Dimday Red - Can of Worms

Part Five - Rejected Reality

Time and space were no longer relative. Was she still in the closet-room? She felt her feet did not touch the ground, like she floated in a womb waiting to be born. Memories and thoughts were battling in her head; reality slipped away. A vile presence existed in the darkness with her, for that she was sure, but she could not see it. Its viscous limbs crawled around her, sending waves of reek each time they passed close to her face. She had to uncover hope and anchor herself to it.

She thought of him.

Nobody had cared about her as Cillian did. From the first day they met, saving her life, and every day for the past four years, he made her complete, like they were one entity. People always used a lot of words to describe it: love, destiny, passion, lust. Meghan knew it exceeded definition and whoever thought they were able to express it, they had never experienced it. She focused on the sensation of his lips touching hers.

A dim cyan light appeared on her left. She tried to reach it, but there was no sense of distance; she could not walk, her feet did not step on any kind of ground. The light illuminated nothing; it did not move; it was just there. Trying to calm herself, she closed her eyes and brought Cillian in her mind again. His touch on her neck, sitting on the rooftop, drinking wine and conquering the world with their minds.

When she opened her eyes again, the light was next to her. Through it she saw her reflection, but not in the dark place, she stood at the seaside.

Meghan had never been to the sea. She had spent all her twenty four years in the Center, as everybody else unlucky enough to be born in it. Her mother had shown her pictures when she was a child, but even these looked faded. Yet, the salty scent and the cool breeze seemed so familiar. And the sky; it was blue!

It was never blue in the Fireball anymore. It was almost white when the sun rode up high. Various shades of orange and red, colored it at dawn and dimday. Many nefarious grays covered it during the constant electromagnetic storms, caused by climate change. And black; at night. Of all those colors, she preferred that. Darkness helped her appreciate light more. The way candlelight made shadows dancing on the walls. How moonlight turned everything silver, making Eric's colorless eyes seem like mercury.

"He is not coming you know."

Meghan observed the person speaking through the light. She saw herself, but something appeared off. The woman on the beach appeared perfect, almost unnatural. Her dark hair were silky and shining, skin looking smooth and softly tanned, her blue dress waving at the breeze, bright as the sky. She looked so elegant, like a model, but the woman in the reflection did not feel like her.

"Do you think he will always be there to save you?" her model-self asked, drawing symbols with the bare feet in the sand. "The world is a tough place Meg, but it is not your fault you are suffering. You were just born at the wrong side of the fence. Do you think you would be the same person if they had raised you outside the Center? All your values, your priorities would be different. You shouldn't have to search for someone to fill the gap your father's death left you with. You would be carefree, just like me! Wouldn't you like that?"

Meghan tried to protest, but her voice didn't find its way out. She knew all these were lies. Her father did die in the protests leading to the First Uprising, almost twenty years ago, when they first raised the walls around the Center. His loss left a huge scar in her young soul, but it had long healed. And she wouldn't change her beliefs and values for all the colorful dresses in the world. Such was the life universe dealt her; her thoughts, her dreams. Nobody would take that from her.

"I know what you're thinking," the woman on the beach said. "I am you, everything you ever wanted to become. Don't you remember drawing me when you were small? Colorful dress, by the sea, blue sky? You wished to become like me. But then you changed. You didn't care about dresses any more. You needed to change the world. What good came out of that?"

Meghan put all her effort to push one word out, and it sounded less than a whisper.

"Cillian..."

Crimson clouds started gathering over the beach, covering every bit of the blue sky. The colorful dress, waving fiercely to the strong wind, changed to yellow, then orange, then red, until it went up in flames. Her reflection on the seaside ignited. The pink skin turned ominously gray, her rich hair into a blaze of fire, her eyes white-hot embers. A gruesome smile formed on her black lips.

An invisible force started pulling Meghan towards the light. Everything on the other side was ablaze and in the middle of it all, a dark silhouette with inhuman long arms, ready to embrace her. She tried to resist the pull, sensing the flames on her face, smelling cooked flesh. This couldn't be real. It was a dream, an illusion. It had to be. The power pulled her through the portal, bringing her over to the scorching world, closer to the ever expanding grim clutches.

Gruesome long limbs wrapped around her, burning her wherever they touched her body. She opened her mouth to scream in agony, but no sound came out. Every moment brought her nearer the smiling black creature until she stood right in front of it.

"There is no escape," it said. "Everything burns here and so will you!"

Meghan felt her consciousness slip and something compelled her to surrender, wishing for this nightmare to be over. In a sudden act of determination, she pulled the long pin holding her hair up, and stuck it into the creature's right eye. A high-pitched scream almost deafened her for a moment, then everything ended.

The fire, the heat, the smell, the wind, all of it.

She stood back in the closet-room, only it was white, fully lit. A skinny figure in a black suit lay face down in a pool of blood in front of her. On what she recognized as a female hand, she saw the mark of the Controllers. She turned the body over and pulled the pin out of the bloody eye socket.

"OK, mother fuckers! Who's next?"