Wake up
by [ Hyper Nerds Eat Cookies ]
by [ Hyper Nerds Eat Cookies ]
I kicked, punched, swatted, and screamed, but my feet hit nothing, my fists hit nothing, and no one heard me. No matter how hard I struggled, I still hovered in total darkness, sensing nothing and feeling nothing. Hours and hours of struggles have gotten me nowhere. I still hang, suspended by air and surrounded by darkness. Complete darkness, without a single light. My head begins to droop and my body feels like a block of lead. I’m tired, my life almost wasted away. But I do not sleep. I do not dream in fear of returning to the place I least want to be.
Oh how I wish I never learned the truth! How I wish I had never died! But what if I didn’t die? What if I hadn’t been kidnapped? What if I wasn’t murdered? Confusion is all around me, many questions and no explanations. My arms stay limp by my sides, too weak to lift, to reassure myself that I still exist. If I hadn’t learned the frightening truth, would I still be alive? Would I be back in that world, or did I ever leave it? There is only one way to find out.
I close my eyes, trying to remember what a dream is like. My mind draws a blank. My memory is slowly slipping away. I don’t even remember my first name, or how old I was. In all this darkness, I can’t even figure out whether I am a girl or boy, and I can hardly remember how to tell the difference. Everything is blank, and my brain joins my body in the numbness. I shut my eyes together tightly, hoping for dreams to flood me, refill my memories. Nothing comes. I open my eyes again, or at least I think I do. It’s so hard to tell now, being trapped in this empty state for who knows how long. My eyes fall upon the most peculiar thing. Made even stranger by the fact that for all this time it was impossible to see anything. A small beam of light enters the room, a dark shadow concealing most of the light. I shield my eyes. Being exposed to something new is too much on my sight, enough that instinct told me I could be blinded.
There is a small click that echoes around the space as a dozen lights begin to glow. What was this called again? My gut told me there were two words in its name, but I could only think of one: light. What was the other? My eyes are squeezed shut, slowly adjusting to the sudden light. After a few seconds my eyelids flutter open, my eyes trying to see the scene though my brain warns to stay closed. Two men enter through a… door? One of them is unconscious, the other using some force to make him hover in the air, being pushed around with every movement the conscious one makes. The unconscious boy, obviously younger than the other, is shoved to a point only arm’s length away from me. Then, noticing for the first time that I am watching, that I am awake, the older one walked toward me, his white lab coat swishing with every step. Out of a pocket in his coat, he pulled out a black cloth, thick from being folded over multiple times into a rectangle. He lowers me to the ground with his strange power. For the first time, my feet begin to feel, to feel the cold surface of tile.
“Julia,” he says, holding up the black cloth, “do you really want to do this? Forget everything, Julia.” He brings the cloth over my eyes, forcing them shut. He lifts my hair and ties the cloth underneath, making a knot impossible to undo.
“Forget everything,” he says, reinforcing the knot. “You are needed to forget if pure humanity is to exist again. Stop trying to remember. Stop fighting back now to allow the world to start over.” My head slumps, looking almost like a nod. The knot is finished and I rise back into the air. I feel a swish of wind beside me. The boy, too, has become a part of this mission.
