The web

I used to be sure of my existence, because … how could I doubt it? After all, existing is one of those things you don’t need a certificate to prove it. You know it by getting up and being able to feel your heartbeat or the warmth of your partner’s breath. To know that you are alive, at least until a few years ago, the only thing you needed was to be sure of your own existence. No walking around there and asking the neighbor something like, “Hey, Mrs. Smith, I have my doubts. Could you tell me if I woke up alive today? ” I think something like that would seem absurd to most human beings. Nobody’s existence depends on the personal appreciation of whoever is next to them.
I, naive me, used to think that things would stay exactly the same for a very long time. But what was I to know?

It caught us so fast, no one saw it coming. It was a transparent net, but everyone who approached it could hear a peculiar electric hum coming from it.

Hardly anyone could see it, but still, everyone in the town was fascinated by that spider web.

They stopped going outside. They started to stop caring about feeling the warmth of another human being. All my neighbors were lost within themselves. They lost their souls to something that no one could feel in their hands.

They began to live for a synthetic sheen, which not even they were sure it actually existed. How absurd! And at the same time… How appropriate for the modern world!

I would have liked to finish this story by telling you that I fought bravely until the last minute and managed to save my neighbors. But in the end, I’m just another human.

Now I do not know if I am still alive, although that cold humming reminds me that although half alive, I still exist, even when my heart has stopped beating long ago.