I am walking throughout the night, in the silent sky above are the stars, living fearlessly in their commune of free will. My tummy growls, blowing the horn of hunger. In this resort, you don’t wonder what it is that you will eat but what might eat you.

I enter, hiding away from the cold that makes me cooler than a pack of peppermints, a once-warm household. I paint the walls with my eyes searching for a hole to stick my head in. I find a door, crack it open. The interior is dark, folding my open eyes.

I adjust my eyes to the fog of blindness. I pick up my foot slowly and lean closer, letting go of the spine-chilling door knob. Bam! The thunder of a closing door. The shock folds me like a weak caterpillar on the floor. A silhouette of a young girl holding a dagger appears.

She pounces on top of me like a mouse-craving cat. She has been infected, eyes dusty gold, fangs dripping red blood. The sharp glazing knife-end ready to dig out the pallet from my neck. The cold runs away from my struggling body trying to hold the dagger from crunching my flesh. I run my eyes over her face, fixing mine on hers. I can hear her tears struggling to break free from the gold of her eyes, a desperate pounding heart screams to escape from the cold blood streaming in her veins. It doesn’t have to be this way, those thoughts overcome my busy mind.

I let go of the struggle, placing my brain in a pool comfort. I replay the picture of that young boy, those soundless tears, that passionate smile painted on his face for the last time. Then I realise, the girl is not placed in this field of her own will, it is how the world is now shaped. I open my eyes, my soul still blinded with the flesh, air still able to enter into the gates of my lungs. I am still alive.

I pick myself up off the floor and dart around the room. There she lies, the knife now on the floor. Showing no motion, the cold creeping into her body, eyes wide open turned from gold to black. Gone. I can feel the breath behind me, a heavy sigh of fear, a survivor like me, who’s been hiding in the corners of misery, now unveiled, saved my life.

In the world of today, we sometimes are not given a choice, we go by the way of the shape of the world. It may have been one man for himself, but today two hands shall be bound to reach the edge of tomorrow.

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