At this point, I start my journey which to an ordinary person would seem like a lifetime of extraordinary events. However, if you look closely into the descriptions, beyond all the details you see something that every person faces in their lifetime. A revelation so innately true, that an ordinary man would immediately turn a blind eye. This, however, is not an ordinary story.

As I burst through the exit door my legs suddenly felt motionless. There was no more chirping, no cars flaunting their new exhausts, no gossip on the street about the new designer brands.The world had frozen around me and although it felt as if I was no moving, I still ran. I ran through the deep fields of exhausted crops from the endless rainfall that had taken over the city in the last few months. I ran through the pitch-black streets. I ran through the ponds filled with old bottles and bubbly hydrogen substances until the pungent stench of lead and arsenic took over my lungs and I finally had no choice but to stop. Eventually, as the days passed on, the stench became better. The metallic rotten smell soon became a sweet smell and, apart from toxic fumes, smelled like a cheap perfume.

Day after day, I sat there on this bench across the parking lot of the old cathedral that was once filled with thousands of cars, but now only ever held the same five cars on a Sunday morning that were there every day. Perhaps the rainfall and insanitary conditions of streets were not worth it for the citizens of what used to be one of the most buzzing cities in the world, or maybe faith in God had disappeared altogether. Whether the reasons were the prior or the latter, I was much happier. I was much happier in the ruins of a dirty, polluted, detrimental city than in my previous residence, at least here I controlled my life. I sat on that bench for days, weeks perhaps. It was the first time since Lyssa left that I had a place I could call home, even if it was just a small wooden bench across from a church that once signified hope for a lost city.

This was my first taste of poverty. I felt no self pity, no loathing, no desire to move anywhere else, I had no home; I had never had a need for one. Even though I had only been there a few days, I felt very different. For all I knew, lead was binding with the molecules in my body and not allowing me think properly, but my thoughts had never been so clear. I had no home, no one looking out for me, but I was still alive. Perhaps if they had not kept me in that brick building for so long, I would not have needed all that ‘help’ they offered me. When a place makes you feel like you’re trapped in a prison, in your mind, any place is a better solution.

As the days grew colder and wetter, memories of old picnics by southwest national park or walks through the forest fresh air holding Lyssa’s hand saved me from hyperthermia. I remembered how she asked me to enroll her in the local daddy-and-me swimming classes. She told me it was because she wanted to spend more time with me, but I knew it was because her friends would tease her when she could not swim in their luxurious pools. Lyssa would ask me every day, but I would always be too busy typing away on my laptop.

At first, the only reason I took the job was to try and save money so that Lyssa could have everything that I could not give her. But, as the chairs turned into sofas and clocks turned into Rolexes, I, too, became addicted to the massive scheme of our society. The moment you forget the purpose of what you do is the moment that what you are doing becomes obsolete. Life without a purpose is no life at all.  

I used to have a purpose in life, to provide for Lyssa to have a perfect life. At the end that is all I ever wanted, but with time sometimes we get carried away in our little worlds. I remember a few years back when Lyssa’s aunt had come to visit, we were preparing the house. It had to be perfect since we didn’t have family over often, especially not from Lyssa’s mother's side. She was bouncing up and down on her tiny feet, rubbing her pale hands together. The last time I had seen her that excited was when we took a day trip to the mountains as a whole family. It was actually quite an interesting trip, Lyssa’s mother had left our sight and we spent the whole day looking for her. It turned out she was just having a sit in lunch. She was like that, never too bothered about her surroundings. Anyway, I digress. When Lyssa’s aunt finally came over, I showed her around the house wearing my golden Rolex and a suit that I’d ironed.  I provided hors d'oeuvres, and a five course meal during in which we discussed the contemporary situation of the world. The hours went by with laughter, smiles, and drinks. That was apart from Lyssa, who had left halfway through dinner. I did not bat an eye at the time, but now it seems so clear to me. After all, since her mother left, all she had ever wanted was a family member she could hug that wasn’t her father. The love of an additional family member ,while free of cost, was not something I ever even considered providing for Lyssa. Shortly thereafter, Lyssa’s aunt moved across the world on the infamous ‘safety boats’. I still feel that pity for those who walk around with expensive jewelry on their wrists, and convertibles by their side because it takes less than another Mount Vesuvius to take it all away. In fact one wrong flap of a butterfly’s wings and everything is gone. I lost everything when Lyssa left, but that means I have the chance to rebuild myself so that when I meet her again, she will have a reason to stay. I heard an object fall to the ground, and effortlessly, I moved back to reality.  

I held my fire opal upright at eye level and examined it: nothing was broken. It was the first time I had touched it since the day I ran away. The letters engraved on the rock by Lyssa kept me from taking a rope and climbing to the top off the national oil company, where I should have gone with the rest. Even if I could not read the letters myself, I felt that if I had these words close to me, I had Lyssa within my reach. I can read English, German, French, and Latin, but I never got around to learning Greek, even though Lyssa grew to love the language in the latter parts of her studies. I gently stroked my fingers over the indents of the gemstone, I looked over the beautiful symbols once more:

Πολλή νοημοσύνη μπορεί να επενδυθεί στην άγνοια όταν η ανάγκη για ψευδαίσθηση είναι βαθιά

I remember Lyssa would always tell me that it is much better to live in a world where nothing is left rather than live in a world where nothing is right. That is why I had decided it was time to stand up and turn left. My legs had felt a huge weight on them, as if suddenly gravity had increased just for me. The blood circulation in my legs had essentially stopped so every step felt like scraping your knees. I headed down Thanatos street where, despite the fact the street was overcrowded with markets and buildings, the atmosphere of the place made you feel as if there was nothing there. Of course, I knew that there were people with genuine lives and families inside the old brick buildings surrounding me, but the odor of feces, rotten eggs, and garlic made it seem as if I was the only survivor.

Thanatos street housed the parliament before it was shut down. It’s funny how so much can happen in such a short period of time. Back at the HHS they would tell me that my memories from the past were often obstructed. I will admit my memories are a bit hazy, but the picture of Mr. Benjamin Williams raising our country’s flag in front of millions of cheerful people is something still very clear in my mind. Often it can be hard distinguishing reality from fiction, but I know for certain that if we had not put our trust in every businessman who came to us with an empty promise by allowing them to come to power, things would have been different.

In fact, it didn’t matter if it was Benjamin or the man who took over this nation a century back, all that mattered was that the person in charge had to be a someone in a black suit with a red or blue tie hanging perfectly in alignment with their smug face. Regardless of who was in charge an entire nation would have cheered him on as he promised work, food, shelter, and a better tomorrow. Either way, these men had no intentions of actually bettering the nation that blindly entrusted them; they simply want to use their powers for private gain. These men go one generation after another without any reprimands for their actions. If Benjamin had made a few small calls differently, then maybe Thanatos street would still be filled with families enjoying a warm summer day in the ice cream parlor to my right, or happy couples buying beautiful engagement rings from the jewelry store to my left. After all, there is a very fine margin between right and wrong.

I remember that Thanatos street was known throughout the country because of that particular jewelry store. They had just about every gem you could think of, every gem except for a sunset fire opal. For years, Lyssa and I would be interrogated with offers for the unfamiliar gemstone. Never once did we think twice about rejecting the offers immediately, no matter how many zeros were added.  The stone was simply priceless. It was about what the stone represented more than anything. A representation of passion, it was a symbol of hope that no matter how dark the world may become, we would always have a speck of light. I was always illuminated by the reflection of my opal, and even as the skies and water turned black, my stone shined and reflected for me in times when I could not.

I was blessed. I, of every person on earth, possessed such an important object that I could not be find the light no matter how bad circumstances had become. Conceivably, that may have been the reason that Benjamin Williams strenuously attempted to take the cabochon off Lyssa and I. Lyssa had a school friends who was the daughter of Mr. Williams, so we were fairly close with their family. I remember one of our conversations so vividly, he would come to Lyssa and I on our way back home telling us about a vision he had for the city. He spoke of  a utopian world, with skyscrapers, lots of workspace, and an entirely green city. He said to have that world we can not hold on to possessions. He said that our opal belonged to nature and should be returned. It was that bullshit we had to deal with on a daily basis. I have to admit though, I do feel a bit of empathy for Mr. Williams. I wonder, how could he have known that the passing of such a small legislation would create such a large chain reaction? Then again, opening the doors to fourteen hundred large manufacturing companies certainly could not seem like a good idea to any sane person.

I suppose it is a bit late for me to be complaining now, especially considering that I am to blame just as much as anyone else. When I was young and both my parents were still healthy, my mother told me that the day the world goes to shit would not be because of some old man in a suit, it would be because of the ignorant idiots who watched him ruin a civilisation and did nothing. I would be wrong to say that I, just like everyone else in our country, did not notice the clear blue water running through our great nation turning into a dark yellow gooey substance. I could have done something about the situation, the whole nation could have reacted. Instead, we chose to change the channels on our brand new TV’s and ignore the old plastic bottles in the lake because we knew that we could just import more oil from elsewhere. Back then, of course, oil was the biggest problem in the world, then again, back then we were messing around in the kiddie pool of natural disasters. You can mix nitrogen with oxygen and throw in as many acidic pollutants as you want, but you will never understand how sulfur impacts the equation. Even now, I can still smell the devil.

The end of Thanatos street, I opened my mouth wide and tilted my head backwards so that the bitter tears of God could travel through my body. Thanatos street connected three ways: to the right was Kalo Street, to the left was Miso Street, and straight forward was where Lemon Street started. The latter was particularly important to me, as that is where Lyssa and I shared our apartment. The place was stunning. We had vines running down the side of our balcony, which played with the aesthetics of the fair paint that encompassed the region. However, none of that was comparable to the inside, which was decorated with frescoes, murals, hand-painted ceramics and, of course, lemon scented candles.

As you would expect, Lemon Street was named after ourworld famous lemons. Every year, these lemons were cultivated en masse using citrus tree seeds that could only be found inside our city. Lyssa and I would pour a large pitcher of cold lemonade every Saturday morning and play a game. At times, there would be as many as fifteen of us sitting out on the balcony. We would laugh about our weekly adventures, and Lyssa would come out with drinks on a silver platter. Everyone would find it to be the most adorable thing in the world; when you are young you tend to turn a blind eye to what is happening around you. We had to learn the hard way that wilful ignorance kills societies. For what does that matter though when you are young, crazy and surrounded by a group of mischievous individuals? I can honestly say that I have had some of the greatest moments of my brief life on that balcony laughing with my friends.

The best game of all was only played when everyone left and it was only Lyssa and I. We would take turns describing scenarios to each other in which we imagined our lives differently. It let us dream, but most of all, it let us hide from the reality that we might not have a future. I would tell Lyssa about our large home on Mars with Skylos, our space-alien dog and she would laugh falling to the floor giving out a little belch while Louie, our real dog, licked her across from her forehead to the dimple on her right cheek. We would do this every Saturday morning from the moment the alarms went off until Lyssa would run off to her appointments.

I felt a sharp pain and clenched the left side of my abdomen quickly. It seemed as if the world was passionately against the idea that I contemplated scenarios that had already passed. Then again, the world is very sick. Its grey hair has fallen to its feet, and its baggy eyes have turned dark red because the sunlight keeps breaking in. Its arms and legs are weak as spaghetti, and even though it marches on it cannot help but cry tears and cough out minerals and metals which to an ordinary man would seem extraterrestrial. It is at this point you realise that everything you thought you knew to be true may not be as clear as you would think. It is at this point you realise that the almighty earth, may no longer be all that mighty.

For all I know, Lyssa could be a hundred miles away. It can be hard to do certain things when they become associated with something painful. For me that game made me think of Lyssa more than anything. I know that it has cost me heavily though because I hear dead silence around dirty wet streets instead of laughter and joy. Only reflecting can reverse the effects of a dystopian world. It leads to contemplation and every once in awhile, the scenarios we play out in our heads come true. I have not reflected since I lost Lyssa, not the way I would want to anyway. First, however, I need to to have the reflection which each human being dreads. What if I had not been so ignorant? Maybe if I had done it before my mother would still be alive and Lyssa would not resent me. For now though, I have to continue my journey and to do that I will need a good night's sleep.  

I opened my eyes in a moment of panic. I felt my heart sink. In my time out here alone, one thing had always been guaranteed: no matter how hard you concentrated you could not see a single shred of sunlight around you. One day, in particular, however, felt different. The sun was shining bright; It was not just the gleam of light that caught my attention though, the large ruined buildings had been replaced with small houses, the dirty streets had been replaced with fresh grown grass, and that horrifying quietness that had diminished my last hopes had been replaced with the sound of birds humming playing gently along with the acoustics of kids playing in their backyard. In that one instant, all of my anxiety disappeared, and I galloped down the street like a knight taking a celebratory tour. I had gone to the mightiest battle of all, and came out victorious.

Only then did I realise that I was not only seeing small family houses. I still smelt the pungent rotten eggs and urine around me. I was seeing the beautiful sunlight contrasting with the wet grass. Never did the sun shine at me directly. I could hear the cosmic symphony of children laughing. I still felt empty and alone. I rushed over to the nearest house---I had to get help. I had to become part of something, I could not stand being alone another moment. I grabbed the gate next to me and yanked at it, but it would not open. I yelled, jumped up and down, I got down on my knees and begged, but no one took notice. I was trapped in a bubble. I could see the perfect world around me, but could not access it. I would not give up though, I had already made it through the mightiest battle, this was no challenge.

I stood up, screamed at the top of my lungs, and ran forward at full force. BAM! I felt the blood running from my eyes down to my lips, I had crashed into a giant cylindrical prison of glass around me. As you may have noticed from my journey, I have never strongly believed in the idea of defeat, but for some reason, I had a strongest feeling of complete angst at this moment. That is until I heard a small voice. The voice was soft, almost divine, but definitely not unfamiliar. I heard laughter, a unique kind of laughter I used to hear every day. It was Lyssa: “Use the rock to break the glass, you have to save me. You can’t leave me again.” I stood up valiantly to her haunting words, and threw my rock at full force breaking down my dome. The glass shed all around me, but I could care less. I took in the fresh smells, the beautiful sights, and embraced the sunlight shining on my face. I was free and Lyssa was with me. I ran over to the door across me, opened the gate and rang the doorbell. For the first time in what felt like an eternity I was face to face with Lyssa, she was standing at the doorstep.

I fell to my knees, and wrapped my arms around her. I felt her hand stroke my face as I transcended into peace. Not long after, she would reach down to my neck where she would grab me viciously. This was no ordinary grip, it was a grip you develop after years of built up anger. Over and over she repeated the same word “Why, why, why, why, why” She tightened her grip: “WHY ARE YOU HERE?”

I grabbed her arm and pushed her away ever so slightly.  As I regained my breath, I tried to tell her that I could make everything alright and that I would not make the same mistakes again. I tried to enter the house, but she pushed me away. Then  all of a sudden the room went silent, and it stayed silent until the fresh grass turned back into dirty streets, the large houses turned into large buildings, and the whole city turned dark once more. That is when she said the words I dreaded to hear “I’m not coming back. You killed me, of all people, you murdered me.”

Suddenly, the world was shaking around me. My vision became impaired. I ran back to the streets to look for my fire opal but it was gone; my only source of light or, should I say hope, had disappeared and with it left my last connection to Lyssa.

Lyssa would often have bad dreams during rough times. On one of the roughest nights, she asked me why nightmares exist if God can hear our thoughts. I told her that there was no such thing as a nightmare because it is all in our heads, and everything in our heads is in our control. Deep down, however, I knew that this was just some fabricated excuse. Make no mistake though, my intentions were not to deceive Lyssa, they were to deceive myself, which is exactly what I did. Even though what I told Lyssa was a lie, her real question was not why nightmares exist, but rather why bad dreams exist. Although the two can often be used as parallels, there is a distinct difference. Bad dreams are unpleasant even frightening experiences, but they are fabricated by your mind and that is where they stay. Nightmares, on the other hand, are everywhere around you. Often they can be in places you would expect such as in the hospitals where a loved one dies, or in your office when you realise you are about to get fired. Those are small nightmares. A nightmare does not even have to be in a place. It can be a look, it can be a sound, it can be words. No matter where you are, nightmares can pop up, but you can usually ignore them or ward them off. However, the nightmares that  stick with you, the big nightmares, are the ones that happen in the places you would not expect, such as your own home when the person you hold closest to you tells you that you are destroying their world. Or in the park where you once shared the happiest moments of your life, which has now become a graveyard. Essentially, the difference between nightmares and bad dreams is that nightmares bleed into the real world, and if you let them through the front door then you are allowing yourself to be genuinely harmed.

This was a nightmare. Although I experienced the most recent nightmare during the night, I have been living a giant nightmare ever since I escaped to find Lyssa. Up until that point  I had been keeping my door heavily protected, but the previous night it broke open anyway. I woke up with vomit pouring down my clothes, and extreme pain throughout my body. I had not had a full night’s sleep in a while, but sleep was not my primary concern. No matter the circumstances or the pain, I did the same thing I did every morning.  Only this time, I completed my morning routine with a lot more fear. I reached into the right pocket of my ripped jacket, and my rock was somehow really not there. Instead of it was a mango. A goddamn mango! My most prised possession which I would not give up for the universe was replaced by a simple a mango. I stood up and got ready to throw the mango because I am not one to take gifts at random, but then I saw something carved into the side of it in deep sharp marks: Go Home!  My nightmares know me too well to leave me food considering the fact that I had not felt the need to eat for days. My nightmares were sending me a message. Thanks to this trip, I learned that the only way a person can truly lose hope is if you rip it from their guts or get them to give up.  As I said before, I do not give up easy. So I picked up the nearest stick I could find, gnawed at the tip with my bare teeth until it was sharp enough for me to stab the fruit into a thousand pieces. I picked it up and ran down Elpidastreet, followed by Oneirastreet then Filodoxstreet, and then about another seven blocks until I ultimately crashed of fatigue.

I felt the rain running down my face making indents no less painful than rope burns. Although I have no reflection surface here whatsoever, I can tell that my face is probably similar to that of someone with third degree burns. I lifted myself off the ground despite my my joints cracking every time I moved them. That is when I saw that my journey had reached its eventual goal. I had reached the river of Lethy. The silky water contrasted with the reflections created on the Hypnos cave. Lyssa used to run into this cave whenever she was upset. Even when the world was crumbling around us, Lethy always preserved its waters, it was proof that certain things are incorruptible, and thus it had a superlative importance at the time. I remember that I would tell Lyssa that virtues never die, they simply escape us if we are not careful. For this country, the virtues escaped all of us and became trapped in the waters of Lethy. That is why I told myself that if I were to ever find Lyssa again, it would be in the waters of Lethy as it was the only place where we could both be reborn away from all the earthly problems that have been the root of so much misery.

Lethy, despite its many extraordinary features, was the size of an ordinary lake which meant that finding Lyssa would not be an easy task. The first place to look though would be Hypnos cave. I jumped into the water immediately, I knew that if I took any items of clothing off then I would simply expose my body to more pain, but that all changed once I felt the water. As I drenched myself in this holy-like water, I felt as good as new, the refreshing, cold, clean water healed my wounds. I put my head inside to take all the water in through my lungs, for once being able to truly drink clean liquid. The water, however, started compressing my ventricular system making me suffocate, I tried to pull myself up but an ice wall covering the entire lake stopped me from escaping the depths of the lake. Through the hazy ice I saw a small figure: Lyssa. She was exactly where I would have expected her to be, but I could not reach her. I punched the wall until I made the smallest indent, but Lyssa still stood  motionless as if she had not the slightest clue what was just under her toes. I continued to push up on the ice, hitting against it, but I could not make a significant impact until finally the entire ice sheet rumbled. Lyssa fell on her head, her blood covering all of the ice. Little by little, the dark red color of the blood started giving the ice a vibrant shape. Through indents in the ice the blood spelled Go home!. I lifted myself over the broken ice, and I tried to go over to Lyssa to preserve her life, but the ice was too shaky, I refused to fall but fate would not give up that easy. Soon ice started plummeting from the  top of Hypnos, dropping into the lake with big splashes. Until one hit me. The giant block of ice on my chest was almost half a meter thick. I was motionless. The only thing I could do was ait and let it melt but it felt as though the longer I waited, the more pressure was on my chest until finally KREECKKK.  Heavy smog clouds started forming around my open chest. To this day I can swear I felt my body temperature fall until my soul escaped my body, and I was no more.

In a blink of an eye, my heartbeat went from zero to a thousand. I used to believe our universe was nothing but a colossal canvas. I believed that when we are born, we each receive a paintbrush, driving our lives to be footnotes in a never-ending artistic masterpiece filled with detail and colour. Since the universe is constantly expanding, our piece of the canvas keeps growing bigger which makes us feel a sense of obligation to do something with our lives. I never cared much for making my particular section very aesthetically pleasing. My life was colourful enough as it was. That was before though. You see, sometimes you feel that your life is saturated, you have everything that you could possibly desire in life. That is when you stop painting, you simply let your piece of the canvas expand with the same old colours and designs. Then, one day you are contemplating the giant canvas that is the universe and you start to see certain regions simply expanding until they are no longer noticeable. Day after day, regions disappear. At first, it is some random speck, but then it is the radiant colours of your mother, father, uncle, aunt, daughter.

At this point, the universe starts to look a bit bland, but there are still the few people who manage to maintain a beautiful piece in their canvas even during difficult times.Of course, that does not last either since all it takes is a small smudge to ruin a painting. So, little by little, the blue turns into grey, the green turns into black, and the white starts spreading like a wildfire. That is when you realise that you do not live so that you can leave behind a legacy, because the fancy cars, flashy houses, and large businesses may get you the most vibrant piece on the canvas, but all it takes is one snap of a finger for it to all go way. Of course, I could blame this on the part of ignorance, which I would not be wrong to do, but there has to be a root to the ignorance: lack of ambition. In many ways, it has been argued that ambition is the reason behind ignorance, but it is actually the exact opposite. Ambition is what drives us to think outside the box, it is what drives us to be better than our neighbour. Without it, everyone is fighting for the most colourful piece on the canvas when all that we need to do is pile the paint over a thousand layers so that the earth would not have to be so fragile. All we needed was one man who could create some machine, some organisation, some law which would prohibit the world going to turmoil. Instead, when our canvas started to disappear, everyone took a back seat and acted like they had witnessed the most unexpected event in history.  Ambition is so vital because it can save societies, however, if mixed with wilful ignorance the consequences are fatal.

Wake the hell up! Goddamn it, this is not how it ends!

I felt the arms of a man crush my ribs as I tried to gain conscious. I opened my eyes to see a man about seventy years old with a long white beard. His face was filled with deep cuts, and bruises half the size of his face.

“Get the f off me,” I shouted.

I pushed the man to the ground and stood up, only to fall back to the ground immediately. I was covered in vomit dripping down my red hot body, I had experienced nausea before, but this time my whole body felt frangible. My whole upper body was covered with thick scarlet red blood. I wheezed gooey snot and little chunks dried from my mouth. The bearded man approached me with his calloused, brown fingers The temperature was below freezing, but I felt as if I was being placed in the bang middle of the largest inferno that mankind had ever experienced. The old man ripped off some cloth from his rags and wrapped it around my wounded chest. He helped me up, but I tumbled at every new step. My stomach tightened, releasing a sharp sensation as if two blades had entered opposite ends of my body, and were trying to meet each other in the middle.

“You have to leave her!” The man bawled. “Turn back around, go where you came from,” he insisted.

The words entered my ears, but refused to be processed.

“What are you saying? Who are you?” I murmured with just about the last shred of energy I had.

He approached me diligently, keeping his arms at a visible height to indicate that he meant to inflict no harm.

“Get away from me” I tried to yell, which only lead my organs to spew more blood out as I tried to raise my voice.

“You have the listen to me! This is a mistake,” the elderly man insisted.

“How the hell would you know?” I uttered ferociously

“Look, I can guide you, but you have to go back to the asylum” he said in his rugged voice

“What asylum? I’m not following you anywhere unless you tell me who you are!”

“I have no problem leaving you on the ground to rot dead here if you don’t listen to me!” he responded, throwing an old newspaper at me.

“Go ahead, read the title” he urged.

The newspaper headline read: ASYLUM ACROSS LEMONSTREET IS NEW QUARANTINE ZONE

It did not take much further reading  to realise that the article was referring to the HHS building I had escaped from. I had no idea it was a quarantine zone, but I guess I was not in the right state of mind when I was there. This time, however,  my mind was as clear in thought as ever. I would not give up. Nonetheless, I required the elderly man’s help if I wanted to have any chance of finding Lethy river because this was no ordinary dream. Lethy is nearby, and with it is Lyssa.

“I’ll come with you, but you keep your distance. I am not in the habit of trusting strangers” I said. I kept my voice quiet and tried my best to sound genuine.

“Follow me and we won’t have any problems” the man responded.

I took his hand and he gave me an old cloth to wipe away the vomit on my chest. I tried to walk, but it still felt as if an animal was trying to claw through my chest. I let him put an arm around me, so that I would not fall to the ground. We started to make our way back, but I had no idea where we were going and I could not concentrate. Despite my intentions, I had to trust this man blindly.

As we started to make our way back down the street I had just come from, I could not help but feel the situation was deja vu. I was back to my life at eleven years old. It was not the same street, same dirty apartments, lifeless town, but it all felt the same to me except, of course, this time I was the one who was being held on a lifeline, not the other way around. In my case it was vomit, I was drenched in it. In my parents’ case, it was blood. I still remember the loud sirens, the yelling, but this time there was none of it. There wasn’t any medical army awaiting to help me. I was alone with a stranger, but it made no difference. The pain was still there either way, this time however, the pain was far less. People always describe how excruciating it is to die in a car crash: the glass shattering into your skin, the blood gushing over your face. It’s a slow death, but it’s a death, nonetheless. I never had such a luxury. I never had a chance to say goodbye to my anyone. I never had a chance to express my pain. No one ever held a funeral for me. They simply had to walk away and never look back, I had to stick with this event my whole life. Everyone acted as if I was too young to understand. Dying in a car crash is far easier than seeing a loved one die. I was in the back seat, an ambitious eleven year old boy.

We had just come back from the bowling alley, and a truck came running into us out of nowhere. My mom and dad were knocked out from the initial blow, so for about a half-hour I had to push on their chests trying to bring them back to consciousness. After that the street was filled with ambulances and I suddenly had no control over anything.  I was taken to the hospital, and treated for a few minor bruises when I knew my parents could be dead in the room next door. My vision went blank, and I fell asleep to the sound of my own heartbeat. When I woke up, they were gone. I never had the chance to tell them how much I would miss our Friday bowling, our family dinners, the birthdays, Christmas, new years.  I knew there would be no more snowball fights in the winter and no more beach holidays in the summer. To my parents, they were simply having their lives taken away so that they could start a new phase. I, on the other hand, was having my life shred into a million pieces and thrown back at me. If I could survive that pain then I knew I could survive this pain. That is why I knew I must find Lyssa, because if our time on earth is short then I had to make sure I did not leave her feeling abandoned. I had to find the fire opal.

As I opened my eyes I could see the old man slapping me across my face, but all I felt was the touch of feather. I was numb, hanging by my last thread. I felt the warm contaminated water splash on my face, and with it I awoke enough to ask him where my rock was. He looked at me mercilessly, taking out the rock. As I tried to take it from him he pulled his arm back.

“You need to do something for me first,” he murmured with a bit of reluctance.

I looked at him with a slight nod.

“We need to have the talk you keep avoiding”

In a hoarse voice he continued.  “You need to confront what happened. Why is the world in this state?  What could you have done?” he took a pause as I looked at him in fear.

“Why does Lyssa hates you?  If you don’t discuss this now, you’re either going to continue to live ignorantly and filled with regrets or you will die painfully filled with regrets…...you should pray for the latter.”

It can be hard to admit your faults at times. For me, my faults had destroyed a civilisation, yet, I was not your typical supervillain. I never intended to bring the world to its knees. I had no scheme, no master plot. In fact, I had no awareness of the consequences to my actions. Like every typical middle-class man, I would wake up early in the morning, head off to work, and be back before the clock struck six. I loved my job, and I was right where I wanted to be. That was until Lyssa and I needed some extra money. You see, while my parents dying had many effects on my life, one of the most significant ones was their influence in the decision which led to my career. When my parents passed away, our lawyer was told to divide their equities as demanded by their will, but I ended up receiving little, as would many of my relatives. In fact, the majority of their equities ended up being seized by the government because there was ‘a problem with the will’. However, I knew my parents and I knew they would have spent hours working on their will in case something bad were to happen. They were never very spontaneous people, whenever we went on family trips they always had everything planned. This one time we were going on a flight, at this point I don’t even remember where we were going. I just remember my dad had planned the trip to the last detail, but as we arrived to the terminal he had no boarding pass. He must have lost it somewhere in the airport, but he was furious. Not because he could not board the flight, but because I had been under a lot of pressure at school and he wanted to give me the perfect break. When it came to making my life easier, he was never complacent. Then again, however, the word of an eleven year old boy meant nothing. So little by little, I watched a greedy lawyer profit from the death of my family without even one glimpse of the lives he was destroying. From that day forward, I vowed I would be a lawyer who would be incorruptible, a lawyer who would helped the unfortunate. I would be a lawyer who would help the world become a better place by diluting the effects of the terrible lawyers destroying the earth.

I did not shatter my morals for Lyssa because morals are not like glass. They can not be broken. Instead, morals are like my sunset fire opal: they are a rock. It’s not something you’re born with. You must find your morals. Everyone has to search for their morals. Some people stumble across their morals out of nowhere, while others go on a deep search. In fact, at times, you may believe you have stumbled across the perfect rock, only to find out years later that this particular rock is not meant for you. When you find the perfect rock you stick by it. The ones with the strongest morals are the ones who have found the right rocks for themselves.  Nonetheless, to those reading this who believe that they should not be held responsible for the atrocities being held worldwide because they too have strong values, they are the most naive of us all. You see, there comes a moment in everyone’s life when they step outside of their moral boundaries, and it is not the end of the world. However, every time we do something which we believe is morally incorrect, we are splashing some water onto our moral rock. As we all know, while our sedimentary friends do not break easy, they do erode over time. That is why anyone who says that no one can break their morals, is not particularly holier than thou, he/she is simply expressing a reality of life that morals do not break, but rather diminish until the morals themselves are only but a speck reflecting the person you were meant to be.

Lyssa was meant to be  a detective. At the early stages of my law career, it was not easy to provide for cable, so I would pick up books after work for her from a shop outside Lemonstreet. She became immersed in all genres of books, but mystery books, particularly the sherlocks, were her favourites. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew her as the little detective because every time someone’s cat ran out, or someone lost their phone she would be the first one on the case. Even when everyone started to become sick, she could do a far better job at finding the root cause than any doctor in the city. Even if it meant pointing the blame right at the victims of such atrocities, because when the government was pouring buckets of oil down the river we would say that we were too small a group to make a difference. When the streets became filled with trash, we would say that it was not our problem because we didn’t create the mess. When the clouds filled with sulfuric acid to the point where you could see the devil beneath you we would say it’s already too late. Eventually, one by one, he took each one of us down to hell with him.

For all the mysteries that Lyssa could solve, I could only solve one, the only one Lyssa had an issue with. The mystery of death perplexed her, so I had to come up with an answer. I remember I decided to tell her that there was a place for good people, and a place for bad people, as it was the closest thing to an answer I could give. This worked for a while, until she started to ask me how it was decided in which place you would end up. For this particular question, I had no way of finding a short made up answer, and so I had to dig into my own beliefs. Eventually, I told her that at the end of your life you end up in a place made for you depending on how ‘good’ you were throughout your life.  My answer was not enough for her, she wanted to know what was good. She said that for some people it is obviously easier to be good because of their upbringing, circumstances, and character. That’s when I told her something that was as much a strange truth of life to me then as it is now. I told her that the measure of how ‘good’ you are at the end of your life is judged my examining the person that you are and comparing how far off you were from the person you could have been. I told her that every person has an identical looking pair which only they can see, the person they could have been. This person does not speak, you can’t communicate, in fact, most of the time you forget that they are even there. However, every once in a while they emerge out of nowhere as a silent reminder that you standing idle while there is not certain peace in the world. This means that the person will always be living in the back of your head, eating away your subconscious. I told her that if the world were to end tomorrow, then your worst fear shouldn’t be seeing the world collapse around you, for you already knew that would happen ever since you decided not to react.  I told her that her worst fear should be coming face to face with the person she could have been. I told her that I was sorry I couldn’t save her, I was sorry she had to go so soon. I told her that she would always be my daughter even if she didn’t want me as her father. I told her that I wouldn’t ever let her die. She told me that I was the person she wanted to be be like. Now I was facing who I wanted to become, so I knew that I was in hell.

The bearded man looked at me with a sly expression on his face.

“It’s good to see you talking again, I was afraid you could no longer communicate” he said, offering me some mango.

I took the mango. It was one of the few times in a week when I was genuinely hungry. My appetite was otherwise nonexistent, I felt better now then but the pain in my chest refused to go away.  It felt as if I was sinking into the ground. I could feel my chest compressing.

“Now that you’re talking and feeling better, how about you stop with the bullshit and tell me that actual story. How’d Lyssa die?” The old asked impulsively.  

I chuckle a bit “That would be tragic, but I can’t help but laugh, imagine my little girl is gone. The biggest hope in life is seeing someone part of you make better choices than you. I have that chance with Lyssa, you have to understand I can’t let her die.” He smiled over at me, opened his mouth to speak but he hesitated.

“You know, you’ve come a long way since your parents died.”

“I’d like to think so, but I think the old saying is just far too true, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. How am I better than them if  I abandon Lyssa?” I questioned.

It had not occurred to me until that time to ask the man for his name, or to thank him for helping me out. Anyway, I shouldn’t ask, I don’t want to become friends with someone who I would  have to leave soon. He looked at me with concern.

“Are you sure you’re feeling better? I never said you were better than your parents, you know, I just said that you are better than your old self,” the old man clarified.

“Yeah I know I just thought--” I say only for him to cut me off instantaneously

He cut me off instantly. “But if we are comparing you to your parents, you’re nothing like them, they were never afraid to see things as they were, and for what it's worth, they sure as hell didn’t want to abandon you.”

“Of course, because I’m so damn blind right? I’m so blind that I can’t see the pollution, I can’t sense the toxic rain, I can’t hear the shrieking cries of the victims who have had to witness death after death as the earth turned to but a speck of dust. I may be an ignorant, but I’m not blind. I saw everything happening in front of my own two eyes, I saw it on the television, I saw it from my neighbour’s photos, god damn it! I even saw it with my own two eyes when my own daughter’s lungs were filled with lead. I’m not blind, and even if every other f'ing person on earth may have acted as if they were blind, as if they could not see the atrocities, as if to them nothing had changed, they were not blind either. They saw every f'ing bit of it, and I did too.” 

There was a moment of silence. Although I had been alone for the majority of my journey this was the first time that even the small voices inside my head were quiet. The voices eating up my brain were one, and I felt the slightest sense of tranquility in the midst of chaos. The bearded man looked at me as if he was having a moment of reflection. A moment later, he reached into his pocket and pulled out my sunset fire opal.

“Take it” he said, offering me the rock.

“I didn’t get to hear exactly what I wanted, but whatever reflecting you still have to do is not between me and you. I know you think Lyssa is alive, and maybe she is, but you need to let her know how you feel before it’s too late. One of the scariest thoughts for me is the fact that some people die years before they are buried. Even if you make it to her without the need of a gravestone, it doesn’t mean you made it to her alive. That’s why we need to return to the quarantine zone immediately,” the man explained, his voice quiet and solemn.

I took the rock from his hand, and I now had two very clear thoughts:  I had to leave a message for Lyssa, so that she will not feel abandoned and I had to kill this man. At the end of the day, the man had done his job. I would reflect, but I could never abandon Lyssa. Anyway the latter seemed far easier considering that as I placed my majestic cabochon on the bearded man’s forehead he simply gave me a nod. He did not resist once, all he did was hand me a paper and a marker. The blood spread onto the sides of the paper, but I quickly ripped that part off. With him gone I felt new, stronger, and a lot more hopeful of my chances of finding Lyssa. I reached for the paper and marker and began to write.

Dear Lyssa,

It was my deepest belief that light had to always follow the dark. After all, the sun must shine following the night. That was until the light no longer shined, and I realised that everything is not always as it seems. For me, I was always told that my duty was to provide for my family, to earn a good income, live in a good house, etc. I thought that all of that was more important than my duty as a citizen of the world. As hard is it can be to admit, at times, the things we think we are doing because they are morally correct are the things that have the largest consequences. That is because we rely on society to tell us what is right and wrong. You were only seven when all the power plants took over the city, but many of us knew the dangers and decided to ignore them. We believed that this was not our priority, we said that other people had jobs to fix the environment, and we had our own jobs. Little did we know that when something affects or has the potential to affect the universal wellbeing then it is everyone’s problem. After all, if you catch fire you don’t wait for the fireman to come, you put it out immediately before the consequences are irreversible. A few months later, when you had your environmental unit in class you came home and told me that I was a hero. You said that your teacher said some of the biggest fighters trying to save the environment were lawyers. You gushed about all the cute little pandas I was saving.  In reality, all I did was defend companies through the notorious lawsuits which they rightly faced for defaming this planet. I thought that swimming lessons, and detective book collections would make you happy, but to be happy you must be alive and safe. My job to protect you should have come before my job to make you happy. If you a reading this, Lyssa, and you somehow manage to grow old in some recovered planet, my one tip for you is that your duty to preserve the natural order of things in the world is not because of your moral compass. It is because of your obligation to society, your commitment to a better tomorrow, and your indebtedness to the peace of humanity.

I never meant to hurt you Lyssa. If I could go back in time and quit my job to help make the world a better place, I would. That is my biggest regret, I thought one person could not make a difference, but every step forward is a step in the right direction. If I could have had the courage to take a step forward, perhaps I would have found that my feet are humongous, and then maybe you would still be here. If I never find you, I want you to know that it is not the consumer attitudes, the deforestation, or even the fossil fuel exploitation that killed this world. It was us. It was us, Lyssa, the sheep following the wolves blindly. I led you to the wolves, Lyssa, and I wish I could have saved you but, I don’t even know when you started to be eaten alive. It didn’t happen at in instant; it was happening for years. The humongous power plants constructed only to explode, the ecstatic skyline factories which once contemplated the brilliant blue sky with their shiny metallic features were now barely noticeable under the hazy grey dusts above my head. I should have realised from the first cough, first doctor’s appointment, first surgery, first funeral...I should have realised sooner.

My deepest regrets,

Pops

The end of my journey to find Lyssa, takes a resplendent turn as opposed to the rest of the story. After sealing my letter shut with the last bit of saliva left in my mouth, I marched forward. However, this time the skies seemed to be a lot brighter, I was optimistic, it was as if the fates had changed. I had accepted my faults and was ready to change. It felt as if the world was too. I trudged onward for about another half hour, but this time I knew exactly where I was going.  Thirty-seven minutes from when I signed off my letter I had reached the river Lethy. It was exactly how I had pictured it in my dream, full of colour. Although it seemed life was no longer visible in the vast bottoms of this lake, you could see a few bubbles popping from the gentle stream as an indication that new life may be beginning in the depths of the stream.

I was ecstatic, and although I could not see Lyssa I could feel her nearby, so I placed my letter on my sunset fire opal and tied it with some dead vines. I plopped the rock into the ground and lifted it back up. There are some instinctive moments in life when we realise that we had forgot to consider some aspects in our story. For me, I forgot to mention the story of how Lyssa died. It was not some big tragic seen, so you can keep on reading. As I said before these things take time. I had to see over many years, my daughter who I loved with every bit of my heart suffer. Her potential, ambitions and hopes drift away as she fell sick. Lead and arsenic filling her lungs, she could barely breathe, living the last year of her life half dead already. I would have done anything to help her, but it was too late, all I could do was watch. She couldn’t even cry because there was too much acid in her system. She was such an ecstatic young lady, and she left being someone filled with reminders of how terrible our world can be.   I kept on trying to see if I could find anything but sedimentary rocks. The water was clear, as there was very little sunlight to absorb. I had gotten used to the dark, grey city a long time ago, but locating a body underwater would be much harder than seeing a building in the dark. Lyssa and I were actually both pretty good at seeing in the dark. Often, when I was still studying, and we ran out of coal, electricity was not cheap. So instead we would imagine that we were in a dark cave, although we could not see much, every once in awhile we would use a flashlight and point it at a wall so we could create shadows. We could create our own little world with the objects we made. Sometimes our hands would form an animal, sometimes a planet, but we did it all knowing that the light would eventually run out.

I threw my rock into the river, bringing it back up every time. “Tloou, tlou,” all I heard was rock. Exhausted, I realised that my sunset fire opal could not help me much longer. I dove into the river and swam with my cabochon letting the current take me, until finally, I found Lyssa. Lifting her remains out of the river depths gave me the privilege of closure before the end.  I could feel myself holding her, as if she was a baby once more. But she wasn’t. This was an eleven-year old girl’s body lying on the lifeless grounds of a ruined time, her face half degraded, the sharp, choking smell almost taking over the entire village, but was not very sizable when compared to the lead which had formed all around her mouth. Her entire body was as pale as a ghost, or at least the remaining skin was, the majority of her organs had disintegrated.

The world seemed at peace for once, but then again, if there is one thing my journey taught me, it is that we, as humans, have a tendency to trap ourselves in our own perfect illusions, creating a prison for our minds. I took Lyssa’s body, placed my letter perfectly in between her rib cage and gently dropped her back into the river. I felt a razor sharp pain in my left abdomen, I was wheezing blood but felt no emotion. There was chaotic tranquility all around me, and paradisiacal agony inside me.  I took my sunset fire opal and plopped it into the water. An object so futile gave me so much hope, I felt the light would never end. Then again, every person’s sun sets after a while, for me it was darkness at that point. I took another dead vine, and wrapped it around my eyes, I pulled it with full force until I was blind and had blood pouring from my eyes. I let go of the vine, and tried to find it on the floor, until I felt it on my foot. I picked it up with my shaky hands. Wrapped it around my neck. I squeezed. I saw the ravishing pollution once more, smelt the pleasant rotten eggs for a last time, and felt my lifeless spirit leave me. The last sensation I had was of the cold water rushing through my face as I ceased to exist.

I had promised that the end of my journey would be resplendent, impressive, rich, full of colour, and I am not a liar. Death is the most resplendent experience in human life because death is the start of everything, not the end. We have witnessed this again and again: empires fall, as new ones are born. Meteorites hit the earth, wiping out ninety-five percent of life, and this allows different species to develop and prosper. New philosophies are born as a reaction against the old ways, and so on. One certainty about life, however, is that death only comes when it is time to move into the next cycle of life. I urge you to use this new beginning wisely. After all, ignorance dies hard, but at least it dies.