DDO Olympics Storytelling: Round 1

Immediately I began rolling myself to the door. Opening the door was a challenge. I had to hold the door open while I got myself out, but I needed to use both of my hands to turn the wheels. I had an idea, but it sounded incredibly painful. I extended my leg and used the stub where my feet used to be to push the door open. And yes, it was as painful as it sounded. Without morphine dripping through my veins anymore, my entire body was pulsing as if I had an acupuncture session using sawtooth knives. The hallway that I had entered stretched into the distance as far as I could see. The decision really wasn't a hard one to make, either I go left or I go right, but I sat there paralyzed in amazement. Before I could make up my mind a door three rooms down opened up and two men walked out. I grabbed my handgun and shot both of them. Two in the chest, two people. That's 4 bullets. This gun is a Glock 22, generation 4. That means it hold 15 bullets if fully loaded. I can only hope that it has 11 bullets left. My brothers and I spent most of our weekends at the gun range. We performed at state shooting competitions as well. I like to think that I was rather good at it. I didn't have time to reminisce though, I had to keep on the move. More members of the Virgin Church came into the hallway, the outcome was the same. Two in the chest. 9 bullets. 7. 5. 3. I should have three bullets left. Suddenly Brother John and Cardin walked into the hallway. Three bullets, two for Brother John and one for Cardin. I aim at John first, Cardin doesn't seem like he would be familiar with using a gun. As I pull the trigger I hear a click but no bullet fires. God damnit, Gren must had used three bullets earlier. I should had known. It's an amateur move to fire three bullets at one person. It's natural to think bang, bang, bang. There was nothing I could do. No way in hell I was rolling out of here. Cardin mumbled something to Brother John and walked back into the room he was in. He reemerged moments later with a syringe and started approaching me. I was demoralized. I had an opporunity to escape, several actually. I could have gotten away in the Hanging Forest, but I was caught. I could have escaped when Gren gave his life for me. Again, I failed. There wasn't an ounce of hope left in me. I wanted to question what was in the syringe. I wanted to stop Cardin from injecting it into me. I just couldn't. He stabbed me with the needle and I quickly fell asleep.When I woke up I was strapped into a bed again, with Cardin hovering over me. Talk about déjà vu. I still couldn't muster up the willpower to object to what was going on. "It's okay, Nathair," Cardin explained, "we have finished the formula suited for your chemical balance. This time when you fall asleep you will literally enter a comatose. Your body, for all intensive purposes, will be dead. Only your mind will live on. However, you will live in a state of bliss. You will create memories as real as here and now, your life will continue from before the Great Rapture. You will be with Maria."I accepted my fate. Maybe none of this would be real, but at least I would be happy. Before I knew it I was sleeping again. I was sitting at the top of the lighthouse and I was severely depressed. I remembered this memory. I was contemplating suicide, by leaping into the rocky waters below. Yes, that was why I bought the lifehouse. This is when I first met Maria. I was about to jump when I heard a woman shouting for help. I watched myself, from the third person, as I ran down the lighthouse's spiral staircase and ran along the beach in the direction of the shouts. Maria was laying there, soaking wet and lying on a plank of wood. She was on a boat when it hit a jagged rock and capsized off the coast. You see, the lighthouse doesn't actually turn on anymore. It was abandoned years ago, because trade ships don't pass through this area anymore. It's a miracle that she survived. I always thought that fate brought us together. I was torn, then, when the Great Rapture tore us apart. I watched myself check her pulse and begin to do CPR. And I continued to watch. I do not remember it taking this long for the CPR to work. Minutes had passed and I insisted on continuing. It felt like I was spending an eternity watching myself try to save Maria. Wait a minute, I thought, I am watching the same scene being repeated again and again. I am witnessing the beginning of my attempt at CPR until just moments before it is successful, and then starting over. Is this how I am to spend my life? I felt my heart rate rise, I could hear it beating as blood flowed through my veins. I could hear manic laughter in the background, it was coming from the sky but it was Cardin's voice. There was also a beeping sound, my heart monitor. It was pacing rapidly as my heart rate intensified. Even when I had lost all hope, Cardin found a way to give hope back to me and take it away again. Never before had I felt so defeated, not even when I pulled the trigger on my the glock and no bullets exited the chamber.I looked down at myself and realized that I was just an abstract spirit, that I didn't even have a bodied while witnessing my own memories. I could move though, as if I was a real person. It caused a great deal of stress on my mind, as if you are trying desperately to believe something that you know to be false. Your brain wants to reject the fact, but your heart wants to believe it. My heart was overpowering my head and I was slowly stepping backwards, I was re-imagining my memory. No, I was reconstructing it. My physical body remained on the beach, pleading with every push into Maria's chest that she begins breathing again. I knew that I, that he, was pleading in vain. I inched my way towards the lighthouse, every step more painful than the last. I climbed up the stairs until I reached the top. I stared over the ledge into the gaping abyss below me.I was engulfed in the same thoughts that I had everytime I contemplated suicide. Water is simply magical. Every molecule has purpose. Every droplet belongs in something greater than itself. The ocean is pure without innocence. I always loved that thought. Water is pure enough to sustain life, but mature enough to take it. The ocean is pure without innocence. I am not pure. I have sinned in my life. I have caused pain to others. I have done little good in this world. Nor am I innocent. My entire view of reality has been warped and twisted. I no longer know what is real and what is not. I lack purity and innocence. Perhaps if I give my life to the ocean I can cleanse my soul. Perhaps I can atone for my sins and wipe my slate clean. I was never a religious man, but the ocean had a spiritual draw on me, it always has. Whatever my abstract form was, it was struggling to move forward. I was altering my memory too much for my mind to accept it, but my heart was already in the ocean, it drew me towards it. Suddenly I slipped forward, into the rocks below. I heard the monitoring system beep more quickly as I approached the ocean, and then at once everything stopped.