Memory 2: Reality, Once Again.
In that instant, in that moment, something overcame me. It was an anomaly, laid bare. An anomaly in this world of enslaved perfection, just like me. Unnatural, unwanted yet still alive. There. Existing.
*BLINK*
And just like that, as quietly as it had once appeared, it had slipped away from my perception. Gone. Alone again I was, isolated. I tilt my head backwards in full swing, cackling incessantly into the dawn. My laughter echoed and reverberated through the walls, leaving no witnesses. Liquid stained my eyes like tinted glass.
It was there! I saw it. I witnessed it in it's true form! A miracle, a miracle it must be. Am I truly not alone in this world? If it had eyes, it would've stared back. If it had ears, it would've listened in glee and anticipation for my every move. If it had a mouth, what would it have said? Oh, will you please come ba-
"HEY!" A man, clearly irritated and very much now awake from my childlike excitement bashed open the door with one swift slam into it. "Will you shut up already, you freak? Who even are you anyways?"
I take a moment to revel in the fruits of my labour for a second or two, turning around only to see the hulking figure of what seems to be another abandoned person. I don't trust these people. They weren't "abandoned" in the same way I was. They were outcasts to begin with, deviants, criminals who would do anything for that one moment of adrenaline to be pumped into their system.
They became monsters of their own volition.
These people, if you can still classify them as such, I don't want to be like them. Every waking moment of my existence is spent as far away from all the suffering, running from it. Running, vaulting, jogging, walking, crawling. Anything to get away from the fate that awaited these. Whatever humanity is left in me, rejects it violently - survival is not an excuse to become someone else.
"Me?" I slowly turn and twist my body to face him, my hands massaging the back of my neck. Might've gone a bit overboard there. "I'm a nobody, I am nothing. But if you really want to name me, call me a vagabond - that is who I am now."
"Tch." He spits on the floor to the right of him, his eyes not breaking eye contact as if eyeing up his prey. I don't think he liked that introduction. "Better get talking right god damn now. You're in my territory. Explain yourself or... well... I won't be able to recognise you in a moment, yeah?"
And, just like at the drop of a pin, I dart for the other side. Turns out this labyrinth of absolutely "beautiful" grey walls, grey walls and even more grey walls was this guy's home. Bad luck. After breaking out into a full sprint for a second or two, I peek behind me only to be met with the same giant who blocked my vision then, blocking it all the same now.
[Man, are you a minotaur or something? What's your obsession with mazes?] I attempt to shout over, only for it to be muffled by my increasingly desperate gasps. I don't dare look back to signal this to him, that'll break the first rule of running. Also, I don't really want to look behind me as I hear the most colourful swearing and rambling I've heard in all my life.
...
Finally, a clearing. The seemingly infinite waves of gray that once surrounded me now replaced by a path, devoid of anyone. I make a last dash outwards before my stamina runs out, a final struggle before my body gives in.
A minute, two then three. What felt like a second eternity now is drowned by the burning sensation carved into my legs. No more running now. Whatever happens happens. I can't even support myself no more, faceplanting the dirt in the least graceful method possible.
[Good luck, me.]
I wait for it, the pain to seep through as he would pummel me. I can see it, as clear as the light that paints the pathway infront of me, see it in my mind. Each and every frame, filled with the tenderness of sheer pain.
...
But it doesn't come.
Through my drained attempts for ever sweet oxygen, nothing came. I hold my breath. No noise, no footsteps, no screaming or death threats. Blissful safety.
With the very last bit of energy in me, I twist my body over to see the sun, fully risen. Then, it slowly fades to black.
"What a... beautiful... sight."