Chromed

        Eyes open, mind awake. The opposite of sleepwalking. Unconscious yet completely aware. There was a fly in the room, on my arm none the less. I tried to lift my hand to swat it away. I forgot, body asleep, mind awake. My arms won’t move. the insect’s wings fluttered, barely moving yet causing quite a cacophony. A single ray of sunlight shot through the titanium microfiber safety-glass window. Another shot through a window on the other side of the room, like a military sniper’s laser sight. Each one was followed by a complimentary ray in a different window, just like every morning.

        I kicked my legs over the side of the king sized bed, feet conveniently landing in my soft white slippers. Just like every morning. Elizabithia Co. makes a specialized robot that is designed to find and retrieve slippers from anywhere in the house and put it under the bed. Just one of the many things to make one’s life easier. The Elizabithia Company set out thirty years ago to make every life simpler, giving Artificially Intelligent servants to every household to do simple meaningless tasks. When I was a child my brother and I would play pranks on our RTS7 and RSS6, or robotic toast servant and robotic slipper servant, just so that our father would wake up with toast on his feet and blackberry jam fruit substitute on his blackened slippers. Patrik always was a fantastic programmer, before he was kidnapped and killed just days after I went to university. I shook my head, forgetting about my brother once again. I shoved his memory to the back of my mind, that being my only coping method.

        After sitting on the edge of my bed for almost 5 minutes, I got up and grabbed a towel to take a shower. Sick of the dead white and gray of the world, I turned on my stereo. Typically an AI servant would do it for me, but I destroyed it in a fit of rage three years ago. As the stereo turned on I walked into my bathroom and cranked the water as hot as it could get, too hot. Just as the scalding water hit my back, my pirated metal-core music deafened me, just as I like it. The inaudible screaming was at maximum volume, throwing shapes and colors throughout my entire vision. I suffer from a mental condition called synesthesia which allows me to be able to see what I hear in colors and shapes dancing about my vision. I love it. The louder the sound, the more vivid the color. A fly's wings moving cause a slight discoloration at the edge of my vision. However, this morning's fly caused everything to be so blue. No shapes, just like I was wearing blue colored glasses.

        I stepped outside, closed the door, and then tested it to see if the lock would catch. Just before I stepped out of my white entry room, I caught myself. I stopped. I prayed. He will fix this, whatever this is. He Loves us, whoever we are. He is everywhere, wherever we are. I opened my eyes at the white sky, then down to the white walls of the white buildings, then down again to the white lines on the gray asphalt. The only colors in this world were the ones that only I could see. All of the people had pale white skin. Everyone had dark black hair, almost as if we were all replicas of the same original person. But then who is the original? Could it be me? I felt strangely disbelieving. How could a world be so pure, so white? And why now do I question my God and His world?

        I walked to work…

        I dazed through it…

        I walked home.

        I felt like my ears needed to pop, like something wasn't right. I felt like I was dying without any damage to my physical body. Dying in mind? Then what happens to the body that makes me? The body that our God created for me? Sitting there on my top step, I thought. What if the world I know isn't true? What if the world that I believe my God made for us isn't what he made, but a prelude? A prequel? A prologue? In the distance I heard my stereo sing… "Sing to me, of the end of the world! There's some hope left in it yet!" My pulse quickened. My RCNA3 chirped and protracted itself from its home in the wall. "Mr. Mathias Mathews, your pulse has raised 40 BPMs in the past 62.34 seconds. Are you in danger or engaged in any sort of sexual activity?"

        "Blow me," I kicked the robotic med student meaning to destroy it, but I merely knocked it back into the wall. I checked my pulse. I looked at my watch. Counted to 6. Thirteen cardiac muscle contractions in six seconds. An unhealthy hundred and thirty beats per minute. I was less surprised at the fact my pulse was so high than at the fact my resting heart rate was ninety. I felt lazy, a ten mile run would do me well.

        My doorbell rang, a customized electric wailing of a guitar. Was I expecting anyone? I couldn't remember much of the last few days. I opened my door before my servant could, I found joy in keeping these tasks from the servants… as cynical and sadistic as it sounds. It was a girl. No, not a girl, a woman, although I knew her as the girl. She was pale like all of us, and she had black hair and gray eyes like all of us, but she had a birthmark right above her right iliac crest that I had always thought was the most attractive thing I'd ever seen. She was beautiful. Her name was Natascha. Looking back I see more cynicism in the world than in me at that point, bringing her and I together.

        "Matt!" She yelled and jumped into my tattooed arms, "It's so good to see you!"

        "Natty…" I was confused, as I always find myself when a woman is touching me. I had never been quite good with the women, always stopping up and stuttering, however with Natascha I had always been more comfortable, not comfortable per se but more so than with others. Natascha and I had been friends since birth, our parents had pushed us together, making us more than friends for most of high school. We broke it off days before we both left to university. My heart ached. I did not want to be broken again, nor did I want to be alone with her and let myself get carried away. I hugged her, savoring the scent, the sensation of her body against mine. She hugged me back, only making it harder for me to resist getting carried away. "This is unexpected. Would you like some dinner? I was just about to start on some chicken cordon bleu." I prayed for her to like chicken cordon bleu, it had been my mother’s favorite, making it Patrik and my favorite as well.

        "Oh, wow, I would love some. It smells great in here."

        "I haven’t started cooking yet Nat," I smiled at her, she smiled back, a look that looked strangely childish on her adult face. "How do you like your chicken? Burned, crispy, or raw?" I had just turned away from her to lead her to my kitchen.

        "Oh you know me, I just love it when its still moving." She laughed, time slowed. I wanted to be here with her forever, with her smile, her laugh. I remembered when we were kids she was always laughing. Her mother would always say if she kept laughing so much, one day she would die of exhaustion. Instead, her lungs got stronger and she became our schools track star. She always looked so beautiful when she ran, her long legs pushing her wonderful body as if it were flying. At one meet she had, one of the competitors tripped and fell into Natascha’s lane, her running spikes landed directly on the tripped person’s arm, breaking it and damaging Natascha’s tarsal bones. She got right up and went to see if the other person was ok. They had to call an ambulance for both of the girls, the doctor said that Natascha had badly sprained her ankle landing on the girl’s arm, but getting right up to help her had been the final straw, shattering her cuboids. She never ran again. "Come on Matt," she had said to me the day she heard the news that she wouldn’t run again, "I had a good run. It was fun when it lasted, maybe I’ll just take up the tuba or something." She did, and was amazing at that as well, always looking on the bright side. It was that in fact that gave her her scholarship to the National University of Architecture.

        After we cooked the chicken in silence, we sat down at my stained glass coffee table, since I did not actually own a full sized dinner table. I never saw the need in having more than one table. The coffee table made Nat think, "Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have an espresso machine, would you?" I didn’t so I apologized and offered her normal coffee, "No thank you, thats a morning drink."

        "Ok, well I thought I would offer…" we sat in silence again before she spoke up again.

        "You’re going to think I’m totally stupid for asking this, but what did you study again? In university I mean." There was a question, I had taken my first semester off for Patrik’s funeral. I sat up and told her she wasn’t stupid.

        "Hell, I can barely remember sometimes," I said, trying to be funny. I failed at that so often. Even so, she laughed again very loudly. I chuckled, "I, um, I studied graphic design and music business."

        "Ouch, double major," she had been scared of so much work ever since her cousin had to take a year off of college after taking a triple major. "I would never be able to do that."

        I smiled surreally, I was so happy to have someone other than myself and my robots in the house. "So what are you doing here, are you working on a giant project in architecture  or something?" She went on to explain her lucky break of getting chosen to build the first airway for cars from here to New York. It would be a highway in the sky, something that would take people anywhere by how the bird flies, avoiding towns and speed limits. "I heard about that actually, it seems promising. But… isn’t it about three hundred miles north of here?"

        "Well yeah, but I thought I’d come by to see you and Patrik, I haven't seen you guys in four years, ever since we left to university." She left two days before Patrik died. No one told her. "What's wrong?" She had seen my face go paler. "Oh God what is it?"

        I stood up and hugged her tightly, again she hugged me back, but this time it was almost frightful. I did not want whatsoever to be the one to tell her, I did not want to ruin her fantastic mood. "It's Patrik," I released her to look her in the eyes, "He was killed two days after you left."

        "Oh God," I felt her heart skip a beat. My RCNA3 chirped again before returning from the wall.

        "Ms. Nata-" Natascha ripped the robot out of the wall and smashed it to pieces screaming profanities that my faith would not want me to say, despite the amount that I do. Nat picked up the larger pieces of the RCNA3 and threw it down into the basement. 

        "No…" She was crying, "Please God, tell me you're joking," Not crying, sobbing, "Tell me this is a terrible joke."

        "I'm so sorry," I was, "I should have called you," I did, several times, she never answered.

        "Matt…" Natascha looked sick, not green, never green, but she was swaying. I caught her when she fell. I brought her to my bed. I tucked her in, went downstairs and slept on the couch. I awoke several times to hear her weeping. I went upstairs to replace the tissue box and to give her a new change of clothes. "Matt… I miss you," I could barely hear her whisper as I left the room. "I miss you both so much." I turned around, she was asleep, crying. Not crying. Sobbing. Silently.

        I woke up at nine in the morning. Too late for work. I didn't want to go, so I fixed Natascha and me a good breakfast, eggs, toast, and oatmeal. I cooked one egg over-easy, Nat's favorite. The other I attempted to make a spit-in-the-eye, my favorite. I burned it. Didn't pay attention to the heat. I tossed it, feeling numb. 

        The world isn't real. Le monde n'est pas rèel. So What? Say it's not, what then? Wait for the Rapture to take us to the next chapter? Wait? Why wait if I can see my God now? Suicide seemed a little farfetched, so I dismissed the thought outright. Find God, I thought, Find God and he will save you. Christianity had become a rarity; I was the only devout Christian I knew of at my work. I go to church every Sunday, I drive for four hours to teach kids about our God. Last time we met, we talked about the Rapture, the second coming of Jesus Christ, "the Rapture takes us home," I had said, "it takes us to our Godly Father."

        "But Mr. Mathias," said one of the children, Jim O'Connor, "what if we die before the Rapture takes us home?" Jimmy was dying, he had a brain stem glioma, the doctors gave him another month, although they were skeptical if he would make it through the full thirty days. The doctors had given up on treatment. 

        "Jimmy, if you die before the Rapture comes, you will be waiting to welcome us home when it does." I had loved Jimmy, like a little brother. He died the next day, just like that, went to sleep and never woke up. A peaceful death.

Rapture.

        I finished the oatmeal and grabbed the toast from the RTS18. Halfway up the stairs I checked my tray. One egg for Natascha, cooked just the way she likes it, two slices of toast with blackberry and strawberry jam fruit substitute for each of us; butter on mine, not on hers. Last were the two bowls of oatmeal, one for me, loaded with brown sugar and whipping cream, and one for her, also loaded with the sugar, but without the cream. Natascha was lactose intolerant. I forgot the coffee, Nat's favorite drink. I remember when we would meet at a local overpriced coffee shop in the mornings we didn't have school. She took her coffee black and bitter. I remember questioning her choice of coffee shops. "This is the only place I know of that grinds their beans freshly roasted and immediately brews them for maximum taste potential." I called her a coffee connoisseur.  I called her snobby. Hopefully my coffee was worth going back for. Quickly I ran down the stairs and grabbed the two steaming mugs of the black liquid. Again I checked my tray at the halfway point on the stairs. I had everything I needed for a great breakfast, other than my spit-in-the-eye. I prayed, away from Natascha, for she was Atheist and strongly so. Thank you Lord for this food, for my and Natascha's life. Thank you Lord for this world and everything in it. I apologize for ever doubting you.

        Amen.

        I opened the door, making a minor creaking sound, outlining everything in a bright red, thanks to my synesthesia. "Natascha?" I asked the redness. Odd… the sound was gone but the color remained. Nearly a minute later I realized my mistake, the red was not in my hallucinations, but it was Natascha's beautiful bright red blood spilling over my white sheets, off my white bed, and onto my white carpet. I heard white noise coming from the stereo, it made everything a darkened grayscale. Everything but the red blood staining my carpet and soaking into my socks. I heard a clatter. No shape or color appeared. I dropped the tray. Her wrists were cut, horrendously ripped open by a chunk of chromed steel off of my stereo, causing a faulty wire and a bad connection. I could only barely hear through the noise, "I walked into your house this morning, I brought the gun from our end table. your blood was strewn across the walls now, I find you on the bathroom floor…" I found a slip of paper in her hand, gripped tightly, or would have been had the tendons not been severed. It was soaking in her blood. I could only make out a few phrases.

        Patrik and I… Affair… Cheated… you… so sorry… Can't go on… so much guilt…

        Goodbye.

        I sank to the floor, eggs and toast mixed with the coffee and blood. I had suspected Patrik and her, she and he were always closer than her and I, but she had seemed so happy. Patrik had always been my best friend, but he always became physical with women very quickly, not sharing my Christian values as closely as I. I did not want to believe it, but I did, or I could at the very least.

        I was so scared, terrified, beyond everything. Not scared for my life, that was in God’s hands and was therefore at His expense. No, I was scared for Natascha, for her eternal life, for her worldly life was gone and among the ashes, among the eggs and toast at my feet. Her eternal life however was still there in the room with me. Watching me as I wept over her memory. I prayed, not to God, but to her, Natascha, I am so sorry, I should have told you when it happened, I should have watched after you better than I did. I am so terribly sorry. Blame me, as it is my fault. Natascha’s soul would not be in Limbo for long, she had committed a mortal sin by killing herself. Dear Lord, that has a horrendous thought, my love was going to hell. 

        Suicide had begun to seem less and less out of the question as I sat on my blood-soaked bedroom floor, the wanting to die tugging at the edges of my conscience, steadily convincing me. I slapped myself, "I do not want to go to hell!" I said to myself as scripted as I’d ever been, "Do I?.." I needed to do something to stop the inevitable, I needed to at least try. I had given myself a mission. I needed to save Natascha, she was too perfect to go to hell. I remembered a conference that Patrik and I had gone to when we were young, it was a great time, they played music, they acted out skits, and then they spoke to us. In all seriousness, that is when I really came to be. After seeing one of my favorite bands perform, the band members acted out a skit. The skit was about a man who went to hell just because he didn’t believe. Somehow he had managed to send out a message to one of his friends, a girl who was very devout in her beliefs of God. The message was just a video, no special camera effects or anything, just a grainy VHS tape of him in hell, him being tortured, ripped apart over and over then put back together just to be torn again. The entire time he was screaming her name, screaming the same question, "Why?!" he had screamed, "Why did you not save me?! Why did you not try harder?!"

        I found myself thinking that this man was me, trapped in hell. I righted myself, I was not the man, I was his friend, I was the reason Nat was gone, I could have saved her. I needed to save her now, I owed it to her. I got up and undressed from the bloodstained pajamas and washed it off in the shower, blood mixing with water, diluting Natascha’s life force. I got out of the shower, grabbed a white towel, and attempted to dry my hair. The towel came back red. No matter how many times I washed my hair I couldn’t seem to get the blood out. I was starting to think it was my mind playing tricks on me. 

        Post Traumatic Stress Disorder typically found itself in soldiers returning from war, but ever since Elizabithia Co. extinguished the thought of war, just as they "fixed" the sky, soldiers were no longer needed. Mild cases of PTSD would then surface in children of divorced parents or even people who witnessed a minor car accident. It was almost as if the disorder tried to cling to humanity in a desperate attempt to make more people suffer. Elizabithia believed they had solved the world’s problems by making houses easier to live in comfortably, but when that didn’t work they eliminated wars. No one really knows how they did it, but they did. Even then, there were rising amounts of murders, kidnappings, and suicides. In retaliation, the Company attempted to rid the world of shadows, making the sun obsolete by creating our own sun that illuminated the world horizon to horizon. That happened thirteen years ago when I was eight years old. Murder and kidnappings went down, not all the way, but down far enough. but suicides went up in flames, skyrocketing like a space-shuttle set for the moon. A thought came to me in the blackness of my numbness, something I had read in school from a classic short stories author, "Can we kill time?… Why must we live in such a strict world?" 

        I redressed myself in the nicest suit I had, an antique. It was made by some company called Volcom. It used to be a very popular company. The suit was a slim fit, always bringing out an attractive musculature that I didn’t have, it was as dapper as one could get in these days. I lay down beside Natascha and straightened out her body, so that her shoulders were squared to the ceiling and her hands were folded just above her belly button, her shirt was risen just high enough to see her beautiful birthmark, flawed terribly by her blood obscuring the shape. I wept. I kissed her bloodstained cheeks and lips. Cold. I grabbed the chromed make-shift knife from her left hand. I stopped. I then remembered that I had set the tray that was now on the ground sodden in blood for a person who would be right hand dominant. Knife on the right, fork on the left. Natascha was left hand dominant. My mistake just made my weep harder.

        The sensation of blade against skin seemed comfortable compared to the wretched misshapen piece of steel. The true sensation was odd in the very least. I felt multiple edges against my wrist. in the background I heard a song I enjoyed at the conference Patrik and I had attended years ago. "Hallelujah, hallelujah!" Flyleaf. "Beautiful Bride". One of my favorites. I took a deep breath and pulled the steel across my left wrist, hearing my skin and veins ripping. It hurt. It hurt but I kept pulling, tendons ripping and steel scraping deeply against my carpals. I bled, but not quite enough to reach my desired destination. I tried to grab the steel with the other hand. I couldn’t. This made the cutting of the other wrist very difficult, but I managed to sever everything I needed to, using the same hand I was trying to sever. I needed to be with her, so I lay next to Natascha in the same position as her, with one hand flat against my stomach, and another, my left, grasping Natascha’s right. 

        I waited, not for the Rapture, but for my Rapture. 

        I felt my spirit fading away, falling to the blackness. Natascha, I am coming for you. I love you so much and I cannot let you go to hell. Such a place is not meant for a woman like you. I was just barely clinging to my life.

        "Rapture," I said, throwing a bright white star right there in the center of my vision, as if my synesthesia was approving of my actions. I smiled.

        "Rapture," I whispered a second time. I was gone at this point, gone and out of this world, still smiling at the thought of my own heroics.