"The closet is dark and cold, but oddly a snug comfort from the sleep that waits for me outside. Only, it is not here quite yet, so I sit with just the dimming light of my phone as I count out the seconds till this game of hide and seek ends with scratches on this paper. I will die and in my sleepless stupor I watch my body scribble away as time itself kills me.

I have played this game for what feels to be days now. The coffee machine refuses to give me stimulants and the bed chirps incessantly through the day that I have missed my mandated sleep appointment. Sleep will come for me soon – I can hear the bed faintly through the walls telling me so. I know it has alerted the ‘proper authorities’ and that they will come with their faceless masks, their battering rams and their guns. It is only a matter of time before the monsters knocking at the very fringes of my consciousness break through and find me. And I am content with that. The bed is chirping again. I simply wish the walls were thicker.

Outside I can imagine the sounds of the nightlife, revelers drinking the night away like marionettes dancing dizzyingly on strings so twisted and knotted that all have simply given up on finding who is on the other side. Caricatures of whoever they may have once been the people of this city dance away, their minds young and blind, their bodies worn and tired having done this routine so long that the routine itself has surmounted the existence of the body and whatever identity it once holds is now washed away in a cacophonous sea of suffocating frenzy with all the hours it has spent crashing down like a raging wave snuffing it out entirely. I can’t stand to see them anymore, or myself for that matter – the mirrors did quite protest upon me smashing them to pieces but it had to be done. All I can think about is how many times have they possibly gone through the procedure? The mental death at age 30 while the body and mind are reborn at age 20 to relive the ‘best years of human life’. I may not remember all these deaths and rebirths, but I am constantly reminded of it with the pamphlets, billboards, and ads strewn everywhere. The holidays celebrating the unlocking of the power of the immortal jellyfish and the advent of Turritopsis. The documentaries and journal pieces hail it as a savior of humans – freedom to experience the best years of your life again, experience the books, movies, and games you enjoyed so much with a fresh mind, and considering the existence of these films we must have bit it. Hook. Line. Sinker.

This body is being dragged beyond its limits. Occupying it feels grotesquely wrong. I watch myself move through the daily routines, closer to the enforced, automated reset date when this mind expires, and another is shoved into this already bursting body and I want so desperately to scream, but I can’t. I have no mouth and the only one I can use is not my own – it belongs to someone long dead. The bed chirps. Faintly I hear it giving me one last warning. They are here, and I have one last chance to comply, to go quite literally quietly into the cold night. I will not. I write here, that I, in sound body and mind, as an individual existing beyond the frenzied routine of the modern ‘roaring twenties’ do exert my right to live and die.

 I hear the shattering of the front door, and their heavy boots treading across the threshold. Sleep has come and the game is over. From the depths of gratitude, sincerely from the both of us, goodbye."

The mangled corpse lay in a pool of blood, slumped against the wall of the small hallway closet. Two figures stood in the hallway, standing over the scene, their identities masked by black gas masks – the only features to be seen being the large abyssal void of the eyepieces, and the golden badge on their chests emblazes with the words ‘Turritopsis Service Agency”. One turned to their shoulder and the faint buzz of a radio burst to life.

“Turritopsis Enforcement Team Firebird to Operations, noncompliant neutralized, moving to clear and secure rest of premises, over.”

The garbled murmuring of a voice over the line. The enforcer spoke again. “Identity burn protocol confirmed, over.”

“Check the body, any letters or other documentation on person needs to be confiscated and taken in for erasure. Don’t read anything you find; these crazies write some weird shit – waste of time.” The Enforcer moved away towards the chirping bedroom, leaving their partner alone with the broken body. The letter was not hard to find, still clutched in the hands of the dead. The Officer ignored the advice of their partner and glanced at the writing. Then the faint shimmer of a lighter and the last thoughts of the body lying in the closet went up in a puff of smoke.

“Done?”

A quick stand to attention and a nod of the head. The Enforcer nodded and turned to their shoulder again.

“All identifiables destroyed, turritopic sleep chamber undergone factory reset – prepped for assignment to new compliant. Request for waste retrieval and cleanup service, Firebird out.”

A slight garbled voice confirming receipt of the message and that a team would be dispatched to prep the living quarters for a new assignment. Then silence fell on the two like a deep, peaceful sleep. The stillness of the apartment laying like a thick blanket in the night. The two walked out into the cold night air and only until they were within the confines of their patrol car did they disturb the night’s slumber.

“Well, I suppose this opens up a slot for that perpetual baby Senator Graham has been hounding us to sign off on, best pay them a visit.”

The car revved up and drove into the night, past the blinding lights of bodies dancing away their time on a flat circle, spinning into an eternity until only the afterimage remained.