2017.5.24

2017. 5. 13

           I am Erin Gray. Last month, I was sent to the Valerie concentration camp by the government officials. They said we were the participants for the clinical trial of the treatment method for the smokers, and we will be able to stop smoking after the clinical trial. But there were some strange points: we were all locked up in dark, humid rooms, alone, and we didn’t do anything in our rooms but eat and sleep.

           I am writing this note even though I'm not sure if anyone will find and read this. I know that I will put in great danger if anything about this letter is revealed to the administrators of the camp, but I must record this strange incident. About 3 days ago, I experienced something very strange. A mouse came out from a very small hole which I had never noticed. With a tiny hope, I looked into the hole. There, I found this little note.

      "The scent of spring tickles you, and you are brought outside by an undeniable force that pushes your back to go out and smell the beginning of spring. Spring always does this to you. It gives you this mysterious hope that you might be able to actually 'meet' her and escape from this never-ending, gray loneliness, but you know that this dusty, humid room will never let you go. Spring is here, but no one seems to know. You lean back, drinking the humid air in. You smell the thick and heavy smoke, filled with last night's laughter and sweat."

           It was a story of someone who may have been also locked up in this room. Where did she go? Why did she write this note? Its handwriting implied that the writer is a female, so I could easily conclude that she had the same sexual orientation as me.

           I am a female, and I have a girlfriend. Yes, yes I am the one you are thinking about. When being sent to this camp, I had to leave her in our home, and I couldn’t hear from her since then. Maybe she was sent to another concentration camp, too. The woman in the note also seems to have missed her lover.

     “You don't want to smell the smoke in between the humid spring air and the slight flowery smell. The combination of the gas turns the beautiful ‘spring smell’ into the odor. I cried. "Stop smoking or I will smack twenty cigarettes into your mouth at once!"”

           I didn’t get it. They said that this camp was only used for the purpose of clinical trial. But why is this note full of talk about smoke that she inhaled in this camp? I couldn’t smell any smoke here.

2017. 5. 23

           Anyone who is reading this note, please run away. Do not fear getting caught, it is in any ways better than just staying here.

           About a week ago, they began spreading out this gas that smells like the smoke of cigarette. At first, it made me dizzy, and I couldn’t get away from severe headache. But as the days passed, I became addicted, and I started to depend on that gas. The way they spread that gas was well planned. They spread the gas when we were so desperate for that gas that we would cry out to the administrators to spread the gas. When my addiction reached that scale, too, I could finally understand the meaning of the last part of the note.

      “As time passed, you forgot the lovely and warm scent of spring that tickled your nose, hair, and your soul. It swipes your pure minds of a happy child with lollipops and evokes your inner darkness of oppressed anger with diminishing dreams. You used to blossom your hope and smiles when you pictured yourself in the middle of newborn sprouts swindling with a certain odor of spring. Now, your tears are dropping. Imagining the past days, you stop what you were doing, and felt the moment. Every year, spring comes to you, and just because of that cigarette smell, everything demolishes.”

2017. 5. 23

           For the first time, I could go out of my dark room and meet other prisoners. While standing all together in the big room, the administrators counted the number of people standing. Standing there, I could easily perceive that everyone in that room were women with short hair, and by talking with the people around me, I realized that we all had the same sexual orientation. This concentration camp was not about smoking. Now I started to get the grip of where the writer of that note went. It seems that this note is about to come to an end.

2017. 5. 24

           Bang, bang, bang. I hear people screaming. They are disappearing, and I will disappear today. No one will be interested, since we are invisible in this society.

           Remember, remember the 24^th of May.

           Remember, remember the year of 2017.

           Do not forget.