Chương 30: Chapter 29: Living in a Nightmare

I found myself in the familiar white void which stretched on forever, with pure silence around me and nothing to see in all directions. Standing perfectly still, I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, feeling some foreign emotions stirring inside of myself. I felt anxious, paranoid and afraid… nothing tied to them specifically, but emotions I was acutely aware of all the same. When my eyes opened again, I was standing in a dark room with Emily and Gav at my side.

I was standing on the table where the monitor sat, all of us looking at the screen.

"I've almost got it…" Gav said, punching something into the computer. I didn't respond. My memories came back to me. Though I knew I had to tell them we had to leave now, I decided to say nothing instead. I turned to the window, knowing the propane tank would come crashing into the room. The glass was intact for now, but it would soon change. An odd feeling washed over me. I felt as though I had told them both we needed to leave again, as if I was pleading with them. I felt it, but I knew I wasn't doing it.

Rather than implore them to get out of here, I stood there silently, allowing the scene to play out and knowing there was nothing I could do to change the past. The two of them continued looking at the computer while I looked at the window, knowing it would soon be broken… but nothing was happening.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" I heard John's voice come from the doorway. Turning to face him, my chest tightened as our eyes locked. He was casually standing in the doorframe, attention turning to his hand, holding a wrench which idly spun. It was the same wrench he'd been using the last time we'd worked on the truck. Clearing his throat, he continued.

"When it plays back like this, you can change things. I noticed it back when we first tried it. It's interesting, though: the same events will play out…they have to." A pause.

"... but, it seems the small moments in between can be altered however we want." Not wanting him to distract me, I shook my head.

"You wanted to talk, right? That's why you've been reaching out. You don't…you don't…" I stammered, trying to tell him to simply talk to me. John looked at me, and in a moment, he was right there, next to me.

"I don't what, Tess?" He reached out and grabbed the front of my shirt, yanking me toward him.

"I…I…" I tried to respond to him, but I couldn't bring the words into existence. My gaze flickered to the side to now see Emily and Oliver looking at the monitor, oblivious to what was happening to me. John's other hand grabbed me by the chin, forcing me to look at him.

"Say what you need to say." His voice was calm…alarmingly calm. I grabbed back at his arm, trying to pull away, but he was impossibly strong. I couldn't move.

"Y-You're…not real. You can't…" Spluttering out a few words, I took a few deep breaths as he waited, letting me finish.

"You can't hurt me. You're just…something in my mind. You can't." Two gunshots suddenly rang through my ears. I was outside and John was standing over me, holding a gun. A searing pain ran through my chest as I looked up at him. A large, menacing smile was on his face. I tried to respond, to yell, but I couldn't make a sound as I felt blood pouring from my chest. He stepped forward, but I couldn't move. I was frozen in place.

"See?" He said, reaching down and grabbing me by the ears.

"I can change things, too." John turned my head down to show me the clear liquid I was bleeding, along with a constant stream of gas coming out of the two bullet wounds. I blinked and my chest changed to a white cylinder. Before I could process what was happening, John had pulled me up by the ears and threw me toward a large window. My body shattered the glass as I tumbled into the room, rolling a few times before I looked up to see John, holding me by the chest as I looked down at myself.

I blinked and the pain was gone. I was on the desk once again, looking down at the propane tank spewing gas and liquid out of the two bullet holes.

"Why are you doing this?" Struggling in his grip, I asked him point-blank, "can…can we just talk? Please?" He shook his head, but thankfully let go of my shirt, taking a single step back from me.

"You should probably get out of here." The cocky tone registered in my ears just before I saw the glow of a small fire outside the window. I jumped from the desk to the floor, grabbing Emily and Gav by the shirts and throwing them across the floor, toward the door. Even though I knew it was a memory, something compelled me to play it out, as if it weren't entirely in my control. I ran after them, trying to reach the door, knowing I wouldn't make it. The explosion erupted as soon as I reached the doorway.

A chunk of something pierced my left leg, causing me to collapse as my inertia sent me barreling through the door. Walls of flames surrounded me as the sound of the explosion continued ringing loudly in my ears. Slowly wobbling to my feet, I found the world had left me. Only the flames remained, surrounding me on all sides as a figure walked toward me. I tried to get away, but there was nowhere for me to go. John appeared, strolling straight through the inferno, his body falling apart like I'd previously seen.

The flames burned off his skin, his muscles, each layer of him torn away by the fire… and all I could do was stand and watch. It felt as if his gaze bore into my soul.

"Why did you leave me there, Tess? Why didn't you try to stop it? I could have been alive today. You could have saved me." Waves of guilt and shame crashed over me, stinging far more than the fire could.

"What do you have to say for yourself, Tess?" He began approaching me. I could barely breathe, much less think. All of the flames were stoking the fears I'd felt that awful night, when I'd looked into the house and froze, unable to move, simply watching the house burn. I opened my eyes further, looking up at him as realization hit me.

"No." I said, causing him to halt. The flames continued to tear at his flesh, turning him into the monster haunting me in my dreams. I shook my head, looking up at him again.

"No!" As my voice rang through the flames, they all suddenly disappeared, quickly morphed into a black void, leaving both him and I with nothing around us. I glared at him, feeling as though I'd just learned what he'd been trying to show me.

"I didn't just stand there. I was petrified. I was afraid of…the flame…it…" I closed my eyes, remembering that feeling. When I opened my eyes again, John was there, back to what he was before he'd turned into that monster. I continued, more confident.

"The flames, all the fire…it felt like I wasn't in control, I felt like I…had…" John got down onto one knee, now eye level with me.

"Go on."

"I… felt like I'd seen that before. It brought back a memory, but I couldn't remember what it was. I just remember being afraid… I remember… death…" A bright light blinded me for a moment before I saw myself back inside the building, standing at the doorway. I was looking at the flames and saw my silhouette, a dark patch within the flames. Only after a moment did I realize I was taller than normal, at least six feet in height.

Once I looked at myself, I realized I was a human, holding the flashlight in my right hand. I stood there, confused by the strange feeling of not being in my own body. Remembering what happened next, I looked up to see the shadow of myself bolting at me. It was little more than a flash before I was hit in the chest, feeling as if a wrecking ball had slammed into me. I skidded into a wall and crumpled to the floor, wheezing in pain. As I tried to catch my breath, the figure stood above me.

It was me–the real me–but with the same hatred and anger I'd seen in the figment's eyes.

"You're so close, Tess." Came a new voice from my body, one I'd never heard until now.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you want from me…" I said, causing the other me to frown for a moment before anger rose into their face.

"Of course not," he said disappointedly, "you never know what to say. You're so comfortable when you're feeling helpless, feeling sad for yourself. You're comfortable when you let your family and friends die for you, giving them nothing in return. You think you're a good person, but really…" They stood on top of me, eyes glaring into mine as a new wave of shame flooded through me.

"You're more of a monster than I'll ever be. You should have left your friends out of this. You should have just found some place to quietly disappear and die. The only thing you know how to do is bring pain and death to the people around you. You're the monster here, not me." This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"S-Stop! Stop saying that! It's not true! I know it's not true! You're just… you're just…" Even as my words died, I grabbed them and pushed them off my chest, sending them to the ground as I stood on top of them. Like flipping a switch, I lost all control, punching the imposter who'd stolen my form. I screamed so loud it hurt as I felt the heat of the flames surrounding me again. Ignoring the fire, I continued whaling on the monster underneath me, losing all sense until one of my swings went into the open air.

Now on my back, I continued to scream and throw punches at nothing.

"Tess! Tess! Stop!" I heard faintly in my ear. It took me a moment to realize it was Oliver's voice. I opened my eyes, finding myself back in the basement of Gav's house again. A horrified looking Oliver was next to me, backing up to give me space. Whatever he'd seen, he looked terrified. I laid my head against the chair, catching my breath as my entire body went limp. Oliver had turned the light off, but the box continued to make the familiar humming sound of playing a memory.

"Tess? Are you okay? What…what happened?" He asked. Slowly, I moved to a sitting position, eyes scanning around the room before settling on the LED panel. Only a few lights had turned from red to green. A sinking feeling flooded my chest. I'd barely done anything. My vision moved to Oliver, who looked slightly concerned, but mostly upset.

"You turned the Guardrails off, didn't you?" He asked. Wiping the tears away as they rose in my eyes, I nodded.

"I did…I'm sorry, but I needed to–""–what?" He asked sternly, cutting me off.

"Risk your life? What if I didn't show up? What would have happened to you?"

"I don't know, but…I had to try, Oliver, we weren't getting anywhere and I needed to try."

"And you couldn't trust me to be here with you?" He asked, incredulous.

"Maybe you could have asked. Maybe you could have told me what you were planning and I could have been here to stop it before it got bad. You could have died in there for all we know, and for what?" He said, pointing at the LED panel.

"Barely anything!"

"I had to try, Oliver!"

"No, you didn't! You could have just let this go. We could have cut our losses and figured something else out. You're so focused on finding these people that abandoned you. Remember that? These people cast you out on your own and you're choosing them over your friends? The people that love you? You'd risk your life to get in contact with these pieces of shit when you have people right here who took you in and called you family? If you'd choose them over me, then fine, get back in there.

I'll turn the light on and leave, and you'll figure it out from there. I'm not willing to deal with any more losses tonight."

"Oliver, I'm sorry…I never…I never looked at it that way…" I gulped, holding back more tears.

"I didn't mean to make you feel like…wait…what losses?" He didn't say anything for a moment, instead swallowing. A sad look crossed his face just before he turned away from me.

"They, um…they didn't make it. Either the fire or…a collapse or…something."

"No…" I said quickly, heartbeats ringing in my ears. The world felt like it was spinning underneath me as I gripped the side of the chair.

"I… I saved them… I pulled them away from it… they shouldn't have…" Oliver turned away from me, crossing his arms and looking up at the small window at the top of the basement wall. I felt like I was about to faint. None of that incident should have happened. It should have been me. All they were trying to do was help me. My thoughts raced together in a shapeless, colorless blur as I ran through everything I could have done and should have done differently.

The people–my friends–who'd done everything they could to help… I'd lost them. I'd just left them. I remembered John, looking at him from the other side of the flames. I'd left Gav and Emily behind the same way I had with John. I couldn't think, I couldn't breathe. I couldn't… understand how Oliver had learned this information. I blinked, looking over at him. Oliver couldn't have learned about that information, not yet. Everything had happened too recently.

Even if there was news about it, it would all be surface level, and if there was a collapse, someone would have found their bodies and reported the details more clearly. Taking another deep breath, I felt my body calm down, anxiety slowly purging itself from me as my beating hearts slowed to a normal rate. Not saying a word, Oliver continued to look out the window.

"That was a mean trick." I said quietly.

"I'm sorry." A familiar voice answered. It wasn't Oliver's or John's. It was the same voice coming out of my body from when we had swapped. A pair of hands grabbed the wheels of the chair, turning it until I saw myself, but with a few different features. The person stood, placing his hands behind his back and looking at me. I slid off the chair, standing only a couple of feet away. It was still me…but he was a little shorter, hips thinner at the sides, and no wound on his ear like mine.

"Who… are you?" I softly asked. He looked at the floor for a moment, then back up at me before taking a few steps forward and placing a hand on my shoulder. For whatever reason, I didn't feel any fear toward him. I just wanted to know the whole story. As his hand touched my shoulder, the basement disappeared, the world morphing around us into something much darker, much colder. Soon we were both standing in the snow, and just to my left was the smoldering remains of the farm house.

Both of us turned to look at it, his arm still on my shoulder.

"I'm you, Tess…the other you. I'm the you in your head that speaks out when you need someone to talk to, to give you advice." I turned to face him as he kept surveying the remnants of the house.

"Can you please just…tell me why?"

"I remember very little about before. The memories I have are just…too much. You were better off forgetting, so I made you forget. I made us forget." He answered, as if it were the most logical response.

"But why all this?" I asked, turning him to face me. He looked up at me, giving his own, curious smile. It felt strange to speak to someone who actually looked like me instead of someone who was a human.

"Yeah, it's kind of weird…isn't it?" He said, as if considering it himself. My head tilted slightly.

"What?"

"Speaking to each other like this…I admit, it feels weird to me, too." He responded. I narrowed my gaze.

"You didn't answer me." He sighed.

"I knew you wouldn't stop trying. I'd locked those memories and feelings away. I never wanted them to come back to the surface, but you kept pushing, wanting to go forward, so I decided to help. Unfortunately, your friends caught on, but instead of seeing it as helpful, they saw it all as a threat."

"Why didn't you just say that, then?" He shook his head.

"You wanted to be told, but I can't tell you emotions. I can't tell you feelings…not really, anyway. If you wanted answers, you needed to feel it…so I had to become…that…in order to make you feel it."

"Feel what, though?"

"You needed to experience the emotions that are in that memory." He answered.

"How…how do you know what's in it, though? That memory is from someone else." I pointed out.

"Yeah." He agreed, nodding.

"I remembered what was happening, though, and I knew what he would have been feeling in those moments."

"He?" I asked. He nodded again.

"Dad." We both fell silent, looking at each other, unsure what to say. Slowly, I felt myself sitting down in the snow, trying to wrap my head around everything. The final memory was from my dad…and whatever happened, it must have been something horrible.

"I'm sorry I had to put you through all of this." He said, sitting down next to me, arms gently wrapping around me in a hug.

"I just hope it's enough…" I answered.

"If not, I don't really know what else we can do, but you can always reach out and talk to me. I'm always here." I frowned.

"How would I do that?"

"We talk all the time, Tess, but normally, I'm here." He said, reaching out and holding my hand.

"You're in my hands?" I raised an eyebrow. He laughed.

"No, no, I speak from here. When you play your instruments, that's me, speaking to you. When you feel those emotions, when you hear those thoughts that interrupt your thinking, that's you feeling what I'm feeling. I talk to you when you play, but when you sing, that's all you. That's how we talk to each other." He gave my hand a soft squeeze.

"I've…always felt like they've had a mind of their own." I gave a small smile at the thought. He nodded.

"Well, now you know why." I sighed.

"So, what do we do now?"

"Well, I, uh, wanted to give you something." He said with a smile.

"What do you…uh, what could you give me?" I blinked, confused about how my subconscious could give me something.

"A song." He said.

"You want to give me…a song?" I confirmed, still unsure what he meant.

"It's the song mom used to sing to you. I wanted to show you, but I couldn't. It was tied too closely with all those other emotions, but now that those are out, there's no reason I can't show you." He cleared his throat and started to sing. There were no words, only notes, but as the song began, I felt my emotions change. They swirled into something safe, comfortable, loved, and all of them overtook me simultaneously. I started to cry as I turned my head toward the smoldering building again.

Smoke billowed to the heavens as the emotions continued to wash over and crash into me. I remembered her… or at least, I remembered how it felt to be with her. I barely even noticed his song changing from his voice to the sound of an acoustic guitar. As I looked back at him, I realized he was gone. Instead, a guitar was in my hands, and they continued the song he'd been singing. I closed my eyes and sang along, remembering what it was like to be around her.

The song seemed to overpower the world around me, melting the snow away as the building disappeared into a familiar, white void. However, the guitar stayed with me, the white void flicking as I let this beautiful song fill my hearts. I forgot about everything else and simply let the emotions run through me. Somewhere in my peripheral vision, I could see the basement around me and the blinding white light just above me. It took all my strength, but I reached up, and with a flick of the switch, the light disappeared.

The void was gone. The guitar was gone. Despite everything in my vision leaving me, the emotions stayed lodged deep in my hearts. I felt warm, I felt loved. I felt like everything was going to be okay. As I slowly lifted myself up, I took a moment to truly refocus on my surroundings to make sure everything was real. Satisfied, my vision found the LED wall with a board entirely lit with green lights. The computer sitting next to it showed a loading screen as it compiled the memory in a way I'd be able to see it.

I slumped forward and cried in relief, overwhelmed by everything I'd just seen and felt. Unaware of how much time passed, I only occasionally managed to let my gaze drift up to the loading bar, seeing its progress each time. It seemed impossible, but we'd done it. We did it. A smile crept onto my face as the tears finally stopped. We did it. Just as I was about to hop out of the chair, I heard something outside the house. The front door squeaked open, my head quickly craning to the ceiling in response.

I was about to call out to Oliver when I stopped myself. I heard footsteps above me. Two pairs of footsteps.