Home
I was cold all over, freezing inside and out, numb. My eyes were cemented open, blank and unblinking. I felt incapable of movement. The walls were closing in on me, shadows played across the room, the jolting cacophony of noises outside droned and blended together in a symphony of destruction. I could feel the fires that I knew were still blazing outside. The smoke was choking me, the flames singed my flesh, my eyes stung�
Time passed. Morning came. I hadn�t slept. The sun was refracted by the cracked windows. Dully, I watched the beams sliding across the floor. I made a vain attempt to drag myself up. After a time, I was on my feet. The room was spinning. Green fire�melting the walls. Freezing, freezing cold. A crash�another crash. Splintering wood- the front door. Several unintelligible shouts. Metallic clanking, thudding, creaking, banging. In the halls, the stairs. My door. At my door. Take me, please, end it now�I don�t want to live anymore. Through the door�inside.
The fire was purple. It danced over my head as the cold steel grip clenched around my throat.
Sitting on the sofa. Blue, soft, warm like home. The television was buzzing plaintively. A speech, nothing else on. Nothing else was ever on. Listening. Cold words, manipulative. It spoke of weakness. Weakness of the human race. Join us, take charge, move toward prosperity. Become one of us. Propaganda, he muttered. My husband. Beside me on the couch. But he went. Few didn�t. They took them, all of them, then brought them back, different�wrong. Like them. Cold steel. No warmth. Not human. Like them.
Prosperity? This was not prosperity. Dying was not prosperity. Torture, destruction, famine�? If I could, I would. I would save them all from this- the others, those who resisted, like I did. But it is too late for me. The air would not come. I stopped fighting. Slipping away, deeper�then I saw it- the round silver, glistening dully, hanging in my face. They had brought it back? Anger flared up inside me. Cruel, heartless�beasts! Human minds, but mechanical flesh�no emotion. I fought back. I wouldn�t give up that easily. That was what they wanted- they wanted us to surrender. I yelled and thrashed as hard as I could, but more of them came, seemingly from nowhere. Surrounded�I was surrounded�it resounded on the sterile walls. Smothered. The light went out. The dancing flames, extinguished. No hope�none.
I opened my eyes. It was completely dark. There was only a soft clicking noise in the distance. I tried to move, but I couldn�t. The pain was too great, my limbs felt too heavy. I blinked, but my eyes adamantly refused to adjust to the ocean of dark. I didn�t know where I was. I listened as the clicking grew louder. Slowly, very slowly, I began to see the vague outline of walls through the blackness. I was finally able to sit up and drag myself into a corner. Click, click- I began to feel nervous. I huddled in the corner with my eyes shut. Suddenly, I could see light through my eyelids. It grew brighter and brighter until finally, reluctantly, I opened my eyes. I was in some sort of cell- a prison cell. The light came streaming from a lantern grasped awkwardly in a steel claw. It was looking at me as it stood outside the cell. It was odd�they never looked at you�more through you. An odd sense of familiarity swept over me. I gasped.
�You�ve come to save me!� I tried to say, but I could not speak. Instead, I began to choke and gasp for precious oxygen. He was still just looking, showing no signs of concern. But I was sure of it- he remembered me. The stony illuminated gaze showed no affliction, but I felt it. Together again�he would save me, come back to me�we would go home. It would go back to the way it was. I just want to go back�
But he just left, left abruptly in a flurry of iron feet. That�s okay, I thought, he�ll come back, he�ll make them understand and then we�ll go. It�s okay now. But I knew it was a lie. A lie�I choked on a sob and grabbed at my throat. My stomach burned�the coolness of the chain on my clammy palm. The locket�but why? What does it mean? I pulled it off and grasped it anxiously. I knew it! I thought. You did this! You remember! I forced the locket open in the blinding darkness. I remembered the photograph it held for the first time since it had been stolen�we were together before the forest of lush, green wilderness. Such green I had not seen in ages�! But I could not see in the pitch black�I stabbed at the locket with my pupils, staring at the photo, but I could not see the picture. Then�then I could see it�in the clear sight of my mind�s eye. The trees, the beautiful forest, and before it�them! Two of them, arm in arm, their reddish gazes like daggers in my brain, seeming to laugh, their metal chests quivering with it. No more�there was no more. I felt sick, swaying on the ground, trying to make sense of it�then I understood. I understood.
We were primitive. We were the beasts. We lived our lives fueled by emotion. Messy�where was the logic? Well, here it was, here in the new race they had created. No longer children playing with their nuclear toys, their fire and their land mines. They had taken the power of the human mind, removed it from its barbed wire cage of feelings. Then they had mixed it with unbreakable flesh�now they had a race fit to govern, without the sloppiness and bother of the heart.
Lock us up, lest we destroy ourselves�those of us who still feel. That, or fix us so we cannot be destroyed- make us like you�cold, but strong. Infinitely strong. It is not too late�there will always be a choice. But what of me, the battered wretch huddled on the stone floor? Too far gone for salvation. All at once I felt it as clear as the locket in my hands�they would never clear my mind of all this�this feeling. I was corrupted. Corrupted�the tears overflowed and spilled upon the ground.
