Somebody’s Daughter
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Dreams and Premonitions
By Susan Allen Panzica

You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.
~William Wilberforce

I woke up with my heart pounding. The screaming in my ears was my own. As my eyes adjusted to the 3 a.m. darkness, it dawned on me that it was just a dream. No, it was a nightmare.

In my nightmare, my daughter, who was studying in Australia at the time, was abducted and sold into slavery. I remember every agonizing detail of the dream, from the faded floral pattern of the peeling wallpaper in the stairwell where they grabbed her to the dread in her eyes, the terror in my heart, and my panic that it would take me twenty-four hours to reach Australia, way too long to start the search for her. (Keep reading)