Читать книгу dancergirl - Carol Tanzman M. - Страница 14

Chapter 7

My heart races. Breathing is quick, shallow. Adrenaline courses through my body—but not the good kind of performance adrenaline. It’s the get-out-of-here-quick kind. Fight or flight, the bio book called it.

But there’s no one to flee from and nobody to fight. Unless you count the ratty stuffed animals I share the bed with.

Why am I having nightmares? Even spookier is that I can’t always remember what’s in them. All I know is that suddenly I’m wide-awake, practically screaming because someone stares at me. Like I’m a jellyfish in the Coney Island Aquarium. Or one of Los Desaparecidos, The Disappearing Ones, in the Spanish III documentary on Argentina.

There was this part about torture that’s hard to forget. The police used electric prods and then buckets of water to fake-drown the prisoners. Sometimes they kept the lights on 24/7. Watched the captives constantly, waking them up whenever they fell asleep.

When we saw the film, the lights-on thing hadn’t seemed so bad. At least not compared to other kinds of torture. Now I’m not so sure.…

Being stared at 24/7? Oh, yeah, that would drive me nuts. I’d tell anyone anything just to get them to leave me alone.