morph

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I think about death a lot. 

Maybe too much. I know Josh worries about it. (I stopped telling him. I thought it was interesting, but every time I would mention it, he would cling to me like I was looking at his face through a noose.)

I mean, it was pure curiosity. But now I can't seem to get away from them. These thoughts. They're constantly hounding me, neon lights flashing, "It's time to think about death!"

I'm so sick of it.

My head's always buzzing right before I go to bed. Sometimes with thoughts, and sometimes with static, but either way, it's too loud.

I like to sit on the window sill and watch the vultures circle overhead, great black wings unfolding, cutting through the air with ease. Josh says they unnerve him. I think they're kind of lovely.

The windows fold all the way out, so I can sit and dangle my feet right over the edge. The temperature drops right down at night, as if it wasn't cold enough already, and the sky is dead and cloudless.

I used to be afraid of the dark. To be fair, I think I still am, it's just that light is a kind of constant in Dema. I say light, it's more of a perpetual state of grey.                                                                                  

You would think the Bishops would revel in darkness, but I think their neon is too important to them.

The thing about neon is that the light permeates everything. The light is there, glaring, white and unnatural, from when you crack open your eyes to long after you close them, phantom light staining the inside of your eyelids. It blinks at me from the other side of the room, a chandelier of bright white, mocking me.

Sometimes I wish I was in Nills' district. (And I really hate Nills' district.)

Nills' is the only lightless district. The whole diocese just seems to hang in this permanent state of darkness and despair. (I mean, that's the whole of Dema really, but it's even more so in the Nills' district.)

You feel it, as soon as you step in there. The aching silence, so dark it's like you're dying. I know, because once a couple years back I snuck into one of the rooms so I might get a decent night's sleep. It was awful. I sat up all night, rigid with fear, barely daring to blink.

The thing is with darkness there could be anything in there. Once your mind latches onto something, you'll start to see it in the curve of the shadows. Faces in the corner of your room. Eyes, everywhere.  At least the neon allows me to know that Nico or any other of the bishops isn't watching me from the corner of my room so they can drag me to one of their existential seminaries, or worse. I can think about death in relative peace, knowing that it isn't just 'round the corner, waiting to grab me by the throat.

I used to like thinking about when I'd die.  I'm not scared. I know it's going to happen one day, and then it will all be over, no more waking up. It makes me sad, I guess, but I've accepted it. It's inevitable.

The fact that I'm going to die doesn't scare me. But when I say, "What if I died ?" I don't know, that terrifies me. I mean yeah, of course, I'm not going to live forever. It's just... it freaks me out. Like, I can say "I'm going to die one day." and that day might be tomorrow, and I have to accept the fact that it's true and no matter how hard I pray or cry, that's never going to change. It might be tomorrow for all I know.  

What scares me is that when I die, I won't be alive anymore. And yeah, I know, that's the point. But I wouldn't be able to see Josh or... or that blonde girl in Sacarver's district that I think is cute, or...

Or the view outside Dema. The towering cliffs, and the river that threads through Trench. The beryl green colour of the forest that lies like a blot of ink against the white canvas sky. The vultures waiting atop the central towers, huge and black and daunting, like a bad omen. The dried yellow flowers in my drawer that I picked from the mountainside. One for each failed escape. 

Just blackness. Endless, looming blackness. Heaven, or hell, maybe, but I would still be dead. And that's what scares me. 

I guess I could stop pushing them down. Let these thoughts consume me until I didn't even care what would happen after I died. Me a year ago wouldn't have even thought about it. But I guess I'm different now. And there's no point waiting for science to discover some miraculous serum that they could inject into our necks and make us all immortal. (And even if they did, let's be real, I would never take it.)

I guess it's ironic for a suicidal person to say they're scared of death. It's pretty funny actually, now I think about it. But it's true. (I think maybe that's why I realised that I wasn't sure if I actually wanted to die, or whether I just wanted to stop living.)

But I don't want to think about that right now. It's late enough that nothing is clear anymore. Thoughts crawl sluggishly through my skull, all speaking at the same time, drowning each other out in their clamour to be heard. (This is usually how I get to sleep. The thoughts don't stop, they just sort of become one monolithic buzz.)

I've been trying to sever my brain from my body. Metaphorically, obviously. To entertain the fantasy, even just for a couple of seconds, that I'm not me. That suddenly, Nico wouldn't look at me and see every weakness, every little string of insecurity for him to jerk like a marionette whenever he wants to. It feels like I'm floating, seeing my body from third person, a ghost amongst dead men walking. Suddenly it feels like the whole world is made of paper. Like if I tried hard enough, I could reach out and tear it down. 

If I could become someone else, what would happen? If I ignored the thoughts, would they just go away? Would the Bishops stop looking at me like I was fresh meat? (I could never ignore them. They're too loud. Everything else in my head shrinks to grey next to their blinding ostentation.)

Maybe if I keep doing it, if I keep morphing, I'll have enough time to make some sort of escape. I don't even know if this is the real me. Maybe this version of me is as fake as the memories the Bishops put in my head when I arrived here. They were supposed to make me believe that I had always been here. It's supposed to be a security measure, so we don't try to escape. (No matter how bad something is, if people think it's always been that way, they won't protest.) I never believed it. Not for one second. I guess it helps when you don't trust your brain to start with. To be honest, I really don't care if I'm 'real'. If there ever was a 'real' me, I don't remember it. All I have is right now, day by day.

The sun's starting to rise again, but its light never quite seems to stretch into Dema. I remember birds used to sing in the early morning back in Columbus. I haven't heard a bird for years.

I think I might go to sleep soon.

For now, I think I'll put my faith in whoever's up there, 'cause there's no use in putting faith in Vialism. 

It's funny how the Bishops teach us that faith is the greatest evil of them all, faith and hope. To have faith is to be dependent. To be faithless is the goal. Not even atheist. I mean like, not having faith in anything. Yet they still ask for us to have faith in them.

I know there's no easy answer to it all. And if there was, would I even believe it?

I think I just have to keep fighting, for now. Lame as it sounds. (I don't fight. I shrivel, like a dying flower.)

I think that as long as I keep pushing back against their teachings, they won't have a total grasp on me. As long as I keep questioning it, as long as I remember what's on the other side of the Limit, I'll still have a chance of making an escape. Even if it's in fifty years. If all I can do is keep questioning Vialism, that's what I'll do.

And I'll try to find more people that I can trust. More people to live for. To have faith in. So, if the time comes, there's not quite so few strings for me to snip.

Maybe I'll talk to that blonde girl.



a/n:  thanks for reading! the story properly starts next chapter, which i'll be posting on the first day of october (thursday). i hope you enjoyed it <3

pear

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