The three of us are dying.

I keep dying in my dreams again.

Which means my subconscious is stuck on another loop of wanting to kill its shell.

Most of the deaths have been pretty typical. But one sticks with me.

Not for its gruesome nature, because it wasn’t. Rather, because it seemed most plausible.

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I don’t remember much of the build up to it; however, like most of my dreams, it took place in a post-apocalyptic type setting. Something that looked like Kenosha, but in a timeline where people standing on street corners with machine guns never ended. A timeline where it got worse.

In the midst of this, two friends (who I won’t reveal) and I helped a group cross the city without people shooting at them, and we’re right at the end. But right as they’re going in to this safehouse, suddenly, one of my friends is down, then the next one.

Clearly, they’ve been shot.

I know this is my subconscious just being cruel, because they’re the two friends that I know — besides myself — who are quietly “dying” inside, in more ways than one.

However, as I’m about to bend down to help one of them, I feel something moving down my face.

Blood.

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It started pouring down steadily as I bent down and took one of my friend’s hands. We look at each other. Crimson is covering both of us more and more, and it completely soaked our hands, and I look them in the eye, slightly smile and say, “It’s alright.”

And they smile back.

We both get it, I think.

At that point, we’d done enough. Our story is complete. It’s just the end of our time.

I started feeling more and more tired. That’s the thing about bleeding out that makes it far more peaceful than you’d think.

I remember the time I actually almost bled out in life about seven years ago.

Surgeons had finished working on me, and I was in a recovery room with bandages on my face. After a little bit, the nurse came to change my bandages, only to see that there was still plenty of blood.

No big deal. It’ll probably stop.

Next batch of clean bandages. Still blood, lots.

Next batch, still looks like a murder scene.

She’s no longer speaking in a calm, pleasant voice as she’s changing the bandages. Now, she’s trying to page people or get ahold of the surgeon to get me back in the operating room to stop the bleeding.

And I can tell from everything happening that this is serious as I’m watching all of the blood on all of the bandages they keep putting on and changing out.

I’m sure on the outside it looked much more dramatic.

But all I could think while I was sitting there was: “Well, I suppose this is it. It’s alright. I’ve had a good run. I’m okay with this.”

But, as I closed my eyes, I did not feel defeat, because it was not defeat that found me. I just allowed myself to surrender to that inevitable thing that will find us all. Because it’s not a war. It’s a standoff — one that eventually ends with you coming out of your shelter and going with it, no matter what.

However, lo and behold, I opened my eyes again hours later, still here. But I never forgot the feeling.

It was the same in the dream, holding my friend’s hand.

I just let myself slowly collapse to the ground next to them, and I looked over at our other friend. Death had already come for him.

So, I closed my eyes.

“This is alright.”

And as those same feelings of surrender, relief and succumbing to the period at the end of the story overwhelmed me, I woke up.

But that, too, will have to be alright.