Dodes:

            "Hail Mary, full of grace…"

There were so many bodies, pressed tightly against one another.  There was no room to move, no room to speak, no room to breathe.  I was drowning in a sea of people.  Oh God, I couldn't move.  I wrapped my arms tightly around my stomach, trying to shrink and disappear.  I couldn't breathe!

"…The Lord is with thee…"

            I couldn't shake the feeling that I was stuck in a concentration camp of the twenty first century.  They told us we were just supposed to wait in here, but then all of a sudden the water sprinklers would open and methane gas would flood out and that would be the end of us all.

"…Blessed are thou amongst women…"

            There was the sound of soft sobbing from across the room.  It had continued on and off for several hours now.  A tiny figure crouched behind a row of folding chairs; a head of blonde curls buried in a pair of scraped-up knees.  She couldn't have been more than 11.  She couldn't have been more alone.  People tried to comfort her, I did too.  But the minute you got close you started feeling like you couldn't breathe.  She was cut off from everything good and safe by what she had become.  We all were.

"…And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…"

            Three more hours.  It was an episode of the Twilight zone, and I was stuck inside it.  Time would pass, hour after hour, day after day, but I would never leave.  That had to be it.  It didn't help to think like that, I knew.  A series of numbers was read off again.  The hulking figure next to me vacated his chair and there was a dash to fill it.  A young guy took his place.  He looked a little like my father, his smile tired, but reassuring.  He glanced down at my hands, gripping my grandma's rosary tightly.  I glanced up at his head.  He wore a Yakima place neatly in the center of his fine, black hair.  He muttered something under his breath that I didn't understand until he got to Amen.  I began to pray again and he echoed in Hebrew.

            "We need all the faith we can get," he explained. 

"…Holy Mary, Mother of God…"

            There was a scuffle across the room.  It was a man, rapidly speaking in Spanish and gesturing emphatically to the guard at the door.  They told us he wasn't a guard, but we all saw that he was packing.  We all knew why he was here.  The guard just shook his head and told the man to sit down.  Again the man began yelling, trying to make himself understood.  He charged for the door, trying to get around the guard.  There was a shout and flailing and a push for the door.  It was madness.  BANG!  A shot rang out.  A woman screamed and the floor tiles were dyed red, as the man fell to the floor, a bullet in his brain.   

            "He just wanted to get home to his son.  He said his child was home alone…" a young woman shrieked, her clothes flecked with splattered blood.  "He just wanted to get back to his son…"

"…Pry for us sinners now…"

            The stars had been replaced with fluorescent lights, set evenly along a blank, white sky-scape.  It was pushing midnight, and still I had not moved.  Most of us hadn't.  More and more came, fewer and fewer left.  The tears had long since dried on my cheeks, leaving salty patches.  The blonde child had run out of tears too.  She was passed out in a fetal ball, shoved into a corner.  Already she was learning to be strong.  She didn't even whimper when she was kicked in another scuffle.  Life lessons learned in a single day…

"…And at the hour of our death…"

The rosary beads slipped between my sweaty fingertips.  I had long since stopped praying aloud.  My lips were parched and my throat too dry.  The room spun as my eyelids dropped again.  The little girl was gone…the Mexican father was gone too…I would soon be gone…we all have to go eventually…The beads fell into my palm, and in my head, the prayer began again.  Then they came, the ones to take us away.  We all had a number…they collected the numbers…Dodes wasn't here, just 3641.

"3639, 3640, 3641…" they called.

"…Amen."

A/N: Short chappie, but be nice and hit that little purple review button anyways…