The Choice

The Choice
Josh Fink

He was chained, face down on the floor, just like always. The hard floor (tile?) felt wet beneath his fingers. (Blood?)
He couldn’t see to know for sure where he was. There was no light. There was never a light. He didn’t know how big the room was, how many people were in it, nothing. He felt the wet tile floor and shackles around his wrists (were they bleeding?).
And honestly, he didn’t care. Nothing mattered. The blood he thought was dripping from his mouth just didn’t matter to him. Images flew through his mind. He dismissed most of them, choosing instead to cling to three thoughts.
A man holding a cigarette lighter to a gallon of gasoline.
A syringe being pushed into a man’s struggling arm.
A window that looked out into white nothingness.
Strangely, these made sense to him. But they didn’t matter. It was as if a sequence rolled through his head, jumbled pictures that somehow came together with a reason he couldn’t place, but felt that it was important even though it didn’t matter. It was like a dream that made perfect sense while you were having it, but when you woke up, you couldn’t figure out why. You spend a long time trying to guess what had happened, sensing a connection, but the moment that you are about to grasp the purpose, purpose vanishes. You are left remembering that you are supposed to remember something, and you never do.
A lighter, a syringe, a window, gasoline, an arm, nothingness…
The dream ceased to make sense. All he caught were glimpses of his glimpses, and when he tried to piece them together to form what he thought he remembered, he discovered that he didn’t actually remember anything.
He drifted back to unconsciousness.

An explosion, boiling blood, burning building, burning man screaming.
A syringe being pulled from a limp, charred arm.
A window that looked out into white nothingness.

He awoke trying to keep a hold of his dreams. And of course, they slipped through his mental fingers.
He rose to a sitting position by placing his slippery hands (he was still bleeding?) on the ground and pulling his legs under. It was one of the two positions allowed him by the chains.
He had a nagging feeling in the back of his mind. It told him to look around.
He did. He saw a light behind him to the left.
He felt it speaking to him. He felt it say (kill me.)
The light was not his friend.
He strained against his shackles. He wanted to attack the light, to give it its desire. He wanted to end it, to remove the incongruity from his world of dark and blood and chains.
Explosion, syringe, window, burning, limp, white nothingness…
Light…
Light didn’t belong here. He was somewhere devoid of anything but dark and blood and chains. He was somewhere beyond the shadowy recesses of the world. Surely light didn’t belong here.
Yet there it was, taunting him.
Again he faded into unconsciousness.

A charred man lying on a hospital bed, surrounded by doctors and nurses.
A man walking placidly to a door at the end of a long white hall, being led by a limp, burned arm by a man in a long black coat.
A window looking out into white nothingness.

When he awoke, the light was closer.
He could make out that it was the shape of a rectangle. He stared at it. He felt that it was evil. Now, more than ever, he wanted to stomp out the light, destroy it, murder it, make it bleed…
(Am I crazy?)
(Kill me.)
(Yes.)
He had been so wrapped up in the light that he hadn’t noticed another important thing.
The chains were gone. Blood was dripping from the fingertips he couldn’t move.
The shackles had grown into his wrists and had been ripped out. They had taken most of the flesh with them.
He started to run to the light. Halfway there, he noticed something on the ground.
A bloody axe.
For no particular reason, he picked it up and continued running.
He reached the window. He looked into its white nothingness, though to do so caused him pain. Images began to form.

People he thought he almost knew crowding around a hospital bed. On the bed was the charred body of a man he thought to be himself.
He was in a coma.

Once again, unconsciousness.
Once again, images.

Go through the window. You will return to your friends, your family, and your body. You are trapped inside your mind. Free yourself! Go through the window!

When he returned to consciousness, he lifted the axe and contemplated the window.
(Kill me.)
The window was his gateway to his previous life. The window was his way back to his empty life in an empty world full of empty people. It was the way to his friends and family who only thought they cared because the empty society told them they should. Everything was emptiness, everyone a vessel to be filled with nonsense and lies. And it was all illuminated with empty light.
Not at all like his new world of blood and chains and darkness and truth.
(Kill me.)
He lifted the axe, smashed the window, and died. And he was happy.