The Confined

6. Ego (Part 2)

My eyes fluttered open. I tried to move my body, but I was totally restrained by straps all over. Even if there were no straps I probably couldn’t have moved because they had clearly paralyzed me. I looked around, even though my vision couldn’t reach the other side of the room, I could tell where I was. I was in the Confined hospital. I could tell by the bitter smell of old moldy pills and the ivory painted ceiling. Every ceiling in the Confined was painted all red except for the hospital. I was still rolling my eyes around when something caught my attention.

It was definitely her. Violet Crowe. I could barely see the top of her head but it was definitely her. I thought she shifted her posture because her head bobbed a little bit.

“You’re awake,” She said. Her voice was calm and steady. I’d only heard her when she was angry so I hadn’t known how soft her voice was. “Thank God.”

I didn’t know that she believed in God. People in the Confined don’t believe in God. Well, I’m an exception because I’m hoping that there is one. Still, like I said before, I hate him anyways.

I whimpered to let her know that I was listening but couldn’t talk. Then, I realized that my mouth was able to move. The paralysis was starting to wear off.

I wanted my first words to say something that would encourage her. Something that could make her happy. Something that she would be able to keep in her heart and take out to look at whenever she heard my name in the future. I wanted her to remember this moment and every moment from now when we were together. But my brain acted faster than my heart.

“Don’t ever do that again,” I said to her in a rather cranky way. What was I doing? I wanted to make her feel better. I wanted her to at least show a hint of a smile.

She sighed. “I didn’t mean to, but I hate pumpkins. Plus I was quite mad about what happened the other day.” I moved my head ever so slowly to look at her face while we were talking. If she couldn’t remember being with me, at least I should be the one who could remind her of everything we talked about and how we felt.

“I’m Ego. Short for Egorbis.”

“Ego. Cool name.” She smiled slightly. Then she didn’t say anything. She didn’t tell me her name.

So I asked. “Aren’t you going to tell me yours?”

“No, you probably know it already.”

“I don’t,” I lied.

“Okay,” she nodded. Her conversation skills were weird.

I tried to break the silence. “Why did you do it?” I asked.

Violet Crowe shrugged. Her hair drooped over her shoulders. “I got angry.”

“Well, doing that frequently is not quite a wise move around here. Apparently you don’t know that yet,” I nagged her.

She stared into my eyes. “I’m sorry. I just can’t understand how you can take this place. Why don’t you fight back? You have many more people than them. You could rebel or something.”

“No,” I said immediately. I could sit up now, so I did. “No, it doesn’t work like that here, okay? Life isn’t that easy.”

“I don’t think so,” she snapped back.

“Look. You don’t get it.” The more closely I looked at her, the more she made my emotions flood over me. They took control of my body, my brain and my own self, swallowing me into my convincing mask of fraud. “I understand that you haven’t been here long. You just came down here yesterday. I want to tell you, as a much more trained Confined citizen, that things don’t work like that. The human principle goes like this. Everyone who takes action faces results. And those results for us are always horrifying. We are beaten, starved, tortured, and killed.

“We got people? They got machines. And machines don’t die. We got teamwork? They got a whole army just to protect themselves from nothing. And they don’t die. See? Even though they can think of us as a threat, we can’t even lift a finger near the RL without risking our lives. It’s not only that we’re too frightened of them. It’s also that we actually can’t make that bargain. We can’t win with them shooting us down one bullet per person. That’s how things go in the Confined. That’s why we don’t rebel. Rebellion, is too much of a sacrifice to worth taking a risk for.” My thoughts that had been dammed up inside of me flew over and knocked out every nerve in my body. While the words pumped out of my mouth, my mind was rushing to stop.

Her eyes were getting watery. “You know what? Life isn’t much. Life is sadness. The fact that humans run towards death every moment of our lives after we are born is sadness, and its life itself. The small bits of happiness, those small bits that make us forget our sad ending for at least a moment, are what we call being alive. It’s the only reason we continue in life. And if you can’t even get that, if you can’t even live a life alive, why do you live? Don’t you think it’s weird?” She wiped off a tear from her cheek. Her lips were swelling from biting on them so hard to keep her feelings contained inside her. She stood up from her chair. I didn’t want her to go, but my words had made her too sensitive to stay.

As she walked out the door, she said something that I had thought every day in my subconscious. “What do you think life would be worth if we’re only painful and scared about dying? Wouldn’t it be better to just die and be peaceful instead of living a life full of dread? I think it’s better to be alive while you live instead of being haunted every night by nightmares about what horrible thing will happen tomorrow. And if you can’t have that, I say you should at least try.” She walked out of my tight hospital room.

I stared at the ivory painted ceiling. For some reason it looked like it had a tint of red mixed into it. I knew she was right, but I also knew she was wrong about something. We were not all sad.

Especially when I was with her.

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They finally spoke to each other!!!
Yay!!♡ It's a matter of time before they!!.....(spoiling)hahaha

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