Stories I Never Finished

Remember

Letting out a deep breath, Michael focused his gaze on the ceiling; watching small tubes of blue light glow like purified energy through the panels above him, pulsating as though they were the life source flowing through the veins of the vast building.

He wondered how many floors above the ground he was, whether his mother would be wondering about where he was, and if his pet dog Molly was waiting patiently by the front door for him to come home.

He wondered when they would realise he would never be coming home again...

A pale hand, almost as white as a ghost--blending into the white of their uniform, long sleeves riddled with the same shade of blue of the dim ceiling--, broke into his view. Long fingers delicately brushed the skin of his face, soft in their cold touch to his warm skin as they turned his head toward them; met with zero resistance from his strapped down and sedated figure.

"I'll count down from five." The pale person's voice was gentle, like a distant warmth lost in the chill of a nuclear winter, and Michael would've fallen in love with it if this had been any other circumstance.

Blue eyes were like crystallised diamonds dipped in the pool of the universe, millions of stars locked within their glistening gaze as they peered curiously down upon him. Michael almost wished his own eyes were as bold as the ones the strange young man had.

"You'll feel a light sting." The voice continued, their head turning away briefly as their other hand grasped hold of a nearby syringe waiting for him.

The cold tip of stainless metal pressed against the skin of Michael's neck, glowing white light blocking the world beyond the small laboratory now nothing in comparison to the dawn of such an unnerving sensation.

"And then you'll be back home again." The blond's face reappeared in Michael's vision, soft gaze peering down at the quiet male.

"I'm...growing tired of this." Michael dared to speak. He felt as though he had been here a thousand times before; seen those gorgeous blue eyes almost a million times over again.

"I am aware." The blond's free hand came to rest almost lovingly upon Michael's chest as his eyes focused on the syringe he was pressing deeper into the man's skin. "I grow tired too."

"But so long as you are... alive." The blond seemed to speak like a confused robot; as though he were learning the meaning of each word he spoke as he said it. "Then... the tiresome is worth it."

"I don't agree." Michael lay his head back, eyes returning to the ceiling as they waited to close.

"It is a money machine." The blond said, peeling the needle back out again. "And they say you are one of the broken cogs... A little oil is necessary for you to function. Which is okay." He placed the needle down on its previous tray with a gentle clink of metal.

"But sometime..." His voice was a whisper, unable to be distinguished by the ears that listened. His hand moved to sit upon Michael's shoulder only briefly, blue eyes filled with stars Michael almost wanted to map out for himself watching the male strapped down. "Sometime I wonder if you have too much oil."

Michael didn't fight the serum like the blond recalled he usually did—much like many other patients—and instead green eyes fluttered closed; his mind still awake for a few fleeting moments before it would reset.

"I hope for you to have less oil, though I do not know what the other versions of me would think." He gently took his hand away. "When you see big eyes on a screen, smile like the others do and one day I shall not need to see you. It will be a sad day for me, indeed, but I would prefer it."

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The whistling of a content man could be heard through the bustling streets, people coming and going at their own pace within their own individual lives; all wandering through life, some at a run and others at a slow walk—but all heading toward the finish line.

Michael rolled his shoulders with a sigh, hands tucked into the pockets of his white jacket as he walked within the sunlight streaming through floating clouds higher than the skyscrapers surrounding him. Endless buildings lined every block of land, a city towering over the earth as though flora and fauna had meant nothing but the profit of florists and zoos, and for everyone who walked its surface it was all they had ever known.

The old generations who had built their new world from the surface up had long since passed—leaving the universe to power forward without them with only their faint footprints left behind in places who were yet to kick up the dirt and rid of it.

En route to work, Michael followed the whistling sound until it came close to his side; caught as an older man standing by a coffee cart whose server was passing a freshly made coffee to a woman draped in strict business attire.
Her smile lit up a hundred light bulbs, endless gratitude aimed toward the acne-riddled server who only held onto his humble coffee cart in the hopes one day he would build up into something more.

The man nodded at Michael when green eyes glanced his way, and in turn Michael nodded back; somewhat confused by why such a custom existed among people. They were strangers, but then Michael supposed a mere silent 'good day' didn't hurt. It felt like a connection, a wire zapping within his mind, and he offered a casual smile to the same man who grinned and waved in response.

It was ever so easy to make a human smile.

Michael kept on his way, disinterested in the world around him. It was nothing new, the same crowded space of random people making up a city's population as it was every morning he awoke to. The same thing day in, day out.