Daisies

It is so very cold, and something soft is covering my body, soaking into my pale skin. My eyes flutter open and I look around me. Everything is white, foamy white with specks of black. I feel cold. I feel numb. Stretching out, I attempt to stand on my bare feet. The white specks dance around me and then spiral back towards the empty ground.

It is snowing.

My toes smoosh themselves into the snowy earth and my feet are covered with the white specks, hiding my bony ankles from view. When the snowflakes come in contact with my skin, they do not melt. I feel the cold, but the cold does not feel me.

After staring at the earth for a few more moments, I dare to lift my gaze and search my surroundings. I do not see myself anywhere in the distance, and there is nothing for a person to hide behind. No trees or rocks or shrubs or hills, just a pure expanse of white snow. Like the stretch of grayish sky above, frozen and empty.

I am alone here.

And then I hear a strange noise, at first I begin to think it is the wind howling, but then I realize that it is a creature. A human, sobbing into the wilderness. I listen closely now, waiting for the words to follow.

"She's getting worse." Sniffles.

"The doctor said that she would have to reach the worst before she could even begin to improve." A slight pause, and I imagined this second voice wrapping its arms around the first, comforting it. "Let's hope that is the case here. And then we will have more hope than ever before."

I cannot understand what they are speaking of. But I know that I recognize the voices. The woman, and the boy. They seem to be quite close, of course emotionally.

A stab of hot emotion runs through me and I forget the icy cold for a moment. Jealousy.

I shake it off before looking around me in anxiety. Where are the voices coming from?

Perhaps the ceiling. Perhaps the sky. I long to join them, but I find myself fading away from the snowy world, back into the white room.

I'm sick of the color white. If it's even a color.