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The Price of Paradise

“Paradise comes with a price.”

That’s what they always taught us in school.

After the world collapsed under an all-out nuclear war, one city stood tall among the ashes.

Paradise is humanity’s last hope, a safe haven, bubbled in from the cancerous world that surrounds it. Once a year, on the anniversary of mankind’s near-extinction, the gatekeepers of Paradise let any 21-year-olds willing to leave their world of fighting off marauders, eating stale dog food and bathing in radioactive lakes.

But there’s one catch. You have to make a sacrifice to enter Paradise.

“Paradise comes with a price.”

It’s a slogan that we all grow up with and mull over until the day we get to choose our destiny. Do we remain intact people and carry on in a broken world, or join the last intact city as broken people?

Since birth, I’ve lived on the outskirts of Paradise, looking through a clear, half-sphere — inside of it, skyscrapers, green grass, and mutilated bodies.

To enter Paradise, you have to sacrifice one of your five senses — proving your commitment to a new and better world.

Choose sight, your eyes will be gauged out. You’ll experience Paradise, but you’ll never see it.

Choose hearing, your ears and their inner workings will be removed. The sounds of cries and screams from the nuclear war is all you will have to remember.

Choose taste, your tongue will be clipped, and your mouth will be cauterized to kill the nerves. Paradise has the greatest foods of the past world, none of which you will taste.

Choose smell, your nose is sawed off and filled with a hardening metal, making it impossible to ever smell again.

Touch is a mystery. I’ve seen the other choices through the clear walls of Paradise, but never anyone with missing hands or feet. Maybe no one’s ever chosen it out of fear?

I run through these thoughts as I inch forward in line. I hear the nightmarish screams of the people up front and the sounds of cartilage being carved and tossed aside.

There’s no turning back now, I think to myself.

As The line shrinks, my anxiety grows. Before I know it, I’m almost at the front.

I’m second in line, I hear the voices of the gatekeepers booming with judgement and disdain.

“Paradise comes with a price, step forward and choose your sacrifice,” the voices echo in synchrony.

“Uh…I choose smell,” the man’s voice quivers.

“Very well.”

Two of the four gatekeepers grab the man by his arms, rendering him unable to move. A third quickly approaches with a paper-thin saw, as thin as an over sized scalpel. He makes quick work of the man’s face, meticulously slicing through his blood and screams.

With the nose removed, the fourth gatekeeper swoops in with syringe of metal liquid, filling the fresh wound. The metal quickly hardens, and the ceremony is done. “

“Welcome to Paradise,” they say.

In a state of shock, the man is carried to a door by the gatekeeper’s assistants. As the door swings open, I get a glimpse of life on the other side.

Artificial Sunlight peers through as music plays and the smell of baked foods fill the chamber. The door is quickly shut, and I’m once again surrounded by severed parts and foul smells.

It’s my turn to make a choice.

“Paradise comes with a price, step forward and choose your sacrifice,” they say once again.

“I choose touch,” I say as I close my eyes and wait for extreme pain.

“Very well, step through this door to the right, they echo.

Scared and confused, I scurry to a door to the side and enter. It leads me to a long hallway. At the end stands a man, his shadow is dancing from the dangling bulb above him. He waves me down.

As I make my way to him, I hear voices coming from just the other side of the hallway’s walls. I get closer to the man and he points to his right, telling me to enter another room.

My eyes dart around the room, looking for the sinister tool that’s about to permanently scar me.

There’s nothing.

There is a window though, and through its bars I experience what I’ve waited for my entire life.

I can see a beautiful skyline. I can hear laughter. I can smell incredible food. I can taste the fresh air as it fills my lungs.

The door behind me slams shut, and I hear it lock multiple times. I run to it and try to open it up, but it doesn’t budge.

There’s an open slit at eye-level and the man is still standing there.

“Hey what’s going on? Let me out of here!” I tell him.

The man looks at me with a blank stare.

“Welcome to Paradise.”

The slit shuts and I hear him walk away.

I scan the walls for openings, false doors, any way to get out. Nothing.

I stumble upon some crude writing on the wall, scratched in with a rock maybe. It reads:

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