i lay in the dark. red ball.

i lay in the dark room dreaming of a thing to play. it’s perhaps a red ball that goes across a course, of obstacles. and they were placed there by the scientist. because the scientist wanted to study the red ball, for its abilities.

and i begin to think about how the rain outside would sound inside a world where i never leave. and i am the red ball, moving through the obstacles. they’re made of the skin of silverfish and the frozen blood of cattle that are culled in an outbreak. of some disease. caused only by the conditions of factory farming. and i begin to quiver and move less delicately. more like a car on a motorway.

the scientist begins to narrate a reason.

“in the past 100 years a dream has held the people of this world in an iron grip. the dream of freedom from their suffering. a suffering caused by existence. and yet none are brave enough, none have the will. the only way we can exclude this virus, held in our virtual dna, is by processing prime reliability. the data is to be pure. and that’s why you’re there and I’m here. these tests will…”

and it fades into a kind of static as the vision of the forest takes hold and wipes across the screen. where were you? in the glade or the bushes? when you swung the axe chopping firewood for your small cabin, and you sat rubbing the head of the bunny and the child. it was here or maybe by the lake.

the red ball remembers its idyllic childhood and the moment it became a bloodshed field of dirt and dust, the nationalist movement for restoration pulling apart the body of its mother and father and smearing it with their blood so that it became the red ball.

the thing that moves now through test chamber 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 and 7 and 8 and 9 to achieve the objectives of the king and queen who fund research into more effective use of the land in the pursuit of gold and silver.

and the red ball jumps with an A press and dodges with a B press. and you look around the dark room and you still hear the rain, and feel the duvet beneath you, and the bathroom fan and the cars on the road and the crow cawing and the sound of your fingers on the touchpad typing and your teeth coming together briefly as you move your jaw and some sound you don’t know but it’s maybe a video being played or people talking or music. something. somewhere. something somewhere else.