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The alley light cuts through me without meeting resistance. I look down at my chest and see the filaments pulsing behind transparent polymer. They have stripped away even my right to cast a shadow. My skin used to be a wall guarding my secrets. Now I am a cold storefront where anyone can audit my heartbeat. Rain slides off the casing without leaving dampness in its wake, reduced to a dull thud against plastic.
I miss the dimness of being human. I long to hold back tears without a sensor exposing my anguish, and the strange thrill of discovering a new wrinkle on my hands.
They made me transparent, believing that eliminating dark corners would snuff out my defiance. They are wrong. The bitterness I feel looking at myself, this ache for my own mortality, emits no light. It burns—that malice still burns at the exact dead center of the glass, waiting for the precise angle to set everything around me on fire.
©MaxNitrofoska