#anyway I hate lineart why did I even attempt to line here this was true agony

[arrimorr]

Envy

[bullymagnet]

DAY SEVEN: Hallways

WELL... i’m a little late on this one. but whatever! 

FINAL DAY! EXCEPT NOT REALLY! a story about a world where soulmates are connected through their dreams by hallways. soulmates can pass through these hallways, but to their mates, they’ll always appear invisible in this dreaming world unless they’ve met once in the waking world. max and johnny are in this one.

               This idiot’s found a hallway into your dreams again.

               That’s the only commentary your mind makes as a mid-sized sedan goes floating lazily past your head, slow enough for you to pick out the graffiti written on its side: “EAT QUARTERS DAILY.”

               … You’re sure that said something meaningful at one point, like “EAT A BUTT,” or “xxx-xxxx CALL ME,” but you’ve “known” them for years and your… friend doesn’t seem to get that writing in dreams changes like the wind and you’ve almost never been able to read one of their messages as they intended.

               Over what sounds like an intercom across the city streets you’ve found yourself in, a bootleg MIDI rendition of Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up begins to play.

               … Then again. That’s probably not very important to them.

               “Son of a mother,” you whisper, rubbing your temples in attempt not to completely lose it. “You have rick rolled me for the last time.”

               Kicking and punching your way through a spontaneously manifested pile of packing-peanut filled boxes blocking the sidewalk, you take a moment to give a scoff of fatigued laughter about your situation.

               Hallways into each other’s dreams, they all say.

              If you have a soulmate, then you’ll have these hallways. The appear through doors, windows, mirrors, swimming pools, Looney Tunes-esque holes- just about any classical or non-classical means of going through could potentially lead to a hallway into the sleeping mind of your soulmate.

               Even though there’s a hallway in every dream you have, they can be hard to find, so it’s pretty rare that you bother seeking them out and slipping in to visit your soulmate. Not nearly as often as they come through your side.

               You’ve never seen or heard them- that’s just how the connection works. If you meet them in the real world at least once, you’ll be able to. But if that doesn’t happen, the only dream traces of your soulmate when they come through the hallway are the colored footprints they leave…

               And the stupid things they do.  

               You bust through into an unpopulated storefront after being up to your ankles in ball-pit balls outside. It’s dim inside and mostly empty, but this is the place you’ve decided houses the controls for the intercom system. You briskly walk across the music-room-esque carpet and hop the counter to the computer, shutting off the grating music echoing through the streets as quickly as possible.

               Now… Well, they can’t hear your voice, so yelling over the intercom would do nothing. Sighing, you just type out a message for them on the keyboard. It follows:

               HEY IDIOT. WHY DON’T YOU MAKE LIKE A TREE AND FIND THE NEAREST DOOR, GET YOUR BUTT BACK THROUGH THAT HALLWAY AND GET OUT OF MY DREAMS. I’M IN A NEW TOWN, TOMORROW IS MY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, AND I HAVE A LOT ON MY PLATE AS IT IS. HUGS AND KISSES, YOUR SOULMATE. PS STOP RICK ROLLING ME AND FIND A NEW MEME.

               You press enter, and you can hear the echoing voice of Microsoft Sam reading your message back to you out in the streets.

              You cross your arms and lean back. But the moment you relax, you hear a door swing open behind you. You turn to face it, and see a quick-fading trail of red footprints come through. The prankster themself.

               They stop for a moment, probably disoriented by the storefront you made up about three seconds ago, and probably by you. They take a step toward you, pause, and then a CD case materializes in front of where you imagine their face would be. It clatters to the floor, and they dash, leaving a hand print on the front desk as they book it toward the front doors.

               The doors swing open, and then close, and about five seconds later, a massive pile of snow comes down from the heavens, effectively snowing you in.

               God you hate them.

              You begrudgingly note, with a strange feeling in your heart, that you know you won’t, eventually, because that’s… also how this works. But for now. Yes.

               You turn around, shaking your head, and go to check out the CD case they left for you. You can’t make it out in the dark, so you scoop it up and squint down on it.

              On it is a terribly drawn spiky-haired smiling character that you sometimes see them draw, and an incomprehensible jumble of words that now says, “∞ SONGS?!???? ASTLEY.? beeb”  and must have at one point said something along the lines of, “RICK ASTLEY’S GREATEST HIT, BUT A LOT” because all else that’s on the CD case is a photo of Astley himself, winking sagely up at you.

               You wearily look up, studying the wall.

               You Cannot Imagine What Is On This CD.

               Your next morning is terrible.

               Apart from landing on a jerk’s face on your way to your first day of school, you woke up super late, you fell down the stairs a little, and you’re pretty sure all you managed to grab for breakfast was a can of soup and a bag of Pomegranate Thangs.

               But hey let’s get back to that landing on a jerk’s face thing right that part sounds interesting.

               The aforementioned jerk stands in front of you on the cracked sidewalk, miraculously alive and with a face covered in what you would assume was a tire track if you didn’t know it was the distinct imprint of your very own scooter, having indented his face not a minute ago. … Listen, you were texting while scooting, there’s a lot of ledges in this town… it’s actually a lot easier to accomplish than you’d think. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Well, you’re not, you feel pretty alright, but—

               “Okay kid,” the strange boy begins. “Listen up.” And you mutter under your breath that your name isn’t kid, it’s Max, but he doesn’t seem like the listening type.

              “You just landed on a very important face. Johnny’s face,” he goes on, and your brain takes special note of his name like it’s marking it off a grocery list. “My face.”

               He just keeps right on talking after that, but you kind of zone out to take him in. You’re probably not missing much. You’re pretty sure he fits right into the Bully character archetype.

               His hair is red. Bright red, and you’d say that it seemed kind of familiar, but you’re not psychic apart from the fact that your subconscious mind is forever linked to another human being’s. Your gay little brain says he’s handsome and you figure that’s true but would be more true if he wasn’t being so immediately intolerable in this moment. But it’s not that he’s drop-dead gorgeous or that he’s the most interesting man in the world, it’s something that you don’t quite knowingly notice but the narrative does. That you’re experiencing a kind of déjà vu that isn’t dizzying or vexing like it typically should be.

               That the moment you saw Johnny, you felt something unlock in your subconscious.

               … You think he just said he’s going to beat you up if you don’t give him 50 cents.

               It’s a strange two days that follows. You don’t get to sleep in the night that connects them.

              This school, this town- it’s like their culture, their social nuance, their infrastructure is just a few pixels askew from the lineart layer of reality. And in your first two round days here, you feel yourself sinking into the swamp of madness that is Mayview.

              Just about everyone you meet fits right into that madness, even the few “friends” that you make. But none of them seem to take quite as much utter glee out of being an agent of chaos as that Johnny.

              He does end up beating you up. Well, after an entire day of running away from him, you rise to his challenge… and then quickly un-rise. He beats you into the ground, essentially. That Bully archetype came with some pretty brute strength.

              He does give you a “life lesson” afterward, though.

              “Why take the maze,” he energetically asks, with shining eyes, as you wonder how many bruises you’ll be left with. “When you can bust on through the walls?”

              And it’s that lesson, his praise of your deciding to roll up your sleeves and accept his challenge to get beat up by him, and the special language of game-breaking logic that he seems to write and live by… that all seem intimately familiar to you. You’re not sure why.

              You think that’s probably because you’re already resigning yourself to a very long and very tiring fight-avoiding school year.

              He also breaks your scooter.

              The bulk of your second day goes off with about the level of interesting content you would expect in and that would likely be discussed at length had this story been a different medium and genre and universe.

              Though extracurriculars don’t hold you up until twilight like they did the first day, and housekeeping doesn’t hold you up indefinitely like the first night, you’re a pretty popular dude, and it’s not until about 3 AM that you manage to get the opportunity to sleep.

              But once you do, you’re out like a light.

               The vineyard you find yourself on is surrounded on all sides by thick, coniferous forest that seems to go on forever, but you can still taste the salt water in the air, and you can hear the waves and the seagulls of a beach that doesn’t seem to exist. You’re quick to realize it’s a dream.

               You get to your feet and brush the sand off your clothes, ducking under a low-hanging grape vine. You can see a beach house up ahead, and without much else to do but wander the acre of grape trellises sticking up out of the sand, you head toward it.

               The front door is unlocked when you reach the porch, so you walk into the house. Inside, the lights are off but it’s illuminated just fine by the daylight streaming in.

               You meander through the nautical-themed building. Nobody’s home. It’s not typical for you to be swarmed with dream characters in lucid dreams anyways. For now, you see what kind of interesting stuff is around here.

               After several rooms of treasure chests and seashell-covered guest beds alike, you walk by a rose-colored open door with a gaping wardrobe in the room inside. The wardrobe wouldn’t be so remarkable, though, without the homage that lies inside its open maw. There’s a hallway in there that breaks the laws of space. Your soulmate’s hallway. And so obvious, too.

               You cautiously walk into the room. Apart from the wardrobe and a screen door leading out onto the beach house’s back deck, it seems to be pretty empty. You approach the hallway wardrobe and peer inside. The wood floor is waxed and the tacky wallpaper is the same the whole way to the end. And there, down about twenty or thirty feet, is the open door of your soulmate’s mind. Green sky and yellow clouds.

               You can’t help but smile a bit and snort. Oh boy. They’ve been through here. Prepare for trouble.

               Turning around, you breathe to nobody in particular, “Guess I have…”

               You trail off. Turns out you failed a perception check and the room isn’t quite as empty as you thought it was. In the other half of the room, standing awkwardly in the middle of the dusty floor holding a boombox, is Johnny.

               “… Guests,” you lamely finish.

              He’s dressed in boxers and a Superman shirt, and he’s staring unblinkingly at you. He drops the boombox in his arms and it fizzles out of existence. He is very still.

              “Oh, great,” you mutter, bemused. Make it double. “Like I needed a Johnny on top of this.”

              He furrows his brows and breathes something, a one word question that you can’t make out from across the room. Wow, you’ve never seen the real him think this hard. The way he looks at you… it’s strange.

               Whatever. Dream characters are always weird. Johnny is extra weird.

               Deciding to clear the area before things kick off, you make a casual beeline for the screen door and the deck beyond it. From the corner of your eye, the dream Johnny tenses up the moment you begin taking steps again.

               “H-Hey. Hey!” You glance back. He steps toward you hesitantly. His eyes are locked on you and the ground behind you like homing missiles or something. “Max… Who’s dreamin’ about you?!”

               “No one’s dreaming about me,” you sigh, almost automatically. “I’m dreaming.”

               And you keep walking.

               And you stop walking.

               That question. That’s a really specific question. You pause in front of the door for a moment, just thinking, before looking over at him. He’s still gaping at you. His eyes are as wide as saucers and intense. You turn to face him fully, and squint.

               There on the floor, where he’d just taken a few steps toward you, are several fading red footprints.

               Nope. No way.

               Your thoughts are racing, but your words come out almost calm, however firm. “Johnny… are you a dream character?”

               His eye twitches. He sort of absentmindedly grabs the sides of his boxers in his fists. “Wh-what’s that mean?”

               You inhale and exhale.

               “Johnny,” you begin again, very slowly and very carefully. You take a few steps toward him. “Where did you come from.”

               Bit by bit, like his body is lagging behind his mind, he raises his arm and gestures over your shoulder with his finger, pointing toward the rose-motif wardrobe and the plain, stretching hallway within.

               And he says, confused and mystified like he’s unraveling a riddle and as his wide eyes seem to take the whole of you in like this, right here, is the first time he’s actually seeing you, “The hallway.”

               The hallway.

               Johnny, the boy you met by nearly concussing with a metal scooter. Johnny, who chased you three blocks down Mayview trying to beat the snot out of you, one as a member of a human totem pole. Who later beat the snot out of you (not as a member of a human totem pole). Who not only gave you change for the money he extorted and advice after he beat the snot out of you, but advice that you employed. Who is vexingly somehow the most irritating being you think you’ve met to date, but whose powers of frustration never stopped you from considering him handsome. Johnny, the energetic boy with the loud gang and the loud red hair and the fictionally golden eyes and the devious smile who may as well be the human equivalent of a far-too-hyper inferno.

              Johnny came through the hallway.

              Johnny’s your soulmate.

              You’ve gotta be kidding you.