They say life is a zebra. A black stripe, a white stripe, and then it loops back around. Some have more white stripes. Others, more black. But when a bright period finally arrives, it feels like a true miracle, turning the world upside down.
My life is not a zebra. My life is an endless, unbroken black stripe. A desolate asphalt highway stretching into nowhere under a midnight sky. There are no white stripes on it. Only the rare, dim glint of headlights from passing cars, blinding for a moment before plunging me back into darkness.
From childhood, I've searched for a crack in this asphalt, a sliver where light might break through. I immersed myself in books, devouring the fantastical worlds of old Terran masters, where heroes had purpose and meaning, where their sacrifices weren't in vain. I turned to electronics and robotics, piecing together mechanisms from scraps, each one alive with its own primitive existence. I remember spending a month building a small cleaning robot, a complex spider-like contraption that could navigate a room on its own. When I proudly showed it to my mother, she grimaced and said it buzzed too loudly and scratched the parquet. The robot ended up in a box in the attic.
Victories in competitions, grants, teachers' praise—I had those. I threw myself into biology and medicine, my knowledge rivaling university levels. But no matter how much I achieved, no matter how many awards I earned, to everyone around me, I remained nothing. A void. As if all my accomplishments were dust in the wind, invisible to others.
Sometimes, it feels like I'm living inside a perverse play. A meticulously staged production with flawless sets and top-tier actors. A damn "Truman Show" where everyone knows the script except me. But I'm not the endearing protagonist. I'm the scapegoat. The object of ridicule, my suffering just part of the entertainment for invisible spectators. I even catch myself scanning corners for hidden cameras, straining to hear falsity in conversations, searching for a hint that it's all a setup (though this is likely my paranoia and burgeoning mental issues). The actors are too good.
Today was the season finale. Graduation. A day that should have been my triumph but tasted like ash.
The hall buzzed.
It was the hum of hundreds of voices, mingled with soft, unobtrusive music and the clink of glasses. The air was heavy, suffocating with the blend of dozens of expensive perfumes that stung my throat. I stood by a pillar, in the shadows, watching this aquarium. I grabbed a canapé from a passing waiter's tray. A perfect little construct of bread, cheese, and olive. But it tasted like plastic. Utterly flavorless, sterile matter. I discreetly spat it into a napkin.
My gaze drifted across the room and caught on the stage against the far wall. There stood Alexander with his parents. His father, a broad, self-assured man, laughed heartily, head thrown back, gripping his son's shoulder in a genuinely proud, fatherly gesture. His mother looked at them both with such unfeigned tenderness that my jaw clenched. Why do they have that, and I don't? What did I do wrong? When did my life veer onto this dark, lonely highway?
At that moment, my eyes found them. My parents. They stood among a group of adults, my father, James, animatedly recounting something. My mother, Elizabeth, stood beside him, her face a perfect mask of proud parenthood. Leading actors in my personal hell. Their eyes met mine. For a split second, their smiles faltered. They excused themselves from their companions and approached me—not as loving parents to their son, but as diplomats to a representative of a hostile state, obligated to conduct a formal meeting.
"Einar," my mother said as they reached me, her voice even and cool. "We lost track of you."
"I wasn't lost. I'm right here," I replied.
"Of course," my father chimed in. His gaze slid over me, barely lingering. "We just wanted to say again how… proud we are. MIT is a serious achievement. We always knew you'd make it."
That phrase didn't just sting. It tore open an old wound. Suddenly, I wasn't in the hall anymore but in my room, years ago. Before me on the table was a complex mechanism, my first truly functional quadruped robot. My father stood behind me.
"Not like that," his voice dripped with disappointment. "You're doing it all wrong. Is it so hard to follow a simple schematic? I showed you everything. Useless."
He snatched the soldering iron from my hand, his touch burning with cold.
"Watch and learn, if you're capable of anything."
I was so sad and hurt back then. If only they'd said, just once, with sincerity: "We always knew you'd make it, son."
I blinked, and the memory dissolved, leaving only the taste of ash.
"You're glad I'm leaving," I said. It wasn't a question.
My mother stepped closer. For a moment, I thought she might hug me—her hands made a slight, almost forgotten motion forward. But they froze midair. She looked away, her fingers nervously brushing an imaginary speck from my jacket's lapel.
"Don't be foolish. Of course we'll miss you. But this is a new chapter for you. A new life. Far from here." Her final words carried a faint but unmistakable relief.
"Exactly," my father nodded, already scanning for his conversational partners. "Time for you to move forward. For all of us."
"Time for us to be rid of you," is what he meant. The thought was so loud it nearly deafened me.
They stayed by my side for exactly forty-seven seconds. I counted. Then, with the air of duty fulfilled, they returned to their world. I saw their postures shift as they turned away—shoulders relaxing, smiles turning genuine. They slipped back into warm, friendly conversation, leaving me in the cold shadow of the pillar.
I moved through the crowd, feeling like a ghost. The music blared, but I realized I'd been hearing the same repetitive beat for minutes, as if the record player's needle was stuck on a scratch. No one else seemed to notice. The clinking glasses were odd, too—too loud, too sharp, almost ominous. It wasn't like this before.
In the center of a small group by the appetizer table stood Alexander and Felicia. My "friends." If you could call it friendship when they were the only ones who didn't outright ignore me. I stopped a few meters away, watching them from behind some adults. Alexander whispered something to Felicia, and she laughed softly, hand covering her mouth. They were looking my way. Of course they were. Talking about me. Mocking me. Preparing another dose of humiliation.
Alexander spotted me first and grinned broadly.
"There he is! The genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist!" he proclaimed, loud enough for heads to turn. "Don't tell me you're going to spend all night brooding over your unfinished projects."
He winked at Felicia, who giggled softly.
They're laughing at me. Again. Making a spectacle of me.
"I just came to say hi," I said, feeling my insides twist.
"Come on, don't be such a grump," Alexander slapped my shoulder in a friendly gesture, but his touch burned cold. "We're happy for you. Right, Felicia? Our Einar's off to his scientific kingdom, leaving us mere mortals to languish here. Tell us, what's the plan at MIT? Starting on your death ray to enslave humanity?"
"Mere mortals." He's mocking me. Calling me an outsider, a know-it-all.
"We'll miss you," Felicia said, her voice unnaturally sweet, dripping with falsity. "Who's going to explain quantum physics to us now? Remember when you tried explaining it to Mr. Henderson, and the poor guy nearly had steam coming out of his ears? Everyone laughed so hard."
I looked at their smiles, their casual gestures, and saw only venom. Flattery masking contempt. They were poisoning me with shared memories, twisting them to paint me as an arrogant know-it-all. Why? What did I do to them? Why do they hate me so much?
In another life, another world, things could've been different. I could almost see it: Alexander's friendly jab that doesn't wound but amuses. Felicia's warm, caring gaze, holding something more than mockery.
But those were just dreams. Foolish, painful fantasies.
"Stop it," the words slipped out, quiet, almost inaudible.
Alexander's smile faded.
"Hey, what's wrong? We're just joking."
"It's not funny," I said louder.
"What's wrong with you, Einar?" Felicia cut in, her voice hardening. "Everyone's congratulating you, and you're acting like a sulky child. You got everything you wanted. And what do you give back? Not a single friend. Not a shred of respect. Everyone hates you. And you know what? You deserve it."
"Deserve it. Hate you. Alone."
The words pounded in my skull like trapped birds. My heart raced, my ears rang. My palms grew sweaty. The conversations around me began to fade, not disappearing but shifting. Voices turned hollow, mechanical, as if echoing from the bottom of a well.
"Look at him!" Alexander's voice boomed, theatrical, bouncing off invisible walls. "The little genius is falling apart!"
Laughter. It came from everywhere.
The people around me morphed into shadows with glowing, mocking eyes. They encircled me, their whispers merging into a single, hissing chorus.
"Failure… upstart… deserved it… we hate you… alone…"
I stood in the center of this circle of shadows, and a revelation hit me. Hideous but crystal clear. So that's what this is. My show. The scream I'd held back my whole life didn't erupt; it collapsed inward, forming a singularity—a point of absolute, cold rage. And in that void, a purpose was born.
"I'll kill them all."
My body moved before my mind could command it. I felt it from a distance, as if my consciousness were merely a passenger in a machine of flesh and bone, now following its own predestined path. My hand slipped between glasses, fingers closing around the handle of a cake knife with the intimate precision of a lover. Heavy, with a silver grip. The cold metal biting into my palm was an anchor. The only truth in an ocean of lies.
"Calm down."
A voice. Not external, but inside. Steady, confident, mine.
"No. They deserve it. They all deserve it."
"You're intelligent and rational. Your mind is your greatest weapon. Don't let primitive emotions take over. Analyze the situation. Violence is illogical. It won't solve your problems—it'll only create new ones."
"They're laughing at me! My whole life!"
"It's their right. Your right is to rise above it. Put the knife down. Don't ruin everyone's celebration over this misunderstanding."
I closed my eyes.
Took a deep breath.
And exhaled.
The music returned. Laughter, real and warm. My father, proudly talking about me to his colleagues. My mother, looking at me with tenderness. And Alexander and Felicia… they were watching me with genuine concern. Alexander's gaze was thoughtful, worried; Felicia adjusted her glasses in a gesture I somehow recognized.
"ᚨ̸̡̨̢̨̡̫͍͚̞̦̤͍̤̜̻̜̥͍͖̤̬̗̌̈͆̑̈́ᛞ̷̢̨͖̯͔͓̱̜̳̞͍͇̱̱̯̤̘̖̥͎̣̯͒̓͊́̎̿ᚨ̶̮̍͌̄̉̆̔̃̉͊̄̚ᛗ̵̨̻̦̳̱̘̲͈̮͚͖͓͐̏̓͋̒͗̄͘ͅ, are you okay?" she asked, reaching out. "You look pale…"
What?
I looked at myself. It was as if I'd blacked out for a moment.
I was standing in the circle of laughing shadows again. Felicia looked at me with contempt. The knife was in my hand.
When did I pick it up?
I glanced around, feeling with every fiber of my being, some nonexistent sixth sense, that something was wrong. Something was about to happen… right now.
I looked up at the ceiling, adorned with blindingly white chandeliers. And I saw it—a thin, hairline crack running across the perfect surface. It wasn't black. It glowed from within with a blinding, unbearable white light. It spread, branching like lightning, not across plaster but across the very fabric of reality. From the fissures seeped not radiance but pure, concentrated absence, which my brain mistakenly perceived as light.
Then the world exploded.
It wasn't like an explosion. It was like glass shattering, the glass in which you see your reflection. The world struck me—not my body, but my essence. As if the air itself recoiled from my soul, expelling it like a splinter. I screamed—not from pain, but from the horror of realizing that the reality I knew was just a thin layer of ice over an abyss of madness. And that ice cracked beneath my feet.
Light poured from the fractures, flooding the space. I felt not heat but an all-consuming, icy cold, as if I were being submerged in liquid nitrogen, freezing my very soul before shattering it into a billion pieces. My legs buckled. My heart pounded as if it wanted to leap out and flee this collapsing world.
The space turned into viscous, dark water, and I was a stone sinking within it. Around me, distorted faces of my parents, friends, teachers rushed past like drowning figures. The white light pulled them all in one direction, into a single, radiant stream, carrying them away. I reached out, trying to grasp my mother's silhouette, Felicia's hand, anyone.
But my body went numb.
I could no longer control it. Suddenly, I felt something thin, invisible, and sharp as a needle pierce my arms, legs, torso. Dozens, hundreds, threaded through my flesh, coiling around my bones, burrowing inside. Then they tightened, pulling me backward with irresistible force. Away from the stream that carried my world.
The white light flared one last time. It became everything. It burned away space, time, sound, and my very thoughts.
Carrying me into dimensions beyond existence.