CHAPTER FIVE

Thousands of people living trapped inside the glass…and I’ve never felt so alone.

I knew what I was agreeing to when I accepted this assignment. I knew the risks, and I knew the plan. Please don’t think me weak when I say the isolation is worse than knowing I might die.

Every day, I see hundreds of people. I smile at them. I talk to them. As far as they know, I am one of them.

None of them see the demon walking their halls. That’s the way it has to be.

If they found out what we have planned, we’d be done. We have one chance for success, and a single crack in the façade would be enough to shatter the future so many have died trying to create.

Every word I speak is a lie. Every smile I give is a threat.

It’s stretching me apart from the inside out. I wonder how long it will be before there is nothing left of me and all that remains is the lie.

I am trying not to lose myself. I remind myself every day, every hour, that they are the enemy. They are not people. They are sheep, and I am the wolf come to slaughter them all.

When the time comes, I will know the names of the dead. I will know which corpses should be burned together because they would not want to be separated even in death.

I wish I didn’t have to know these things. It would have been easier if they had remained a faceless enemy.

My duty is to play a role as I wander among the sheep, pretending I am an innocent member of the flock. But my fear grows every time I tear a little piece of myself away, offering bits of my soul to convince them my lies are true.

If there is nothing left of me when the battle begins, will I remember what part I was created to play? Or will I have lost enough of myself that I’ll forget it is the sheep who are the real monsters?

See you in the embers,

~C