Nightmare End

“At least in hell, my suffering would be sincere.” Though to be honest, I’m not convinced this isn’t some kind of hell.

“That wasn’t the intended result. Tell us what happened from your point of view.”

“No, please, no more. No more talking, no more requests, I just want this to stop. Please just let me be. There’s no discussion needed. You know what I want, but you act like you don’t. No one ever listens to me. It's like words don’t mean what I was taught they meant. Every time I think it's over, it's something else. Just let me go.” This must be some kind of torture specially designed for damned souls of my ilk.

“But we don’t know why you're like this. Why you ran from welcoming arms. Why you wanted to be restrained. Why you sought your own demise.”

“You don’t need to know why. Surely you can come to some sort of conclusion by the actions themselves.” This wasn’t getting anywhere. For god(s?), they weren’t very smart.

“How about this, if we could grant you one wish, what would it be?”

“Leave me alone.”

“How about a second wish?”

Of course that wouldn’t work. They didn’t listen to any of my other pleas. How like the god of that world to ask for your greatest desire only to ignore you. “For words to have meaning.” This’ll probably be ignored as well, but for whatever reason I somehow have hope that something, anything will get through to them.

“They already do. How about a third?” 

What’d I tell you? Guess they want me to ask for tangible things. But the one thing I wanted, getting it back won’t help. Not now. It's far too late to ask for that. All I want now is to be done and for this to stop. I just want to be left to rot somewhere. I thought I had distanced myself enough from the others to achieve that, but then this happened. Not having anything left to wish for, I treated them like how I wanted to be treated and stayed silent.

“... Having trouble?”

That’s it. I’m done. I’m done playing this stupid game. Whatever comes next, I won’t respond.

“Would you like us to set you on the floor?” 

Well, I guess as long as I don’t actually ‘say’ anything. An affirmative nod should get the idea across. Should. Everything else ‘should' have been enough and look where that got me. Oh, wow, they actually seemed to understand this time. Maybe I was right about the word thing. Now that there’s solid ground under my feet, maybe I can escape. Not knowing where to go, everywhere had the same whitish glow, I sat down facing away from the god and stared into the blank nothingness.

“What? Are you mad at us?”

Of course. They would’ve been able to see it in my eyes throughout this discussion had a certain incident not occurred. Though, I guess I would be leaking, but ever since I’ve been here, not a single drop of color had spilt from me. Remnants of previous spouts were still all over me, but nothing new. I cross my stained arms and sulk. A giant hand spins me to face the “god” again. Once it let go of me, it reeled back into the same nothingness as everywhere else.

“You do look pretty roughed up. Would you like us to repair you? Would that make you happy.”

I was about to decline, but then I wondered to what extent they’d fix me. Surely they’d fix my eyes and wash the multicolored stains off my body, but would that be it? If it stopped there, there’d be no point. Would they fix whatever was causing the colors in the first place? I got optimistic, we’re finally getting somewhere. Maybe they could even … well, I guess I should ask, first. So much for not responding. “To what extent?”

“What do you mean?”

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, ‘What do you mean?’! “What are the exact changes you’d make in order for me to be considered ‘repaired' by your standards?”

“Does that imply there are things you both do or do not want changed?”

ARGH!!! “Could you please just answer my question?”

“Please, understand. If you tell us exactly what went wrong, we can have a system worked out to accommodate for future individuals with a similar worldview as yourself.”

‘What went wrong…’ oh, where to begin? Probably the riot I got mixed into, but I could live with the consequences resulting from that. Heck, I kind of liked being all alone in my cell. You know what? “Could you bring me back to when my world was gray?” I was purposefully cryptic because I wanted to narrow down possibilities just right. One wrong word and this dunce will ruin everything, though I guess it doesn’t get much worse than this. Although I wouldn’t want a chance like this to go to waste.

“Your world was never gray, you were just blind to the color at the time.”

Oh, I guess they’re right, but I actually wanted them to ask questions this time… Perhaps they knew that, and purposefully didn’t ask anything. They are a god, after all. If I ask to be put back in a cell as I am, I’d probably just end up here again. If I ask to be taken back in time, this would all happen again. If I ask for … my restraints… well, it wouldn’t do me good now. Being here wouldn’t do the old me any good, either. I wish this just didn’t happen, but I feel I got some very usable information that past and future past me would appreciate. But I don’t want to have actually gone through all that. This is such a nightmare… OH, WAIT, THAT’S PERFECT! “I wish the past few days had just been a bad dream all along, and that I’m about to wake up from it.” I sighed, that was the only way I could think I’d be able to move on from this.

“We would debate with you some more, but you technically did ‘wish’ that time. And we were going to part with you soon anyway.”

And then I woke up, face to face with Mistari. She was by the bed I still don’t recall falling asleep in, looking at me with yellow eyes, concerned. I sat up, realized I couldn’t yawn properly, felt around my mouth, and smiled so wide it hurt. I leapt out of bed and lifted her up with a hug and twirled. It wasn’t quite what I’d ‘asked’ for, but I guess it was what I’d ‘wished’ for.

“Did you have a nice dream?” she asked. Her eyes were now orange, but also had a magenta glow. I set her down, my hands still in contact with her, and energetically shook my head. Wonderful! My eyes were fixed (kind of) and the stains were cleaned, or no, they never weren’t like that in reality. Even better! My reaction seemed to make her eyes even more intensely orange. Of course she didn’t understand, but so long as it doesn’t affect me directly like in that nightmare, it doesn’t matter. I let go of her and twirled some more and skipped outside. I waved at the passersby, settling into a trot. In a full twirl I glimpsed back at Mistari, who’s eyes had now fully shifted to magenta. I’m so happy she’s happy for me. Randal put his hands on my shoulders to stop me. With the sun behind him, he cast an intimidating shadow over me. Great, what now? His usual green gaze made me switch from orange to yellow to purple back to orange; I could see the changes clearly thanks to his pale face and the shade. What a volatile mess I am…

“Hey, partner! Look, I won’t ask about yer… issues anymore, but we can’t have ya just take up space, a’ight?” I nodded, not knowing where he was going with this. I was fine on my own, I didn’t come here on my own accord, but something tells me they won’t be letting me go so easily. “Come with me, we’re goin’ back to the fortress. Ya like it there, right?” I nodded. He gently shoved me the other way and we walked to the vehicles that initially brought me here. “Well, we gotta go back to pick up more drop-offs like yerself.” I nodded. See, it’s much easier when people just let me respond and let my answers be answers. “It might be right to have someone who hasn’t fully transitioned to help some of ‘em adjust easier. Remind ‘em ‘o home er somethin’. Closest we had before was Mistari, but even she might be a bit too different for ‘em nowadays.” I nodded. His reasoning seemed severely flawed as I was the only one I knew of who actually liked it there. The only one who seemed to be having adjustment issues was me. Although, maybe I was just too caught up in my own problems to notice the others.

The ride over gave me time to think. People didn’t talk to each other much, especially not to me, and I liked that, but that was also kind of the problem. After all that went down and everything just happens to work out? Them actually taking my preferences into consideration? It all conveniently really being a nightmare? Perhaps it was too good to be true… How am I to know if this wasn’t some illusion created by the god? Then again, maybe all of that really did happen and the wish was real, which means I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. I guess if I have a chat with that god again I’ll know for sure. “You ain’t gonna try nothin’, are ya?” I hadn’t been looking at Randal, but I assumed he was talking to me. I shook my head. I startled myself when I heard my chains scrape against the side of the van I had been leaning against. The other passenger cast an orange glance, it changed to red for just a moment and settled into yellow. It makes sense to be a little anxious, especially after how I reacted at the last pickup. Randal’s gaze was just as green as ever; I kind of admire his confidence.

There were three of them waiting around this time. Randal had the same speech as before. The other passenger nudged me, “Let’s go.” I guess I remembered a couple others getting out when I was picked up. Ah, there it was, just as perfect and colorless as I remembered it. It hadn’t even been that long since the last time I saw it, but I missed this walled-up city terribly. The others seemed to be chatting it up, so I thought I’d just lean against the structure and listen to the rhythm of its inner workings. Reminiscing on what it was like to be in the heartbeat of my clockwork home. I may not be part of it anymore, but it’ll always be part of me; so long as I can help it, at least. Apparently they thought this behavior was weird. Lots of orange eyes today. It probably is weird. I’m a weirdo. I don’t care what they think, though I sure hope this doesn’t count as ‘trying something’. What struck me as weird was them asking if the pickups wanted their bindings cut or not. I wish they had done that earlier, particularly with me, but perhaps I caused them to start asking due to how much I’d freaked out when I was picked up. I thought the effort was going to be wasted, but to my surprise, one did decide not to remove them. 

That one sat next to me back on the truck. I wonder how many were forced to cut them out of peer pressure. I don’t want to think about it, so I’ll try not too. There was more noise on the ride back, to be expected, but I didn’t pay that much attention. Being able to silently think to myself for long periods of time is both a blessing and a curse. I hadn’t been listening to them when they were talking outside the city, either. Maybe they counted on that. Maybe they asked for one not to cut them for my sake. Well, that’d be just as bad. Just going through the motions of empathy without truly understanding. It’s disgusting. But perhaps this was genuine, so I tried to think of something else before anyone asked about the chartreuse glow. They might interpret it as carsickness, and I don’t want the ride back to take any longer than it has to.