'Become an Übermensch'

They force us up, crowds of us. Up the spire. All I could see was white. Blank endlessness. The walls consumed us.

Voices hushed, urged us up. I ran up the staircase, my head dizzying, hoping for an ending. To reach the ‘Top of Freedom.’ If I reached the top I would no longer be less. I tried to suck in my breath. I couldn’t catch up. My ‘allies,’ if I could call them such a word, were ahead.

You can’t show weakness here. You can’t show weakness here.

‘Become an Übermensch.’

I repeated the slogan in my mind. With urgency. With fear.

I felt the solidarity of my lesser men. Their fear dissolved into the walls. Rotting.

I felt a sharp horror fill my lungs. They told us not to fear death, but... why did I feel this much.

I didn’t want to see the judge, in his white coat, his verdict.

The white pills offered me no calm so I kept them at the bottom of my tongue.

I wanted to feel something. Otherwise, life became monotony.

The stairs seemed endless, still. I heard chanting. Beckoning us to reach the top.

I reached the limit of my inner threshold. The building began to shake. I feared I wouldn’t make it. The climb required bodies. I could hear them speak in tongues, about transcendence, about consumption into the common ‘god.’

‘Here I go,’ I heard. I see fragments from the top. Bodies falling. Nameless and numbered. Personhood? Always striving upward. Thrown off by the wind.

Everyone was going up, pushing each other forward. You couldn’t go back. And if you did, you would face judgement.

Hesitation: punishable. At least they couldn’t see into my mind. There is one place they cannot climb.

There must be a fracture. A split.

Panic set in.

I pushed forward. I fell. They trampled on me.

White bleached the edges of my sight. A heel pressed into my ribs.

‘Keep climbing.’

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