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Untitled

     He stared out of the center window of the three in his bedroom.  Crows flew from one tree to another, and finally congregated to peck at a worm, caught out in the rain.  He couldn't see the forest for the trees.  A squirrel peered at him briefly before scampering the rest of the way up a tree.  Another day at home alone.  The ceiling was the same off white smooth surface it usually was.  His radio played the same cds over and over again.  Something has to change.
      On the other side of town, a young girl smiled and laughed with her friends.  Two houses down, an old woman sat in a rocking chair on her porch, thinking about her kids far away and her long deceased husband.  Across the street, two boys sat around an anthill, experimentally tapping it with sticks and watching, mesmerized, as the ants scurried around in the ensuing panic.  They were interrupted by a female voice calling from the window, telling them it was time for a bath.
      "Pay attention to where you're going..."  His father chided from the passenger's seat.  "You're all over the other lane."  He shook his head and blinked.  He heard the remnants of a whistled melody before he turned his full attention back to the road.  Where was he going again?  Home. That's right, pass through two more lights then turn right.  He switched on the blinker.
      Tears streamed down her flushed face, leaving behind dark trails of smeared mascara.  Her hair clung in tendrils to her sweaty forehead.  Her nose was running, and so was she.  The pave- ment was hard beneath her pounding feet.  Got to get away.  She brushed past pedestrians and window shoppers, rounding the corner at increased speed.  Occasionally she turned her head to look over her shoulder.  "Who are you running from, child?"  A priest stood on the sidewalk, laughing as she sped away.  "If you fear the shadows, turn on the light," he called out after her. He's getting closer, she thought.
      Poisoned.  A hand fell limply, and a glass fell to the floor and shattered.  The lights in the room spun.  Laughter and the slamming of doors, along with the clattering of shoes on the fire escape, faded from his mind.  "Who are you?"  A green creature holding a lantern tittered and shook its head.  Its beady yellow eyes glinted in the spinning light, revealing a writing desk and a barred window behind it.  "You are home," a tiny, gravely voice declared.
     "No."  A smooth off white ceiling greeted him, along with the familiar surroundings of his room.  "Something has to change."  There was a symbol painted on his hand.  He wondered who had put it there.  He heard a sigh from across the room.  Blearily, he sat up.  A sad-eyed, messy haired girl peered back at him from a chair across the room.  "He's getting closer," she said, simply.
      "Elitism is very expensive...  The elite suffer from a nervous condition, brought on by frustration.  The thinking of the higher ups gets more muddled as time passes.  Communication is only possible among equals.  Any system involving a lower level reporting to a higher is bound to be fraught with disinformation."
      "You mean, its like living in a world of 3rd graders when you're a college graduate...  Don't talk down to me."  It all comes down to this: ego.  Have you followed it back to the source?  No, you've been too afraid to.  What are you afraid of?  What do you think will happen when you find the source?  You are afraid that the world as we know it will end. What is so scary about that? Something has to change.
      How many voices do you have in your head?  Have you considered that they're all the same? That's a scary thought to you.  Because if that were so, you would be all alone...  And you don't want to be all alone...
      "No."  He had no idea what it was like to be a female.  She had no idea what it was like to be a male.  The representatives for two very different species looked at each other over the table. Too serious, was the only thing he could think of.  She looked pained, as if there was a black dripping wound in her side that would not heal.  He looked dispassionate to her, with cold far- away eyes and a bored posture.  Who would speak first...?
      "I have some things I want to talk about," she began.  "First of all, what is real to you?!?!"  He shifted his weight, looking mildly uncomfortable.  "I mean, this table in front of us, is it real?" He shrugged.  She sighed.  "Okay, you go first."
      "I don't care," was all he could say.  She couldn't understand.  All the things in her life that she held dear, all the things that she believed in, cried out to her.  Don't give up!  And soon, it didn't matter anymore.  Because the green creature was there again, with its swinging lantern and its gleefully empty eyes.  "Tee hee!" it shrieked.  It had a sticker on the back of its robe that read, simply, "schizophrenia."
      None of these people are real.  They're all in a deep sleep, floating in some space colony, waiting for the day that the earth will be inhabitable again.  Never, it will never be.  The rest who had done their homework were already on another planet, in a different state of mind.  The dramas of everyday were dreams of the slumbering earthlings.  Their dreams had begun to be quite troubled, fraught with killings and natural disasters and myriads of other destruction. Who would tell them that there was no death, that there was no earth???  Who would wake them up and let them be again?
      One among the sleepers dreamt that nothing was real.  He dreamt that he was surrounded by illusions, and that he was not even sure of his own authenticity.  He therefore verbally assaulted anyone else he encountered in his dreams with a biting cynicism and maintained a harsh exterior. "What's the point," seemed to echo in his mind.
      Another sleeper was tormented by dreams of unrequited love.  She imagined the perfect ideal being and thoughtlessly pursued him, not realizing that she was chasing her own tail.  She spent many a night crying into her pillow, remembering the object of her affection looking at other girls with that light in his eyes.
      Only the sleepers who were considered children had any semblance of peace, living with the joy of their endless imaginations.  Most were already quite susceptible to what adults referred to as guilt and shame.  It was only a matter of time before the world broke them, it was generally believed.
      What kind of neurosis was this?  It could not be fathomed.  They were the musings of a tortured mind.  The price of omniscience...?

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