Connecting Stars

A Story by Jess Greene

It's midnight. I'm supposed to do it now. But I don't. I stay up in the tree, listening to...nothing. I love this time of night, when everything is silent and dark and peaceful. When you're free to think whatever you want, and no one is there to judge you. When you can finally take off your mask.
If I look up I can barely see the sky. An expanse of dots like a connect-the-dots page in a child's activity book. Or a corner of it at least. I don't have enough dots to connect anything. And it makes me sad for some reason.
I could stay up here all night thinking about the stars. I could stay up here all night thinking about anything but my job. I could run away and never look back and never have to do the job again. I could...
I could.
What if.
Maybe...
But no.
I couldn't.
No if's.
No...
I can never leave. Because we are stuck here in this endless cycle of hunt and kill and survive. Hunt and kill and survive.
Hunt.
Kill.
Survive.
That's what we do. That's what we were born to do and we will never stop.
That's the problem with humans: We like tradition. We don't like rebels. Only rebels like rebels.
Leaders don't like rebels. But then the rebels become the leaders and are no longer rebels. And then the cycle continues. Hunt and kill and survive. And rebel.
I could stay up here all night, connecting the dots and listening to silence. What if I did? Maybe I will.
But if I do they will find me. They will kill me. They only want to survive. And who can blame them? I want the same. We don't like difference, but I guess we don't like when everything is the same either. So if I leave, I will likely die. If I stay up in this tree I will most definitely die. If I do what is expected of me, I'll die anyway. But my minutes are more if I do what is expected of me.
So I hop down from the tree and pull the gun from its holster.
Hunt, kill, survive.