The Clean Ones

CHAPTER 1

Part 1

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."
~ William Blake

Chapter 1

"Death is the fate that awaits the ill and the unstable, not the cleansed."

I repeated the phrase over and over again, allowing myself to soak in all the comfort and familiarity that radiated from it. For most, talk about death was considered taboo; a topic the majority of people in the city had not dealt with. Even for the most ill patients, the eldest of the elderly- who, to my knowledge, would by no means be considered elderly in any social metropolis (25 years old was still quite youthful according to other entities)-and even the most emotionally unstable all found someway or another to evade death. From the time I was small, I was coaxed to believe that nobody ever died, or even that such a concept didn't even exist. Life was an everlasting bubble of perfection. One may say that it was the child in me believing such a nonsensical analysis of life. Or so, I liked to believe that. If I were to speak to someone outside the borders and ask about their take on life, they would tell me that life was full of hardship and sacrifice, of love and loss. And, that our optimist outlook on such an unfortunate reality should be replaced by a more pessimistic one; hilarious. But that was only a mere theory. How was I supposed to predict what nonsense anyone outside of our community would say.
It wasn't, necessarily, that we were all that different. Physicality wise, we looked the same. Linguistically, we spoke the same. The only defining factor that separated us was our mentality. If only they abandoned their utterly cliché lives in the suburban areas of the world in exchange for the tranquility that came with our life, they would realize how truly wonderful it is. Unlike in the "Melting Pot" society that was the present outside of the Community, inside the Community you would not come across one person who differed from you. Morals and ethics were never questioned here, for everyone had come to a consensus on these matters- they do not matter. Why spend life, everlasting or not, worried about petty beliefs? Thinking was for the weak, they said. Education, for those too dull to enjoy life. And Opinions? Well, nobody ever spoke of those. The children of our Community probably didn't even know what they were. Opinions were deemed the worst of the factors. As the town promulgation stated, "The three factors that, if not eliminated entirely, will greatly contribute to the destruction of our 'clean' Community." This was only one topic of many that was covered in the thick, leather bound volume.

And I didn't believe a word of it.

As I climbed the apple tree that resided in my tiny backyard, I couldn't help but think of the serenity that came along with the second Monday of every month. Creation days appeared as just slightly better than average compared to the second Monday. Mental stability meant more to me than any paper-wrapped box ever could. Although, my creation day had yet to fall on a second Monday. Therefore the Cleanse told me that my creation day was the best day of my life, that nothing in the world could be better than boxes full of useless trinkets and sugar-coated cake. And in the moment, I would believe it, because I was not stable. For me, stability wasn't determined by the usual means. Stability meant that I was well enough to fight the promulgation. I could think and have opinions and simply not care. Amazing, how something as simple as being able to process a thought of your own could be considered a luxury. If any of the lab workers were to hear those words spill from my mouth, I would undoubtedly be chastised for even composing such a thought. Or, even worse, they would assume my brain wasn't responding well to treatment, and they use me as a test subject for a new experiment.

Now that was something I could not deal with.

They would also argue that nothing was exactly wrong in my life, and that I should be happy to have been blessed with this lifestyle. But, while they did propose a valid point, they did not know that nothing seemed quite right, either. That was the beauty of the second Monday. It provided exactly the solution I needed for myself- one day that I could actually live. Any adult with even a moderate sense of intelligence would tell me that my perception of such a date was complete nonsense, and that I should be beaten for even conceiving such a thought. People tended to be extremists, though I couldn't exactly blame them, for if you thought on the same exact wave length as everyone else in town, you'd think I was ridiculous as well.
When we, the other creations in my primary school class and I, had a break from testing and educational drills, we would play pretend. I happily played it back then, but grew out of this habit as soon as I left the primary school grounds. That is, except, for on that second Monday. All the youthful memories and tendencies would suddenly bubble right back up to the surface, for on this day I would tell myself that I did live an utterly ordinary life.