Death Creation

I had a dream.

I was trapped in a very tight space. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.

When I opened my eyes, there was nothing.

Nothing but pitch-black darkness.

For a moment, I thought my eyes had simply stopped working. I tried to move my legs, but I couldn’t feel them. 

The only thing I could feel was a sharp sting running through the lower half of my body.

I tried to push myself forward. Slowly, I reached out my hand.

My fingers moved only a little before touching something. It felt foreign.

Hard. Rough. Almost like rock. I couldn’t make sense of where I was.

Then, all of a sudden, the entire space lit up.

The darkness disappeared, revealing walls surrounding me in a dark chocolate color, almost like red clay.

The surface was uneven and jagged, resembling the face of a rocky cliff.

Then I finally saw my body.

And I froze. My legs were deformed.

Half of my right foot was missing. My left foot looked as though it was melting. I couldn’t explain what I was seeing.

Everything below my waist seemed to be slowly dissolving.

My mind screamed. Something was terribly wrong.

I tried to gather my thoughts, forcing myself to stay calm. Then, in the middle of my peripheral vision, I noticed a yellow light.

It was faint, but it was there. Illuminating something in the darkness.

I turned toward it. Suddenly, my vision blurred.

I closed my eyes. And then I heard it.

A lingering voice whispered—

“You are chosen to free us, we will elevate you from your mundane life”“And bear the responsibilities”

A sudden bell rang.

When I opened my eyes again, every light was gone, absorbed into a black hole that seemed to swallow everything I was able to see.

What had felt like hours inside that place had only been five hours of sleep.

I woke with a terrible headache.

I had gone to sleep at 1:00 AM and could barely make out the numbers 05:00 on the small digital clock in front of my bed, beside the television.

Next to me was my wife of four years.

For a moment, my skin felt hot, as if I had a fever. Then, almost instantly, it turned cold.

The room was freezing. The air conditioner had been running for more than 24 hours, keeping the apartment cold throughout the night.

Without giving much thought to how vivid the dream had been, I lifted my head and looked toward the glass window. My vision was still blurred.

Outside, clouds hung low on the horizon. And there, in the distance, I saw a light.

It looked strangely familiar. It was the same kind of yellow light I had seen in the dream.

I quickly searched for my glasses. When I finally put them on, I realized what it was.

The sun was rising. For some reason, that realization calmed me.

I was awake. I was here.

The dream was only a dream.

Trapped inside that place, even if it was only a dream, there was nothing I could do. But now I was back. Back to reality.

This harsh and hellish reality.

I slowly lifted both legs from the bed, careful not to wake my wife. My feet touched the icy floor.

The cold traveled from the soles of my feet through my body, and somehow, it felt reassuring. I knew I was back.

I walked slowly toward the bathroom.

When my hand reached for the door handle, my vision suddenly blurred.

For a couple of seconds, I couldn’t see anything.

Then I heard it. A train.

The distant rumble grew louder, as if it were approaching me.

I froze. Then, just as suddenly, the sound disappeared.

Silence. My mind was in disarray.

I shook my head and tried to make sense of what had just happened before opening the bathroom door.

The first thing I saw when I entered was the round mirror.

To the left was a rack filled with hand-soap containers. Beneath the mirror was the sink.

I turned on the faucet and washed my face as I usually did.

Then I looked back at the mirror.

My eyes were red. Not bloodshot.

Red. So red that it looked as though I were crying blood.

I stared at my reflection.

My heart skipped. I shook my head.

For a moment, everything blurred again. Then my vision cleared.

I blinked. My eyes were normal.

I stood there for a few seconds, staring at myself.

The headache was still there. I ignored it and stepped into the shower.

I turned the tap and waited as the water heater began working. After a few minutes, the water started to warm.

I stepped into the shower, letting the water hit my body first. My head was the last thing I put beneath it.

Then the first stream of water touched my head. It felt like something impossibly cold had struck me.

I screamed. And for a few seconds afterward, I heard it.

The same voice. The same voice from the dream.

“Bear it, the responsibility””Don’t regret it”

I quickly finished my shower and made my way to the small closet where I kept my clothes. As expected, the smell of fabric softener filled my nose. It was slightly musky, probably because the windows were rarely opened.

I grabbed my long trousers and a batik shirt. While barely managing to zip up my trousers, I started preparing breakfast. I put the rice into the metal bowl and began washing it.

Then a sharp pain shot through my joints.

For a moment, it felt as though the pain traveled straight into my brain.

My body was reminding me that after four years of doing this, it was tired.

In a way, it felt like my body was complaining.

“Why do you keep doing this?”

I looked around the living room.

There was trash scattered across the table. Dirty plates had been left where they were, and the blankets were still a mess from the night before.

I finished washing the rice, added the appropriate amount of water, and started the cooking process.

Then I began tidying up what was left behind.

I made my way toward the sofa, beside the table where the plates and blankets were.

I picked up the dirty plates.

Then I touched something strange.

Something slimy. Mushy.

I froze for a moment, staring at whatever had stuck to my fingers. I couldn’t make sense of it.

Without thinking too much about it, I carried the plates directly to the sink near the kitchen.

That’s when I realized something. There were an absurd number of dishes piled up in the sink. More than I remembered.

A sudden sensation struck my head, like blood rushing rapidly toward my brain. And then a thought came to me:

“When can this end, will this ever change”

Stuck in reality, I went back to the sofa and began folding the blankets.

As I pulled one of them up, a sudden burst of air hit me.

The air was thick with dust. Almost immediately, I started coughing.

My asthma was flaring up, and suddenly it became difficult to breathe.

I tried to take a deep breath. Nothing.

My chest tightened.

I tried again, but the air seemed to stop somewhere before it could reach my lungs.

Then I remembered the dream. That moment of dread.

The feeling of breathing without actually breathing.

Consciously trying to inhale, but feeling no air enter my lungs.

The memory came rushing back.

I became angry. Not afraid. Angry.

My hands tightened around the blanket as I thought to myself:

“I’m alone again, no one here’s to help me”

“How can I get out of this”

At that moment, I began thinking about all the good memories I had left behind, and all the choices I had made to escape them.

Was there truly a good outcome in the decision I had made?

The situation I was in made me wonder.

Maybe when you’re being tortured, the only comfort you have is knowing that you got to pick your poison.

At least I chose this one. Not the one that fate had chosen for me.

If you looked at me right then, you probably wouldn’t have imagined any of this.

My hair was a mess. My batik shirt was still unbuttoned, and I was barely awake.

How had life brought me here?

I finished buttoning my batik shirt and walked over to my wife to let her know I was leaving.

She told me that her body felt incredibly fatigued. Her muscles were aching, and she asked me to massage her body before I left.

All I could do was sigh.

I was already going to be late for work.

Like clockwork, I gave her a massage for about twenty minutes.

If you’ve been doing something like this every day, you’d think it would eventually become exhausting. And it does.

But then you realize that, in a way, all of this is because of your own choices.

In 2026, problems are everywhere. Yet, almost like a curse passed from one generation to the next, parents often fail to prepare their children for the real world.

I made mistakes too. I hurt her before.

There was a time when our minds simply weren’t in sync. My younger self was stupid. I thought I was ugly, and that my wife was out of my league.

For some reason, I convinced myself that this was enough of a reason to act like a jerk.

It wasn’t. Looking back, I know that now.

But when everything is said and done, I believe the only way out of hell is to create a new life—and make that life better.

Hopefully, I won’t create another hell in the process.

And even if I do… At least it will be my hell. A hell of my own choosing.