The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask.
Jim Morrison
XXX
I shouldn't be here. I should be... where? Out there? I look out over a beautiful garden, filled with flowers of every color. Their fragrance rides the wind up to the marble balcony where I stand. Rolling hills lap for hundreds of miles in any direction. The sky is azure, not a cloud in sight. Somewhere, a bird calls for its mate to come home. It is all so dreamlike I dig my nails into my arm to be sure that I am truly awake. Only when I see red begin to roll between my finger tips do I stop.
I might as well be dreaming for as real as all of this is. I am living a lie. I am a lie. Behind me, a low voice rumbles sleepily.
"Lauren..." even in sleep he calls to me, like the bird to its missing match. He doesn't know. He isn't supposed to know. He can never know.
I am a lie.
And when that lie is discovered, I will be dead. The man who calls for me in his sleep with call for my death. With one word. For a second he might consider sparing me. For a moment he will have mercy, but, like all good things, it will only last for a moment. My heart aches, from fear and...something else. Regret? I shouldn't feel that way. I should not regret tricking a murderer, a terrorist, they call him. But when I imagine what will happen if he ever learns the truth, I'm not sure which is worse: the bullet that will penetrate my heart or the look of betrayal in his eyes that will break it. He can never know...
I calm my nerves before I send myself into a panic attack. In one deep breath I am in complete control of myself again.
I am not a lie. I am Lauren Reynolds. Everything else is a lie.
Or so I tell myself.