Author: Aphrodite Zervou
In this dense dream of endless running and infinite floating thoughts, I am trying to wake up. How stupid of me, this is not a dream. I sigh the remaining air I had contained in my lungs away, making it harder for me to keep balance and to continue to run. I gave up on trying to glance back and see if they are still following me; I know they are. I got accustomed to the sound of their horrifying, yet unavoidable, metal-made legs that are surprisingly their only way of chasing after desperate humans. Am I even considered one at this point? I have been running for an awfully long time. The only reason I am even able to do so, is because of my survival instincts, but can I even consider this stamina survival instincts’ doing? I have been running for what feels like forever and I don’t even dare to look at my watch to check the time. Not to mention the pain in my leg is increasingly getting worse and the hope I had is now hanging by a thread. I look straight in front of me, at the full moon that is gazing with discrimination at my laughable desperation. Yeah I guess that makes me at least desperate alright. As my foot gets to have the slightest contact with the rooftop I am on top of, I collapse in some kind of hole that makes my heart drop. My face hits the ground with an unbelievably loud thud and everything goes dark.
The slit of light that creeps through my eyelids forces a wince out of my mouth, which following that, makes me come back to full consciousness. I suddenly sit up, look at my surroundings, but knowing damn well that I can’t even comprehend my own thoughts right now, I close my eyes and take in a deep breath. The taste of blood is overwhelming yet the ringing in my ears is more unsettlingly getting louder with every second that my heart escorts heartbeats through to me. My heartbeat slows down, with the
reminder that I am, for better or worse, alive. My vision is back to its glorious form and I can finally examine the area I fell in. The dust is strong in the air yet no sight of it on any of the shelved objects or the furniture. The ground is soft. Strange, I remember falling on hard cement flooring. I look down and see how I am on a bed with stains of blood trailing here and there from the main source being my head. Attempting to stand up, and to my surprise succeeding, I stabilize my balance then peak around the room
for details my mind could not really process before.
A woman with, what one can perceive to be, a doctor’s coat. Her expression is nothing like you’d expect from a doctor though. No welcoming smile, nor worried face. The face of an annoyance is displayed all over her facial expression and way of walking. With her hand on her temple and a sigh coming out of her mouth, she gets ready to finally speak.
“It’s pure miracle that you are alive, whether you were lucky or unlucky, you survived a ten feet fall on a cement floor. Tell me, how did you achieve all this?” she says while outlining my entire body with her eyebrows raised.
“Excuse me? I get it about the head, but I think that’s it?” I say with a confused tone and bland manner.
She huffs a laugh and shakes her head in a disapproving motion. “Are you stupid or do you just have a nerve disorder that stops you from feeling pain? You have fractured at least two bones on each of your legs and your spine was bent in an unnatural way that only an unmindful lunatic could achieve.” She stares me down with the most done and plain stare known to man, from either robots or the human kind.
Suddenly, with an unpleasant and horrible surprise, I get a certain dizziness that sends me back to what feels like a flashback. It doesn’t just feel like it, I know it is, then it accordingly and sneakily makes my blood boil, alongside fabricates shiver on my skin. It is that unshakable scene that will haunt me till the day I stop having any sort of living organisms in my body. My one and only comfort place, my home, my sweet and toxically unbreakable bubble, that prior to 3 days ago I thought would always remain like that, there in front of me, in ruins and remains of rubble. My sister was inside and is probably already dead, the realization makes my legs give up. I fall to my knees and in a praying-like position, I continue to say to myself that this is a nightmare, just a bad nightmare is all.
The rubble shakes and makes a sound almost like a human voice. “My... sweet child... sweet, sweet.. like... the blissful honey. And bright... bright as the sun’s gaze...” I know that voice, I instantly lift my head to the gut-retching and unbelievably horrifying view.
My mother, her bottom half body completely gone and escorted to the darks of the destroyed, once joyful and meaningful walls. The second I look up at her and listen to the last breaths leave her lungs, the robot shoots the magma bullets through her skull. Her face melts away like it never existed to begin with, as if my own life has been a lie all along. Before I can mourn and cry this suffocating feeling out of my soul, just like one pours away the water in a glass cup down the drain, I see that the robot summons other ones and with sharp laser blades, they start chasing me. I stumble on my face, yet it does not faze me. I start running, and use my skill in running that I have always kept high on my throne of pride, for survival. The sweet and sour tasting sweat on my face feels like a waterfall that spawned out of nowhere to pry for my downfall. I can’t feel or hear anything around me, I just keep running for the hope that I would get to live and see tomorrow. The antagonizing feeling, that I can’t understand why or how creeped up in the back of my mind, makes my thoughts drown and pleasant moments, that I have ever had, disappear into dust. I don’t have time for thoughts or sentimental emotions, I’d rather just die.
“Hey! Wake the hell up!” I hear a voice yell while a certain hand continuously slaps my numb face.
I crack my eyes wide open immediately and clench my fist to punch whoever was slapping the soul out of me. Before I actually hit that person, I stop to realize who it really is. I don’t know if I should be glad or disappointed that the doctor was trying to wake me up, it seemed as if she really hated my guts just for fracturing bones. As I look at her insanely angry features, she looks more like a ripper than a healer, weird because she is supposed to be a “doctor”.
“About time you woke up. if you continue to black out randomly then good luck finding someone else to treat you.” All that she had to say was, now I am actually considering trying to find someone else to treat me. “I have had your head taken care of as much as possible, but you’ll have to go through a surgery for the leg fractures.” As that statement comes out of her mouth, she escorts herself to her office once more.
The room has not changed at all, yet after what she said the air feels chilly. Everything I love has already been crushed to ashes and rubble, why should I even try to go through surgery? It’s not as if anyone will patiently wait for the success of my recovery. That chillness in the air finally gets to me and the depressing thoughts that are roaming around. Like some kind of demon, waits patiently just to tear my skin apart, yet keeps me company when I am alone in the dark rooms. This is all a lie, it must be. The first clear conviction I’ve had in days hits me. The doctor steps out of her office with her back hunched back and her hands on top of her head, a displeasing yet confused expression is portrayed on her, by now, wrinkly face.
“I am truly sad to say that you have a very low chance of survival at this point. It would be best if we just let you peacefully die on the nursing bed from poison injected in your veins.” When that fact hits me by surprise, it knocks the sensical thinking out of the window.
I spring up, with no pain or unbalanced stumbles, which ends up scaring both me and the doctor, then I open the door of the room and run out of the building. Escape to where? I don’t know, but far away from all this catastrophic and corruptive life. How did I do it? My bones are fractured yet my skin and dirt make the most unbreakable duo that defines physics or logic in whole. Somehow, I continue to sprint toward the tree I used to love going as a child, back where I ran from. I don’t stop and it doesn’t seem
like my body is tired enough to stop; not yet at least. The tree erupts in the background of the smoke and corruption like the light at the end of the tunnel. As I get closer to the tree trunk full of branches overflowing in leaves. the more dangerously euphoric my steps feel, like a puddle of quick sand dragging me to the depths, out of my misery.
Right now, as I sit next to this tree that swallows away all the loud buzzing and ringing from the world, I feel relaxed somehow. Yet every breath hurts, and now seeing the robot corporations and skyscrapers turned into burnt memories of a century I can only dream of anymore, I realize that this is it. This is the end of the memorable and beautiful life that used to bloom of endless opportunities, which I always took for granted, and the end of my pain. The lights fade and smudge in my vision, though it does not sway me from hanging next to the tree. I look at the tree in question, burning and smoking. Its leaves are no longer decorating it with the heavenly given glow. Instead the brightness of distraction is painted all over the tracing roots and trunk of the tree. Then, I choose to just burn with it and feel the tingle that covers my bare and clothed skin, while the sensation of someone holding my hand through this engulfs me with happiness.
“Goodnight”.
