Everything was black. Which in a way is funny because that is my favorite color. The sea was black as if all the oil thrown into the sea had finally swallowed it up. The sun bathed the earth in black and yet everything was visible and strange. Not like the night that brushed the dusk with dark colors, but as if the whole world was dead and yet it kept going. 

There was also the food. Black, as if someone had let it burn. I chewed each piece of hamburger reminding myself how fashionable it had once been. Even the lettuce, everything was black. And yet, so tasty. I felt every taste even though everything looked the same. 

It was all so crazy and strange but I was still curious, as if I needed to test how far it would go. Taking a dark knife, I lifted it over my skin of the same color and made a cut, deep and painful. Laughing above my teeth that may or may not been rotten, I laughed about the dark liquid that oozed out. It was so real, so beautiful and thick. I ran a finger over it and put the liquid in my mouth, still tasting metallic. 

It felt like a perfect, almost unreal world. Maybe it was me waiting for the end of the world, maybe it was my conscience fading away. When a cloud of black smoke dissolved into gray, the smell of cigarettes escaped through the window. All the colors came back and yet nothing looked so beautiful. Not even the golden sun. So raising the cigarette to my mouth, I drew in the air until everything went black again.

This, my backyard garden, was a marvel to behold behind my low, one-level ranch house.

Inside the house there was coffee in a huge, open area (in my mind). Carafes perched high upon ledges, and beside each huge coffee urn was a plate with a single piece of pie. It looked like cherry, with a layer of white, probably cream cheese or mascarpone and whipped cream. I heard myself screaming, “Look, there’s fish fillets over here!” I certainly sounded cheery. I was filling a bag with takeaway and giving myself mac and cheese samples, gratis. I stood in a separate aisle now, also replete with multitudinous rich, sweet treats, all free. I wondered what was up and if I unwittingly was trying to fatten me up. But to what end?

I hurriedly went back out.

Ah! Here. High reaching trees cast shadow. Plants below the upper canopy embodied curving forms. All sought to defy description, so varied and unusual were they. Having traveled round the world, I’d not seen any of these species, so I created them. It was perfunctory, my function. Perhaps they were cacti or varietal hybrids. Though the ground was shaded, sunlight (ray? particle?) beams filtered down through lofty branches. Beams beamed down through beams. A dull smile duly lit my lips but did not make it to my eyes. The effect lit up dazzlingly colourful plants to clearly display each hue.

"Across the road, look," I told myself. "Quick!" Panning my head to the left, the garden opposite this bounteous feast for the eyes was nice, neat, and trim. Gesturing back toward the right, I said to myself with a wonderful tone, “I want to live here, to continue to live here.” It was, after all, my fairy land.

Alas, a dead end I’d planted.

The hot dryness seared. It morphed. In my image, the ground belowground shook, causing a liquified mudslide the same way teeming flora in my gut moved, sludging sluggishly at first. Faster it chugged, racing across the desert. Each plant burst and the virus it had contained coursed through horny toads, Gila monsters, sidewinders, and fer-de-lance, filling them with feted glee as they transmitted more vileness than ever before. Even the frilled lizards gained deadly abilities they’d long sought. All these would carry on, for they accepted their tasks to taint with alacrity.

My smile burst through my invisible mask mounting to a bitter, hard laugh. And now my eyes were lit with fire newly kindled from within. I’d made myself and now I’d made my new universe. Not only made, … I had mastered it. I could die, and withal I could do so happily.

I laid back on my bed and put on the VR headset. I knew I shouldn’t. It was the third time already today and still not yet lunch-time. Working from home, being lonely, never meeting any real people. I convinced myself that it was okay. I wasn’t addicted, just enjoyed the trip. I could stop – any time – if I met a real person to share my life with. That didn’t look likely – but the virtual world was so much more realistic and enthralling.