The Subzero

Two

I wake up in the middle of the night.

I dreamt of a hustling city, mags with tires on the street, trees flanking the sidewalks. Tanbark was laughing, a careless, innocent laugh, the kind that would make you smile. Flocks of birds dotted the stretch of blue sky, the Sun reigning it. Then he's there, Crimson, bumping into me, spilling my frappe. He apologized then went on walking. It was so normal, the normal I want. Then I'm reminded that it's not the kind of dream you wanted to dream, the siren world. I surface into reality with the uncanny taste of frappe fading in my mouth.

I mistrust and despise all of that. The right dreams for a man in peril are dreams of peril and all else is the call of death. One wrong move, then I'm diving into a lake without knowing it's a mirage in the middle of a desert.

I'm in my sleeping bag, placed at the southeast corner of the room - my vantage point. I had made a hole on the point where the two walls meet, and this position makes me capable of seeing who's coming. Nights are exception. Don't need to watch overnight. No one will risk walking blindly in the darkness or flaunting their presence with a lamp. Might as well put a bull's eye on your forehead and scream SHOOT ME.

Outside, the blizzard screams and persuades me to meet her, my death. It doesn't help that I just woke up from a good/bad dream, and the timing doesn't help, either, because it's my brain's let's-screw-Halley time. Times where all Halley Brain can do is regret everything I've done and everything I never did, where I think about Mom, Dad, Tanny, Crimson, even Tipsy, our dog. Reminisce the time where I watch TV shows, eat cheeseburgers, play Harbinger. The sadness it evokes, so strong, it crashes me down, pinning me to that dark corner. It makes me feel so alone that sometimes I think about facing that damn blizzard.

Mother Earth continues screaming. I can hear her even from the thickness of these walls. It's her, Mother Earth, throwing the agony she felt and bottled in for millennia. I swear I can actually hear her screaming sometimes.

Stupid, ungrateful humans! Doesn't know how to treasure me! Suffer!

I wish I lived before Mother Earth became a bitch. The Utopian Earth, a paradise, where you didn't need to worry about anything but keeping yourself out of bad luck and thinking about who's the next Homo sapiens sapiens to screw. Life was lighter than feather, and time flew in supersonic speed.

Until Mother Earth revenged.

I wish I wasn't born or is dead, but I'm stuck in between, where there's no choice but to live. And living sucks. All people can die, but you can't be sure if all of them really lived. Maybe I'm that, the person who died but never lived. The girl who could have lived but died in billion billion ways instead.

So here I am, waiting for my demise, confused if I should go out or stay inside. Should I go out? Well, say hello to Mr. Blizzard. Gonna be one of his masterpiece soon. Should I stay? Might as well commit suicide.

Inside = death.
Outside = death.

Pick your death, Halley.

I shrink in my sleeping bag with a harrowing feeling in my gut. I don't know why I kept myself doing nothing for so long. Have I surrendered to death?

Hell no.

Maybe I need to go out. Maybe. Someday, but not now.