???’s Perspective

I was in a landscape of white after I passed through that door. It was very warm and comfortable.

Even then, once I woke up, I wasn’t able to go back to sleep again. It felt as if I was missing something important. But I couldn’t make any sense of what just happened. After a while, I grew tired of thinking, unable to piece back any sort of sense.

After a while of floating aimlessly, I closed my eyes while deciding to sleep again. However, it was all a bootless errand.

After a while, I came up with a reason for the empty feeling filling my chest — I was all alone in this white world. There was nothing except this endless white and I grew tired of it.

At the same time, another feeling washed over me. A feeling that there was a vast world somewhere out there. A world with things I never saw, things I never experienced, and some even beyond my imagination. Before long, I found myself filled with a mixture of longing and expectation for this boundless world.

I sat there in silence, my eyes closed, unsure of what to do while waiting for something to happen. My curiosity about the matter was growing ever so slightly.

And one day, I grew tired of waiting as I wanted to move, to find the place I dreamt of.

Thus, I tried to stretch in order to prepare. And then… I felt something. I felt something flowing between my fingers. This something was slightly cool and when it flowed against my fingers, the sensation was soothing.

My nose twitched a little as I smelled something. The smell was enchanting, filling my heart with a strange satisfaction I never felt in that white world.

‘No, it isn’t something, it’s wind.’ The thought filled my mind as the smell enchanted me. ‘Wind carrying a sweet scent. Scent which I can’t quite make out where it’s coming from, what is producing it. A scent I can smell.’

My desire to see the world grew exponentially as I wanted to see where the wind came from. And to know what happened to me. To know why I was in this white world. And then…

… My eyes opened.

A stabbing sensation from my left eye blinded my senses, forcing my eyes shut. My whole body trembled as wave after wave of pain assaulted me as my brain kicked into motion. My breath was the farthest thing from calm and the sensation of beads of sweat sliding across my skin made me feel a slight itch. And the wind kept blowing against my skin, making me feel like curling up into a ball.

Ouch! What was that? It hurt a lot… and all this sweat, it’s making me itchy. And this feeling, is it cold? I want to scratch my forehead. All this sweat is irritating.

While trying to move my arm to wipe the sweat off, I felt no response. As if it was never there.

My arm? What? What just happened? I can’t feel my arm…

A sense of numbness had assaulted me when I tried to move my arm. On trying to apply more force to move, it felt something like trying to punch at a cotton ball. The force I used dispersed into nowhere. Powerlessness washed over me as my heart filled with uneasiness.

Cold sweat lining my back, I gulped a mouthful of saliva. Following the movement of my throat, the feeling of my throat bugged me. Sticking together and tearing apart — the same one you would feel if you didn’t drink water for days and then tried to empty a bottle of water. It left me wanting to empty my stomach out.

With my breath getting faster, the sensation in my throat amplified a few folds. Anxiety began creeping over my thoughts.

Giving into the storm bubbling within, I tried to open my eyes again.

Aargh — What awaited me was the same sensation of pain from earlier. While shivering occasionally, I shut my eyes as tight as I could.

Chills crept down my spine as I could feel my ribs struggling against the thing hammering against my chest, trying to prevent it from breaking out.

Just what is going on? What happened to me? Why can’t I move?

With a chest heaving up and down under a sweaty layer of clothes, blood kept rushing to my head like some dam had broken loose within me. Desperately trying everything that came to mind, I flailed about, twisting and turning for a few hours.

However, it turned out to be nothing more than a fool’s errand.

What happened to me? Why can’t I move? What will happen to me if I can never move again? Why me… just why? Who is behind this? What did I do to suffer like this?

By the end, I almost broke into tears. Those thoughts kept bombarding my head, shaking me down to my core. Soon, breathing became hard, as if a rock was weighing down on my chest.

I could feel something intangible wrapping around my neck as it kept dragging me into depths of despair. My breath got stuck in my throat, while I could feel my face burning.

No — no, calm down. This all has to be a dream. Yeah, a really bad dream. I’ll just open my eyes and I will wake up from it. Right? Right?