I dreamed about my dear sister. My older sister, the one who advised me on cooking and sewing. The sister who was as graceful as a swan, peaceful as a summer rain. She was dancing in a field of flowers, smiling and laughing. She called to me, and I ran, forgetting my hunger, my pain. But the dream turned dark and frightening as swiftly as the sickness caught our city. As I took her hand, she paled. Her skin tired papery and gray. Her bright blue eyes were sunken and dull,dead. She sank to the ground, screaming at me. It is all your fault! All yours! Her skin started to fade, Lizzie's full lips were dry as she lay in the now dead flower field. "Lizzie!" I shouted hysterically. Suddenly Lizzie's face changed to Ma's, a dead blank stare drilled into me, sending chills down my back. Then, Ma's body began to crumble. Her hand became a skeleton's and I screamed, as her whole body, her whole soul, was devoured by the demon of death. The skeleton smiled at me, bones wet with the rain that had suddenly crept up, but the rain became my tears as I woke with a jolt, crying with the renewed reality of the death of my parents and sister.

My whole self was shaking as I sat upright in my gray bed, in my dank bedroom. I sobbed, big fat tears rolled down my cheeks and I could almost hear Ma telling me it was only a nightmare. But it wasn't a nightmare. I had seen my sister, Ma and Pa leave from life, their bodies taken away from me because they had the sickness. The illness. The epidemic.I rocked back to sleep, into a rocky, restless night full of demons and black splotches and angry ghosts plotting the revenge of their murder.