The Beautiful Deceit: My Addiction to the Imaginary  by Areej Ali

The dust specks only dance for the light I allow them. 

I am the sole curator of this self-inflicted museum, responsible for its quiet and its failures.  I look at my own wrist, not as skin and bone, but as a blueprint carrying a design I did not ask  for. My body is a brittle, labeled specimen, accession-numbered by the blood, carrying the exact  angle of an inherited, quiet despair. 

I hate the tilt of my jaw, the way it prepares for surrender, the readiness for a life that is less  than I deserved. Outside, the market breathes its relentless, gilded ambition. The rich get richer  in a language I have no fluency in, and I know my struggle is structural, reinforced by a history I  cannot erase. 

I close the atlas of my palm. The Projection starts now. 

In the other room, which is only this room, meticulously amplified 

The walls are soundproof, built with thick, unsaid promises. The air is precisely 72 degrees,  sterile and perfectly still. I have built entire histories here, using only the meticulous architecture of avoidance. I am a full-time curator of this alternative life, and my sole job is the  continuous maintenance of the silence. 

The streets are clean, paved with omitted dialogues, and the sun sets only when I command it  to, always on a pale, controllable lilac. I have engineered the lighting to be incapable of harsh  truths. Every moment here is polished, every corner sealed against the intrusion of real  memory.  

In this world, I am untraceable, and safe, suspended between two heartbeats. 

The child I was lives here, too, preserved at the age where the world first became frightening.  They are a potential, a figure on a Do Not Touch pedestal. I teach them the necessary rules of  this silent city: how to walk without disturbing the dust, how to perfect the distance of the  handshake. We practice the flawless friction of control: no warmth exchanged. “This sterility”, I  tell the child, “is a managed, beautiful thing”. 

And yet, the contradiction is the only thing that feels real. The craving is a dull, relentless  voltage under the skin. I want the clumsy, uncontrolled ruin of a human palm on my shoulder,  the chaotic warmth that defies the archive, the light that remembers what came before and  does not flinch. I want to be pulled, not gently, but with necessary force, out of the perfection I  worked so hard to build.

A voice calls, I voice so foreign but the echo stains the walls of Museum I’ve created: a sudden,  jagged break in the quiet. It is time to unlock the door, time to move, time to exist in the real  world. I feel the key in the lock, the cold, brass potential of freedom. 

It offers a choice: Disruption or Maintenance. 

But here, in the soundproof, sterile light, a small hand reaches for mine. It is the child I was,  untouched, unjudged, uncatalogued. Their grip is weightless, utterly dependent, and perfectly  safe. I press myself further back against the controlled silence. I turn my shoulder from the lock,  ignoring the cold promise of the key. I lean down, just past the limit of the glass. 

And I stay. I choose the beautiful, tragic maintenance. I choose to tend the silence I have spent  my whole life paying for.

About the Author

Hailing from a small city in Pakistan, Areej cultivated her early love for writing through reading fanfiction. This initial spark has evolved into a serious dedication to crafting compelling, emotionally resonant novels. Her goal is to explore heavy themes like mental illness with honesty and depth. A victim of maladaptive daydreaming, she has already begun addressing this complex topic in her work, using her personal struggles to inform her powerful narratives.