curled and exposed an etching in the case. It looked like, maybe, could it be. It was a circle with a heart in the middle of it next to, maybe a door. She got up and started looking around the door. There was nothing there. Why would he put that in the locket if it didn’t exist.

She looked and looked and could not find it. She was so upset that she through the locket against the wall and it flew past her. A little while later, she tried to find the locket back. She saw the chain under the rock wall. She pulled it and when she stood up, there it was. It is circle with a heart in the middle of it. It looked like the same size as the locket, so she placed it in the hole. Nothing, nothing happened! She screamed and hit the wall. All of a sudden, there was a noise; she could not make out what the noise was. She waited and waited and nothing. She yanked the locket from the wall and that is when she noticed the door was cracked open.

She opened the door slowly. She looked through and saw a light like she had never seen before. It was hard to see, the light was so bright. She moved slowly up the tunnel. The closer she got to the top, the brighter it got. There was something about the air too. It smelled different. There were so many thoughts running through her head. Would she find her father? Would she just die because the environment, wherever she is, would kill her? There’s an opening! What is that?

She found herself in a room. She sees a door. She goes to the door to find it is locked. What was that? There was a noise behind her. She is afraid to look. Then something touched her shoulder. She began to tear up, thinking this was it. She was going to be killed. She turned around and there was a man that she recognized. It was her father standing right there in front of her. Then there was a great explosion and she fell to the floor. When she fell she hit her head.

When she opened her eyes, she was back in the bunker with her mother. It was a dream. She was holding the heart shaped locket in her hand. She hoped that someday this dream would become reality. She hoped that maybe her mother could be there too.