Impractical

The City

1:1

My chest burned with effort as I tried to scream, but all that passed out of my mouth was air as I watched in horror. I saw someone being 'cleansed' for no reason. She was only twelve, had long, brown, wavy hair, honey brown eyes, and was a little too tall for her age, teetering just above her peers, but only by a few inches. She was wearing the correct mundane clothes, had the right bearing, and was standing rigidly and perfectly in line, yet she was being beaten by a professor, his eyes wild with fury and hate. When she turned towards me with pleading eyes, I realized it was me. I tried to scream again, but the breath was sucked from my lungs and I could no longer breathe.

Suddenly, my pillow was smothering me while I wrestled it. I shifted it off of me and watched it fall onto the cold floorboards. I wiped tangled strands of hair out of my eyes and frowned as I cleaned the drool off my chin. I realized I had been in a nightmare, in two places. Of course I had a nightmare, today was the first day of school. I almost wanted to be back in that dream, to see what I really looked like, but it probably wasn't exact anyway.

Getting out of bed before I had to was impractical, and so was someone else getting me up because I slept too late. I looked at my alarm clock and it read six forty-five, so I hadn't overslept. I just waited until my alarm clock hit seven hours and started beeping. I slammed my hand onto it almost before it had a chance to make a real noise. I was surprised it still worked after all those years of me throwing it against a wall to make it stop making that obnoxious noise. I had to put it back together multiple times, so now it looked more like a ball of tape with a button than a clock. The square red letters had long since stopped working, and now it always faintly read 12:00 through the thick layer of clear tape. I groaned, rubbing my sore neck and rolled off of the bed face down onto my pillow, the grey wood creaking loudly when I hit it. I ignored the pocket sized diary on the floor next to my face that I usually carried around with me. It had all of my experiences in it since I was able to write, and I was almost through the thousand pages that were in it, so I needed to do my entries sparingly. Most of the entries in it were repetitive and uninteresting, and the rest were painful (like physically). I decided not to bring it with me today, I just wasn't in the mood to write in it. 

My room was all grey, just like everyone else's, with one window facing north, so direct light never shone into my room, which made it feel even more cramped. It felt empty and lonely, like I was stuck in a cage. I went across the room to my closet and put on the everyday uniform of a red tank top with a red sweater over top of it and a red skirt. I hated it. But, there was no choice in 'the city'. That's what I call the place everyone lives, of course naming that place wouldn't be practical. Every person on planet Earth fits into a city, the city I live in. None of my teachers bothered to tell me where it was, but since we all spoke English, I was willing to bet America or England, maybe somewhere close like Canada or Ireland. I couldn't find any other similarities that would help me guess where exactly where we were. The identical houses lined up the streets, leaving no room between them, and very little room in front of them, with none in the back. I hated it and I wished there were some other way to live, but there wasn't. There was nothing beyond the city, just endless brown grass plains, which my teachers explained had no water, very little food, and was a breeding ground for poisonous creatures that could kill us with a bite. I decided to stay in the city and keep my boring life instead of dying a painful, poison-filled, dehydrated, hungry, tormenting, lonely, sad, sad death.

I looked around my room, thinking. My twin-size bed was the only thing that furnished my room, along with my closet. Both were grey and lifeless, much like every other house in the entire city. I walked out of my grey bedroom door into the grey hallway to the grey living room to get some grey (just kidding) breakfast, before walking to school with all of the other students. The whole house was shaped like a box with only two windows facing the street, I was lucky enough to get one in my room. The backside of our house was pushed up against another house's back with no room in between, and it was the same for the sides of our house. I could only tell our house apart from the others lining the street by the thick block numbers on our mailbox, '2143'. The mailbox was only used for super important announcements from the city like, 'We are no longer able to grow cabbage.' who eats cabbage anyway?

I heard the front door creak open and slam shut, indicating my dad had just left and I was clear to enter the kitchen. I didn't like being seen much while he was around, it kept me from getting in trouble accidentally.

Today my dad would be changing his shifts from night to day. My dad worked at a tower, the only change in scenery, in the middle of the city where people used technology surveillance to see all over the city, to keep everyone in line with the switch of a button. My dad covered the area near my school, a couple of roads and a lot of houses.

My mom had already been up and made me breakfast, eggs (which I could barely choke down) and two pancakes with a slice of ham.  As I ate, I wished I could have more, but any more breakfast would make you too full and any less would mean getting hungry before lunch.

"Thanks, mom." I said after I was done. She nodded towards me in acknowledgement. It was impractical to show affection, but me and mom did anyway, despite the obviously clear rules.

"Bye." I called to mom, walking out the door and pulling up my hoodie to cover my hair and much of my face.