Remote

The door to the van opened wide, flushing out the stale air and leaving cold bitterness. White light bleached his eyes until they stung. Blurred shadows, stamping of boots, crying, groans. A fist gripped his sweatshirt, dragging him, wrenching him off the bench. He fell hard to his knees, his hands and feet bound in chains. The guard yanked harder, tossing him out of the door. Mud sliced at his face. He reared his head, spitting it clean, and rolled onto his back, blinking away the flecks of soil and tears as he tried to comprehend what was above him.

Flat greyness, featureless as a fresh sheet of paper, floated above his eyes, open and free. Magan sat up, his gaze locked onto the expanse above, barely conscious of gelatinous mud seeping down his sweatshirt collar, clinging to his bare skin. A guard nudged his shoulder with a rifle butt. Magan automatically swung into a kneeling position, only marginally aware that the others were doing the same beside him. That was sky.

He turned his head left to right like a metronome. It domed around him in all directions, uninterrupted. until it met the flat horizon. A shiver ran down his spine. He could feel the growing chill of the mud now. In all directions, there was nothing. No houses, no trees. He was in a fishbowl, contained by the sky. Fields, and featureless and grey reached out beyond, with no end, no point of meaning.

The guard butted him harder. 'Eyes down,' he barked.