I can't imagine where they will take me, trying to think of where I am going to end up tonight sends chill down my entire body, which is covered and conserved by this self confining red dress. Never again will I see red the same, scarred and hidden it has made me and I hate with all of my heart. My heart bleeds its color, almost connecting the two in one, like my heart agrees but my mind screams no. I hear them, coming up the stairs. Their feet matching the beat of my heart, thumping so loud I fear they can hear it. It makes them laugh, thinking of me being so afraid and helpless, it gives them power. I can sense their hand on the door knob, they know the slower they are the more I anticipate, the more the fear grows, the more control they have over me. The door begins to open, I shudder and can hear myself screaming in my head, but as the door widens a face so known is revealed. Luke. So frozen I can not move, can not bring myself to breathe or blink, just stare like it's all just an illusion. A defense mechanism my mind is using to shield me from the truth of my death sentence.

His mouth moves to speak but I hear no sound. As he walks across the room to where I sit, in the window seal on my pillow, that reads faith. Faith seems out of reach, so far away, yet it is walking towards me. No, not faith, but freedom, freedom is in Luke's eyes, freedom is in Luke's embrace. Freedom is in Luke's hand, which is now reaching out to me, begging for my foreign fingers to intertwine with his. I reach my hand out with no intentions of doing so, but as I out stretch my arm to meet our hands, I can hear him. I can hear Luke saying my name. My eyes shoot to his lips, and matches what my ears are telling me. It's him, it's my name he speaks! No not Offred, she is no longer I, my name has been shot back into me like morphine, Luke has given it life unto me in which I can not bear to sit with any longer. I jump out of my seat and start to scream, the release of my voice is followed by everything I have had locked inside of me, inside of that red dress. This red dress. I stare at my dress screaming, just standing, staring, screaming. I rip it off, shredding the red onto my floor and off of my body. Luke begins to help me, his hands tearing at the fabrics, freeing me of it's chains.

As I stand there in my underwear, I feel the rush of laughter coming up my body, rushing through my throat and bursting out of my mouth. I fall over in laughter, freeing laughter, and lying next to me is Luke. Laughing, tears rolling down our faces, I can feel the reality coming to. My body jolts itself up as I realize what has just happened. Luke stands up slowly, staring at me. “We need to go, before they find you, and me, and my dress scattered along the floor! Where are the eyes? Where is the commander? And Serena Joy?” With all of these questions soaring out of my mouth, it all stops. My daughter. If Luke is still alive and standing here with me, where is she?

Before I could think or say another word Luke had my hand in his, pulling me across my room and towards the staircase. I tear myself free and run as fast as I can down the stairs, and through the front door. I fall to the ground as I get outside and scream once again. Luke comes up behind me and pulls me up by my arms. “Come on now we have to leave!” I follow him with my eyes, my body standing still. The van. The black van, with the eye of the side, how does he have this? He's one of them, he has betrayed me! Luke has filled my head with all of this joy just to rip it out of my heart with his hands that have been leading me to this black van!

No. Stop it. Follow him, it is Luke for Christ's sake you know he would never do anything to harm you now get in that van! As I talk to myself I feel something coming up behind me. As my instincts turn my body around I see them. The eyes are running toward me, and I hurl myself toward the van where Luke is waiting for me, to take me away from them. To take me from this house, to take me from Gilead, to take me to my daughter, or so I pray.

The sound of the van's tires squealing against the smooth gray driveway makes my heart race even faster than before, and I feel myself start to sweat. As the sweat drips down my face, I can see Gilead disappearing in the side view mirror. I close my eyes and run my fingers along the controls on the door, and order them all down with my hand. As all of the windows roll down, the wind starts to dry the sweat off of my head, and the lights of Gilead begin to fade, I look at Luke. I can't believe what had just happened, and how quickly it did. How Luke showed up in the doorway, how I ripped my dress to shreds, how I sit in this van that belongs to Gilead and all it entails, with Luke. In my underwear and my hair blowing around in the cool night wind rushing in from against the moving car, Luke looks at me, smiles, and looks into the review mirror and laughs. At Gilead I thought this laugh was directed toward, mocking it for all it is and contains, but I hear something laughing back. Someone. A small giggle, and then a touch on the shoulder comes from behind me, and I can not hold it back any longer. I explode in tears, almost hyperventilating I can feel two others joining me, in parading the bulbs of pain and abandonment out of our beings. I look back and see her, and all of her beauty. My heart feels as if it begins to beat again, as if it has not beat for years. Her embrace fills me again, with a life I thought was long destroyed, and her eyes looking into mine is the light I've been longing to see. Down with Gilead, long live the Mayday resistance, and forever will we fight.