The Nano Virus

Incarcerated

I have been here for one hundred and seventy-three days, five hours and twelve minutes, a dark room with frigid stone walls with strikes I engraved into it for every day I have been here. My only light comes from a small porthole sized window with three rusted bars spaced between it and a view of a raging ocean. To the front of the room is a heavy duty steel door which appears to be made to withstand a nuclear attack. Twice a day a small port is opened on the door and a tray plummets. It consisted of a repulsive slime that I believe was supposed to be food. Over time I have learned to somewhat like the slime considering it was all I had to eat.

The best days are when it is storming outside, and the ocean waves were crashing against the rocks far below my window, hard enough for small puddles of water to fly up and splash down on to the floor. I don't really know why I like it some much. Maybe it's because I don't feel alone. Just as my heart and mind cries, so does the heavens. The first sixty days here, I spent undergoing the stages of grief. Stage one, denial, stage two, anger, stage three, bargaining, stage four, depression, and stage five, acceptance. I have not been able to reach stage five and I don't think I ever will, but I have to tolerate it all. I have to tolerate the fact that my soul has been indisputably doomed to hell. I remember at one point I prayed every day and night, but for what? How can I expect God to forgive me if I can't even forgive myself? I have killed, and not just once. I have killed millions. I am a murderer and I have to live with that for the rest of my life, and I deserve to spend the rest of my days in this black hole of a room that sucks every piece of joy and happiness out of my soul that once resided there.

"Philips! Philips, why?" "What did we do to do to deserve this? Silent moans graze by my ears as if the wind was speaking to me. I begin to open my eyes and I see darkness, but I can feel a difference. I am lying down but as I take my hand and caress the ground below me, I feel soft flaky grass rubbing against it. Am I outside? I proceed to get off the ground and stand up; it was a great feeling to breath in the fresh air. I begin looking at the murky silhouette of the trees and it overwhelms me with joy. I start to turn around in a full three sixty motion so my eyes could absorb everything around me. Ah! I fall in dismay. What am I looking at? Millions of people walking toward me, but they all have dead stares complimented with a slow walk, pale skin complexions and the soft unified whisper I heard when I first opened my eyes. "Philips, Philips, Philips." They repeated my name over and over again, asking me "why?" I bounced around in the opposite direction like a jack rabbit and began to run in a zigzag pattern as if I was being shot at. I see bushes in the distance, so I make a quick slant toward those and sped up. Once I got within a good distance of the bushes, I leaped. The bushes began rustling until they came to a slow stop. I took my hand and pushed through the bushes just enough to make a small peephole to see if I had escaped. I took a deep sigh because I didn't see them. I turn around to get comfortable sitting against the brushes since I couldn't manage to catch my breath. I'm a little tired, so I start dozing off until I heard the whispers again, "Philips, Philips, Philips." My eyes immediately burst open and there they were again. I darted out of the bushes and started running toward the middle of the field, but while I was running, something caught my foot and I started tumbling. When I glimpsed back I seen the ward, "Sarah Lee 1991- 2026" Then I knew where I was, and why the people were targeting me. When I looked up I seen millions of the people all walking toward me and I knew I deserved whatever they were about to do to me. So, I sat there. I watched as all of them surrounded me still whispering my name, as one by one they all started to pile up on me.

Ah! The weight on my body lifted. I was able to breathe again. The harsh and agonizing pain in my foot was gone. Are they gone? I open one eye to peek and to my amazement I see the ocean. I open both of my eyes and lean upright to ensure that I was seeing correctly, and that it wasn't my eyes playing tricks on me. I feel the sensation of the frigid stone floors. I see the engraved tricks on the stone walls that I used to keep up with the days. My eyes were pulling in all these details at once which made me quickly realize that I was just dreaming, but something was still different. The thought of anything else being different increased the amount of anxiety inside of me, which caused me to instantly start hyperventilating. I noticed that there was more light inside my room than usual. I considered the possibility of the peephole being the cause of this, but noticed that it was still dark outside. Out the corner of my eye, I see two large and long shadows that cover the floor entirely, like paint on a canvas. I followed the shadows all the way back to the steel door, and those shadows were attached to two big men in all blue attire and white mask. The first sight of them startled me. This was the first time I had ever seen the door open and people inside my room. So, I quickly asked what did they want with me and their response was, "Dr. Philips, we heard you were having trouble sleeping. You were yelling through the night. So, we are just here to help you." However their grins told me otherwise. One of them launched at me and held me. The other one removed his hands from behind his back, and I saw a large needle, and before I knew it, it was punctured into the side of my neck. I felt instant effects. Everything became slow and blurry. I felt my body lifted, and then there was darkness.