Awakening

by Hayden Pearton

  *

  I’m home. The pod opens. I step inside. The hard metallic surface conforms to the exact shape of my spine. The white doors close, leaving the glass cover my only portal to the outside. I reach up to my face, feeling something wet below my eyes. In the reflective mirror before me, I can vaguely make out a man crying. He looks like me. He looks like me, down to the ever-changing eyes and the midnight hair. Why is he crying? He should be happy.

  He’s going home…

  There’s someone beside him. A girl. She’s looks through me with her blazing eyes, reading my mind like an open book. Her long beautiful hair sways in the breeze.

  Breeze?

  There shouldn’t be any wind in the Station. I step forward to touch her, my toes brushing past the long blades of grass. It’s getting harder to think. My thoughts swim before me, darting back and forth in their confusion.

  Help Her.

  Leave Her.

  Again and again, an endless repetition. My mind is on fire, but she’s standing right in front of me, if I could only reach her, maybe I could help her…

  Once more, she has brought me to this place… to this glade. Her crimson tears stain the ground as she moves to embrace me. Her eyes begin to flicker, now violet, now green, now blue, and now, blood-red. I begin to scream once more, uncontrollably, over and over, as her thin, pale hands begin to encircle my neck…