The Illusion of Luxury

My neighborhood is quite remarkable at making me feel left behind every time I look through it. Building after building covers this road in its ultimate fashion, their power for an inanimate object is surreal. Every step through here feels magical in some way; like a first walk through Disney World. Each building is practically four dimensional compared to me, so foreign, yet so beautiful. It feels as though, when I make my way through here, the sky glows in a bluer hue. How could one not feel blissful when walking through such a beautiful area? I do eventually feel some envy, but I smile in the moment, imagining what it could be. I long for a place along a road of people just like me, no matter how silly or narcissistic it is. I feel like I deserve it, and maybe one day I will capture this type of situation by its tail.

The people are friendly too, and it doesn’t seem like that snotty “This man isn’t one of us, wave and ignore” kind of warmth. But genuine gratitude and happiness towards me when I speak, or even walk past one of their homes. Which does leave some guilt whenever I’d say I’d kill for their luxuriously rich lifestyle. I try not to idolize them, but it can be hard. Unusually, no one was outside today. No one mowing, playing sports, or hosting parties. Not only that, but every house's lights were off! I think about this strangely, but not a need for emergency services. Possibly just another thing when you live in this type of culture, where you all share collective holidays between each other, keeping it a secret from anyone but. How I would write novels, direct plays, sell my soul for something different, something to strive and long for like them. Having their own secret communities, their private, special votes in things we normal people wish we could do. And I don’t mean to sound like one's bootlicker, but is this not a fantasy everyone has? Perhaps not everyone lives near a magical road such as myself, where they could travel to see the real world.

For a few more minutes, I continue through this known wilderness, exploring the same way I always have. It feels like I am meant to live in this moment every time I end up in this predicament, like it and I are destiny. However, not too far in the distance, I begin to see something appear along the walkway. To the amazement of my eyes, it was a child! A little baby, no more than a year, laying down clearly in front of me. I run up to it before it gets further, but begin to question why it is here at all. Who would leave such a small child alone, let alone within the distance of any ten-ton machine of steel? The ridiculousness of the situation hits, and I get a slight tenseness within me. What if this is why the lights were off in all of their houses, they all worked together to plant a child outside and pretended to be out of town! They would never leave a child in this situation; no, they just couldn’t, I can’t believe that. I look around worryingly, seeing if someone is going to jump from behind a corner to try and attack me, as if the child is their bait. Maybe I am just a restless person, but this is all that matters at the moment. I slowly calmed myself to brace for picking up the child, yet, as I got closer, it became clear it couldn’t be some sort of lure. It began to look more unnatural the closer I got to it. Its body, the back of its hair, and even the head began to look bizarre. And not in the way of it being a toy, or some sort of clay formed statue; but an abomination of nothing and everything. It looked like a baby, yet like a cardboard cutout at the same moment. It’s almost unexplainable, but as I got closer it seemed more as if I were looking through a television; two dimensional, a thing from another universe.

I realize this, but by the time I grab the infant and hold it upright, it seems as if it’s too late. I felt like it was a portal to an alternate reality, and once I touched it there was no turning. I quickly bolt my eyes left and right for help, and within the second, an unexplainable anxiousness strikes me. I drop the child, leaving it to hit the pavement below my feet with a comical clink, similar to a rock, or coins. That matter doesn’t affect me now, though, because of the intense fear that strikes me as I look into the open space above me.

It was not the sky. The clouds, the blue, the hue, were the same as the child! The fear within me was something that the English language can't describe. They felt flat, like murals painted there specifically to be seen and sold. If someone were tall enough, they could have been ripped off the sky, like it was a wallpaper. It was something false, not real, declassified human-created architect! The feelings of claustrophobia, and being alone, sucked me in.  I felt boxed out of life, trapped. I did not believe I was looking at the vastness of the world anymore, but four blue painted walls with a roof. Imagine being stuck within a cave system, and you had as much room as you needed, but it was pitch black within the caves, not letting you see where the walls are and aren’t. Not ever in my own existence have I seen such a shift in perspective, it was hard to know if it were happening or not. 

I look within the windows of the houses. The light was not missing anymore to leave darkness like it originally was, but it’s as if the concept of light has never existed in these places. There was no dark, nor light, but nothing. It became a place with no life, death, atoms, love, hate, destiny, or solitude.  I start to question what I am seeing and if I am actually conscious or not. How can there be nothing if there is always something? What sense does that make? My own senses make less sense than ever before, if they have somehow been changed. Perhaps this is how the world is, and has always been, and it now has triggered within me? Has my consciousness been traded into the body of someone else, with different senses of how things are? 

 I quickly dash to the door to the house closest and reach for the handle. Although fearful of the dreaded lightless room as described before, I need rescuing. As I look down for it, I see it’s disappeared! But not missing as in not there, it was there, but it was a part of the door. Like, the handle was not built to stick out of the door, but to be a part of it; overlapping in a way. This, out of all, blows me back more than anything prior. What is wrong with this door? How can two things, both the door and its handle, be in the same place at the same time? Are they still both a door and a handle, or something new, or nothing at all? These questions strike a strong fear within me, and I wonder more and more what could be occurring.

Between then and the end of the hour, I come to some conclusions on why I may be visualizing what is happening. I do not think the world around me as real, but as something that exists to test me. This place, however it was made, since the dawn of time, has been created to trap and test what I do. I am not sure why, or how, but what other explanation could there be for torturing me? Is this even torture? I haven’t been hurt in a physical sense; but I am scared. Is this what happens when your world changes so fast in so little time? Do things become fake, leaving a sense of emptiness and fear within you, or an unusual anxiousness to leave?  Have I done something to earn this? Maybe things have always been this way, and the child was just the key to seeing it as such. Possibly this is what everyone goes through, and maybe I even got lucky. 

It begins to rain overtop of me, a somewhat hard yet somewhat light pour; a lukewarm storm. Looking at the bright blue sky, I begin to stop questioning why some of the things that happen, happen. Like how it is able to pour when there is no cloud in sight, only bright blue skies. Blue skies aren’t bad, no, but they’re ordinary. 

The universe continued to stand still, literally, everywhere, all at once.