Dystopia

-3

10:00 a.m. read the holographic digits projected onto the ceiling by a mildly futuristic clock beside him.

William inhaled, then exhaled in pure exhaustion. The oxygen that passed from his lungs and through his lips felt almost surreal, as if he had grown so used to dreaming that the unmanned sensation of consciousness felt unusually strange.

In fact, this peculiar paradox had become a casualty to him. It became normal, a monotonus routine to breathe oxygen that would never truly reach his brain. He couldn't process what he was doing, he felt numb, robotic, almost dead.

William had tried everything from therapy to the consumption of an unhealthy amount of Red Bull in order to avoid sleeping. Although, his valiant efforts proved useless, for sleep always found him, and it always dragged him, feet first, right back to hell.

Yet, as William gradually morphed from a man, to an essentially unconscious, conscious shell of what he used to be, his hunger for freedom evolved. With every week, with every day, and with every second he remained chained to his lifeless (but somehow, still living) body, the more he longed for the now-unnatural sensation of just simply feeling alive.

Ironically, the only time he actually felt this way was when his was dreaming, forced to endure the suffrage of hell.

And isn't that just cruel? To anticipate an emotion, to crave a feeling that's only startlingly exposed to you when all you feel, and all you see, and all you fucking hear is fear, screaming horrifically into your bleeding eardrums.

In fact, all William was now, was an emotionless, sleep-deprived, zombie composed entirely of fear that stemmed from these routine, fragmented pieces of nowhere in particular; the place William despised the most.

"How you doing babe?" William's wife groggily questioned, her voice still heavily induced by sleep.

"Fine."

"Are they.. do those, you know... dreams still come?" She questioned, the innocent tone of her voice very obviously laced with concern and some kind of sadness.

"Yeah."

"Oh..." She paused, unsure of what to say. "Well, I'm so sorry about that, maybe.. maybe your stressful life is a direct reflection of your dreams."

William had no idea what she meant by that, but by now, he was used to it. His wife never really made much sense anyways when she was desperately trying to be poetic. If he was feeling more well, he would have made a sarcastic comment about it. But all he said was,

"Okay."

This worried Camila Hartford. She knew of William's nightmares, she knew of what they made him become, and it terrified her.

Without anything to say, she planted a sweet, long lasting kiss onto her spouse's forehead and mumbled a soft "I love you" onto his warm skin.

"You too." William replied rather coldly.

William slowly climbed out of bed and entered a uniquely furnished living room, consisting of a strange mix of antique and modern embellishments. It was all due to Camila's undying, unscathed love for older things and William's similar feeling towards all things modernized. Combined, it created the worst possible fusion of tangible objects to ever be created. However, as terrible of a compromise it was, neither of them would back down. Both of them were far too stubborn to remove a single decoration from their eccentric extravaganza of mismatched furniture.

William automatically fixed himself a cup of coffee, along with a capiccino for his wife. And then carefully handed it to her. 

"Thanks, Will!" She shouted across the hall, for she was already on her way to the home office.