NINE TIME MACHINES: Do you want to undo your entire life on planet earth?

CHAPTER 9

They are the last people anyone would want to think of while gasping for air; let alone me. Sometimes I wonder how I let myself get caught in their web, right after breaking free from Ebony's. Yet I suppose recidivism doesn't always come with bars and walls one can see. Perhaps I felt comfortable being told what to do, as some way of holding on to a ghost. Maybe I even draw prisons around myself and bring them to life with my tears, so I can have familiar surroundings to distract me from the truth of my emptiness. And theirs is indeed an intoxicating distraction.

The Dream Killers promise all the right things in exchange for complete devotion to their online religion, which is run by thirteen men spread across the Karmic Islands. At first, they snagged me with free food. It kept coming as long as I logged in each week for three hours, to listen their message that one day there would be perfection for all and equality among the races. And to prove it, they met in person all week long, but not for recreation. As a general rule, each Dream Killer has to convert one person per year. Convert them to what though? A life where you could never develop your talents because to be a star meant competing with their god? An existence where the women had to dress a certain way and never hold jobs? And the men could never dare to gain more than basic education? Or a death sentence if you ever decided you had enough and wanted to leave?

It was the main reason I never sunk too deep in their quicksand. Ahhh! I knew I should've never started thinking about them. Inhale. Exhale. I need to feel again. Inhale. Exhale. I want to dream again. Inhale. Exhale. I need to run free again. And the caretaker agrees. He bangs on the door with an annoyed look that says I should know better; then waves me inside.