I could smell the flesh burning and I briefly wondered if they were burned alive or dead.  I waited for my stomach to turn, but the hardened gut only gave a half-hearted lurch.  I suppose you get used to these things eventually.

I looked over the sterile white fence, down the sterile white pavement that stretched for a while and then suddenly made a vertical turn into a concrete wall.  The wall was sterile white as well, at least Our Side was.  I wouldn’t know about the Other Side, nobody would, except I suppose the Others.

I walked on, my stomach continuing its half-hearted lurching, and I made my way down the white path, in my white shoes, my white uniform.  Through some vague connection of whiteness I thought of snow, imagined it alive and cold beneath my feet, remembered my favorite red woolen scarf bright against the icy whiteness and the sound of laughter echoing like some happy movie montage, and then my mind blinked and the warm wool was replaced by a different red, drops of pulsing scarlet scattering in a sudden splash.  But just as I looked up to match a face to the pain, my mind filling with the same numb horror that the smell of burning flesh gave me, that's when I saved myself and I stopped thinking.  It was dangerous to think when so many unpleasant memories were always vying for attention.

I marched on, nothing good ever came from unpleasantness.  I have no worries, I repeated.  No worries, no consequences, just one foot timidly shuffling beside the other, brushing lightly on the clean pavement.

Thoughts I can contain, I had learned to contain, but the senses are harder denied, and the distinctly unpleasant smell of burning flesh aded like a rude question.  I cannot see colors in smells, but my stomach told me the smell that came from the Other Side was anything but the white that surrounded me on Our Side.