Why do people do the things they do?
The thought crossed my head as the explosion bloomed like a flower of fire, sound, and destruction. The shockwave hit me, blasting me across the cafe, pulverising my insides. The flames kissed my skin, searing it like a steak on a hot pan. Pieces of wood, brick and concrete punctured my flesh like a glorified dart board. Then...there was darkness.
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I woke up in a dream.
It was a beautiful one. An endless landscape of shimmering crystal and glass. A garden stretching beyond the horizon into infinity. Bizarre plants and animals, unlike any on Earth, seem to thrive in the light of a rainbow star. It radiated in hues that possessed no rightful place in the spectrum of human perception. Colors that did not exist, and yet insisted upon being seen. Hues so strange, one could say that they were not colors at all, yet it was the closest approximation mere human minds could reach. This was alien, so alien that the imagination of man will not reach here before the sun burns out and consumes the Earth.
I stood in the center of that unnameable place, though the word "place" itself felt like a lie, an attempt to define it in words...and admired it. It sung to me, lulling me into comfort, like it knows me somehow. And yet there was something off. I stared at the rainbow star dangling in the sky, then it clicked.
This place of unseen vastness is completely within my eye, or is it my eye itself? I am standing in my own eye. A fractal, a never-ending pattern, an eye beholding itself beholding itself into eternity. I gazed into infinity, and something cracked.
I covered my eyes and slipped into the comfort of darkness.
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"Sir? Can you hear me? Sir?" A voice called to me in the ruins of the cafe.
Why do some people become heroes and others villains?
"Agents Doe? Can you hear me, Agent Doe?" I was on a gurney, a light was shone on my one good eye, the other was missing for some reason.
Why do some people become doctors and others killers?
"John? Can you hear me, John?" My mother adjusted my tie, my right eye still covered in bandages.
Why do two particular people care for eachother?
H̶e̶a̶r̶/̶L̶i̶s̶t̶e̶n̶/̶C̶o̶m̶p̶r̶e̶h̶e̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶e̶?̶
What was that last one? Oh!
"Sorry, Doc. Million miles away. You were saying?" I hastily replied. The examination room was filled with the sterile air of cleaning chemicals. I never liked these places, always filled with the sick or dying, loud and obnoxious yet deadly silent at the same time, even more so when I was included in the bunch.
"I was saying your scans look good. A bit of swelling on the brain, a light concussion," The doctor said, looking over scans of my head. "Take a week or two off from work, and come in if you start experiencing headaches, nausea, vomiting, confusion, et cetera. Just don't try to push it, okay?"
I was only half listening, my hands already going through the familiar motions. "All things considered, I'd say you are a very lucky man, Agent Doe."
"Lucky?" I wouldn't think of it like that. If I were lucky, I wouldn't have been there. If I were lucky, then I wouldn't have been half dead in that cafe. At least I thought I was, I was pretty sure my right eye was gone at one point too. Right?
"Everything's relative, I suppose. Your mother is waiting outside for you." He was interrupted by the sounds of a lighter as I tried light my cigarette.
He snatched it from my mouth and harshed "What are you doing? This is a hospital. You can light this in here!"
Huh?
"Then where the hell is all this smoke coming from?"