After work, I wanted to walk on the beach, the wind sweetly caressing my face and filling me with peace. As I bent down to pick up a stone to skip on the surface of the sea, a sudden disgust for everything about life appeared in me. It was like a hot wave of air which smelled of boiled cabbage had hit me in the face. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. The wind was now howling in agony as if it could hear my thoughts. I didn’t know why I felt this way.
I sat down on the sand, not caring at all that I was in my work clothes. I decided to dive deep into my subconscious to try and figure out this sudden, yet torturous condition I had fallen into. After some consideration I figured out my thoughts. I realised how heinous humans were by nature. And life was no less than us, especially when viewed from the eyes of such a foul creature. I remembered earlier that day, I had put up with so much trouble, I had been in so much discomfort, and yet mere minutes ago I had been in peace. Life had made me forget my suffering to keep me in the game, give me the bare minimum so I could survive, like a deranged psychopath, forcing me to play its sickening game. My contemplations broke off from the piercing pain in my hand. I raised it to look, and saw blood seeping down my arm, and a large cut in my palm. The stone I had picked up previously had cut my hand. I must’ve held it too tightly when I was lost in thought. This only made my torment worse, and as I cognized just how fragile my body was, I became unbearably aware of the sand, my clothes, my hands, my feet, my breath…I was alive, yet I was slowly decaying, the earth was pulling me in and one day we would become one, as worms ate my flesh off.
It was all too much. I got up and starting running. I didn’t know where to. I was in a haze; I didn’t care where I went or what I did. I just needed to escape. Before I knew it, I was standing in the middle of the streets, blocking the traffic. Cars were honking at me, people were screaming. I thought about how pointless all their lives were. Yet they were all preoccupied with wherever they were going. “Wake up!” I wanted to scream. I felt myself getting dizzy, and the world faded away.
I woke up in a hospital bed. I was in a room that was painted a dull shade of yellow, the paint had started peeling off at some places, and there was a small window illuminating it with moonlight. I looked at the window and saw the rusty bars. I had begun to understand it now. As I was trying to get off the bed, I heard some voices in front of the door. “The patient has been diagnosed as insane,” said a man “and will be transported to the asylum tomorrow.”. I felt my heart drop. I sank back onto the bed, there was no point in trying to escape. I looked at the moon. The room smelled of boiled cabbage.