May 27, 2006

(Note - I haven't gone through and fine-tuned anything in this. It is the same as I originally typed it - quickly and without concern for proper sentence structure - because at the time I was just trying to get it written down. I may play with it at some point, as there is a lot of detail I could go back in and add. Yes, as I re-read it, I do remember the dream well. :) )


A young Indian man has been murdered. His father and brother have given him an honored burial in the town cemetery, but due to the people who live in the town, his remains are disinterred, and they are told he cannot be buried there. They return in the middle of the night to return him to his rightful resting-place, only to be interrupted by the sheriff. A young woman happens to be in the cemetery as well, visiting deceased relatives nearby, since she couldn’t attend the funerals (better late than never to pay respects). The young Indian’s burial is hastily completed and his father has just enough time to give a hurried explanation (he was murdered, but everyone thinks it was drug related, which is why they don’t want him there) before taking off – don’t want to tangle with the sheriff.

Sheriff comes up and is furious, insists that the burial be undone once again. Young woman is quietly sitting by the grave, refuses to move from in front of it. Grabs onto sheriff and tells him she can give him the truth of what happened, and goes into a trance-like state where she sees where he had been when he was killed. Get promise from sheriff for 1 week to prove that his death was honorable before he will be disinterred again. Leaves for the city.

She meets up with a young man with a nose for finding people who don’t want to be found and knowing how to deal with the situation. They check into a rat-infested building – actually the same one where the Indian man had been murdered, even into the same room. She is getting ready for them to go out for the first night of searching for info and is startled to see an Indian in the kitchen. Her young man thinks she’s gone off the deep end, there’s only the two of them there. It’s actually the ghost of the murdered man, and he’s confused, hurt, angry and has lost hope that he will ever be able to remain at rest. She reaches out to him and he notices that she can see him, can hear him. With his help, she sees the series of events leading to his death, including the man who killed him – known as “The River Rat”.

He had just come to the city, planning to work with disadvantaged and abused children. He was working on getting grants and help to start a refuge for them, a place to go when their parents weren’t around, or, maybe for when their parents were around. He took the crappy little hotel room to save $$ for a while. He’d been making connections and getting other people interested in helping him for about 3 weeks, and was on his cell phone to his father when an obviously drugged out, scrawny, scraggly red haired man with bad teeth had broken the worthless lock on his door and demanded all his valuables – especially the phone. He asked to finish his call to his father, was told fuck no, hand it over now. Told his father he loved him as the crook slammed a 6” blade through his heart.

She watched as the Rat stepped into the pooling blood with his super pointy toed shoes (with very distinct tread), quickly ransacked the apartment, and went through the door to meet up with his associates.

She convinced her friend to follow her, as she was certain she knew where to find the crooks and all the stolen property.

They end up going to the seediest part of the city, down a nasty alleyway, and into an old multi-story rest home (no stairs, just ramps leading from floor to floor, rooms with no doors on both sides full of stuff). They run into a problem – someone being jumped by a number of other people. Since she has been trained to 3rd Black-Belt/Dan level, and her partner was almost to 1st Dan level, they jumped in to help the attacked person. Quickly made work of the attackers, and helped the woman underneath. She was quickly fooled into thinking that they had been recruited for the gang, and wanted to show them around. Took them up a couple levels – gathering a following of the rest of the crew as they went – and they started noticing that every room was full of stuff. Clothes, TV’s, radios, computers, phones, you name it. And each room had a stack of cards with names written on them. Were told that each room was inventoried according to who the items were stolen from. Asked for permission to look over the phones, they’d been needing one that couldn’t be traced back to them, and knew how to get it reprogrammed in case it had some sort of tracking device associated with it. Female crook told them sure; they started hunting through the cell phones. She quickly finds a card with the young Indian’s name on it, and locates the phone. As they pick it up, the Rat shows up and threatens to ruin everything. The crook they helped gets involved in a heated discussion, and one of the other members of the crew grabs hold of the woman – who promptly bites him and throws him. She spits, then comments that she doesn’t like to be touched without permission, and that guy certainly didn’t have it. The Rat likes what he sees, and welcomes them to the crew. Starts giving them the grand tour, bragging about how everything had been stolen, and how some of the people the items were taken from ended up in the hospital or worse. Nobody realized the woman had kept a small recording device on her, and she had all the info, including the Rat’s laughing confession to killing the “stupid Indian”. She asks the Rat if they should move out of the place that they’re staying, maybe he has someplace better for them since they’re part of the group. He says, “you bet, go get your gear and come back”. They go, and come back with a number of law-enforcement people (who are smart enough to follow in such a way they actually aren’t seen). Before the cops break in and capture everyone, she gets the Rat to acknowledge that had he had a place to go (like the refuge that the young Indian was working on establishing), he might have had hope for a better future. “But what the fuck. Who needs hope for something tomorrow, when I’ve got a knife to get me what I want today.”

Cops break in, catch the crooks.

She goes back to the sheriff with proof of what happened, including why the young Indian man had gone to the city in the first place – not drug related in the way he and the community had been thinking. The Indian man’s family is extended a very very heartfelt apology by the community, is given a “proper” burial, with an new headstone engraved:

Here lies an honorable man.
“A man has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.”
In being honorable, he gave his life while trying to improve the lives of children.

The community, realizing what he had been trying to do, establishes a fund to help make his dream of Refuge House a reality. Because nothing is worse than having a young person grow up to do violence because they have no hope.