The man stood in the middle aged, dirty, pale, and thin.
His eyes were brown, hardened by the world he once called home.
In his prime, they were always cold, never warm.
Serious and focused those were the only things left in them.
Not even Satan himself could change the look in his eyes.
They were dirty, bloody, and unwashed.
Inside him was a fading taste for a new life
a life that withered a little more every day he stepped onto the street.
His long raven-black hair streaked with gray,
he never once looked away from a person's eyes not even for a second.
The woman lived in the same world as the man.
She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a black eye patch over her right eye.
But it wasn't just her vision that blinded her
Her ignorance, her misplaced morality,
crippled more and more each time she went back out into that cruel, cold world.
Stealing. Killing. Hurting.
Again and again until her soul went blind.
Her vision—distorted, corrupted, fractured.
She lay on a blood-soaked box,
white skin bare beneath the overcast sky
a sky painted in ocean blues and violent greys.
Around her, the tall grass swayed, moved violently through the air.
She cleaned herself with a white cloth,
the blood from her body turning it wine-crimson.
She twisted water across her back, down her stomach,
then grabbed a large brown wooden bucket filled with the same crimson liquid.
She poured it over herself.
Breathing heavy.
The hot water warmed her cold body.
But only for a moment—then the cold returned.
He painted with practiced ease,
no tension in his movements.
The colors: white, dark purple, and crimson red
spread across the canvas.
Figures waited in a field of red grass.
Above them, a sky of dark purple, clouds mixing into lilac hues.
The door creaked open.
A gust of wind blew into the cabin
as the woman slammed it shut.
The man looked up from his work.
"Welcome back, Emma."
Emma walked slowly toward the painting.
The old wooden floor creaked beneath her feet.
She studied the painting.
"Where'd you find the paint?" she asked.
He dipped his brush into the red.
"Out in the cornfields. Found it next to a painter."
Emma raised a brow.
"A painter? So he was fine with you taking his art supplies?"
The man turned his head, looking over his shoulder.
He placed the brush into a wooden water cup.
"No. He was dead. Suicide, I think.
Guess he couldn't take waiting in this windy hellhole anymore."
He leaned back in his chair, voice thoughtful.
"But you know the most interesting thing?
He got back up. Fine.
The bullet was gone. The blood too.
Like it never even fucking happened."
Emma sat in a wooden chair beside the window.
Outside, the trees swayed violently with Earth's motherly screams.
"So I guess that confirms it," he continued.
"We can't die here.
Not that dying would serve either of us any purpose."
He looked at her, eyes narrowing.
"Between you and me, I don't know how long we have to wait.
But it seems if we go crazy, or try to die,
it doesn't work."
"I wonder where we are."
Emma closed her eye and sighed.
"Only God knows where we are.
And all we can do is wait."
The man scoffed.
"Yeah… wait.
You know, Emma, I never thought I'd end up sharing a cabin
with someone who looks like a damn pirate."
He smirked.
"So how did you lose the eye?"
Emma tried to remember.
But it had been so long since she woke up from that dream.
A dream but it wasn't a dream.
Just another world.
A world where no one could die.
Where people only waited.
The world she lived in now felt just like that dream.
But was it a dream… or was that the real world?
And this this the dream?
"I don't know," she whispered.
"But I'd rather not remember."