"I'm not going to work anymore." as Anas said that, silence prevailed and echoed around the room, and the two of them quietly went to sleep.
Late at night, while Anas was deep in sleep, a strange vivid dream started playing in his head, where there was someone who looked to be a farmer, wearing both overalls and a straw hat, digging a hole with a red dusty shovel through the dirt. The presumed farmer later grabbed a black trash bag and seemed to struggle to lift it. Cut to the same scene but probably some different time later, as the rain was falling harshly now, and the framer's clothes looked more ragged and heavy, as he was covering the hole in the ground, while lightening struck everywhere across the sky and lightened up the scene a few times over in different directions, one of which was an old hut that is covered with overgrown weeds, while a black dog seemingly was watching from afar what was going on in the opposite direction. Cut to the same scene again at a different time, late on a cold night, the farmer sat down before where there was supposed to be a hole, clasped his hands together, and started praying. Cut to the same scene again, again, and again. Until, on a sunny day, a tree has risen from the ground and threw its shadow on the face of the farmer. The farmer face was unrecognizable, but with a long black mustache that could be mistaken for a wild smile at distance, that was the only feature that could be grasped. The tree had grewn long and hard. Though, at that moment, Anas realized something strange about it. The black lines that hanged from its branches and swayed with the wind looked awfully similar to hair more so than leaves.
The tree swayed from right to left in a strange manner. At that behavior, the farmer had knotted his eyebrows in confusion, and then soon after, he raised them in both surprise and horror and looked backward. The terrifying look of the farmer met Anas' eyes, and the sensation that the farmer is looking directly at him struck him awake like a heartbeat.
As soon as Anas opened his eyes, he found Maj's face directly in front of him staring, which terrified him more than anything and caused him to jump out of his sheets. "Whoa... I didn't mean to scare you." said Maj, and yet he was smiling for some reason, as if it was intentional after all. He continued, "... You're sweating bullets. Is that normal? Did you perhaps have a bad dream?" Anas clinched his head and mumbled quietly."I don't know... " As a strange headache seemed to visit him on the spot.
"Oh! and of course you forgot about untieing me. I had to ask Shams to do it. Do you have any idea how humiliating it is to ask a woman for a favor with your eyes watering and not having any grounds to negotiate? Well, maybe less like "ask" necessarily and more like "beg with random noises." I still have some glue on my face from the duct tape, yuck... " At that moment, Anas had noticed some small black lines like worms in different positions under his sheets and on his pillow where he had slept, and at that realization his headache intensified as if his entire head was stuck between a wall and a drill. His left eye started shaking and losing focus, then dropped down further to the left as if it was unplugged. The throbbing kept getting more and more severe, as his left temple, under the scratching of his nails, began to swell. At some point, it wasn't clear whether he was conscious or not, not even to him. But soon after, in front of Maj's terrified look, the swelling got bigger and bigger, and as Anas let out a horrible scream from the pain, a certain bell rang and a single word drowned out all of the noise in a second.
[ Empty ]
The light flickered a few times, as the light behind Anas' right eye seemed to dim a bit. The swelling slowly was relieved as both pressure and pain seemed to have dropped to a certain extent in the swelling area. Shams' bells jingled around a bit, but looking at the scene, she didn't drop any comment. Maj scratched his head and sighed helplessly, but under Shams' burning gaze he straightened up his back and threw his hands in the air as if to stop her "F-fine, fine, I'll tell him! ....God "
After Shams put her scarf back covering her mouth and left the room, Maj carried Anas on his shoulder and went after her, but then soon after he turned to the right into an empty room, closed the lights off, and somehow, taking a few steps down, as if descending a staircase, they had began going down very carefully. "I'm not so sure about the design. I mean, it's not so much for decoration if you can't see anything. But as far as security goes, this might be it." After taking a few steps ahead, Maj stopped, turned to the right very cautiously, then continued descending. "Sighhh... Now that I think about it, it's more like a death trap. Maybe he was trying to kill us all with this. I'm not even sure what would happen if you fell off of one of the dead ends." Anas started mumbling at that point, but unfortunately, Maj couldn't get anything from it. "Don't worry. I might not act like it, but I've memorized this thing on my first try."
In the middle of a series of descending and stopping, taking rights and lefts, then descending and stopping again and again, silence somehow found its way between the two, and Maj seemed, at that point at least, more serious than ever before. Still, somehow, he pushed himself to talk. "Do you know how the internet works? it's supposed to be a bunch of cables thrown into the "sea", which is like a big pool filled with water. But no one really knows who put them there. I mean, no one really knows much of what's going on outside the city. Even if you were to look for maps, none of them showed anything outside the border. All we get are fairy tales fed to us with a wooden spoon." As Maj said that, he made a full stop and touched something invisible in front of him, but didn't seem to do anything towards it. "I thought you knew, with your friend succumbing to the roots, and when I saw you staring at that truck driver's head, I became even more sure of it. But since you've almost lost it a moment ago, it seems none of it was your doing."
Maj left hand lightly brushed against the invisible wall in the darkness, and a nostalgic smile was drawn across his face. "I know how all of that must feel really confusing to you now, but you have little room for choice."
At that point, the expression on Maj's face seemed even more serious, though he stayed ever so silent. But the next minute, his expression got mixed up and seemed very troubled. "MAN I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SAY THIS." shouted Maj internally while looking upwards.
But then he regained his composure by thinking of saying it his own way, however that might be. "Ah... hahaha, so you see. Everyone at some point got infected by this weird seed. The prophecy goes someway into telling us that it's something like the mother tree's eggs, which she is trying to reach out for us to regain and fuse with her or something. But that seed is a bit more special than just the mother tree's rebirth. If we think of every human being as having a life force, when it is fused with the seed, each one feeds from the other. If you looked into my ears, for example, you'll find some branches growing there, but only there, so it's somewhat more specific and conditional."
Suddenly, Maj's hand grabbed into something positioned on the wall, and when he turned it counterclockwise, a purple beam pointed in some direction. "Ah, haha. Don't judge me for using some help. I said I memorized it, not that I managed to get across the whole way through."
The two of them began walking underneath the purple beam towards the pointed area in the distance. "So... where was I again? Ah! right, the seed. Well, the seed doesn't necessarily feed off of the life force itself, in most situations, the desire of oneself, combined with an object of desire creates a potential energy fueld by the life force, and then the seed takes action. Say, for example: my ears."
After they arrived at the wall that the purple beam was pointing at, Maj started searching with his left again for the switch again, and when he found it, another purple beam escaped the wall backwards but slightly to an angle to the left.
"This might take a while. Sighhh, I wish Shams was here." And so they turned around and continued walking guided by this second beam.
Scratching the inside of his ear, Maj continued talking. "By having a seed and a certain desire, the only thing left is losing the object of said desire. Potential energy is like having an iron ball in a position above the ground before the fall, but it's done when it reaches the ground as it was put out, which means having your desire unfulfilled. In this case, getting to hear certain words from a certain someone, haha... Well, and so, that makes my desire and object of desire both realized, but then the seed will feed off of that potential energy. Although,it's not so bad. I'm not sure how that comes to be exactly, but, accordingly, that gives me the power to erase sounds. Pretty cool, right? Well, not so much, cause it's the power of the seed, so it affects me as well, making me nearly deaf."
The next wall had the same altercation happen, but now the beam slightly pointed to the right more so than left to the back of them. "We should be close by now." said Maj as they continued to walk under the third beam now.
Maj face turned yellowish, and sweat poured down on his face and got close to Anas' ear and whispered in a nervous tone. "D-don't tell Shams I told you this, but her power is manipulating others' emotions with her tongue which has like a leaf drawn on it, hahaha... "
Suddenly, the light turned on, and both of them found themselves in front of a couple of steps of stairs, in which seemed like a basement surrounded by white walls.
"Finally... my shoulder almost got dislocated." said Maj. "Ah! I almost forgot. Don't ask anyone about their object of desire, not everyone is as great as me." with that last warning, they made it through the final steps of stairs.