u/After_Ad6422

A great flood has run the whole world through. The waters run perpetually around the world, carrying vast chunks of all manner of debris. The only way to get around is to float on the debris until it brings you to the part of the world you want to reach.

I am a man filled with regret, I lived a life of restraint and one day in a fit of blind rage I bludgeoned a man to death to protect my cousin and ran. I find myself floating on the debris endlessly, aimlessly. I have the mind to go to America, but the way is dangerous, there are people that snipe at floaters from afar, to kill them.

My float seems to have been caught in a revolving current that does not leave my country, I simply orbit forever the same place, watching the same people. There is no sense of time, no urgency, I'm just numb, empty. I see a cat and a dog bound together by a piece of rope, the cat is unusually large but weak. The dog drags it about. She is so pathetic, I pity her, but i can't help her. Every now and then they come close to my flood, I think if I could just leap off I could reach them, I could cut the rope. But i never do it. Whenever I think of it I am afraid.

I see my sister in the distance, she's looking for her daughter, the little girl is off trying to keep our dog from chasing down the bound pair. I call out to them, but they do not respond. I see a man and a woman bound together, the man has a knife. He is forever cutting at the rope, but it is not sundered.

One day the snipers come to my country. As the current carriers me about I sometimes see them, I have nowhere to hide, they shoot at me but I feel no pain, only a strange sensation and a lightheadedness. I stop fearing them. I see a man on a fishing boat next to the bound man and woman. He is sobbing, bitterly and deeply, he is holding a gun to his head. The bound man takes his knife to the woman, he grabs her and begins cutting her neck, her head begins to burn in pale yellow flames coming from the wound.

A song begins to play, I have forgotten the lyrics but I know the essence of the message. The crescendo comes when the crying man shoots himself and the woman's head falls. All three disappear like mist.

The song said that the dead live on in the memories of the living, but their lingering tortures those that remember them. The crying man could no longer bear to live with the memory of his parents, they themselves had withered into mindless husks over time and yearned for release. The cat and the dog I can see in the distance, still bound, whose memory are they?

I look to my left and I see my cousin, which I had tried to protect! An overwhelming and profound understanding falls suddenly upon me; that I am dead and bound to him, and the memories of the living have bound us both here. The floods only run through my world, the dead world, my sister and niece are perfectly fine in the living world. I seem to be the only dead one that can see both worlds. But in the distance, on the living side I see a fat man that has been staring at me for a while, perhaps he's a living that can see the dead.

I feel that I am about to wake up, so I hurriedly try to catch a glimpse of my sister and niece before I do, but I wasted all my time staring at the spectacles, they are gone from my sight, it is too late.

I awake.