Black. That’s all I see all night long. No dreams, no nightmares, nothing. It’s just blackness surrounded in that muffled sound of being asleep; a deep sleep that seems to last less than a moment. That’s the worst kind of sleep: the one that doesn’t steal you away from the world for any length of time at all. I wake up to the unpleasant bleating of my alarm clock that sits on the floor next to my mattress. Flailing my arms around at the source of the obnoxious sound, it turns off. I roll off the mattress to the cold tiled concrete, and turn on the floorlight. The light is a kind of tile the ‘masters’ put into every floor to mark where each person’s living quarters is. To turn it on, you just hold your hand on it, and then it emits a warm glow that gives better sight to the world. I find it to be quite ridiculous, actually. Now I begin to deflate my mattress, folding it when enough air escapes. It fits into a tiny square, and I place it in the compartment under the tile left of the floorlight. It fits very nicely with the rest of my belongings. That is to say, nothing.
To think, I have to go through with another ridiculous day of this life. This miserable, pathetic life of living a perfect life in front of the screen. I shake my head. At least I don’t have to watch it. This would be the very worst show to have to watch. I know this is always what I think about; going on and on with this life. I can’t seem to get myself to think of much else. When I do at last think of something else, I get sad… or I just forget thinking it altogether. Then I go back to thinking the same thing… and thinking about thinking about the same thing, so on and so forth. I glance at my neighbor’s living space. They’re not up. Neither are any of the other people in the room, as a matter of fact. Good. I get the whole place to myself. Now I can think of something else. I know it will lead to the same miserable thoughts, but why not give it a try?
I stand up and pace back and forth trying to create some kind of thought to distract me. I squat down and turn off the floorlight. That’s better. Darkness is a better place to be for ideas, and the thoughts begin to form. I picture a multitude of people sitting around watching a television show of a perfect world. There are people in the show doing everything the government wants, they go to work, to the store, and to recreational centers. They go home, watch T.V., and play board games. And everybody lives in the same houses… well, not the same. But they all look the same. That is my world, and as is obvious, I can still not get it out of my thoughts. Shoot.
The floorlights all around me begin flipping on, and the people fold up their mattresses, just like me. They store them in the floor, just like me. Unlike me, they sit and await further instructions, not paying any attention to their ongoing lives or anybody else’s. They are basically the toys of the ‘masters’. 
I don’t know why I’m different. Maybe I’m not… maybe I’m just too stubborn for them to break. Maybe everybody else is like me, they just don’t look like it… or maybe I am the same as them. No. It can’t be, there’s no way I’m like them. But I am, aren’t I? The masters have me scared into doing everything they want, too. So there’s nothing separating me and the rest of the miserable crowd here in this warehouse. Maybe I am just one of them, awaiting further instructions.
Before I know it, I’m sitting on a stool next to a table that have both risen from the tiled floor. I pull on the drawer underneath the table to find my perfectly portioned breakfast. We have to eat all of it, and can’t eat anybody else’s. Nobody disregards that rule, because if they did, the masters would find out. They always find out. I have a potato. That’s it? A potato. I glance around the room. Some people have only a half of a potato, I’m definitely not envious of that. But there are others who have near seven course meals set in front of them. Apparently, some of us are supposed to look more overweight, some underweight. So the show seems more ‘realistic’. How pathetic. Don’t they know that gives us health risks? Duh. Purposely making people fat and stick thin should not be allowed, not even for show business. I guess it’s to make everybody of the real world feel better about themselves, which is a good thing for them. Not us, though. We suffer the consequences of making the ‘real people’, as I like to call them, feel good about themselves. Fortunately for me, I get to be one of the healthy people. I haven’t ever been injected with sickness, either, so I have that to be thankful for.
Those sicknesses that they inject you with bring on terrible things. Most of them are just normal, everyday sicknesses that you can get yourself like a cold, or a sore throat, sometimes even as little as a headache. But there are others that are dangerous. Very dangerous. One shot is purplish and it makes the person get these big lumps over the course of the next few days. The lumps begin to look fluid filled, and they pop. Then they die. There’s a red one that makes the person vomit blood for a day or two before they die. The only other one I’ve seen is a transparent gel that makes the person seem perfectly fine, until the day of their death when you realize that they’ve been eaten from the inside out by these ugly wormlike bugs. That day if you’re near them you get to see the pleasant view of billions of tiny insects crawling incessantly out of their nose, sometimes their ears and eyes. I don’t know how they choose which people to give the shots to, or even what shot to administer, but it’s definitely not our choice. I mean, duh. Who would choose that? I guess the show ‘needs drama’, as they say. That’s just one of the many ways they bring on the drama. I swear, the unfortunate people that do find themselves sick never even have done anything to deserve it. They’re always the happiest, most reliable people that don’t go off of the plan. They should do it to people like me who mess up all of the time. The people who can’t even handle a little smile when the cameras begin shooting. I suppose I give them enough smiles to live, but who cares? There’s bound to be a day sooner or later that I don’t and then I’ll end up like my last neighbor…
He was a young man, tall and strong. I never could figure him out, the way he always did things just exactly the opposite of what he was supposed to, but not quite noticeable. Like how when he went to his pretend work, he would always carry his bag on his right shoulder. Not his left, which he was supposed to. Like I said, it’s not like what he did was particularly incriminating, except for the fact that I’m pretty sure he did them on purpose. One day was just like all the others, he was home, right as my neighbor. The next morning I woke up to find he was gone, just like that. There was an announcement before filming that said someone had tried to escape. He hadn’t made it, and he was shot on the spot. I couldn’t take my eyes off the empty patch of cement next to me. The unlit floorlight before bed. He was gone, and he was dead. When it came time for the show, we were made not to notice, not to mention it. To continue as normal. Do the real people not even notice when somebody disappears?
I take a fork from the drawer and set up my plate. My cup is filled with some weird concoction that the masters think is necessary to give to all of us. Maybe they give us all our own individual ones to drink away problems in our lives, like unintended sicknesses. I laugh at the thought that it might be a happy juice that makes us loose our sense of anger. Nobody really ever gets angry here, unless it’s part of the script, so it could be. I sink the fork into the potato, and I find to my pleasant surprise a gooey center of butter and sour cream. My favorite. I savor every single bite. It’s probably the best breakfast I could ever get. After my potato is eaten, the table and chair disappear. We line up to use the restrooms. Twenty at a time, and I’m last. How terrible. There are a total of a hundred girls, a hundred boys, too, but that doesn’t effect me. As people go in, the little green lights on the wall outside the units turn red, showing that the space is occupied. I wait a long time before I get my turn to do my business, after which I take a shower. The warm water feels good going down my back, but I have to hurry. Since I’m last, that means if I waste time that reflects badly on all of us. I’m dressed before our hour of calm before the storm of the show.
For this hour, we all get our own activity to distract us. It’s the masters’ way of making us feel less miserable. Some people around me have these moving floors that they run on, but never actually go anywhere… Others watch television, but only previous episodes of our show. I’m so glad I don’t have to do either of those. I would die if I did. Literally, because I would give up and be sad. Then the masters would execute me. Simple as that. Some people read, write, or draw, none of which I would mind or particularly enjoy. Some people get to dance, stretch, or heighten their expertise of board games, all of which I envy… all the time. I have to sit here on a chair. It’s a comfortable chair, yes, but they don’t give me anything to do at all. I don’t see anybody else in the whole place who just sits there. None at all. They don’t even give me a chance. What am I supposed to do? They probably know that someday I’ll give in, and the more they give me now, the more they will have wasted by then. I know the masters are cruel, but, they could have at least assigned me with something vaguely interesting.
I think the masters noticed that I don’t sleep as well as the rest of the people here, so they give me another chance for some shut eye… I don’t appreciate it at all. I close my eyes in an attempt to sleep, but as every other time I do, I can’t, so I don’t. I wiggle around my toes, and wonder what I’m going to have to do today. Within minutes, I fall asleep. I don’t know why or how. I guess last night was a particularly stressful night’s sleep. Oddly, in this sleep it is not just black, there are people here. Everywhere, and they’re looking at me, like I’m supposed to do something. It begins to frighten me, and that’ the end of the dream.
When I awake, it is almost noon. That means almost show time. I get up from my chair just as it disappears back into the ground along with all the board games, the books, and the moving floors. There is a hushed lull that kind of hangs in the air. Nobody says anything. They never do, so I don’t question it. Yes, I am definitely like them, and I hate myself for it.  I hear the static of the speakers turning on, and await further instructions. No. To await further death sentence…

“Stage one, report to family homes.” We’re Stage One, because we’re the top floor of this warehouse. I guess in the show, that makes us like our own little suburb. This is it. Here comes the beginning of this unbearable day. The bell rings, allowing all of us to line up and walk to the places we have previously been assigned. The houses form out of the ground, like they always do, the ceiling patching into a bright blue sky with little fluffy clouds dabbed about randomly. The area is all very convincing. I mean, it looks so close to being real that sometimes I almost forget that I’m in a show. My house is basically the same as the rest of them. The only way I can tell which is which is by the doors. The others are a mixture of plastic and pine, but my door is sturdy. It is made of oak, which makes me feel special.
I know that’s dumb. Like, really dumb, who even cares? I suppose anything that makes me different from the rest to them makes me feel good. Inside, I find the rest of my assigned family. There is my ‘mom’ who is short with greying hair that she always pulls back into a mess of a bun. I have a ‘sister’ who looks frighteningly similar to me, her small shape and brown hair… Just like me. But I have dark eyes, unlike hers which are as bright of a blue as you can get. I am like the evil twin of her. My face has more rigid lines where she looks like a child. I am taller than her, but not by much, and it seems like she has been getting closer to my height lately, anyways. My ‘brother’ character is really genuinely nice, not just for the cameras. I feel like he thinks we’re actually a family, but I don’t have the heart to tell him otherwise. He’s just so little, and adorable… and innocent. He’s only ten, but his black hair and bright green eyes make him seem but a little older. I guess he could be older… I don’t think our ages as characters are necessarily our actual ages. I wouldn’t know. It’s not like we have true to date calendars or anything. So I guess my brother character could actually be older than ten, just like I could be older than sixteen, but there’s no way to find out. I understand that we aren’t actual siblings, but I feel a sort of connection at least with him. My ‘father’ supposedly died of a heart attack before my brother was born. He never really actually existed. I only became my current character a few years ago, when my being on Stage three was not needed any more. I had been just a kid that had no parents. I guess that means I was adopted? Who knows? I don’t really care what my character’s life story is. It just doesn’t seem to matter.
The speaker clicks on and there’s a little bit of a fuzzy noise before the daily recording begins. “Remember, the day you stop working and doing your best is the day we stop allowing you to.” The speakers go dead. It’s a wonderful way to start off the day, you know… people threatening your life for no apparent reason at all.
The silence is nearly unbearable. My ears are tingling from it… I suppose it is almost a fear we all have, that daily message, so much fear that it’s almost a moment of silence for the lost people who have been killed for refuting the ‘masters’. The floor manager starts walking around with his megaphone shouting orders around.
“Air, please proceed to ‘preparing breakfast’……” he yells. Of course he would start with that name.  That’s my character’s name. Back in the world between shows, I’m nameless. I don’t even get a number. I am referred to as ‘hey you’ or ‘get over here’. I suppose it’s not that often that someone needs to directly speak to any one person. Anyways, even if they do, it’s rarely me.
It would be obvious to see the lack of reality… so obvious. The only ‘if’ about it would be that the viewers would actually have to look. I suppose that’s not a thing many people do, though, so I should be safe.
I walk to my designated spot where I will begin to make food that isn’t really real so we can fool the real people into thinking that we eat just like them, not potatoes. ‘Carl’, my acting brother, sits at the table in his designated seat to wait for the start of film. ‘Carol’, my acting sister will still be ‘asleep’ in her bedroom. My ‘mother’ is outside in a lawn chair reading a weekly magazine.
At least the masters don’t tell us everything we have to do or say… usually they just tell us our beginning job and our beginning spot. We can say or do anything we want, but within regulations, which means be happy even if you aren’t. I don’t generally talk unless somebody else talks to me, but I suppose I might today, just to be a bit different. That is, if they ever start the cameras…
Just then, the lights shut off for a brief moment to say the cameras are about to go on live. The speaker begins its long introduction as we start doing whatever it is we do. I am beginning to make eggs in a pan with diced onions and other vegetables. Carol is sleeping, Carl is watching me, silently and happily, and Mom is reading her weekly magazine from ‘perfect world houses’. Apparently, my ‘Mom’ wants to buy another house, and maybe in the next few weeks I’ll have to switch floors again to ‘move’ to a different house. Who knows?
The speaker man’s introduction goes somewhat to the tone of “Welcome to our beautiful city, Shrubland, where the people are good, the crimes are low, and the work is high. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show!” It’s like that every day. Let me repeat that. It’s like that EVERY SINGLE WAKING DAY. How in the heck do people even watch this show? I swear….
“Hey Air!” Carl says to me in the most chipper voice I’ve ever heard him talk in, “What’s for breakfast?” I know that’s what he asks every day, but it seems like he wants to annoy the life out of me just because he can. Besides, even if it wasn’t his cheerful voice that makes me cringe, it’s the fact that my ‘name’ is Air. Like, really? You couldn’t think of something that literally makes up more of the world than almost anything else? Oh well, I guess it makes me feel free sometimes. It makes me feel free without a leash until I realize that there’s air in here, too. It kind of makes me a tad bit upset to realize that.
“Same as every other day,” I reply to Carl in a voice that probably would get me in trouble if anybody actually cared to notice. He began talking to me, like he needed to tell me something, but I kind of zoned him out because it’s not like he really has anything important to say.
“Did you hear me, Air?” He asks. I mumble back to him. “Well, I’m trying to tell you that the egg is burning.”
This shocks me back into ‘reality’. I look down, and sure enough, the eggs are burnt. It won’t matter though, because they taste like nothing anyways, so the burnt ones shouldn’t be much different. I sigh as I flip them off of the pan onto four different plates. I toss one plate to Carl. Yes, I tossed it. So what? Does anybody care? No. He catches it with a laugh, and I glare at him. He doesn’t notice. I put the other plates on the table where the rest of us sit. I call out for them to eat, but nobody responds.
I sit down and ‘eat’ my ‘egg’. “Wow, this is really good, Air!” Carl says to me. I feel like he was trying to tell me it tasted like air. If so, I agree, so I nod.
After the whole egg thing has disintegrated in my mouth, I stand up and walk out the front door and bug my mom to come inside and eat. She laughs and tells me ‘okay’. Then she stands up and goes inside. Why does everybody do that? I was trying to make it less ‘happy’ by being rude, but she laughed. I don’t get it. I follow her through the door, but part to go to my ‘sister’s’ bedroom and dump a glass of water over her head. She shoots up and gives me a look. Finally, somebody is bothered by what I’m doing. She laughs. Dang it, I lied.
“Air! That’s a new one,” she says happily, her voice ringing like bells, “I’m going to eat then?”
I nod, and she gets up to get dressed and put on makeup. My character doesn’t wear makeup. I don’t know why. Sometimes I, as a person, feel like I deserve to put on makeup, too, but apparently the ‘masters’ want to waste absolutely nothing on me at all, not even paint to put on my face to make me look happier. I could make the lipstick curve upward a little to make me look like I was smiling, even if I wasn’t. It’s not like I would make it obvious or anything, just a little to tone down my glares. It’s unfortunate that the day is already pissing me off so much.
Back in the kitchen, my mom and sister finish their eggs, and they genuinely look pleased by the way they taste. I’m not entirely sure if that’s a good thing. I mean, what if I’m the only one who can’t taste it? Carol is smiling at me. I don’t know why, so I ask. She replies with a laugh, “I was just noticing the contemplative look that has come over you! Please share, Air?” This is one of the things I really can’t stand here in this intolerable universe. People can ask you personal questions on any level and you’re basically forced to answer, but seriously. I can’t tell her what I was thinking, so I have to try and fake my way out of it.
I chuckle a little and try to smile, but I doubt it appeared as much more than a painful gesture. “I was enjoying the fact that you all appreciate the breakfast that I made so much. It makes me remember old times.” Carol smiles and nods. Geez… I really can’t take it anymore. I’m going to go insane living like this for any number of days more than last week. Last week it was okay I suppose. Mostly just because nobody really talked to me… ever. But now they all feel like it is an intense tragedy that I may so much as pause a moment to be silent.
“So, Air, I was wondering…” Carol starts, “Why do you always do that? I mean… you seem so distracted all of the time and then you just up and pretend to be happy. How do you do that?” I’m shocked. I literally… just don’t understand why she would say something like that. I mean, pointing out my fatal flaws won’t do anything but kill me. So, unless she has a death wish for me, that was a really stupid move. I’m pretty sure my shock shows because she’s laughing at me with my mother and Carl. I laugh with them. Hopefully the ‘masters’ didn’t catch that. “I was just kidding, Air! You take everything so seriously.”
“That wasn’t nice, Carol.” I say, in the happiest angry voice I could put together. She’s laughing at me again. I think back to what exactly my character does throughout the day. I suppose I usually go to the school to pretend to learn, but I really don’t want to do that today. “Alright, I gotta go get ready for school.”
I go to my ‘bedroom’ and look at myself in the mirror. I look exactly as I always do, that is, really angry looking and confused as to why I’m not dead yet.

I find myself in the jaws of death as today draws to a close. Overall, there was nothing out of the ordinary that I did today. I went to ‘school’ and learned, well… I stared out the window. One of my ‘teachers’ screamed at me for not paying attention. She got all red in the face and purely angry… I won’t be surprised if she turns up replaced tomorrow. Unless, of course, they’re trying to make her a bad guy. There are occasional bad guys. I ran into one on the way home after school today. He had on black jeans and a red shirt that had all in all too big of arm holes, except that I think it’s the design of the shirt. His muscles were bulging out everywhere and I couldn’t really see a way out without a fight. He mumbled a few words to me and I ignored him, nose pointed back ‘home’. He noticed and glared at me. I kept walking. I really wish I knew how they got to be bad guys. I mean, if it’s just the ‘masters’ that’s one thing. But if it’s actually anybody on the regular landing I kind of wonder why they haven’t chosen me yet. I could do great things as a bad guy.
He said to me “Hey girl, why don’t you answer me when I talk to you?”
“Why don’t you mind your own business?” I say back. It’s not like he could really hurt me. There are cameras everywhere and unless it’s in the script he can’t really do anything too awful. Unless, of course, it’s in the script. In that case, I’d have been screwed.
A few bystanders glance over and the guy lets out his really awe inspiring ‘Oooohhhh, guess who thinks she’s in the big leagues now?’ I just walked straight next to him. Then he kicked me. I thought to myself that it might just be in the script. A way to make me pay for the anger I show all the time.
“Think you can stand up to me?” I hadn’t noticed but he had pushed me down into the grass. The grass that felt like concrete, mostly because it was… it’s just an illusion. He was towering over me like a skyscraper but it didn’t really phase me. There’s not anything I can do about it if it’s part of the script. And if it’s not, there’s no way he gets away with it.
“Yeah, man, so get going.” I stood up and looked him straight in the eyes. They were dark like mine.
“Chicky… get out.” He let me go but only with a direct kick to the head that made my nose bleed, and I got a nice clunk to the back of the head and it’s bruising now. But he let me go. I was tempted to go after him, but I’m trying to live. Not that living like this is really worth living at all, but maybe someday they’ll let us out into the real world. And that’s what I’ve been thinking about here, lying on this nice soft concrete waiting for bedtime. Now is our ‘social’ hour. The houses are gone, and the show is over for the night. We’re supposed to talk to people for a little while, but nobody ever really does. I look around me. Pretty much everybody looks tired. There’s a girl on the other end of the giant room who I can tell is crying. She’s balled up in a little roll and she’s heaving a lot like the tears are more painful than wet. She picks up her head and I see why she’s crying. She has the big red pus filled bumps everywhere. Why did they give that to a child? That’s cruel. I get up and walk her way. If it’s contagious I hope I catch it. By the time I get there, she’s stopped crying but she’s turned the other way. I tap on her shoulder and she jumps. I’m an idiot. Obviously that is going to hurt her. She stares at me.
“Hi.” I say.
“What do you want?” her eyes are green. Really pretty if she didn’t have all those lumps exploding all over her body.
“I thought you deserved a little nicer of a time than writhing in pain, miss.” I realize I shouldn’t be here. If this child has done something bad enough that the masters want to kill her off, it’s a bad idea to associate with her.
“Do you realize who you’re talking to?” She looks me dead in the eyes as if I’m the stupidest person on the planet. Maybe I am. “I’m the one who tried to escape with the boy. He made it.” Just then I hear a loud screeching sound. The doors that are always shut are opening. I almost forgot of their existence. Two guards come charging in. Right at me, no, right at the girl. She whispers something, just inaudible enough that I can’t hear. Then she says it again, a little louder because I didn’t hear. “Check my box and use the information wisely. Please.” Then she’s gone. The guards whisk her away and she’s silent. The doors are shut again, just like they’ve always been.
I wonder what she meant by checking her box. Nobody has a box here… Unless. It’s her mattress compartment. That’s odd though, they’re supposed to just barely hold the mattress. Sometimes I really have to push for the mattress even to fit. I can’t look in there, anyways. There are cameras everywhere and they’ll see me. But if what she said is true… my old neighbor got out. Which means there’s a security leak… And he left that girl to die. How cruel.
The room seems to be louder. I take a look around and there are people talking. Like, interacting like humans. It’s pretty loud now and I notice people flocking together around me, as if coming nearer to the spot where the girl was taken would help anything. How convenient, though. They’re loud enough to cover for me while I casually look in her box. As if.
I open the lid very slowly and glance around. Nobody noticed. They’re really dumb sometimes. I move my hand into the box and look. That smart little girl… It looks like she chewed a hole in the mattress and there’s a teeny tiny scrap of paper in there. I swipe it out as fast as I can and plop the lid back on, squeezing back into a standing position and working my way to my bed station. It’s practically empty over here now; everyone has gathered at the other side. I open the scrap of paper. It has a lot of words on it, especially for being so small but I work on reading them.