Tʜᴇ Pᴀᴛʜ Tᴏ Hɪɢʜɢᴀᴛᴇs

Tʜᴇ Lᴏɴᴇʟɪɴᴇss Wᴇ Sʜᴀʀᴇ

Cʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 15

Your finger twitched, once, twice. Then your eyes fluttered, filtering in the deepened light through your closed eyelids. Lethargically, you open your eyes with a few blinks and rubs of your tear ducts.

It was bright outside, the room was as silent as it was empty, and as you sat up and stretched out your back you realised German Empire was nowhere to be seen. He had probably started his day hours before, if he had gone to sleep at all that is. The net that surrounded his bed had been pulled back and tied at the posts. It was obvious that the Empire had done it, and it unnerved you to think why he had, perhaps to get a better look at you as you slept.

With as much lethargy as you had woken up with, you pushed back the duvet before you threw your feet over the mattress and sighed. The room was cold, but the sight of the brightened light billowing in through the windows warmed you with gentle fingers, encouraging you to stand up and start your day. On the chair the Empire had sat in last night lay your clothes, all neatly folded and laid out for you to take back and wear.

With a gentle slide, you slid off the bed and feel the cold floorboards beneath yourself. You walked forward on twitching feet, feeling the heat slip from the crevasses of your body, lowering the room into a gentle cloud of entrancing coolness. As you grab your clothes and unbutton the shirt you still wore, you began to feel the tiniest bit warmer, revitalised to restart your day.

Slipping the shirt off your body, you gently pull your old clothes back over, as you did you realised they had been washed and dried in the time you had been asleep. You can't help but feel a little bad that you had been so harsh on the Empire, was it that he was only trying to help by taking your clothes off you in his own sickly twisted way? Or maybe he was just a little awkward and that was his only solution. Either way you feel mildly uncomfortable with the thought, but a lot less violated.

Once you were dressed you turned around to retrieve your bag, in doing so you opened it up to assure yourself there was nothing missing. Before you were the only items that reassured you you weren't insane, that all this was real and you had really been to college. A smaller pocket was stitched into the larger one, which held pens in separate sections. Then in the main bit was your silver laptop, and as you took it out to examine it you realised it had been damaged. Though you didn't at all feel bad about it, you couldn't use it here anyway, there was no way to charge it or get internet, it was useless in this world.

You slipped it back in and examined the other items. A copy of The Lord Of The Flies and Animal Farm lay before you, you thought it was laughable really. You really did feel like one of the boys from The Lord Of The Flies, driven to savagery by your alienation from your kind, feeling helpless that you were slowly driving yourself mad. Yet you couldn't help but think this house was like Animal Farm, a dictation of regular people like you who wanted nothing but freedom. Yet you were forever tangled up with the Empire, you were his serfdom, and he was your ruler. Or perhaps you were trying to compare fiction to your life so you wouldn't feel as though it were really reality. You shake your head, it didn't matter anyway, nothing really did.

Alongside the classics were history books of various countries; Britain, America, France, Poland, Russia though amongst them ironically was The German Empire and The Third Reich. You for a moment wondered what they would do if they were to read them. Especially Reich, would he regret his own future? You weren't sure whether or not you really wanted to know.

Finally, behind it all was your sketchbook, your bottle, the clear container you had fed Salem with and your phone. As you wrapped your fingers around your bottle you couldn't help but feel a deeply rooted sadness. The images of the men you had spoken to in the cart popped back into your head. How many of them were currently dead? If any of them were even still alive of course, though it seemed slim that they could be. They weren't in the best of shape, despite their boundless hope. You place it back down, and tried to forget. But it was so hard to forget anything anymore, you needed something, but you weren't being given it. You weren't sure what it was, but the frustration that you could remember was beginning to weigh on you. If you could, you would have cut out the image of the young man begging to be spared from your mind immediately after it had happened. You didn't want to think anymore, and yet here you sat, thinking of every horrible thing you had seen. Oh, what you would give for your mind to touch the world back home, away from this madness.