Dream Diary - What Goes On Behind Closed Eyes -

The Destination

The sky is very grey this morning, heavy clouds dominating the blue with their thickness. Despite this, a small ray of sunshine manages to peek through and shine down on us, causing the morning's atmosphere to be both hopeful and bleak at the very same time, reflecting how I'm feeling perfectly. 

My parents are in line to board the bus with my little sister and a friend of mine from last school year, but my older sister and I stand back, watching as other students pack themselves into the bus as well. The bus is white, with a stripe of dark blue going horizontally across the side. Words are written sloppily over the blue, but I can't read them. 

The bus is in my school parking lot, and I have the feeling that we've all been anticipating this day for a long time. This bus is going to take us to heaven. Paradise. A better life.

 I can understand this, but I'm afraid. I'm afraid because I know that what's on the other side of this life isn't better at all. You die when the bus arrives at its destination, which is still on earth, and you become a ghost-like creature. You're transparent and eery, and you can't have the life you had before. It seems my sister knows this as well. We don't speak of it, though. We only sit on the steps in silence, filling out our application forms (we're supposed to write about all the good things we've done in life, or else we won't be allowed to board the bus to paradise). 

I look over to my sister's paper to see that she's drawing a bloody scene, people are hanging from the sky and blood drips down their foreheads to gather in large puddles on the ground below. This doesn't disturb me, though. I only scoff and go back to filling in my own application.

"You're supposed to write about the good things you've done."

"I know."

She elaborates, but as soon as she stops speaking, I find that I can't remember the words that came out of her mouth. It didn't matter though because the bus was about to leave. I nudged my sister with my elbow and she looked up from her bloody drawing to watch the bus leave. As it begins to move forward and out of the school's parking lot, I feel a pang of sadness. It feels like I've just lost something that I can't ever get back. As soon as the bus leaves, the entire school turns an odd color. The air around me looks different, like the entire world has an Instagram filter over it. Sepia. It looks like sepia.

I think nothing of it. It's always been like this, hasn't it? Whatever. I hop off of the steps, and my sister follows. The teachers and staff are holding weapons; spears and guns. This is normal, isn't it? I don't mind anyway, and my sister and I sit quietly on a bench to eat our lunches. I wish my friend hadn't gotten on that bus. I wish she was still here. But it's whatever. That doesn't matter now, I suppose.

My school is very small, and we have an outdoor cafeteria. There are containers of pills lined up across the tables, some blue and some white. I'm shocked to see my friend standing near one of the tables, dropping what I assume to be eyedrops into her eyes. I approach her casually,

"Hey, why are you here? I thought you were supposed to be on the bus?"

"I just got off the bus halfway through. I couldn't go through with it... so I changed my mind."

She turns around, and I notice immediately her eyes. One is a vibrant blue, which is odd considering she always had brown eyes. In fact, this stands out to me as the weirdest thing that's happened this entire time, and I'm beginning to find myself incredibly uncomfortable. 

Her other eye is white, but not white in the sense that she doesn't have an iris or pupil. Rather, her iris was an eery white, while the normally white space in her eyes is a lighter grey. Her pupils were silver instead of black. It all looks so wrong.