"Ask yourselves this:

when people wake up,

do they truly wake up?

Or do they just return to their prison"

-quote from the ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ Manifesto

"We're almost there."

Marko woke up. He must've been lost in thought or day dreaming again. The sky was like a blanket of lead pressing on the world. It looks like it's going to rain any minute now. As he was trying to keep up with his older brother he kept thinking about where they were going. They were on the river bank, on the left side that leads downtown. His brother said they're not going too far, and Marko only knew of two places around here: the night club at the corner of a small street near them, and the spice shop right by the central bridge. He didn't really know what spices are, though he kept hearing about them in the news and his mom would always tell him to avoid this place whenever they passed by it, that only junkies and losers come here. There's no way he goes there right, my brother is not a junkie or a loser.

"Are we going to the spice shop?" he finally asked his big brother.

"No, no, no.. we're not going to the spice shop."

His brother laughed.

"Where going to this place my friend works at, i have to give her some stuff."

They finally arrived at this small, nice looking house. Marko recognized it having walked past it many times, but this is the first time he actually went inside. It was all brown, like it was made out of wood, and dimly lit with a warm orange. There were a handful of tables and by the wall in the back a bar. He recognized the woman behind the bar too, she worked for his mom. Marko's brother gave her a bag with something, he couldn't tell from down here.

"So can you look after him?"

"Of course, he'll be a good boy i trust, right Marko? Go through the back."

She opened a door behind the bar that led to a big walk-in pantry. It wasn't too wide, maybe 2 meters at most, but it looked like it stretched on forever. The walls were tall and covered floor to ceiling with shelves on top of shelves. On the shelves there was food, more than Marko had ever seen before.

"You'll stay here and Maya will look after you, ok? I have to go and meet with some friends, it won't last long i promise, then we go home" his brother told him.

"Sure."

Marko watched as his brother walked towards the end of the pantry and opened a door, and behind the door he saw bright blue lights and people dancing and heard loud noises. He was old enough to know that looked like a club. The boy kept looking at the food on the shelves, gravitating around the cheese and bacon section. He's never seen so many varieties of cheese and ham before.

"Go ahead, you can eat whatever you want" Maya told him as she was carrying a tray with drinks on them towards the club. He did just as she said, and before he could know how much time passed or what was happening, about 4 women came inside the pantry from the club. They were all dressed skimpy, if he had to guess they were probably strippers. "Could the bar be connected to the night club?" the boy thought to himself.

"Put this on."

One of the women handed him a pair of what looked like panties.

"What, I'm not putting this on, they're for girls."

"C'mon, put it on, it'll look cute on you." another one urged him on. They were all gathered around him looking down at him with evil grins telling him to get undressed, that he has nothing to be ashamed of, that he'll look great in it. He felt so tiny.

Then one more woman who just left the club grabbed his shoulder and pushed him aside.

"Leave the kid alone you sickos."

Marko woke up on the big armchair in the living room back home. He was older now. He looked up and saw the woman who saved him. She was incredibly beautiful. Her hair was curled and her eyes were green. She was tanned, dressed in nothing but black fishnets and a silky black night dress, with her cleavage showing. She turned around and bent over and Marko could see she wasn't wearing any panties. She lowered herself on his lap.

"C'mon baby boy, you wanna dance?"

"No."

"How could you not have seen it?"

Marko woke up in a huge park. He was older now. He was sitting next to his girlfriend and some of their friends talking about this movie that came out when they were kids. Of course he wasn't born yet, and the movie became pretty obscure afterwards, but they insisted that he had to know it.

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"I mean i kind of remember watching it with my dad on cassette or something when i was little, i can't remember shit about it though."

There tables with people talking and having fun just like them as far and wide as the eye could see. The grass was of a crude and beautiful green, and the sunlight warmed all of it. He then looked to his right at this tall banking building just outside the park and told the others:

"Do you guys see that too?"

"That what? What are you talking about bro?"

"Baby are you okay?" his girlfriend asked, seeming kind of confused and worried.

"Can't you see that fish?"

Marko saw what looked like a giant fish suddenly fall from the sky and crashed into the top of the building. The fish then exploded like a balloon blowing up, spewing out cascades of water. It flooded the whole city, and Marko was carried by the waves for what seemed like eternity.

He finally woke up in this old building, like the abandoned factories he'd play in with his cousin when they were kids. The walls were grey and beige and falling apart. He walked up on these narrow stairs covered in ugly, burgundy and slippery tiles. Once he got up to what seemed like the upper floor, he saw a doorway in the middle of the wall to the left and a dim light coming out of it. He went to look inside and saw himself when he was younger. He was with his father watching this movie that he was talking about with his friends. He picked up what looked like a dvd case and saw a dusty cover of a little girl dressed in a pink shepherd girl dress, with a doll in her hand.

"Oooh, i remember this now. This movie is nice."

"Yeah, remember how we used to watch this when you were little?" his father responded to him, but without looking at him. "It's such a great movie."

"Yeah, with the little girl looking for her parents."

"That's not what the movie is about." Marko heard a hoarse, deep voice, but he couldn't recognize it. He turned around and saw a man covered in an old, brown, grim reaper looking coat, though he couldn't see his face or his hands. It was all dark and blurry.

"What do you mean dumbass, i remember the movie now. It's about the girl looking for her parents and the doll is like alive and keeps helping her."

"The doll is not alive, the girl was crazy" the voice responded again. "See for yourself."

Marko saw the movie playing right in front of his eyes, as if he was watching everything unfold from above in the sky. The tanks. The smoke. The dust. The piles of corpses. The sound of warfare and death. He could see the little girls, with her cute pink dress covered in mud. Her doll disfigured and soaked in blood. She was looking for her parents, that he got right.

He looked again at the figure and suddenly his world became dark. He couldn't really tell whether it took him 1 second or thousands of years to reach this conclusion, but he finally realized he was blind. He could feel his arms stretching upwards, his wrists locked by metal handcuffs. His hands were freezing, the pain reaching his bones like cold knives. He turned his head downwards not because he could see, but out of reflex. His feet were so hot, they were probably hanging over a fire.

"Do you wanna watch it again, it's such a great movie" the voice returned.

"What the fuck are you."

"Oh, I'm a demon. My job is to torture you."

The voice's bluntness surprised Marko, but what took him back even more was what came next. His eyesight returned. His hands weren't aching and freezing anymore, and his feet felt fine too. He looked behind him and saw a doorway that led to the old building he was in before. He was now on what looked like a balcony. He looked around and saw that he was in a large hall and below him was a pool. The water was clear, and so tempting. He couldn't see the figure anymore, but he could still hear him talking.

"Jump."

"Come one that's the oldest trick. What are you trying to pull here, i jump and you take the water out? We're too high and my body crumbles on impact?"

"I gave you back your eyes and let you go. This is your 1 chance, just because i feel like it. Jump."

Marko did just so. He jumped in the pool, swam to the end and ran outside the hall. There was a beautiful garden all around him, so tall and dense that he couldn't see anything past it, just a narrow dirt path leading through it. He ran on the path, ran as fast as his legs would let him. After what felt like hours of running, he realized he ran back inside the old building. He saw the doorway that was leading back inside the hall, and in the middle of it stood a figure, except this time he saw it.

"I told you I'm a demon. My job is to torture you. For eternity."

Marko woke up terrified. Was it the images of the movie? Was it the weird women trying to force him to do stuff? Was it the torture? Was it the dream itself?

No.

It was the demon's real face, it's real shape. He couldn't even remember what he saw, just a black, blurry image of what resembled a human figure. And even without remembering what it looked like, he was terrified of it.

He opened his phone to look at the clock, it was 4:53 am. He felt dizzy and feverish, and he remembered he was sick. "Oh probably a fever dream." He lazily reached with his hand on the nightstand for a pill and swallowed it empty.

"Hah, the legs burning and the hands freezing." He could feel his feet were cold, he probably accidentally took off the blanket while he was asleep. He thought the dream just reflected his position while asleep and his feet being cold, but then he thought something was odd: his hands should be warm since they were covered and his radiator is right behind his bedpost, and it was his feet that were cold, yet in the dream it was the total opposite. "Eh, the mind can be tricky like that, I'm looking too deep into it."

Then it suddenly hit him: his legs. Why is he feeling his legs. What happened to his legs, and to his arms. What happened to that creature that ran him over and tried to kill him.

He jumped from under his covers and stormed to his bathroom.

"Why can I walk? What's going on?"

Marko realized he had no memory of what happened after that incident. He didn't even know what day it was. "Fuck did i miss college or something?"

He got inside the bathroom and turned on the red night light. He looked at himself in the mirror but couldn't see any difference. He looked at his shoulders and arms to see any wounds or scars, but nothing. He looked down and saw that his legs were fine too. He looked back at his face to see if he could pick up any hints on how much time had passed. Maybe his beard grew a little, or his hair, but nothing. Just droplets of cold sweat running down his face like morning dew.

He was scared and confused.

"Am I crazy? Did that even happen?" He recalled the girl looking at him after the incident with the weird kid, and wondering whether he's crazy or not, if anything really happened and she saw it too. Did any of that really happen? Maybe that whole day was a fever dream like the one with the demon too. Fuck, the demon. Marko tried so hard to recall what he looked like, but he just couldn't. It was always the same, a dark, ominous figure behind a curtain of blur.