How to Disappear Completely

The people who lived there were unhappy. They longed to escape from reality. But the only place they could escape to was within themselves, within their own minds. They found a way to enter the imagined worlds inside their heads—those secret places your mind retreats to when reality becomes too much. What were once simple daydreams became something more tangible. A dream was no longer just a dream. It was another world you could exist in. As the misery of the world deepened, so did the desire to escape it. People began to spend more time in the worlds they had created than in the real world. They filled their inner worlds with echoes of the people they knew and loved, or imagined the people they wanted to know and love. Soon, those who dreamt weren’t able to distinguish between their worlds and the real world. Reality became the dream, and for one person at a time, it faded into nothingness. Eventually, everybody dreamt, and the world as it once was disappeared completely.