Government's Misery Machine
Level of Lucidity: N/A Level of Cohesiveness:
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Lucid Intent? No
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The UK government had grown angry of everybody always complaining about them and the way they ran things, so they announced that they would henceforth be harnessing the worth of our misery to pay for everything. The leader of this scheme would ride around with a small crew in a van with a Misery Detecting Device stuck on the top. When something unfortunate happened to you a green, glowing ring would surround you, and then the van would drive next to your house and they would take the essence of your misfortune and put it in a bottle. This was really irritating, because everytime he stole your misery essence, the man would shout "SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT NOW!" and it would annoy everyone, so the whole country tried their best not to ever have accidents so that this wouldn't happen to them.
It was a dark night in the house I used to live in, and I was in the kitchen getting a glass of water. I'd climbed up to sit on the counter-top to drink it but in the process I had spilled my water. It wasn't very annoying, but the green ring fell down around me. I was feeling annoyed and the van drove up to my house in the alley behind and the guy started to yell at me.
Because lots of accidents happened, the machine which harnessed misery grew out of control, and instead of a single, person-sized ring, it grew very, very large and everyone who found themselves in it became miserable and suffered misfortune. It was almost as bad as dying, and everyone feared it just as much so I decided to go away to boarding school.
The boarding school I went to was on top of a hill, surrounded by rolling hills and countryside. It was an old, stately-home type of place with a courtyard in the middle and hallways which went on endlessly. There were lots of people who went to the same place, and we all stayed in single rooms which had a single bed, a cheap white desk, an old desktop computer and a cupboard and drawers. They were pretty small but not uncomfortable. Because there were so many people in the school, the ring of misery was drawn to us, and landed on the area. A lot of unfortunate things started to happen.
I was walking down the hallway to the showers, and when I got there, there was a lot of blood on the floor which seemed to be draining from the pipes. It was mixed with water and was all over the floor and th gutter that ran along under the sinks. Some other people came to look as well, and a big commotion was caused. It had been one of the guys in the showers above ours, who had slit his own wrists and hung himself because he couldn't take all the misfortune that was falling on him.
I don't really remember what happened next. The next thing I do recall is that we were standing on the field outside the school, and the giant green glowing circle was trying to pin-point on us. We were instructed to run in a circle up the hill and down, and everytime we ran it would slowly follow us, but we would run down the hill before it got us. Everytime we managed to escape it and make it turn a full circle, it got a little smaller; we continued to run around. I felt like I was running through jelly but I had to struggle to escape it. It grew smaller and smaller until it was only the size of a person. We could no longer make it get any smaller, and the only thing to do was to let it fall on one of us, and it would vanish but it would kill the person who had been caught, as it had done to people earlier.
We all stood around in the field, hoping that it wouldn't fall on us. We tried to think about nice things instead of worrying so I gazed at the sunrise and thought of how nice it was. In the back of my head I just hoped and hoped that it would not pick me.
I found myself back in my room after the incident, and felt pretty happy that I had not been the one picked. I didn't know who it was though. Everyone in the school was leaving because we no longer wanted to stay in that awful place. They were all packing and getting ready to leave on the coach, so I threw a few of my clothes into a rucksack and pulled some CDs out of my desk drawer, and ran for the people in the main courtyard who were the last to leave.
As I ran down the hallway, in the darkness to one side, I could see a man standing there. I didn't feel comfortable, so I ran as fast as I could there to meet with the group. One of them reached out to me and took my hand, and I told him what I had seen. Then I noticed that in one of the alcoves was a woman who was reaching out to us. We walked past her, trying not to look. Behind us another person ran around the edge of the courtyard, but could not come close to us. The man who held my hand scolded me, and told me not to mention what I had seen ever again, because "we can no longer think about the dead; it will only make us sad."
