Sense #WeAreDystopia

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Shouts, chattering and cheers flood the room, bouncing against the walls. He made it. Four passed the test. Which means others can do it too. Which means I have a shot as well.

The shouts die down to loud whispers as a few people stand at the edge of the arena. They seem to be asking Four how he made it. Four smiles. 'Y'all blind or something?' he asks.

'I'm pretty sure I can see you, buddy,' a boy replies.

'Well, why can't you see the lasers? And, I don't know, avoid them or something,' he says, mocking him.

The other boy gets angry all of a sudden, furrowing his brow. 'What lasers, man? What are you talking about? It's just a blank space here.'

Four goes on about there being lasers all over the arena, specifically red ones. I zone out for a moment, my vision blurry, the sounds around me quieting down. It's time to think. Four sees something the rest of us are failing to notice. Us and him are seemingly the same, but what if something in him, something small and unnoticed, helps him see more clearly?

There's a variety of colours, light the human eye can see and indentify. But what if... his eyesight is slightly different? Could he be seeing inferred rays of light? Lasers?

All of this knowledge comes pouring out of me. When did I learn all this? Who taught me this? Did I attend a school? A school... An early memory finds its way into my head, clearing up some of the fog inside it.

In this lucid dream of a memory, I am much younger than I am now. I can't see myself, but my surroundings make me feel short and small. My hands are propped up on the sides of a table. No, it's a desk. I'm sitting on a plastic chair but when I try to get up some invisible force holds me down, restraining me. I look straight ahead of me. A pair of brown eyes framed behind glasses stare back at me. She is beautiful. Her hair is a warm brown and her voice lovely as she asks, 'Are you alright, darling?'

All I've figured out so far is that she is my teacher. And that I have a connection with her, I trust her. A cry from far interrupts my train of thought. I look around and children are all over the place, sitting on similar chairs, facing similar desks, some of them talking and a little girl crying out loud for the teacher's attention. Is this ... kindergarten?

The cry becomes louder and louder but the teacher won't leave my side. She calls me, not by my name, rather my number. 'Eleven,' she whispers. 'Are you alright?' she asks.

I am at peace. I try to nod but the same invisible force holds me from moving. 'Eleven?' she asks. 'Please wake up. Are you okay?'

Suddenly, I'm feeling strange again. The room around me darkens, the children's smiling faces fading away with it. My teacher takes hold of my arms, which floats, paralyzed. Soon after, the room goes black, and I'm floating too. I'm falling. 'Is he dead?'

I'm falling.

'Are you alright?'

'Are you alright?'

Am I?

I wake up and sit upright with a gasp. About twenty people have gathered around me, glancing down at my body. For a second, no one speaks.

'What happened?' I wonder.

Thirty-seven sits by my side. 'You just fainted,' he says. 'We couldn't figure out what was going on and... '

'Are you alright?' a familiar voice asks me, interrupting him. It's Sixteen.

'I...I think so,' I mumble. 'I was thinking of something ... It was a dream, I think. It doesn't matter.' I pause and take a deep breath. Two guys behind me lift me up and help my stand. My legs feel like jello but I try to mask it with half a smile.

'Did Four really make it or did I make it up in my head?' I ask. I stare far across the white arena. A small man stands on the other end. He has made it afterall.

Now two more people are waiting for their turn. A tiny girl is first, followed by an also very small boy. The girl seems surprisingly confident. Maybe Four is not the only one with that ... superpower.

She takes a careful step into the arena while the boy behind her is holding his breath, fiddling with the ends of his shirt. She makes one more step, then turns left, in slow and calculated movements, as if copying Four's choreography. She is way more delicate than him, yet equally slow and careful. She squints as well. She is now moving like a bird, moving both legs and arms as she takes turns from time to time.

Four must have been telling the truth all along. She seems to be seeing the same lasers he was talking about. Five, the girl, is incredibly close to the finish line. She takes the last turn too fast and barely makes it, landing on the line with her knees. She remains there, silent, then cracks up a smile of relief. She is the second to have crossed that line.

The room erupts into gasps and whispers and cheers once again. It is a hopeful sight to see them make it, one after the other, but now the odds are against me, and I hate to think about that. Instead, I distract my mind by observing number Six, the small, scared boy on the starting point.

Some random guy walks up to me but I don't face him right away. 'He's not gonna make it, now, is he?' he asks.

As much as I hate to admit it, the guy is right. The boy is shaking. Even if he can see the lasers, which I highly doubt due to his lack of confidence, he would never make it far enough as to finish. The boy knows it too.

My eyes catch movement at the end of the arena, where Four and Five stand alone. The girl is waving her hand at the scared boy. He looks up, waving back. Five shouts something and he shouts back, 'Thank you.'

The man by my side speaks again, his voice low. 'She's going to help him, guide him around the lasers.'

I breath in, almost forgetting to exhale. 'That sounds ... ambitious.'