“Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought.” George Orwell

My feet were no longer my own. They will not move under my control. They become a number, attached to the conveyor belt they were no longer separate from, just another item shuffling along to its destination. The truth which was promised me doesn’t exist here. I see empty eyes being filled with shadows and light, split right down the middle. Ears being filled with mumbling nonsense and mouths being filled with endless nonsensical chatter. The hope that was sold to me disintegrates into light filled floating dust accumulating around me. I only hear echoes of something, of voices babbling within my mind, telling me what to do and how to be and what to hold and how to close my eyes while they’re still opened, how to open my eyes and no longer see. And in a flash I forget exactly what I am standing on.

The old man is still writing as he whispers my way and even his words now die in a puff of smoke. They can’t take this! He screams, pointing at his heart. A part of me dies within his struggle, my silence awakens a spark in his eyes. Don’t forget your voice here, you can’t forget your voice! But all I can do is watch as the flames overcome his body and he disappears into the shadows. And I watch the planes buzzing overhead filling up with bombs, their only real truth, floating shadows released from the screaming Earth attaching to each instrument of death. There are no tears here, only blank covered faces, empty eyes, chaining me to the seat which appears below me as I watch ideas flow by. Shards of darkness, repeating themselves, I close my eyes, but they are still open. I cry but nothing comes out as images and words scatter around my head, they mean less and less.

The shadow in front of the room is waving a wand as the empty robotic eyes around the room follow the wand waving at nothing and at seemingly random times, I watch a body, attached to those eyes float up through the air, securing itself to the planes flying above. In between the mumbling and the shadows above me and the chains wrapped around me which I couldn’t touch; and sometimes thought might not even be there, I remember what I once was. The leaves twirl down from the ceiling, orange, brown, remembering what fall felt like and here I am falling, as the voices and the lights remind me of what I am. I reach for the doll, the bear that gives me comfort, the one I could never let go. The cold I felt as I clutched him was the only comfort I knew. And the shadows flew by over head and we would immediately take shelter. Sometimes we couldn’t even see them, but we still knew, we could feel them crawling up our skin. They left fire in their tracks, suffocating, blinding fire. A fire that was no longer even frightening, just tiring, so tiring and I forgot how to breathe here.

The old man, as a vision from my mind screams out to me as I see him running in a trail of fire. And he shows me how they closed their eyes in that car on the hill, dreaming of a better world. And how they held hands. How they thought this was the only way they could make a difference. Where were they? On that hill. I needed to find them I needed to stop them, but maybe they did achieve the only thing they really wanted to. I am here talking about them. I am here and there is nothing I can do anymore but fight this thing. The old man reminds me in his trail of fire, the only thing I can do is never let those flames get too close. I close my eyes and I am both of them and there is a smile on their faces and there is something living there that gets released, something that we can all feel if we could see. I wish I didn’t because here I am in the darkness, everyone with an opinion digging deep down into me, telling me what I am. I only know one thing here, but it’s enough, a lot ain’t right here and this fire and these bombs that never stop falling, the smoke everywhere and the shadows hanging over us, this ain’t right. There is a buzz and a flash and I am there in that car, on that hill, choking on the smoke as the two of them hold hands in a peaceful act of love in the midst of suffocating death. And I dissolve into a letter floating down with the fall leaves, a letter to us all that we’ll never read, but will always be there.