Guilt

It’s all your fault, it’s all your fault, it’s all your fault…

Pitch black. You see nothing. You hear nothing. You feel nothing. There is only you, and there is only the void.

“Am I… dead?” You call out, but no one responds.

Suddenly, a sensation. You hear it. A buzzing sound. You feel it, the way the ground vibrates beneath you. Your eyes snap open, a sea of light flooding into your vision.

Shapes. Shapes of all sizes and colors. Rectangles, squares, cylinders, prisms. Too many shapes, too many colors, too many sensations. Images and sounds flash through your brain in a rapid fire pace, images of death, of rage and of sadness, the buzzing getting incessantly louder until not even your hands can block it out.

Then, silence.

Tentatively, your grip loosens, and you slowly open your eyes. You’re greeted by a lovely grey square. A ceiling. Which means…

“I must be lying on the floor” you tell no one in particular. Quite dumb, really. .

You sit up, observing your surroundings. A bench. A hole in the ground. Train tracks. Stairs. Cracks in the walls. Beside you, there’s a radio, but it’s full of static and you can’t make out the words. You must be in a subway station, but it’s empty.

You stand up and start climbing up the stairs to the abandoned city. Down 3rd street, Take a right on Downey. Past the McDonalds, and then take a left. Somehow, this is routine to you, and yet you can’t recall a thing. Left, right, down, up, north, east, west, south, mindlessly droning on and on in your mind.

You come to a stop in front of a grave, the name John Kilmer etched onto the harsh grey stone block. He must have been important to you, but you couldn’t remember. You start to use your hands to dig deep into the dirt. Dust flies everywhere, your fingers getting dirtier and dirtier, but no one is around to see or hear you desecrating a grave like this. You repeat the process over and over and over, trying to find something, but you don’t know what, until you finally reach something hard and cold.

You pull it up.

It’s the same Radio you saw in the subway station, only this time, the words are clear.

It’s all your fault, It’s all your fault, It’s all your fault