I try not to look at their faces as they gathered around me. It was difficult to imagine that they once were living people with fire in their souls. Now their eyes were vacant and could fixate on nothing anymore. Their skin was white as snow… They were most certainly dead. I question, at times, whether they had once been alive at all; whether they were born soulless. But these are just thoughts to ease my mind – makes it easier to look at them, to use them.

The device was strange. I found it along my route and it was a headgear that made ‘my’ movement ‘theirs.’ They mimic it exactly. I will not lie, I had sacrificed more than a few. I had crushed them because of my mistakes; tumbled them into the abyss and burned them into cinder; all for the goal of my escape.

I do not believe they are capable of drowning…

Those unscathed will stay here, frozen, until a new master arrives, or, more likely, until the end of time. I’m not even sure why I struggle. Where am I going? What hope is there for me beyond?

Survival is all on my mind. I won’t give up. I will die before they catch me.

© Christopher Stamfors