One-Shots: 12

There was something wrong.  There was something up in the air a heavy purple smog that stuck to the grass like lint.  It was hard to decide whether or not it was poisonous to touch or breathe.  Not that there was much of a choice.  It overspilled everywhere, and the thing separating you and it was the heavy, double pained windows and thick brick walls of the institution.
One of the others said they thought they saw a flare go off in the distance.  Another said that the flare was the thing emitting the purple haze.  You didn’t know what to think.  You only knew that you had been inside the institution for too long.  You only knew that there were too many people inside and not enough food.
It couldn’t even be called an institution, but that's what the orderlies called it.  It wasn’t bad enough you had taken refuge in an insane asylum from the smog, but to call it an institution instead of a refuge was even worse.  You could hear the screams from the far wing at night.  Rumor had it among the others that the doors were sealed to that wing; not because of the inmates, but because the smog had entered that side of the institution because of a crack in a window.
It was even worse to sit there, listening to the nervousness of the others.  You wanted to go out, to do, to be.  If that meant staring out through the heavy bars on the windows at the purple smog downing the entirety of the world outside for hours on end, it would have to be that.  You wanted freedom in any way possible.  And the lack of books and movies and stories meant a lack of escaping.  The only hope was to enter the outside world through the guarded, sealed doors.
It seemed to you that the orderlies were more worried about their guests as opposed to their residents.
Perhaps someday soon you could take a whiff of the outside world.  Breathe the purple air.  It might be deadly, but at least it would be fresh air.  Right now, all you had to breathe was loneliness and stiffness and staleness that would make any preserving taxidermist grimace from the overdose.