Üksi - Panic (3)

Part 3 of my continuing fiction series. Comments and questions regarding just what the hell is happening here are welcome. The series incorporates your feedback into how it progresses!

Previous installments: 1 | 2

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“Has anyone else heard the voices?” We’re standing in a loose assembly under interminable sun, baking in the heat. Kaja is tunneled on this idea of voices despite the group consensus that there are much more pressing concerns.

“We have been here weeks and have no food. We’re probably all hearing voices at this point,” Julie huffs. She has a point, and most of us nod in agreement, but my mind clouds over as I try to run the math–has it really been weeks? That can’t be right. None of us look the picture of health, but we’re still walking and talking. No one’s emaciated and bed-bound.

“I’ve heard them,” says Emer slowly. Her eyes are burning holes through the floor, “They’re watching us. Talking about us.” I can’t tell if the silence is everyone solemnly acknowledging her revelation or realizing that Emer’s the first of us to go insane from hunger. I catch Solomon’s glance before he turns away. Above the sun howls down on us with hate. There are no birds in the sky, or anywhere. There seems to be nothing alive in our little village except for us.

“Maybe he was right,” someone mutters.

“Who?”

“I forget his name. He thought we were in a simulation.”

“Jacob? Where is he?”

“Gone.”

“Gone? How’d he leave?”

“Don’t know. Disappeared.” The crowds murmuring takes on a more frantic buzz.

“If he left, we can leave!”

“Why wouldn’t he tell us?!”

“Where the hell did he go?”

“I want to go too!” The group turns ravenous, howling and screaming to be freed. The pushing starts. Punches are thrown. Something smashes over my head and I’m knocked to the ground, dizzy. The lights go out and I’m floating, silent and serene.

I’m walking through a desert, and all I can think about is the thirst. The land has long since given up, split open, and dried into massive cracked scales. The only sign of life are skeletal twigs and wisps of dried, sun-scorched grass catching the wind. I stop and try to dig out the thorny corpse of some shrub, hoping to find moisture in the roots underneath. When I pull the plant from the ground, there are just bones.

I wake with a start and am immediately thrown off by the fact that I’m standing. Before I can work out how, I forget about it entirely when I realize that my arm is missing.