Yellow

Chapter 1

Dema, dema is a nightmare, a dark part of the mind that everybody wants to shut out, something that is run by 9 monsters, by the 9 bishops. They are the ones who keep everybody oppressed, they are the ones who keep on hiding the truth from those inside dema. The people inside of dema are made to believe that the outside is terrible and that they are safe, happy, undisturbed, but the truth is something else. Let me tell you how I discovered the truth.

It was another, gloomy and grey day in dema, I was heading out of my small apartment to collect the ration of food that everybody gets for the day, it was not quite enough food to be completely satisfied and it wasn't really delicious, but it was better than starving or not getting enough.

I closed the door and slowly, unwilling, moved out of the building, walking down the street that was almost empty, only a few people outside.
Not many enjoyed or wanted to be outside. It was cold, grey, bleak, so not something that you'd willingly want to see everyday.

I made my way to the community kitchen to collect my rations, but on the way there I hear something out of the order, a word that I haven't heard before. There were two people speaking, "Bandito" one whispered, "outside" the other said a little bit louder, "yellow, scared" the other replied again.

Those were words out of the ordinary and it caught my attention, I thought that this was something worth listening to, so I slowly stopped and looked at them, slowly making my way over, the two men stopped talking and looked at me, some emotion in their face that I couldn't really describe.

"What dose Bandito mean?" Was the first thing that I asked, they said nothing.

"What do you mean by yellow? What is yellow?" I continued to ask, still no answer. Then I took a breath and asked something that I would never dare to say in another situation.

"What do you mean by outside, can we go outside?" I asked, this time the men just nodded at each other and suddenly left, leaving me not another chance to ask anything else.

With a deep sigh I continued my journey to the food distribution point. After another ten minutes or so I arrived, standing at the small queue that formed inside the building, waiting for my turn, I noticed something weird, a colour that I have never seen before in the corner of my eyes, maybe that was the yellow the strange men were talking about?

Before I could think further in, I was called in, so I got my food and started to look around for that weird colour, but it wasn't there anymore. With a small huff of air escaping my mouth, I left the building and headed back to my small apartment, having a lookout for that beautiful and bright colour.

After arriving at my home, I realised that somebody was inside my apartment, was today inspection day?

Since we always had to keep our doors open for an apartment inspection, I didn't think anything off it, but when I walked into my living room, I realised that the only thing that was touched, was my "things" book, a book where I wrote down stuff or taped down things that I found, or drew pictures of new things that I saw.

I kept it hidden, so when I realised that it was out in the open, I frantically searched through it, seeing if anything was missing or not, luckily nothing was, but there was something new, a piece of tape, with a strangely coloured flower, underneath it said "Yellow tape, yellow flower".

When I saw the word yellow, I started to smile, "so this is yellow, this beautiful colour" I said softly to myself, but then right at the next moment I closed and hid my book again. Nobody was supposed to see this besides me and the person who left me this beautiful gift.

Before anybody could get suspicious, I continued with my chores, which were usually done quickly, but today I was slacking off.

You see, everybody has a main bishops, a bishop who they do chores for, to make them shine brighter then any other bishop. My bishop was Keons, he was the kindest one of all, the one who felt the kindest, the bishop I choose when I was a little kid, the one bishop who I thought I should be looking up to, but in the recent months I started to doubt everything in Dema, the concept, the chores, the punishments, the lights, the everything.

The next few weeks were...strange, at least to say. On some days I kept looking at the yellow flower and I wondered if everything outside the walls was as beautiful and bright, but on other days, on other days I was anxious, scared. What if the outside world was dangerous? What if Drma was indeed my home, the place I belonged to? What if whoever left the flower is a monster? What if the bishops aren't as bad as I think?

One new question brought up ten more, I was getting more and more anxious, I didn't know what part of my mind I should believe, what part of my mind was keeping me safe?

All this questioning made me slack off even more, I sometimes even forgot to get my food rations, so naturally the people got suspicious and as expected, the bishops noticed.

One day, when I just finished my chores, a knock was heard on the door and when I opened, I couldn't believe my eyes.