REALITY

#1/ Fifteenth

The fifteenth day of every month is always accompanied by a funeral.

Of who, you ask? Anyone. It could be an old lady living her desired quiet life in the brick house next to the used-to-be river; or a sweet lady who rewards the kids that helped her bake cakes with some candies of her own; or a thirteen-year-old girl studying at a perfectly normal school in town. Or my overly grumpy nextdoor-neighbour. Or even I. Maybe with an exception of toddlers and infants and disables, every single person in this wide Violet City has an equal possibility of death on the fifteenth of a random month.

It's not a strange disease that affects the infected on a monthly basis, nor does a curse put on innocent citizens due to feuds in ancient times - which starves for vengeance and punishment - although the cause is quite related to such paranormal events. All of the Fifteenth Day Tributes, as we call them in my little Old York, sacrificed themselves in an honorable mission of serving the needed - and furthermore, probably, our poor Earth.

To explain it all, detailedly, I will dig deep into history...again.

"The celestial that had sheltered the life of many

Will doom and die in a time of any

A Virgin whose body and soul is greater than greatness,

Shall be the savior of us all."

That is the children-taught version of the one quote from a nameless prophet - theoretically, as though there is someone who can prove her existence ages ago - which each and every Violet Citizen, from three-year-old to grandmothers and teenagers, know so well we can chant it in our sleep. Obviously, such prophecy was no more believable than apparent nonsense in the old years when this barren land was called New York - and that is highly understandable, regarding the confidence of past humans in their illusional safety. It was not until the world became wrecked and no scientific researches say a thing other than doomsday, they realized, my God, those words were true.

By then, the planet had been dead close to unlivable: the seas were as black as Asian hair and more polluted than all the trash bins combined; the sky was a frightening crimson no one expected to see out of fantasy books with less than ten rays of sunlight per kilometer square reaching the nutritionless ground; the air made people vomit at the first breath; and even strong trees were afraid of growing and dying every time they had been tried to be planted. Natural (or man-made) disasters happened on a daily basis of destruction, wiping out populations here and there, until broadcasts were too exhausted analyzing the death statistics. And if the remaining numbers of scared men were not satisfyingly punished by our raging God, pandemics finished that assignment with a perfect score. Humanity - or, worse, what's left of it - had no choice but to cuddle up in the coasts of North America and cling on the bits of the bits of the leftover pieces of life.

The two sentences describing post-modern Earth had proved itself to be very true in the society nowadays - with the threat of apocalypse hanging right above - and as deadly as the extinct snakes in a historical wasteland known as Australia. It is too late for anything. Nothing can revive this wreck. Or so it seems.

At the very moment we were seriously considering giving up and dying in peace, the saviors arrived. Virgins, and furthermore, girls who didn't age one more day no matter decades had passed through their lifetime, were found popping up from time to time and rising to a tremendous fame. They were the life vests thrown to drowning people and saved them all when they were so steadily sure of death, the greatest assurance that humanity still had a chance - less than fragile, but precious it was - to survive the second Dark Age and begin again. Begin again! Such hopeful and attractive words for a doomed humanity.

The Virgins - we ceremoniously named them - were worshipped and respected even more than a nobody Jesus Christ back in the Pre-Prophecy era, with rituals and tributes prepared just for them right after their discovery of virginity. We needed them like how sunflowers longed for sunlight or addicts strived for drugs. They were the suns, the moons, the symbol of hope, the goddesses, the highness and majesty, everything similarly great in a combination of madness. That was until whatever spell casted on them to preserve their youth eventually broke, and so went the hope of mankind. A Virgin was found, a Virgin was honored, a Virgin was expected to salvage all humans, then a Virgin died decades later like any other normal woman - the cycle repeated back and forth, back and forth throughout long centuries. People lost hope, and they thought this was the final ending for an unforgettable species. They drown.

Despite the despair, once again, a life vest is given at the second we assume we are definitely dying - Helel, the foremost Virgin ever seen. When she was born, basically everyone ignored her because she was so ordinary no one suspected she could be anything better than a girl like all girls left on Earth, and that kind of glance she receive continued for years and years and years and years - even after she was confirmed to be another Virgin in the usual cycle that humanity had been bored witnessing. They expected Helel to crumble and then give up to her destined fate very soon, not different to the previous Virgins. And to their surprise, she lived. A century passed, then two, and the 'normal' Helel remains as immaculately untouched as she was at the age of seventeen - which means, one hundred and eighty-four years ago. It was confirmed: she really was The Virgin. She really was The Savior for our hopeless women and men. She really is The Only One who can extend her hand and work the magic that will revive us all. Such irony it was: when humans could not long less for a second chance, she brought it over so suddenly. But Helel really is it.

And that's where the answer to the Fifteenth Day Mystery lays.

Although The Virgin is widely said and strongly believed to be the most powerful being ever existed on Earth - and I sincerely hope that is as true as her sacredness - she had evidently proved herself several times over to be as fragile-natured and mortal as each and every other human living in this Violet City. Helel lost her ability to view the world like others at the young age of sixteen, naturally but abruptly, with absolutely no problem to her health seeable at the time, as though she was originally programmed by destiny to just be blind at adolescent - which was one of the obvious proofs.

Second to that, she seems to be empty, no will, no need, no wish, no expression, no favor or anything that keeps her mental consciousness enough emotional to actually be regarded as a whole human. Rumors flew to darker skies, but the truth stayed still like a granite in the ground: The Savior had no intention of saving the mankind she felt strange to. As soon as people realised the threatening fact, they have been trying hard to please her - so much I sometimes even suspect if she is spoiled by treats from strangers a century younger than her. Maybe she is. Maybe her soul stays forever as the seventeen-year-old girl at the very moment her humane growth came to an endless pause. Yes, maybe! And if she likes the way she is treated right now, somehow we do have a frail chance. 

Which she doesn't.

I have not lived for so long, only eighteen years in advance, but I do have confidence in speaking my thoughts about a person. I know people - a lot of them, to be honest. I know no one loves to be trapped for days and days and days and more in a dull silence and a fearful loneliness, let alone being imprisoned in a huge house by a crowd that reasoned they did such an action for the prisoner's own amusement. I have never tried to limit my relationships to nothingness and have had no real experience, though, a truth remains a truth and has no exception. Not a single person in this world would want to be left there for long, then occasionally be annoyed by strangers poking their nose in the business wrongly thought to be theirs. Not a single introvert in this society is willed enough to throw away every bit and piece of emotion specially granted to them. Not even the saddest philosopher on Earth since the beginning likes to have their precious time of their thoughts interrupted by annoyance. I don't truly know Helel except for the propagandas and religion based on her existence. But I understand the base of humans. And I know she is one.

No one else does.

Then again, today is the fifteenth of March. The sun shines its little rays of yellow down the ground in the nearly indistinguishable morning, giving hope for a fragile continuation of life. At noon, the bloody crimson sky will brighten to a shady red color, although not much. And then, when night falls onto the wrecked ruins where the Violet City was laid, maybe the shadow of the scarce full moon will be noticed and chanted all over. Yet one won't be able to see it anymore, from tonight onwards. And forever.

Me.