White, again.

White, and a blaring headache. White, with heavy eyelids. I had known exactly where I was as soon as I had opened my eyes. It was pure whiteness, blinding even - like I had been lying in a heavenly cloud. As I had began to regain my wits, I was able to remember the terrible memories of this building, of this forsaken place. Memories that had only shown fragments of death.

Yet, I had felt absolutely nothing.

I felt as though I had been emotionally numb, falling further into the deep blackness that was my life. I hated it, this feeling, my life. I was done with everything, left holding on to strings that were better left to fray. I was only living in a hellish, neverending onslaught of nightmares.

My hatred, it overwhelmed me. My carelessness, it had overtaken me. There had been a slowly expanding crack inside of me, a crack that was hanging by a string. All it would have taken was just the slightest nudge, to destroy everything, to shatter it all. Though I had yet to realize it, I was hanging on by that very same string.

"Just you and me..."

"Yeah?" I spoke aloud. "That sounds nice, doesn't it?"

"Just you and me..."

As those four words echoed through my head, I looked to my right and found a fresh pair of clothes that someone had left on the table to the right of me. I pulled myself out of the bed, and changed into those fresh clothes. One thing, however, became apparent as I did this - my body had been cleaned. By whom? I could have only guessed.

I looked around the room, and found the window. It had appeared that I was on the thirty-sixth floor, just one floor below what appeared to be the highest. This had been made obvious by the numbers on the outside of the opposite building. Clothed, I was surprised to feel a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in each respective pocket. Had my mom gotten them? Had it been someone else? If so, then who?

I decided to drop it and soon left the room, exploring the eerily quiet halls. Where were the children, or even the nurses, for that matter? It had been as I though I were in a dream that would soon turn into a near demonic nightmare, much like a scene in a generic horror movie. The halls had been too quiet, far passing serenity and running into sinister.

Soon after exploring, I found and climbed the flight of stairs to the highest floor, only to find it empty. There were no sounds, not even the monotonous beeping of someone's heart rate. I kept moving, peeking through opened doors as I searched for any kind of life. The entire floor was barren, void of people, void of color, and void of life - in its entirety.

"Aiden." I heard a voice call out, causing me to turn quickly. That was when I saw her, live and in the flesh, or at least I had thought so. "You do have people who love you, you're just too oblivious to see it."

"Kylie?" I took a step, lifting my arm as I reached forward.

"Let's go?" she pointed towards another short flight of stairs.

She ran ahead, and I followed, sprinting forward after her. I hadn't been able to tell right from wrong, real from fake. Had I lost my mind, was I seeing things that hadn't existed? Or was it really her? I had to find out what I was seeing, who I was seeing. I was only able to do one thing, and that was run. I had to run, I had to follow - it was my only choice, and if it had meant seeing Kylie again, I would have gladly ran anywhere for her.

I ran through the heavy door that rested at the top of the stairs, and what I had been met with was a roof that had been just as barren as the previous two floors. Except for one person, and that person was Kylie. She stood across the full distance of the roof, her black hair blowing with the wind. It had unmistakably been her, I had no doubts in my mind.

"You're late, like always!" Kylie screamed over the wind.

I continued to walk forward, watching her with everything that was left of my being. My eyes, however, began to widen with the sight of Kylie climbing onto the rail that bordered the roof. I sped up, nearly running as I tried to catch her in time. I lunged, reaching out to her hand as she fell backwards with her arms wide open.

Running full-speed into the rail, I looked over the edge to see nothing but the ground thirty-six floors below me. I fell to the ground knees first as I let out an exhausted laugh, a relieved laugh. It had felt so real, like I had been given another chance to live my life with Kylie. It had only been me seeing things, imagining things that had never existed in the first place.

Constantly, time after time, I was lifted up only to be dropped a thousand feet lower into the pit of hell that was my miserable life. Such was my life. Love, happiness, joy, gratitude...they were all just petty fucking games, none of them truly mattered or meant anything to anyone.

Everything, all of those words were made to make people feel better about their wretched, worthless selves. They hide what they feel, hoping that one day, maybe just one day, those counterfeit feelings will come to fruition. Unbeknownst to themselves, they will carry on with their facade while continuing to fall further into their own tawdry pool of self-pity.

"Fuck!" I slammed my fist into the rail as hard as I could, hoping that, somehow, it would manage to erase the reality that had been shoved in my face once again.

Again and again, I buried my fists into the rail. My anger only increased, my focus became nonexistent, and that was when I slammed my head into the rail. This caused blood to spit out onto the floor and run into my eyes. As I literally saw red, I butted my against the rail once again, as though I were a ram living it's life by nature's rules. Another fist came down, colliding with yet another part of the freezing rail.

I stood up, nearly grinning, as I stared down at the pavement thirty floors below. What had been the point of it all? What exactly had been my reasons for staying alive? Life was but a vicious circle of insanity for me, doing the same things over and over, hoping that something would have changed along the way.

Foolishness, injudicious. I had only been tricking myself, hypnotizing myself into thinking that everything would get better, that my future would become brighter. I buried the truth deep inside of me and locked it away, only to meet with it again in the fiery pits of hell. Tattoos, sex, smoking, drinking - they had all been simple escapism. I was only running from an elementary truth:

I would have been better off dead before my life had even began.

Day after day, I had moved forward without thinking about anyone or anything, and it had worked for me. I had, however, still been fooling myself. Meaninglessness had been the answer that was sitting in front of me for so long, yet I had so consistently passed it by. It was all so clear at that moment, as clear as a pure diamond.

Every waking hour was spent living life by life's terms, but who had created those terms? Humans lived to earn money to feed themselves and their future families, but what was the point of money? Why did humanity thrive on living. Was it the food, the money? Had it been the procreation they so willingly took part in? What was life, and what had been the point in living in it when there was nothing but heartache and grief awaiting them? It was a simple answer, an answer that many would scoff at, calling it pessimism.

No, it was not pessimism. It was the truth.

Humans lived life in constant searching, trying to find the one thing that would make them happy. Love could be found anywhere, at any moment. Money could have been made anywhere, at any moment. Food was eaten anywhere, at any moment. It wasn't the place, or the time that carried any meaning, but it was the resonance behind it - whomever they had been with, what they had felt at that point in time. Humans searched and searched, aimlessly looking for happiness at any cost.

Unavailing, they tried time and time again, hoping, praying that they would come upon the thing they had been looking for. Foolishly, they believed that fact, the fact that one day, they would eventually find it. Love, warmth, shelter, money, it was all fake. We had lived in a monotonous society, trudging through our lives in a black and white, nine to five society. Full of belief, they happily trudged through the fast lane, straight to their waiting graves while having achieved absolutely nothing in their menial existence.

Existence, in and of itself, had been naught but a giant black hole. Humanity had been created to be cruel, feral in every way - it had been survival of the fittest. However, humanity evolved and the true dark ages had begun. Society had created feelings, allowing humans to believe that they had needed to find something they loved in order to truly feel alive, something that would have filled the gaping black hole inside of them.

Complete. Fucking. Rubbish.

Humans, themselves, had been built to kill, to fight, to hunt. Survival of the fittest had been what this world had thrived on - gladiators, knights, the fight for territory. Humanity had lost its edge, the very part of them that had made them the feral beasts that they were. Complacency had taken over, making earth a former shell of what it had originally been.

We, humans, had simply become mongrels that had wasted the precious oxygen this planet had given us. Humanity had become entirely useless, believing that everything we had been doing was completely normal. Obsessive over technology, obesity, the criminalization of bullying, homosexuality, the whining of discrimination, feminism; it had all been an outright joke. This had not been the way humans were meant to live.

"...Hey, Kylie?" I asked as the blood continued to drip from the wound on my forehead. "Isn't this all pointless?"

I looked down at the ground below once again, only to be caught up by a soft, barely audible voice.

"It's not."