The Mindless Man's Paradise

Chapter fifty-nine

  It had taken an hour, but my method had worked. Cyrus gasped awake as I had done days ago, and as soon as he was sitting up, I tackled him with a hug.

  Seeing him alive and breathing was truly overwhelming, especially considering the amount of times I had watched him die in Dream Land. I would never forget it.

  Apparently, Cyrus was having similar feelings, and he hugged me as he screamed and sobbed, remembering everything that happened in Dream Land all at once.

  I held him, I wiped away his tears, and I kissed him, just as I had been doing for the past two days.

  “You’re alive.” he hiccupped in my ear, stroking my hair, still trying to believe it was real.

  “And so are you.” I laughed somberly.

  “That was hell.” he cried, wiping his tears from his eyes.

  “At least we can say that we’ve been to hell and back now.” I joked, and he squeezed me tighter, laughing the tears away.

  Suddenly the door opened again.

  My brother walked in. Just this action alone triggered the memories of many scenarios in Dream Land, and I knew that it would take a very long time to forget Dream Land. Or at least not be haunted by it.

  “That was the last phase.” he said to me.

  His nose was purple where I had punched him. I didn’t understand why HQ didn’t just heal him like they healed us, but I didn’t care. It was comical to me that he was bruised at my hand.

  My brows lifted at this information.

  “Your execution is in 48 hours, and here at HQ, we are very reasonable. We will not punish you further until the time that your beheading takes place. We figured that is punishment in itself.” he said these words, somewhat apologetically, as if he was sorry we were going to die. “We have a feast for you tonight, and a bedroom for you to stay the night in. Your last night will be lived in luxury.”

  If we had two days until the execution, that meant I had been in Dream Land much, much longer than I had originally suspected.

  This scared me more than anything. Dream Land reminded me of this.

  “Come with me.” my brother said. We didn’t question him or his kindness, so we followed him from the room and were pleasantly surprised by the room we were confronted with. It was almost as nice as the one from our apartment, at least the huge bed was up-to-scale, and as long as that was true, I could care less about anything else.

  I ran to the bed and flopped on to it, leaving my brother and Cyrus in my wake. When I turned around to urge Cyrus to join me, I caught my brother smiling.

  I’m talking about a two row, pearly white smile; the whole shebang.

  When he saw I was looking, he looked away as if he was ashamed of himself.

  Slightly confused, I motioned for Cyrus to hop onto the comfortable bed. He complied, jumping at me and making me laugh like an idiot.

  “You two have fun.” I caught another genuine smile before he locked the door behind him.

  Taking in my surroundings, I noticed there were no cameras, no microphones. HQ was actually giving us a break. At least they had some sort of decency.

  Cyrus and I took advantage of the bed quite well, actually. Our first activity was a whopping six hours of sleeping before we woke up and engaged in some other activities.

  These activities involved kissing, kissing, cuddling, and some more kissing.

  We laughed, we goofed around, and for the first time in a while, I was happy. I was healthy, sane (for the most part), and Cyrus and I were both alive for the time being, and that was something to treasure.

  But then again, in my life, that was always something to treasure.