Redwood
Fiction

Snapshots

Adrian Lei
December 2025
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Scene 1/3:
          To step upon the ship of sentimentals and desires, of which all were dressed for. It was a 1990’s ball on a cruise, people ate and drank to their merriment. I was in a suit, well fitted and intended for my body. I paraded around amidst the sanguine joy those experienced around me, yet despite the connectivity I noticed each group abided only to their own tables. They never spoke to those around them, isolated by where they sat. They never stopped eating and drinking, it was an endless loop of consumption without a pause. Pigs were what they were. Pigs dressed in fanciful clothing to find a place amongst the high end society. 

           I took my way into an elevator that led to a higher floor. A young girl followed along with me, choosing to stand up from her own table. She too had been intoxicated, she laughed without worry and spoke without concern. We rode together in the elevator in silence however until we reached the top. It was quiet, the corridors stretched endlessly with room after room for a person to live within, I had forgotten where my room was. She proposed to accompany me to my room. I politely declined and began walking. She walked beside me, her eyes boring into my blank face. I held my ground, swayed not by vulnerability. I couldn't spare a glance at her as if I did, I knew she would realize I recognized that she was beside me. I quickened my pace, so did she, seemingly always one step ahead to glance behind her. Backwards at me who stepped on her shadows despite the direction was one that provided me the initiative, until I looked into her eyes. 
           I found someone who had dreams, a potentiality of birth separation by what we laid upon. She took the first step, so that future ones were just a bit closer. She too wished to escape, but the facade demanded the party to continue, both of us were subject to this rule. So we fell into the darkness of depths, an end of which was forced upon us.
           The price of remembering is to carry the weight of the memories. The cost of forgetting is to deny its existence, forsaken its presence, as if it never occurred.

Scene 2/3: 
           Expertly portentous, a wear of which extruded belonging and provided a front of confidence. Her presence, or perhaps I, ubiquitously exerted pressure upon those who swayed out of touch from our forefathers, performance of tasks that were deemed out of the moral compass. A body freeform, capacity revoking the need of permission from dimensional laws, rules that had no hold upon me. A hero perhaps, a hero that wasn't blind with justice, but for every action slathered by her own beliefs. She shaped the world exactly how she wanted, another person's desires disregarded to fit her own. A thief broke into a house nearby, she descended like a god, and divorced them from life without another word. Blood wasn’t spilled, they clearly chose to embrace revoking their rights to walk on mortal plains if they went against ideologies most just. The thief had attempted to beg for their life, but she cares not, only that they were excluded from the future that she saw, ostracizing those that simply fit in. Absolute superiority, utter control.
           A bus of the lost, I ran into it with haste. I threw the driver out, a knife through the throat, dragging them across the floor. I took the wheels of the bus and drove as if my life depended on it. There were others on the bus, but I only drove to where I believed was my destination. The roads never ended, to the sides were the phantomless depths of tragedy, tribulations of which cannot be easily announced. It was spiraling, hysteria and confusion as the roads twisted and yet never acknowledged my beckons of change. Pressing onwards forthwith with the passengers on the bus, a control that I have taken, even if it cost so much more.

Scene 3/3: 
           He wore a body suit and rested upon a chair glancing downwards. His expression was dreamy and longing, yet lost. As if he was searching for something far greater that wasn’t blatantly given to his hands in front. It called for attraction, an outfit of which was suited well only in terms to service the eyes that could still see. 
           ​The net of which he cast was a large one, into a pool of the hungry, the undesirables, the inane. Yet his expression was one of the same, seeking for the hand to cup his face and lift his head up. His desires were rapidly reciprocated by thousands at once, all that wanted to take a bite out of a delicacy the he wavered over them, torn to the sides as they wanted to snatch him up. Yet he smiled, his feelings were not injured for he was simply an empty husk, superficial belonging to the world around him. 
           Created only by the mind, he had no personality aside from bringing indefinite comfort, his identity was overridden by only what could be named as “ideality” for the rest of society. Alleviation of others’ darkest desires was enough to make the least sinful being, to be the bulwark against others troubles is to be the true altruist. It wasn’t his choice, for he was confined to only what could be perceived. To exist only what others can comprehend is the extent of the mark he can lay upon the world. His achievements amount to none with a head as thoughtless as his, so others will think for him.
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