Hostile Awakening

I desire death. I crave it. I lust after it. It is the forbidden fruit, teasing, and taunting me with its glimmering sheen. It glistens in the sunlight and beckons me to reach out. But every time I try, I fall short. Every time I try, it moves further from my grasp. Yet, I continue to chase after it as if I were Alice and it were the rabbit. And it laughs in my face maniacally as I struggle and exhaust myself. As I beg for its sweet release.

1 year, 2 months, 8 days. The length of time I've been alone. 10 months. The length of time it took for the loneliness to consume me. 67. The number of times I've tried to die.

I am a god. I am what humans have sought after for centuries. I am all-powerful, infinite, indestructible. But, what is a god without someone to worship them? What is the purpose of divinity if there's no one to believe in it? Can a god exist within a realm without a man to praise them? Is it even a god then or just an unfortunate soul?

Things escalated quickly. We barely had time to process what was happening. I remember the deafening sound of the alarms. Every single person's phone blaring at once with the notice. The group called themselves The Preservers. They were a collective group of advanced hackers who initiated every nuclear bomb in the world to explode at once. They believed their intentions were good. Their manifesto stated that the only way to save mankind was to wipe it out and allow Earth to be reborn. Cleansing the world of man’s sins was our only way to salvation. A mass sacrifice to preserve the Earth before we completely destroyed it. We had only moments to brace ourselves. Just enough time to grab whoever was closest and try to find some comfort before our imminent deaths. I remember the terror on my father’s face. It contorted and shivered as he whimpered in horror. He wasn’t afraid for himself but for the fact that there was no possible way to protect his children. He clutched my sister and I, holding us as if he were a shield. He kissed our heads in an attempt to console us, knowing we knew what was happening. Trying to ease our fears. He tried and he failed.

I remember waking up to dust everywhere. Carcasses of my city surrounding me. People were scattered with their skin half burnt off. Buildings half fallen into rubble. But I was unscathed. I was the phoenix rising from the ashes of a fallen city. I don’t know how. How isn’t even important to me anymore. Why is the question that nags the back of my mind. Why was I chosen to live?

I sometimes think I didn’t survive at all. That I did die and this is my damnation. That I am destined to spend eternity alone in the remains of my home, aimlessly trying to ascend beyond it. But, I refuse to believe that this is my destiny. I refuse to accept this hell.

It’s been hard. I was a city kid with no concept of self-preservation. I grew up with the world at my fingertips. I could barely feed myself before and now I scavenge for food like a wild animal. I have been moving for what feels like forever. Searching every partly standing building for any remnants of food and water that I can find. I still feel human. I’m hungry and tired.

I’ve tried it all. Any possible way to die. I’ve tried cutting, jumping, drowning and every time I wake up fine. Unscathed and alive. Sadly, so alive. I’ve searched half of the country in the past year for any other life, specifically my mother. Her image haunts me in my sleep so much that it feels like a command. Like someone telling me to find her. Insisting that I do. Telling me she’s out there. That somehow she also survived this catastrophe. Her beauty comforts my nights. The memories of her tucking me into bed. Her long blonde hair glowing in the light of the dimly lit lamp on my bedside table and her golden heart locket dangling and hitting my nose when she kisses my forehead. My parents divorced when I was a child. They had me young and both sacrificed their futures for me. But, she had dreams that she could never relinquish and my father loved her enough to let her chase them. She moved out and started traveling a lot for work. I saw her twice a year if I was lucky. If she could take a few days off, my sister and I would fly out to whatever city she was in and visit her. She wasn’t physically present, but she tried her best to still be our mom. She sent us letters and photos constantly. The walls of my room were lined with her adventures.

I always imagined I’d one day follow in her footsteps. I’d grow up, graduate college, and find a job where I could experience the world like her. I guess my dream did come true. The genie granted my wish but it came with its conditions. I have seen hundreds of cities in my quest for her, but they’ve all just been shells of what they once were. They’re not exciting like I hoped they would be. They’re not even cities anymore, just ruins of cities.

I’ve searched almost every place that she’s told me about in those letters. I’ve traipsed half of the country and my optimism emptied months ago. But the dreams keep pushing me to look. They keep getting more vivid, almost like I’m getting closer. I’m not far from her and I can feel it.

New Orleans was the last place she told me about. Her letters described the ambiance of the city. The history intertwined into the architecture, into the very bones of each building. How you could feel the lives of the thousands of people who have been there emanating from the streets. The smell of food that has taken years to perfect wafting around every corner. She said it was mesmerizing. But now, as I’m here, I feel no one. I don’t sense the ghosts of those who walked these streets. I just feel empty gloom.

It’s late and I need to sleep. I enter under the archway with the word Armstrong barely clinging on. Chunks of the sign missing. I go to find a clear spot in the patchy grass to set up my mat and sleep for the night. The stars are bright, the only good thing to have come from all of this. No more metropolitan lights to outshine the galaxy.

I dreamt of her again. This dream was different, though. She was here, in this city. Her hair was flowing magically in the wind as she stood looking over the river. She clutched onto her locket, tears clouding her eyes. People scrambled around her in fear, running away, ducking into buildings. This must have been her last moment. Music was playing. A loud and energetic saxophone. A man’s dying song. Something to soothe the people. She unclasped her necklace and it slowly slid from her grasp onto the ground. She took a deep breath and jumped into the harsh river waters and floated away.

I heard the music as I woke up. It was distant and muffled, summoning me to follow it. I quickly got up and packed my things into my sack and followed. I walked southward through the remains of what I assumed was the French Quarter. Pieces of bricks and iron scattered, having fallen from buildings. I walked down the blocks as the music kept getting louder. Telling me I was close. I started to smell the water and feel the breeze. A light shone before the waterfront. It beckoned me over. The saxophone was almost deafening now, morphing more into a screeching ring. Lying on the ground bathed in the glowing light at the edge of the concrete that led to the water was her locket. Somehow it had survived the blast. It was what had been reaching out to me, telling me to find it. The noise was painful now. My ears rang. Something urged me to do what my mother had. That the only way to escape was to follow her. I clipped the locket around my neck and held it to my chest for a moment and then I jumped, like her.

The water dragged me down immediately, harshly pulling and pushing me. This is what I wanted but my natural instincts made me fight to swim to the surface. The sunlight broke through the water and I tried to reach it. Terror filled me as I kicked my legs. But I wasn’t strong enough to fight the currents. Slowly I drifted deeper. The shrieking noise followed me as the darkness of the water surrounded me and I sank deeper and deeper.

“She’s awake! Subject 1027 is awake,” I heard a woman yelling. The beeping had dulled. It was getting quicker, though, mimicking my fast beating heart rate. My eyes opened abruptly. I was wailing as two nurses tried to hold me down, their faces half obstructed by masks. One tall and intimidating with dark black hair tightly pulled back. The other was young, her soft ginger hair framing her eyes. They were kind and looked at me worried. I was tangled in a mess of wires, flailing around as I yelled. Not intentionally, the screams were just coming out of my mouth without me trying.

“How did she break through?” The ginger nurse asked the other to no answer. “No, one should be able to break out of it!”

“I’m going to get the doctor. Don’t let her get up. Give her the tranquilizer,” The dark haired nurse told the other. She ran off hurriedly. My head darted from left to right. All I could see from each side were rows of hospital beds occupied by unconscious people. Wires attached to their heads, too.

“Where am I?” I begged the ginger nurse for an explanation. Her body weight pushed me down, fighting to keep me in the bed.

“I’m so sorry,” She really did look remorseful. We stared at each other for a moment. She lowered her head close to mine. She seemed afraid someone would hear, “You’re a part of an experiment.”

I was crying now. I hadn’t even realized that I had stopped struggling and had just started to sob, “What do you mean? Everyone’s dead. They’ve been dead for a year.”

“No, no ones dead,” She paused, clearly scared to tell me, “You’ve been in a simulated world of our making. We’ve been studying you.”

“Why?” I pleaded for an answer.

She looked over her shoulder frighteningly, looked back at me empathetically and sighed, “We’re trying to shift people’s consciousness into alternate realities. Earth is dying and we need an escape.”

Before I could ask any more questions the other nurse ran back in. She was followed by a tall man in a white coat.

“You haven’t given her the sedative?” The dark-haired nurse asked the ginger nurse. She rushed in and pushed her aside and grabbed my arm.

“Let me put her under before we take her down to testing, doctor,” She grabbed a syringe from a table.

“No, don’t! Please! Help me!” I pleaded to them as I started to flail around again. They each held me down and the dark-haired nurse poked my arm with the needle. I slowly drifted back into the darkness.

I woke up coughing up water, trying to catch my breath. My vision slowly cleared to show that I was back on the waterfront before I had jumped into the river. The demolished city around me again. I began to sob.