Prelude

Sometimes, I dream about you.

I dream that you’re there again, that I can see your smile, your face. That you exist and I didn’t just make you up. How could I have made you up? I doubt even my creative mind could come up with something so perfect, in the most imperfect sense of the word. But it doesn’t matter anymore. You’re gone, even if you were never here in the first place. And that’s something I can’t bear to think about. Actually, I can’t really handle either- you being gone, or you never existing. The latter doesn’t really make sense, at least to me. A light, shining so effortlessly, so brightly, so.. Ethereal in your intensity, having never existed? Impossible.

You became an essential part of my survival, and now, they tell me you never existed. These people dressed in white, looking like death, so desensitized from the organized chaos around them it’s hard to believe they’re really human. But of course they’re human, the most terrible, inhuman definition.

And the thing is, I’m not.

Being careless, I was caught, though I nearly escaped. This is where I reside now- white walls and bare, cramped spaces, devoid of the light you once gave me. Actually, I should say resided, because I’m escaping this place the hard way, since there’s too many of my kind here.

In a body bag. Right now, I’m being escorted down this long, endless white hallway, to the Happy Chamber, as the humans in white call it. Where the white lights envelope us, and take us away. My kind, we know better- we know exactly what awaits us when the collar around our necks light up. They’ve made another selection at random, to thin out our numbers, make sure this hell hole doesn’t go over capacity.

In a way, I’m kind of glad to be chosen. Living isn’t even worth it anymore, because the moment I was captured, they won. My survival was dependent on a roll of the dice. They controlled me, and honestly, I think I prefer death. I should have gone down fighting them, like you did, so my death stood for something.

We make a right turn, and the five guards shove me roughly into the chamber. I hit the ground, hard, the smooth white tile scraping at my pale skin, as the door behind me slams shut. I don’t even bother getting up, because I can hear the faint sound of poison gas trickling into the chamber, a sickly sweet smell that immediately seduces my mind. Waves and waves of fog, white fog, sticking to my consciousness until I can’t hold on anymore, even though I’m clinging desperately to the memory of you, your brightness, hoping that it can cut through this awful fog.

But, hard as I try, you slip away. And as soon as I let go, I follow after you, into the white unknown where somehow, I know you’re waiting for me.