Writing Challenges

Challenge #1

What if everything you're seeing right now is just a hallucination caused by inhaling oxygen? Is that why when you stop breathing you black out? 

Breathe in the color, the people, the places;
Breathe out to forget all the hurt, anger and heartbreak.
Sleep consists of memories of familiar faces;
Death brings peace. I stumble through life in regret.
We are shells, and oxygen shows us things we don't have the potential to be; it's all a lie, a shadow of reality. Hold your breath until you can see what's most important to you. Stop breathing for long enough, and you lose sight of all the strings that hold this fabrication together. 
Being unconscious facilitates the movement of our souls. We are no longer bound by toxic gases, no longer forced to believe in the mundane. Our souls are free to choose to tread between the land of the living and the land of the dead. We visit Pluto and Olympus, and dance across the stars, but the noxious fumes that force their way into our lungs and draw us into a dystopian illusion, where romantic love is unattainable and perfection is a faraway dream, don't let us stay in this magical place. It's better then, to set our souls free from the casing that traps them and is the vehicle that allows this poisoning to numb us. Our identity is not what we think. We are more than an illusion in death. We are equal. Wonderful. Beautiful. 
That's why I hold my breath.

For some reason, Diane found herself reading the piece of writing on her laptop screen over and over, her heartbeat getting louder and faster with every line. It was late, well into the witching hour, and everybody in her dorm room was fast asleep. She mouthed the words as she reread the piece for the umpteenth time. Her eyes were tired, and she knew she needed to sleep, but something about the way the font gently danced across the screen made her keep her eyes wide open. Feeling slightly out of control, she decided to do as the author did, and hold her breath; so that she could put the nagging doubt in her mind about whether or not anything would happen to rest. Glancing at the digital clock on her computer, she took a deep breath and shut her eyes. She counted the seconds in her mind, and after about half a minute, she gave up and greedily gulped in the air her lungs were craving. 
One of her roommates mumbled something and turned over in her sleep, and Diane decided to try again. This time, she pinched her nostrils shut between her thumb and index finger. Thirty seconds passed, and then a minute. Diane's shoulder's slumped forward, and her mind became foggy. She shut her eyes, and another ten seconds went by sluggishly, like a ship that had just left the harbour.
Slowly, the space behind her eyelids changed from dark to bright blue, and she saw stars and planets, and heard a soft thrumming melody. She felt a sense of relief, so enormous it was akin to bathing in hot water after spending hours buried in the snow. She was wide awake, and she realized that the writer had been right; she had never felt so free. She found that she could manipulate her surroundings to become whatever she wanted--her favorite park bench, Paris, the beach--if she could think of it, it was possible. It was the same for people--she had the company she wanted, with none of the people who had ever made her feel bad. She was happy. 
She heard her one of her roommates screaming for help and crying, and felt her body being shaken roughly, but she didn't care. In a split second, she made her choice. She was going to stay here. This was where she belonged. Her soul laughed, an addictive, euphoric sound that she knew she would be hearing a lot more of. She decided to watch as her panicked roommate called an ambulance, wringing her hands. She looked at her body, the horrible vessel that had held her captive for nineteen years, pale and stiff. 
Her rainbow eyes smiled as her soul soared away, as smooth in flight as the voice of a jazz singer.
She knew she was dead, but she had never been more alive.