It’s kind of calming in a sense, the feeling of floating. I could describe it as some sort of a sensation, a full-body experience, but those would be just a more convoluted way of saying the same thing. I found that word yesterday, convoluted. The familiar pinch between my heart and lungs shot it up to my head.

I haven’t opened my eyes in a long time. The last time I did, uhh… let’s call him Liam; Liam closed the blinds to my space. He has not opened them since.

When Liam’s friends pass by, they call my space a chamber, a cell. It is my home, and speaking of those claustrophobic places makes me feel insignificant.

Although, one of Liam’s friends did say I am a disgrace, an abomination. I don’t know what those words mean, but big words call for big things.

I have never known what is truly beyond my space. I know that I am alive, and that Liam is as well. Is my life too fragile to explore further than the place that I call “home”?

Sometimes, I see images, visions foreign to the darkness that I see day in and day out. There is a landscape of flashing neon lights, then an open plain with a farmers market, long abandoned. Cars hover over the streets of the electric city, then a lone traveler stumbles upon the endless array of empty tents and stores. A man walks up behind him. “You shouldn’t be here.“

But today, I see a new dream. A new dream in which I am trapped in a cylindrical chamber (a chamber, like they said…), water encapsulates me (floating…), someone with their back turned to me - white lab coat, brunette hair - I pound.

I pound on the glass as it cracks and shatters before me, but they seem unfazed. I regain my conscience a moment later, blood dripping from my chest as I lay on the floor. I don’t know whether I have escaped my prison or entered a new reality.

I breathe for the first time, a fluorescent light beams down on me. The person in front of me turns around, stares.

“I guess it’s finally time.”