Recently...

I keep having this dream. I’m walking, but I don’t know where. I’m wearing all white clothing. White collared shirt, long white pants, white socks, white flat shoes. Everything around me is white, too.

There’s no walls, no sky, no shadow. Just white on white on white. And I keep walking. Do I have a destination? Am I just wandering, looking for anything besides blinding white? There’s no point in looking at my surroundings, so I watch my feet as I move along.

Red creeps into view. This must be what I'm here for. I stop walking, finally. The pool of red doesn’t. It keeps expanding, and I watch. I watch it as it creeps closer to my pristine, white shoes. I watch as it touches them, staining the bottom scarlet. I look up to see where it’s coming from.

The mountain of bodies stands in front of me, a mass of flesh covering an otherwise white and empty space. Countless faces of despair with glassy eyes, like goldfish floating belly up in a dirty tank. Blood covers them, too, as new bodies fall out of a hole in the sky. The sky that didn’t exist two minutes ago. I raise my hand to my face. It’s covered in blood now. Even though I didn’t touch a single body, my hands are covered in blood. Red stains that I can’t ever hope to wash out. My clothes are stained now. Not just my shoes. My clean white socks, my white shirt, my white pants. They’re all splattered with blood. It’s gross and I can feel the blood drying in my hair and matting it down. It matters less to me than the blood on my hands.

Clothes are replaceable. but no matter what I do, I can’t seem to wash the blood off my hands. Out of my skin. I can’t stop the spreading crimson as the mountain piles higher and higher. One day, it’ll take up every single bit of that white, empty space. Flesh and blood and guts and tears will fill every crevice of this room that isn’t a room, and then one day, it’ll crush me. I won’t escape. I can’t escape.

The blood on my hands won’t wash off.

Hollow Moon

The moonlight hits my face through the window, and the last notions of sleep quickly leave me. This isn’t my room, though. The window hangs open, allowing a gentle wind to billow through the translucent curtains. I’m laying in a queen sized bed, and the duvet is this tacky, ornate design that no doubt costs way more than it’s actually worth. There’s no way in Hell I’d decorate a room like this. It’s uncomfortably empty, save for the bed and a mossy green wardrobe with peeling paint. I look up to the moon, squinting as if the light hurts my eyes.

Before I can think better of it, I crawl out of the window. My feet hit dirt and grass and gravel all at once. I don’t mind it. The pain keeps me alert. I let myself wander, ‘cause I can’t shake the feeling that I have somewhere I’m supposed to be going— I always do. And eventually, I find it.

A freshly dug grave. It’s shallow, definitely less than 6 feet, and there’s only a thin layer of dirt between me and whatever poor idiot is buried here. Whoever buried this guy did a real shitty job. I hop down into the grave. This is definitely illegal, but it never occurs to me that I could get caught. It’s like the possibility doesn’t even exist. Despite the grave’s shallowness, I dig until my hands feel raw. And then I dig some more. My fingers start bleeding. And then I hit wood. Sweet.

I don’t know why I’m doing this— why I’m so desperate to open this casket. I just feel like I have to. Like if I don’t, it’ll gnaw at me, eating away at my resolve until I do. Temptation is a beast that I wish not to fight. My dirt-covered, bleeding hands search for a way to open the lid. When they find it, I hesitate. What if I know whoever’s buried here? I shake my head to dispel the thoughts and rip the lid off. It takes me a second to recognize who I’m looking at.

It’s me. A peaceful, content me. Smiling sweetly, angelic expression haloed by the moonlight. He’s holding a mountain lily between delicate, uncalloused, clean hands. Something twists inside my gut. There’s no way I’m going peacefully. There’s no way I’ve ever felt at peace, at ease. I’ve never felt peaceful in my entire life. This ‘me’ is already dead, so why do I feel my fingers twitch? Why do my hands wrap around his throat, desperate to make his expression change? This ‘me’ is obviously better off. Why am I disgusted by the idea of a life where I can smile like that? A life where I can be sure that my hands are devoid of blood?

Do I have to destroy everything that’s better off than I am? Maybe ‘I’ deserve it. Maybe ‘I’ need to see reality, to get a little dosage of what the world is really like—My hands press down, squeezing.I strangle the corpse. And for some reason, ‘my’ hands release the mountain lily ‘I’ have been holding, and grabs my arms, trying to rip them away from ‘my’ neck.

Instead of hesitating, I keep choking him. I don’t even question why ‘I’m’ not dead— It doesn’t matter. Not now. The only thing that matters is showing ‘me’ the truth. That you don’t get to smile. You don’t get to go peacefully. You don’t deserve it. You’ll cling to life until your last breath is ripped away from you. You won’t go quietly into that good night.

If only because you haven’t earned it.