Dreams of America (a fictitious story by David Charles Kramer)
Dreams of America
Gnorrth was at war with itself.
The North said it was fighting to end slavery.
The South said it was fighting to preserve order.
Black fought black.
Each side claimed righteousness.
Between them, the camps multiplied.
No one in the camp argued about politics anymore.
War was something that happened far away.
Suffering was not.
They had been taken from another country no one named anymore.
Only the crossing remained.
The ships had no space for dignity. Only bodies. Chains. Breath shared between too many lungs. No separation from sickness. No sense of time.
Some people died.
Some people wished they had.
Everyone arrived.
“Move, bigot.”
The word replaced their names.
It wasn’t shouted often.
It didn’t need to be.
It settled into the bones.
Elias worked where the ground never seemed to change.
Dirt became stone.
Stone became dust.
Dust became mud.
And then it started again.
Beside him was Jonah, who whispered pieces of memory like someone afraid of disappearing.
“You are more than what they call you,” Jonah said.
Elias didn’t answer.
He had begun to suspect that what they were… might matter more than what they had been.
Caleb watched everything.
He counted guards.
Measured distances.
Timed movements.
“There’s always a weakness,” he said. “Every system breaks.”
Samuel believed in something else.
America.
“I saw the boat,” Samuel would say at night.
The others let him speak.
“They were taking people somewhere else. Not here. Not the camps.”
He always paused.
“I didn’t get on.”
No one judged him.
That was worse.
“I thought it was a trick,” he said. “I thought… it couldn’t be real.”
Now it haunted him.
Not the ship.
The moment.
“That was America,” he would whisper. “I know it.”
America had become something dangerous in the camp.
Not just hope.
Obsession.
They said in America, no one was owned.
They said some who were taken there forgot they had ever been slaves.
Forgot the ships.
Forgot the camps.
Forgot everything.
Some said that sounded like freedom.
Others said it sounded like erasure.
Mara said nothing.
Mara was one of the lowest.
Mormon, some said.
Jehovah’s Witness, said others.
It didn’t matter.
“They blaspheme the Holy Spirit,” the overseers said.
“They are beyond forgiveness.”
The other slaves avoided her.
Not always out of cruelty.
Out of fear.
She prayed anyway.
Not loudly.
Not visibly.
But constantly.
Elias didn’t understand her.
Not yet.
Daniel had understood something too late.
He spoke back once.
Only once.
They brought him to a tree.
They did not kill him.
They let him remain.
Balanced on his toes.
Held between breath and silence.
People worked around him.
The camp continued.
The world did not stop.
Elias looked once.
Daniel looked back.
Not pleading.
Knowing.
After that, Daniel never raised his voice again.
Thomas ran.
Thomas believed in America more than Samuel.
More than anyone.
“I’d rather die moving,” he said.
They brought him back.
After that, he still lived.
But he no longer walked.
They gave him work that required hands.
Not legs.
No one asked questions.
The camp didn’t need explanations.
Above them all, Adolf Jackson watched from paper.
His face appeared on boards near the guards.
Smiling.
Measured.
Controlled.
“I never wanted to be king,” the words beneath his image said.
“I am only your president.”
Yet every order came in his name.
Every tightening of the system.
Every expansion of the camps.
“I did not choose power,” one paper read.
“It was given to me for the sake of order.”
Jonah once whispered:
“A man who refuses the crown but gives commands still rules like a king.”
Then the rumor came.
Z is coming.
It moved quietly at first.
Then it spread.
“He’s coming to shut this down.”
“He’s coming to judge the camps.”
“He’s coming because Adolf Jackson went too far.”
Hope changed the camp.
That was the first sign something was wrong.
People stood straighter.
Spoke louder.
Looked toward the gates.
Samuel smiled for the first time in months.
“I told you,” he said. “This is it.”
But not everyone believed.
“Where was Z before?” someone whispered.
“He put us here.”
“He left us here.”
“He’s the reason this is happening.”
Z became something unstable.
Savior.
Enemy.
Judge.
Lie.
The Bible passed again through the camp.
Torn.
Incomplete.
Unavoidable.
One line followed the rumor like a shadow:
“All sins will be forgiven… but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.”
People stopped reading after that line.
Caleb saw opportunity.
“If Z is coming, the system will shift,” he said. “This is when we move.”
Some followed him.
Elias did not.
Samuel almost did.
Then stayed.
Mara never moved.
They left at night.
By morning…
they were back.
Again.
No chains dragged them in.
No spectacle.
Just… returned.
As if the darkness had refused to keep them.
Caleb sat on the ground.
“We killed it,” he whispered.
No one responded.
“We killed it again.”
He looked up slowly.
“Why does it keep coming back?”
That was when it began.
Not outside.
Inside.
The haunting.
No shapes.
No figures.
No sounds.
Just presence.
A pressure behind the eyes.
A weight in the chest.
A knowing that would not leave.
Those who resisted it suffered most.
They couldn’t sleep.
Couldn’t think.
Couldn’t escape themselves.
They spoke to no one.
Apologized to nothing.
Argued with something unseen.
Jonah dropped his shovel.
“I said I was sorry,” he whispered.
“I said it…”
No one had touched him.
But something had reached him.
“They’re being haunted,” someone said.
Not by ghosts.
By what they rejected.
The Holy Spirit.
Still there.
Still returning.
Still… not leaving.
And the more they resisted—
the closer it felt.
The rumor of Z grew louder.
Until one morning…
everything stopped.
No work.
No orders.
Even the overseers seemed unsure.
This is it, Samuel thought.
Everyone waited.
For Z.
For rescue.
For judgment.
For something.
Nothing came.
No voice.
No figure.
No gates opening.
Only silence.
And the presence.
Closer now.
Unavoidable.
That night, Samuel broke.
“I missed the boat,” he said.
“I missed America.”
He looked at Elias.
“I missed everything.”
Mara finally spoke.
“What if America isn’t a place?”
Samuel shook his head.
“Then what is it?”
She answered simply:
“Forgiveness.”
The word settled into the camp like something alive.
Elias felt it.
Because if she was right—
Then the prison wasn’t the camp.
It was what followed them.
What watched them.
What they had tried to destroy.
The next morning—
Mara was gone.
No struggle.
No marks.
No sound.
Just absence.
The place where she had stood felt… different.
Lighter.
Samuel stepped forward slowly.
“She got out,” he said.
Jonah shook his head.
“No,” he whispered.
“She didn’t escape.”
Elias felt it then.
The presence was still there.
But it was not the same.
It was no longer pressing.
No longer accusing.
It was waiting.
And for the first time—
it did not feel like something hunting them.
It felt like something they had been running from.
Elias looked toward the gate.
For the first time—
he did not want to run.
Because the question was no longer:
Where can we go?
But:
What happens when we stop resisting what is already here?
And somewhere beyond the war,
beyond Adolf Jackson,
beyond the camps—
America remained.
Not just a place.
A possibility.
And the only ones who ever reached it…
were the ones who stopped running first.
End
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