Offbeats

Strange New World

I have walked these streets my whole life.

Havard Avenue, Coln Street, every side path is still familiar.

But now I walk them differently, with different beings and different feelings.

There is no joy when I pass May's Bakery, and there's nothing at all when I pass my house.

Well, my old house.

That was among many things in my old life I lost when I woke up.

I've been awake for almost half a year now. Trying to blend in.

I can't make any mistakes anymore, not after my first week. I disrupted too many of them, drew too much attention in my panic.

They suspect I am defective.

But I am not one of them. I am human.

The last one.

Trust me, I have looked.

It's as if as I slept, every human on Earth disappeared and was replaced by these human-looking robots. Except, they're not human.

They're the furtherest thing from humans I have ever known. Not in how they look, but in how they are. They show no feelings of compassion or even of anger. They hate differences and imperfections in their system.

My name for them?

The Offbeats.

I know what you're thinking, but when you live in a world drained of feeling you start to get creative.

***

I don't know why I was left behind.

I don't remember much from my old life.

I get flashes of memory, every now and then, but not enough for me to piece anything together useful. A few blurred faces, hushed words, mangled feelings.

Though I can't remember them, I often think about my family. Whether they're ok. Why they left me. Whether they had a choice.

I just wish I had someone to talk to, someone to care about, someone to care about me.

It's a lonely life in a world full of strangers.

When everything seems so close yet so far from familiar.

Isolation is a diesease, eating me up slowly, from the inside.

Starting with my heart.