...Dust

The Thief that is the Night

The night.

How does one describe what it does?

To many, it is a time for the forbidden. A time to rest. A time that is only seem before they close their eyes in peaceful slumber.

It is a time I have not enjoyed in years.

For those sentenced to Les Gris it is a time in our lives we took for granted.

Know what I hate most about being a Gris?

I feel like each day I lose my humanity, my capacity to love, my ability to forgive.

I feel like I will never be that person I used to be.... After I managed to rebuild my destroyed self after school but before my sentencing.

I was probably my most Boîte-like then, with the exception of my missing church and my snarky way of brushing it off.

I can't remember when I last had a date.

I can't remember when I last felt love for someone.

I can't even remember when I was happy.

Everything loses its luster when you're a Gris. Your eyes. Your skin.

Your whole life.

Things I once loved with a passion no longer interest me. If it requires energy, I likely am no longer interested in it.

That's how they do it, you know.

Kill your spirit. Kill your passion. Make you too exhausted to see any incentive in it.

Turn you into a mindless robot to serve their purposes. You're now only a tool for their advancement.

You never fully appreciate the idea of sleeping when it is dark until it has been taken away from you.

Imagine being awake during the hours of slumber for everyone else. It is isolating enough. You're cut off from everything and everyone you once loved.

Then you feel your brain releasing the melatonin it acquires during the day and you fight it. You fight it with drugs to keep yourself awake. You poison your body with artificial sweeteners and block your adenosine receptors with caffeine to the point where any less, and your head aches so hard it feels like it could split in two. Your ghrelin becomes a beast making your stomach growl and your leptin makes you eat relentlessly to keep your burned out husk of a body running. You place energy pellets into your mouth by the handful. Those sweet little pellets of carbohydrates and sugar that your body craves. A deep part of your brain tells you how bad they are for you but they are cheap. You don't have to do anything special to prepare them. It's easy and fast and require no additional energy. Your cortisol spikes and makes your adrenal glands work overtime. The constant state of distress for your adrenal glands makes your lower back ache in a way no pain killer can touch, no massage can alleviate it. Your bowels rebel against the stress, making your body feel as if it has been shredded and you become sick and dehydrated. Yet you must continue to function.

There are ways around the unnatural patterns. Ways that kill you faster that are disguised as help.

They medicate you.

They give you pills to relax. Pills to sleep. Pills to stave off the metabolic effects of the unnatural life you now live.

How compassionate, some say when they are offered. A way to live!

It is no way to live!

You must take the pills at the same time, every day, for them to work.

It is a foul trick.