This is a story that I wrote out after having a series of nightmares containing the exact same story played over and over and over... I just couldn't get it out of my head. I've felt a lot better after writing it, and for the past two nights haven't had even a hint of it show up. But here it is.


Close your eyes.

Take a step forward.

Walk through the darkness. You have to. No one is forcing you, there is nothing to flee and nowhere to go in the black. Yet you still move uncontrollable, one step after another.

Listen! Carefully, eyes closed, keep them shut! Open them now and again you will be lost in the dark. As you continue forward, not trudging, not rushing, not lagging, just walking, you can hear little snippets of sound, just dots on the canvas of silence.

The little murmurs, mumbles, mindless indistinguishable pieces start to grow. Like a siren, it started distant, faded, but now it builds. Now! Now the sounds explode, as you walk on, you hear voices, cars, rustling, the bustling city. The canvas is covered in vibrant color, and you can hear the flamboyant shades race across the no-longer barren surface.

Go ahead! Open your eyes and see the sounds whose colors you have already perceived. Walking on, all around you see people dressed for business, rushing to appointments, cars racing to meetings. All around the buildings, titans, reach for the sky, grasping at the ceiling of the heavens. The sun shines here, as you walk past rows and blocks of these constructed marvels, reflecting off the surface which stands for the advancement of mankind.

Unfortunately, your feet keep moving on, roaming past this happy place of wealth and technology, a place where people revel in the knowledge that their work improves the world.

With each step the light fades, people slip into shadow, the cars move only away, disappearing into the cloud of smog they leave behind. The cloud grows, blocking out the sun and skyscrapers, and you just keep walking through.

It begins to darken in the mess of technological excrement, sounds dulled, tones deadened, the canvas loses luster and brilliance to black and white and gray. Despite the drab surroundings, you don’t stop, you don’t look back, you don’t return, but you do keep walking.

Then you feel it.

A drop of rain. Not warm, not friendly, cold, biting, bitter is the drop. The rain finally commences, not a mist, not a heavy rain, but a wretched rain that not only soaks skin but anchors your soul to the bottom of the deepest point of the darkest ocean.

The pittering liquid drives away the smog. No longer in a bustling city, you find yourself walking in a dark alley surrounded by dank, rotting waste. Your steps come slower, the sight and terror overcoming the drive to move on. Colors are visible again, only browns and blues mixed with the black and white and gray.

You slow to a stop. You can’t go on. Looking back you can see the sun shining on the city, but it seems so far away, yet still as though you could reach out and touch the fingers of the city.

Tearing, pulling, ripping your eyes away, you look down at the sludge of the street. There, huddled amidst a fallen bin of trash is a human figure. At the sight you fall to your knees.

It is a little boy, blackened with grime, a mere a shell of a being, protected only by scraps of cloth which could never be identified as clothes. He sits amid the foul mixture of acid rain, mud, oil, and trash. In his hand is a single noodle, pure white. Not the white of joy and light, a white of death, pallor, lost hope.

This single little noodle is his food, his meal, the trash his home, the street his playground. Looking at the city over your shoulder, a tear falls from your face.