1
The sky was blood-red.
The pavement beneath me was scorched and curling.
Who was chasing me?
I glanced back but saw only an endless stretch of asphalt road.
The buildings on either side looked like old trash cans, casually overturned on the roadside.
I yanked the blanket off my face and sat up, dazed. Here we go again.
For the past two months, I'd been having the same dream repeatedly.
It always involved corpses and scattered limbs.
I'd see my blood-stained face reflected in a store window, my mouth moving, but no sound coming out.
The digital clock on the bedside table beeped.
Seven o'clock.
I sighed and walked into the bathroom.
The girl in the mirror looked pale.
I couldn't remember how many times I'd woken up from nightmares like this.
Since losing my job, I hadn't had a good night's sleep. Sleep had become something that exhausted me.
Maybe I really should see a therapist...
After washing my face with cold water, I got ready to leave.
The trash in my apartment had been piling up for a week.
Since I woke up early, I could catch the garbage collection time.
The elevator was almost empty, just a woman taking her child to school.
She had bruises on her forehead and other marks on her face.
Seeing me enter, she tugged at her mask and turned her head away.
I suddenly remembered the sounds of fighting from upstairs last night and averted my gaze, hoping to make her feel more at ease.
The collection point was right outside the elevator.
The sorting lady was chatting with a few elderly folks who were out for their morning exercise.
They kept shaking their heads, probably gossiping about another resident.
I dumped the takeout packaging I'd accumulated over the past few days into the trash can.
As I was sorting through the delivery boxes, I heard a low exclamation from the crowd.
"No way! Are you serious?"
"It's true! My daughter was supposed to come back this morning. But as soon as her plane landed, she was taken to the hospital for quarantine, for a safety check."
"A safety check? For what?"
"Blood tests, CT scans, ultrasounds... everything they could do. No idea what's going on."
Safety check? Medical exam?
For some reason, my heart started pounding.
For a moment, scenes from my dream flashed in my mind again.
The curled pavement, the toppled roadblocks, the crimson sunset...
Seeing me standing there, the sorting lady took a step forward and grabbed the trash from my hand. "Oh, sweetie, you look so neat and tidy. Why do you let the trash pile up for four or five days?"
Ignoring her teasing, I pulled out my phone. Twitter was clean, as usual, full of celebrity gossip and social issues.
Weird... Is there a resurgence of the virus?
Frowning, I quickened my pace back home.