Woken again. Another nightmare. Why is it always that my body complains when I don’t sleep
but then wakes me up at the devil’s hours from another nightmare?
Long halls with no end in sight. I’m running. Running towards a future that I can’t see. I trip and
fall, screaming.
And then I wake up.
My dreams are as predictable as my life. Day in. Day out.
I wasn’t the only one to be woken though. All of the others were sitting up in bed, the silence
between us hanging in the air like metal wires. There was something hidden, whatever had just
woken us all up was hidden. But then I realised what it was. We had woken up late and the
wardens had come to wake us up. I rolled back over, hoping that sleep would take me back into
its waiting arms. But it didn’t.
I accepted that I wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep.
I got dressed, a plain white shirt and trousers as blank as a sheet of paper, and turned to face
everyone else. No matter what point you are in the line, everyone looked the same, as if we had
been copy and pasted into this horrible reality. The 5 beeps of the alarm told us that we were
permitted to leave, and leave in a single file fashion into the main hall for what they called
‘Breakfast’. It was really just scraps of food that we have left. It was okay in the beginning but
then the leaders realised that no end of this dome was in sight. That was 16 years ago, the third
year that they had been here, the year I was born.
I don’t know why we are here. No one does. All that I know is that we are stuck in this dome.
This concealing, hellish and glass dome. Everything here was artificial, the grass, the flowers,
the air and the hope that we spread around, thinking that we were going to leave.
I sat down at my table, Louis and Harry were already there. Harry had a look on his face like I
had missed something or like he was trying to hide something, concealing away from the other
2 of us. I sat down, the benches creaking slightly with the sudden weight being placed upon
them. There was a package on the table with my name scrawled across it ‘Freddie’. I hadn’t ever
received anything from anyone. The leaders weren’t very fond of gifts and I was one of many
that didn’t know who our real parents were, or if they were dead and gone or alive and far away.
This can’t be from anywhere but inside the dome, no – one had heard anything about the
outside world or had received anything from the outside for nearly 20 years so why would I be
receiving anything now.