“You do not need my name, for I am a witch hunter.”
I shook, a long finger of panic caressing my body as I rolled that very thought through my tongue. A voice, a curious voice, had rung out from a dark passageway in my mind. That’s all it was, or so I had convinced myself at the time.
The bathwater was getting more stagnant by the second, and I sensed I wasn’t the only one in that marble room. So, I ran with my feet slapping the floor and my hands reaching out into the dark corridor at the end. For those very few moments that resulted from my misplaced anxiety, a truth had risen. At the end of this story, I was going to die.
Cold sweat was the first thing that I felt when my eyes broke open. Although quite disturbed by the nightmare, I had to put it in the back of my mind. After all, I’m not even supposed to feel any sort of emotion.
Nobody, in fact, is supposed to feel anymore. It’s not a given rule though; we are technically allowed to have feelings.
Curious, isn’t it? The very reason that we humans continue to exist; we are solely driven by emotions. Yet, it’s frowned upon where I come from. Today is the day that my existence will come crashing down, I will become just like everyone else around me. Cold, I will be cold. I will try to be cold. My body is still so fragile from trying to keep my skin warm, and I welcome the change to come. I have to be a machine.
Yet, why do I fight? Why is there something inside of me that’s trying to reach out and touch the sky? They tell me that if I don’t feel any more emotion, I’ll help the world stay as it is. I’ll help the world be a place where no one is crying, no one is hurting.
There will be no progression, no war, and no chaos. Just a civil society beckoning conformity and the empty abyss of thought that will no longer be a house of change.
Still, I look forward to this inevitability. I carry myself forward, out of the bed and greet my last day as myself.
They call me “Silent One”, for I do not speak. My mouth opens, and words do come out, but it isn’t the same as speaking. I have refused to tell anyone of what I have experienced. I prefer to suffer in the quiet, and to not bring anyone else down with me.
That is why they have named me Silent One, for I lock my mind inside itself and never ask for help. Today I will speak to forget, to surrender to the idea that nothing is permanent. If I let my clouded mind get in the way of my actions any longer, I will never get the chance to live.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
