He sat up and wondered out loud to nobody, Is this all that life is?
This time of the day always made Hunter ask these questions,
it was 1:15 am and he had only woken up a half an hour prior. He looked around
the dimly lit and barely furnished bachelor apartment he had called home since
he was released from the Educational Holding Centre (or EHC) at age 14. He took
a laboured breath of saturated air. In this time he hadn’t bothered with frills
or decoration, he was the only one allowed in the apartment and there weren’t
many decoration options available anyways.
As he took a massive gulp of his government issued coffee he
got up, cursed his sore back and stared at the single bare light bulb hanging
from the ceiling. No windows meant no sunlight, and Hunter had only seen the actual
sunlight a handful of times as a youth as he was transferred from one EHC to
another part of town. The Complex he lived in was sealed and in it he had spent
the last 15 years of his nights.
“Is this all that life is?” Human nature dictates that that
these types of questions are asked by everyone at some point in their lives.
Most of the time there is far more to it, we just need to find a way to see the
sun once again.
Hunter glanced at his single bed and took off the old and
musty blanket he had always thought smelled a bit off. He was allowed to wash
one load a week and for the first few months he had always included the blanket
but some small tears started to appear and the smell never left, so he gave up
on the weekly practice. He now resorted to hanging it in the closet to hide the
smell until he slept.
He always felt different than the others around
but he was sure this was just another condition of the mind. Everybody feels different he thought, but if everybody feels different than we are
all the same in feeling that way.
