Final Truth

Chapter 54: Saying Goodbye

Julia's point of view:

If someone were to ask me how to tell a dream apart from reality, I'd say that's easy:

In dreams, you can't retrace your steps. You can never find a reasonable explanation for how you got there.

For example, the last thing I remember is being in the hospital wing at the prison, induced with so many kinds of painkillers to help me cope with a raging outburst that happened not long after my last test. Helpless, incompetent, alone, and half-dead is how I remember myself.

That was reality.

But now I'm walking freely for the first time along cobbled streets, donning an old, white dress of mine that billows around my calves as the setting sun illuminates everything in gold. A warm breeze winds its phantom fingers through my hair and curls it over my shoulders, allowing it to trail behind me like a black veil. All the sights, sounds, and smells around me are home, the refuge I've ached to return to for ages now. And despite not knowing how or why I'm here, I feel peaceful...peaceful because this is where I belong, because this is the place I should always be. Here I am happy, here I am healthy, here is where the people I love are.

But this is also a dream.

So while I can appreciate the old shops and cafés that line the streets, the iron lampposts that are just beginning to come alive in the retreating light of day, the citizens that I know by name preparing to go home for the night.... it's not real. I could never expect to have the privilege of being here again in the real world.

Still, I'll take this whenever I can. Being here instead of my horrific reality is more than I ever could have hoped for, perhaps the nicest hallucination my brain could conjure up for me.

How lovely it is to walk freely within the confines of my own head.

Right about now is when Adam would be heading home from his office. Kyle and Cassia would be preparing for a few hours overtime at the hospital. Susan would either be helping out at the Dome or at home watching old films depending on the day.

And if it's a Saturday night, now is when I would meet up with Peter outside of one particular café that is quickly coming into view; he'd be sitting at one of their outdoor tables in a chair that never stands quite level on the pavement, a cup of coffee beside his right hand as a cup of tea and an empty chair sits across from him, waiting for me to fill the space.

For purely sentimental reasons, I quicken my pace in the direction of that aforementioned table, silently hoping that it is a Saturday night and that I might be able to catch a glimpse of him.

This dream has been good to me so far, so what's the harm in hoping?

But he's not there when I spy the table outside of the café, the atmosphere feeling surprisingly lonely now despite the many people that occupy the surrounding sitting areas.

A bit disappointed, I approach the table and pull out my chair to take a seat, simultaneously lighting the candle that sits in the center of the flat surface with my fingertips.

I then shut my eyes and lean back, the sounds of light chatter mixing with the buzz of the approaching night pleasantly as I silently wish Peter could be here with me, the real Peter, in what might perhaps be the last chance I get to speak to him before I die.