The Boy Who Sang About the Stars

Chapter 20

My name is Adam Young.

I was born on a planet, in a time thats been long buried in the past, named Earth. The skies there we.re blue during the day, but transformed into melted butter in the evening. The people were stupid, but free. Compared to some of the sights I've seen in my life, Earth is the most peaceful place you could have ever hoped to live.

I ran away from it all. I was granted a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the stars and I took it. That choice is what landed me here.

I have been a prisoner of the Dalek's for 145 days.

I have long given up hope that the Doctor is coming to save me.

The closest thing I have to nighttime in my cell is a dimming of the harsh lights from above. I catch sleep when I can, but I am hounded with nightmares each time. When I close my eyelids visions of Cybermen, angel statues, people I love being brutally murdered flash before me. I'll awake in a cold sweat, and lay on my paper thin mattress until the Daleks come for me once again.

I'm still not sure what the Dalek's want from me. I've asked them countless times, but never receive a straight answer. It's always the same, "You will save the Dalek race.". I had seen a Dalek without its armour once, only once, and I can definitely assure you I have no intentions on saving that.

Whatever the Daleks are doing with me, its painful. Everyday a slave of theirs comes to retrieve me. They look human, until you notice their forehead. In the center of each slaves forehead is the tip of an eye stalk poking through the flesh. It looks as if a giant zit had formed on their foreheads, and then burst bringing forth alien technology. The sight of them always sends a shiver up my spine.

Each time I am collected I am taken to the same room. It is small, but still larger than my cell. I am thrown in there, with no explanation as to why. I sit in the corner and after some time a thick purple smoke expels from unseen vents in the floors. The smoke fills the room and it surrounds me like a cloud of death. It seeps its way into my lungs and causes me to lay on the floor with my hands around my neck gagging from its presence. Sometimes, my body can't tolerate the fumes and I black out only to awaken back in my cell with tears streaming down my cheeks.

I don't pass out all the time though. Sometimes I can fight back the black tunnel and fight my way through the pain burning in my lungs. I have absolutely no clue what the mysterious purple smoke is, perhaps it is designed to kill me slowly, or maybe its a type of knockout gas. Although both of those are possibilities I've come to the conclusion over the past month or so that its meant to make me hallucinate.

Once in a while when my body fights against the smoke I'll crack my eyes open slowly to see shapes configuring before me. At first theyre only blobs, dark masses of nothing floating in midair. But slowly they begin to take the forms of nightmares. Everything I ever feared takes shape in the purple mist from sharks to the Doctor when hes angry. The hallucinations don't attack me, but they linger in my vision long enough to make my heart race and cause sweat to pour down my back.

That was how it used to be at least.

The more time I spent in the room the more accustomed to the smoke chamber the less I come out shaking and terrified. I cannot exactly determine when it happened, but one day I discovered that if I stopped focusing on the horrible visions swirling in front of me and focused on happier memories buried deep in my mind, when I opened my eyes the horrors lessoned. Ever since then I kept my eyes shut and focused on anything positive I could imagine until the smoke evaporated and the door to the room squeaked open revealing a slave prepared to escort me back to my cell.

Yesterday was the last time I was forced into the Chamber (which I have come to call it). It was one of the lucky days I didn't pass out. I kept my eyes shut and I replayed the memory of when I was six and we got out of school for a blizzard. I thought about the billowing drifts of snow and my lopsided snowman over and over until the door to the chamber opened. I stood up slowly and walked over to the exit per usual, but unlike all the other times I had been shoved into the chamber I turned back around to have one last look at it before I left. It was odd, the purple smoke most likely still affecting my system, but I could have sworn that in the corner where I had sat there was a tiny patch of wildflowers...