Evergreen

XII

Numb.

I felt nothing, like drowning. Not yet at the stage of unconsciousness, but after the initial struggle for breath. The water seeps into your lungs. You've accepted that you're going to die. And you float. Your mind is at peace, the calm before you slowly slip away.

Life became a blur. I saw colours, I saw people but I couldn't recognise faces. The vividness of life now subdued.

I felt as though I was looking at life from under the water, maybe I was drowning. I felt detached, like I wasn't really there.

I got up, went to work at 9am. I returned home at 10pm. I spoke to no one. I just worked. Then I would return home, sleep and then repeat.

Life was routine, it should be nothing less than routine. And so, my life played out, each day the same till one.

I woke to find my eyes met by the dark.

I stood walking to my door. Everything told me not too but it was as if a higher power had got a hold of me.

I joined line after line of people, marching. To where I could not say but we were all marching. Blurs of faces were around me as we walked street by street, each house now appeared empty and desolate as doors were left hanging open, people just abandoning each. I continued walking, numb.

Suddenly I was being dragged, my feet still moving to some unknown destination yet I was only moving further from the sea of unidentifiable faces. I was pulled into a house, the door shut behind me and my captor.

I was put on the floor, at least I think I was. Over the last few days I was beginning to lose my awareness. I began struggling to tell time too. Not as simple as reading a clock, but my consciousness of it. Day was night as night was day.

I looked into my captor's eyes, and whilst I couldn't say who it was I could still tell colours; and he was evergreen.