It's All A Lie

1

The ground beneath me was a blur. A mix of dark greens and oranges, of blues and yellows. The forest was beautiful at this time of the year I had to admit. I didn't exactly see the appeal of hundreds of trees being so close together it was hard to breathe, but it did look beautiful. Or at least, that's what the government wanted us to believe was there. In reality, what had once been called a forest was acres of charred land. Tree stumps that were as black as coal, ashen grass that from so high up would have probably looked like a gray cheese it was occupied by so many holes. Small, wilted flowers that had survived for a day before succumbing to the toxic fumes that still lingered over the land. That was what was really there. To my knowledge, I was just the only one who saw it for what it really was. Families stared at the illusions in wonder. Kids watched the ground below with their friends, their eyes filled with wonder. Some saw birds, others saw traces of deer or foxes. But none of them saw the woods. The parents watched their kids fondly, mothers engaged in small talk while the men rambled on about their ideal hunting strategies that they'd perform when they finally got to go in the woods, not that they would. None of them saw the truth. I doubt they ever would as they were, and continued to be, both incredibly narrow-minded and ignorant to the true current predicament of the world: a lot more was happening then they realised. We weren't simply evacuating the village for the fun of it. I watched in silence, trying to remain as far away from them as I could. I was jealous, admittedly. I wanted what they had. To see what they could see. But I couldn't. I saw the truth.

I had always believed that the truth was the best thing and that I would rather live in a world full of truth than a lie. That was before I knew the truth. When I thought the world was everything good, everything I wanted it to be. But now I know the truth, I wanted to go back to the lie.

'Ma'am? Ma'am are you okay?'

I looked up to see a boy around my age, staring at me concernedly. I smiled gently and nodded.

'That doesn't seem like the sort of thing one would usually call someone their age,' I acknowledged, raising an eyebrow slightly.

The boy chuckled before gesturing to the empty seat beside me, 'May I join you?'

A lopsided, boyish grin spread across his face, making a small smile grace mine. That smile is what someone who was well and truly happy would have. From one look at him you could tell he wasn't, that he was quite the opposite in fact, but I wasn't going to let him know I saw through his façade.

'Of course.'

The boy smiled gratefully, a true smile this time, before sitting besides me, admittedly closer than I would like, but in my current predicament I was unable to move; the current predicament being I was sat directly between him and the wall in what had been an effort to remain as far away from humanity as possible, something I now know had virtually no impact and I would still be graced with the presence of a fool. I wasn't going to sugar-coat it, not even in the slightest. Everyone here was quite simply a fool.

'So, I've not seen you before,' I prompted, 'Do you not get out much?'

He chuckled slightly and I forced a smile. I knew he wasn't from where I was. Everyone new everyone there and this boy certainly wasn't from home. Correction: my old home, which, not that I supposed to know, would become a ground for the trial of nuclear weapons and the like. I mean, it's not like there wasn't already enough of them.

'No I don't actually,' he chuckled, 'it's the first time I've been out of the house in months.'

I nodded curtly before trying to think of a question in order to prove whether he in fact did not get out much or whether he was just completely unknown to me. I was already believing the latter but I could be wrong, of course, being wrong is only human. By that I mean the fact everyone's life is a lie and they believe blindly in the government and it's motives and that everything they told them was correct.

'What family?' I asked casually, trying not to make it seem suspicious although I'm sure I did the exact opposite.

A brief look of panic flashed across his face before he resumed his seemingly collected composure.

'Oh the um whats me called,' he said and bit his lip slightly, 'old Barbara and John's family?'

A small chuckle escaped his lips, 'it's probably bad I don't know my own family name. I'll ask Uncle John later.'

A small smiled made it's way to my lips. There was in fact and a married couple called Barbara and John and they had quite a large family. However, he couldn't possibly have asked John as he died five years ago on my 10th birthday. I nodded thoughtfully before we fell into what I thought was a highly awkward silence.

'You can see it too, can't you?' he asked both so suddenly and quietly, so quietly in fact, that at first I didn't hear him and so suddenly I visibly jumped a little.

'What?' I exclaimed, more than a little shocked when I realised what he had said.

'The forest. It's not there,' he said equally as quiet as the first time, 'you can see what it really is too can't you?'

Hesitantly, I nodded. There was no point lying. He knew I saw it too. At least if we were discovered we'd both be executed and it wouldn't be just me. The thought made me smile, of watching him loosing his head only moments before my own. However that thought made me frown a little. I quite like my head and would like to keep it.

'They don't want us to know it's not real. The forest. Or really anything- They want us to believe that it looks how it did god knows how many years ago.'

'I'm surprised they haven't noticed that everything remains the same all year round,' I retorted, snorting slightly and nodding at the congregation of people on the other side of whatever this was, I thought it was a ship of sorts but I was probably wrong.

A small smile crept onto his face and tugged at the corner of his lips, not fully turning into a smile but a ghost of one.

'Me too actually.'

Again, a silence descended over the two of us and I rested my head against the wall, my eyes transfixed on the ground below. I didn't even notice the boy leaving, nor did I notice him return almost an hour later. A sharp sting spreading throughout my arm awoke me from my trace like state and I turned to see the boy with a psychotic grin on his face, a needle in hand.

'You shouldn't tell stuff like that to strangers,' he reprimanded, his tone quite sing-songy, 'After all, you don't know who they are.'

Panic overtook me as my vision started to blur and the small noises around became incredibly loud and muffled. A bunch of soldiers marched into the room and the last thing I saw before my vision went completely black was the boy shaking hands with the president. Shit. They'd caught me. I knew this was the end. I'd lose my head and my life. I tried to speak but nothing came out and for the final time, my vision went black.