Earlier this week, I myself experienced the most frightening dreams. So unsettling in fact that it's taken me this long to gather my thoughts together and discuss them. But I know that it is better to let something painful out into the open than to hold it in, and so I'll do my best to share them with you.
These dreams took place during World War II, but were quite vivid. Strangely coherent, for a dream.
It started in Lithuania, in my family's home. Very similar, actually, to where I grew up before we moved to France. My sister Mischa and I were very young, perhaps three and eight years old, respectively. Because of the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, we were forced to run and hide in the countryside, in a home we had there.
Things were fine for a while, and we thought we'd escaped the worst of it. Until my parents died in an attack on a nearby platoon, leaving my sister and I orphaned.
We survived a few days by ourselves in our half demolished house, until they came. Militiamen, on the lookout for any loot that might have been left behind.
And they --
God I can barely bring myself to think about it, much less to type it. But I can't keep it in my head, it has to come out somehow. Perhaps talking about it will bring me some peace.
They killed Mischa. My Mischa, my beautiful little sister. And they used her for food.