Everything's blue or black, or some mixture in between. Then comes the flash—and everything goes white again. Zigzagging lines of light shoot downward like divine bullets. Our cage has been hit multiple times by now, and we should be dead. Statistically, we're corpses. My legs press against the grid, soaked and trembling, and yet I'm not fried. I'm still breathing.

The bird's been struck, too. It just shrugs off the lightning like it's a summer breeze.

The monsters are under their own cage, but theirs is different—more open. Freer, and they have keys. They come and go as they please. We don't, we're left to rot.

Why? Why am I here? I hid from them, I was a coward, and cowards survive, don't they? We run. We blend. So why was I dragged into this?

Then—suddenly—I hear her.

"Brother, give me my phone!" It's nobody but my sister.

Her voice hits me like a brick. Real, unreal. Memory, hallucination—I can't tell anymore. I squint through the storm, eyes raw, searching the silhouettes. She floats there. She shouldn't, but she does. Clearer than the rest.

"Gimme a second," I mumble, voice raw. I lean back against someone else—don't know who—and see something on the ground; a shape, smooth, and shifting. I pick it up and hold it out through the bars.

Then the pain, and a voice snaps at me. "What the fuck are ya doing!"

Not a shout—just a rasp from a cracked mouth. Dry as dust and dying under the screams of the storm. I don't even turn, but a hand smacks the back of my skull. My teeth clamp down on my tongue, and iron fills my mouth. MyVirtualLibraryEmpire(*)

I laugh.

A loud, cracked, broken laugh. Because I saw them.

For just a second, I saw my father in the back, watching his fishing videos like always. My mother is knitting soft socks. My sister, pouting, arms crossed, and waiting for her phone to be given back to her. And just like that—gone.

One tear slips from my dry eye. Just one. It slides down my cheek, then gets caught by the storm, torn from me. Carried into the ocean below, into the jaws of those greedy, churning waves.

Why even take that from me?

My body is tight. Cramped and tensed. I push my thumbs into the wet feathers below me, pressing, needing something to feel. Something to prove I'm still real. Still here. The pain sharpens, and the taste is more blood. My tongue's bleeding now, and the hallucination fades.

I see the brownish-mustard color. The filth, our food. Not only did I mistake it for my sister's phone, no, but I also stole someone else's meal—Feces of our asses. My stomach twists, but I don't cry, not anymore. The tears don't come, even if I still sob inside.

Fists land, again and again, but I don't scream. I cry every day, but not from pain. I break under the weight of memory, of my family. Knowing I will never see them again.

I am dragged into their territory now, into the land of these monsters—whatever they are. Fantasy creatures, zombies, and demons out of some fever dream. I don't care. I am going to die here, and I'll never again see the faces I love, their smiles. My heart hurts more than the bruises, more than the hunger clawing at my gut or the exhaustion hollowing out my skull.

The only reason the punches stop is because of Frank. He's the only one I trust here. He's kind, a good man. I'm not. I'm not worth saving. Not worth seeing my family again. Not worth the life I still desperately want.

But God, I want it.

To lie in a warm bed, cared for by my mother's soup when I was sick, to sit at the kitchen table with my sister, eating plain food, drinking supplements we always whined about. Those boring, everyday things I never learned to appreciate. Now I do. But it's too late.