I Am Gone...

• Julia Dickerson, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2019

“Are you ready for number three?”

They run and they hide. They seek and they find. The game that continually plays…
Never ending.

Going…
Going…
Gone…

Can you feel it? The crisp, cold and sharp water filling your lungs. Your eyesight going blurry, and your desperate arms flailing for something to clutch on to, to save you from this fate. All around you, clean but dark. Looking down, nothing.
Your eyes close.
Images of your life faintly flash in your eyelids. Before you feel yourself being dragged down by this force. You can feel it surrounding you in a cold embrace, and a rush of fear shoots through your body, your brain panicking for air. Just for air.
You have no will to fight it any longer.
You let the force take you.
And keep you.

I want to burn.
I need to burn.
Now.

I never knew why. I only knew how. Flames. Igniting the flames was the sole purpose of our lives. And we can't seem to escape from that.
It was never real.
I was never real.
And they weren’t meant to be a part of the story.
It’s all just a game. And we are just the pawns.

We are in the 24th century. Experiment number two is in the 17th century. We are just an experiment. Our purpose in any of the worlds is to incinerate.
The sole purpose in my world, was to cremate books. The sole purpose in experiment number two, was to burn people. The common theme? Knowledge.

“Hmm...I can smell you.
I can feel you.
Come closer.
Please.”

Who’s in charge? Who’s the leader? Who’s the one that has created this entire mess and left me in the middle of it?
Who are they?

“The sound of our army overtakes one singular step into louder, perfectly in time steps. You are in a fight against an opponent you can’t see. Our legs move simultaneously, the loud movements of the gears stopping and starting. We are one. And, oh, you can feel us on your heels, can’t you? Feel us breathing down your neck.
We are coming.
We are coming for you.
And we are going to make you one of us.”

I blazed myself to die. In front of my house, I was meant to die with my books and my house.
But they brought me back to life.
I broke a protocol - if I was going to set myself on fire, why wasn’t I in experiment number two?
But who said that I held all of the knowledge for the world?
Our world was never real. And the people inside were never real. Experiment number one was based around me...

Up...down...up...down…

The last time my chest rose.
Water begins to fill my lungs. Breathing, gasping for air.
My eyes shut.
The last image in my eyes was fire.
And the force takes me.
Forever.

I’m gone…

We want to burn.
We need to burn.
Now.