It was the third time this month.

I was awoken by some hurried knocks on my door echoing on a Saturday midnight in October. Putting on my nightgown, I turned on the flashlight and quietly walked towards the corridor. As soon as I checked the outside situation through the spy hole, I opened the door, finding nothing but several squashed cans and spoiled cabbage leaves lying on the ground. The sharp wind of late autumn was howling, seeming to express some unreasoning anger. Not far away, deep grey and blue bloomed in the vault, like a canvas without any decoration. It was dark, so dark that I felt horror aroused from the abyss of my heart. Something is going to happen. The piercing coldness forced me to isolate myself from the outside world.

The electricity had been cut out for over a week, and the supplies at home were almost exhausted. However, my mind prevented me from stepping out of this airless shelter. I had a social phobia: I didn’t like to get in touch with other people, so I would rather wait until the last minute to buy the necessities and quickly get back home. I hardly knew any of my neighbors, and seldom contacted my family. My favorite thing was to sit in front of the laptop and stare at the screen all day, with snacks and canned coffee piling up next to my right hand. Is there anything else better than staying alone?

When I finally managed to get through the garbage mountain—packaging of snacks, empty cans, food residue, I heaved a long sigh and lay down on the soft mattress. Somehow, I could not fall asleep again, so agitation drove me to sit beside the desk, my most familiar place. In an attempt to reach out for my laptop buried under the litter mountain, I randomly picked some rubbish and threw it out of the window.

During the long waiting process of turning on the computer, I lit up one of the remnant candles. In this cold narrow room, only could the dim candlelight bring me a little bit more warmth. I blew on my stiff hands, using the trembling fingers to press open the chat room. Because all the members were anonymous, this was a safe place where I could talk with other humans, not face-to-face. After typing some greeting words and pressing “enter,” I felt like I’d been waiting a thousand years, but the message could not be sent out. While the loading sign kept circling, I kept rolling my eyes and scratching my hair with irritation.

“Tick-tock, tick-tock,” the world turned to a swirl. Everything began to float and rotate on some invisible orbitals. Gazing at what happened right in front of my face, I gradually fell asleep drowsily before knowing.

I was trapped in an infinite black space. No matter which direction I walked toward, the surroundings remained the same: full and complete darkness. Suddenly, a bright spot appeared at the front. I ran so fast, trying to catch the last straw, the hope to bring me out of the chaos. As I almost touched the spot, a deep voice started to talk, “Stop struggling, human. You are destined to be solitary.”

The voice faded, the bright spot fell, the space burst into flames.

Knocks on the door came again, waking me from the suffering nightmare. This time, I rushed to the door without hesitation. What stood outside was a black cat; he whined lamentably and disappeared into the night.

I followed his steps to the yard, surprisingly finding that I was completely surrounded by an impenetrable garbage wall, plastics that rustled in the icy wind. In desperation, I yelled for help and used all my strengths to smash through the gate covered with garbage. After my unremitting efforts, the garbage in front of me fell down, and there was only one more step for me to escape—to open the gate.

The moment before I rushed outside, what I saw stopped me: everything was replaced by a dark abyss; one more step further—dead.

I collapsed to the ground, watching the vague scarlet floating in endless darkness.

You are destined to be solitary.