CH. 5 - Return to Reality
Everything is black but only for a moment before Michael begins to open his eyes. He hears someone calling out his name as he opens his eyes. He realizes he’s looking up to the roof of this place. He sees Kevin lean over him but he looks different. He looks younger, with freckles and slightly shorter hair.
“Dang man, I didn’t realize I hit you that hard.”
He opens his eyes fully, laying on his back in the school gymnasium. He too is back to his true self, 13 years old. Kevin walks over him holding a dodgeball. They’re both in their physical education uniforms.
“What happened?”
He sits up rubbing his head.
“Well, I kinda hit you in the face with the ball… My bad!”
Michael gets an intense shocked look on his face.
“No! I mean with the explosion! And Francis!”
“Woah man, chill! Francis isn’t even in this class! What explosion?”
Michael stands with Kevin’s help. He looks confused. The PE teacher approaches them.
“Are you alright? Do you need to see the Nurse?”
“No, I’m… fine…”
We see a view of the whole school. It is fairly large. It is now the 4th day of highschool. Thursday, August 20th, 2032. Lunch Time. Kevin and Michael stand in line to get their lunches. Michael looks serious in thought.
“Hey man, you’ve been real quiet. Are you sure I didn’t hit you too hard?”
“No Kevin, I’m fine. It’s not that… I just feel like there’s something wrong here. That couldn’t have all been a dream…”
He then explains what he remembers of this fantasy world back to Kevin who doesn’t seem to remember anything. They walk out with their food.
“So we were like underground hitmen? Sweet, did I look cool?!”
Michael gives him an irritated look as they sit at a table.
“Hey guys!”
He looks up to see Jade walk up to them with her food. Jazmine behind her. Jazmine does not seem to be happy. She seems to be concerned. Michael notices this.
“Hey, Jazmine. Are you okay?”
She quickly snaps out of it.
“Yeah! Just… some bad test scores is all, haha!”
She smiles at him. He questioningly smiles back. A bell rings.
Cuts to Michael laying on his bed back at home after school, still thinking.
‘There’s no way it was all a dream… Something is going on here…’
He sits up, rubbing his face.
‘If it was a dream… am I awake now? It all felt so real. For months I lived life after life as if it were my own.’
He looks at his phone. He picks it up and looks at a few pictures of Jade, Kevin, Jazmine and himself all having fun.
‘They were for sure real so why don’t they remember?’
He stands up and puts on a jacket from his closet. He creeps out of his room quietly since it is so late. Before he leaves the house, he stops by the living room and sees his dad sleeping on the couch to TV. He smiles then leaves. As he’s walking down the street he begins to think some more. He remembers the blast of energy and bumping into Kevin before coming back here to the real world.
‘I guess I forgot too… Is it different this time? Was that blast of energy all it took? Why am I the only one who remembers?’
He remembers seeing the 3 of his friends hurt so badly in the last world.
‘They went through so much… Why did we go through all that?’
He walks down a sidewalk next to a river channel. He then slides down the grassy hillside into it and hops down in front of an entrance.
‘Ah, the old hideout.’
As he walks in he looks around to see a small room with some bean bags, a table with some chairs, a desk and a small fridge. There’s also lights hanging from the roof and posters on the walls.
‘I think it was a storage room for construction but was abandoned when they sealed off that door.’
He looks over to a cemented entrance. He stares for a moment before stepping back outside. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. It’s currently 1 am. He pauses but then texts Jade.
“Hey, are you up?”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“I wanna talk to you in person.”
“Okay, well wanna meet at the hideout? I can sneak out!”
“Sounds good! I’ll be there!”
Michael sits outside the entrance for a while as Jade walks up. It is now roughly 2 am.
“Hey Jade!” Michael calls out to her with a smile.
“Hey Michael!”
She smiles back as they soon walk into the hideout.
“Sooo what did you wanna talk about?” Jade asks.
“Well… has anything been… strange lately? Anything at all?”
Michael asks, looking a little embarrassed knowing full well that he might seem crazy at this point. Jade looks confused as she smiles.
“No, not really. Why? Has something been strange to you?”
“Heh… I guess you could say that. Let me ask you this, is this the real world?”
Michael asks directly. Jade is caught off guard by the question but not wanting to offend her friend, she answers honestly.
“Um… I think so? Now you’re making me doubt it haha!” She sweats nervously, trying to understand what he’s talking about.
“Sorry that’s not what I meant. Just, don’t think I’m crazy when I tell you this okay?”
She nods.
“I feel we’ve been living in this alternate reality or realities for the past 6 months or so. Like some kind of dream. And they always ended in horrible ways. I just want to make sure that we’re awake now. That this place is real.”
He explains, desperately trying to convey what he’s feeling without sounding genuinely insane. Jade looks concerned as Michael looks down, obviously upset by saying this, but then she comforts Michael.
“Look, I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about but I promise you this is real. I’m real. Everything is okay. We just started the first year of our highschool life so let’s forget everything from before and start new, okay?”
She holds his face in her hand and he smiles. Michael blushes as he leans into her hand a bit. Suddenly Kevin busts in through the curtain covering the entrance to the room.
“Yo!” He shouts.
“How did we know you’d be here at this hour?”
Jazmine asks, following behind him. Jade looks pleasantly surprised.
“What’re you guys doing here?”
Michael dashes past Jade while she says this.
“Well, Michael was acting distant all day. We knew he’d call you and you’d both be here. C’mon, it’s not like we met yesterday.”
Michael hugs Kevin behind Jazmine as she says this. They all laugh together, having snuck out on this cold night, enjoying the company and warmth of their friends. After a bit, Kevin decides to speak up.
“As much as I love talking to you guys, we shouldn’t stay long. It’s really late and cold! We should really get a door for this place…” He shivers and holds himself, looking at the entrance.
“Yeah, and I don’t want my parents to bust my ass about school tomorrow if they catch me out.”
Jazmine sighs. Kevin laughs as he walks out the entrance but is stopped when he bumps into something solid just beyond the curtain. It’s almost like the curtain has become hard so he pats it a bit. He looks confused for a moment as he pats it down before pulling the curtain to the side and looking up. His eyes grow wide as he shouts.
“WOAH! Guys we got a bit of a problem.”
He says as he turns away and is lifted by his collar from behind. A giant woman built like a tank covered in scars walks into the room with 2 more smaller punks following.
“Well well well. What do we got here?” One man says.
“Guys, that was three wells. Two more than I am comfortable with.” Kevin says as he hangs in the air by the woman’s grasp.
“It looks like some little babies are barging in on our turf.” The other man says.
“What’re you talking about?! This has been our place for years!” Michael shouts back.
“Aw well now it’s our place. Tell ‘em bruiser.”
The man says, looking at the woman. The big woman holding Kevin points at the entrance to leave.
“Guess it’s never that easy huh?”
Jade says as they stance up.
“I just wanna warn you, I didn’t stretch.”
Kevin says with a smirk when he suddenly grabs the woman’s wrist and swings himself over, landing a kick on the top of her head, hard enough to make her let go. Kevin lands and dashes back, calling for Jade and Michael to strike her with a duel punch to the chest making her go crashing out the doorway shoving the other two men with her. Michael blows on his fist.
“You should really get out of here. Cause this place is ours!”
He shouts, stomping out of the hideout. The four of them all stand together in front of the entrance. Jazmine stands behind them with a conflicted look, something unexpected seeing this.
‘As strong as ever I see…’ She thinks.
“Leave and never come back, got it?!” Michael shouts at them.
“Look, I know you brats are too young to understand, but we can’t just leave. Our master wants control of this whole neighborhood. If we don’t start going around making it clear who rules, we’re dead meat!” One man says, standing up.
“Master is far worse than anything you can imagine!”
The other man says, shivering a little. The big woman sniffles crying and nods. Michael’s face lights up as a smile spreads across his face.
“We can help you guys! We’re really strong for some 13 year olds. Tell us where your master is and we’ll go beat him up good.” He puts his fist in his hand, confidently.
“We can do things no one else can!” Jade adds, also excited by the idea.
“I don’t think you know who you’re messing with… He’s not human. You kids can’t beat him...”
The man says as he gets a vision of his boss as a shadow over him. Demonic, broken eyes, as inhuman as they come.
“Maybe not us but someone else could. We know plenty of strong adults. Just tell us and we’ll make sure he gets wiped off the face of the planet.”
Jazmine steps in, putting her hand on Michael’s shoulder trying to bring him in, reminding them that they are just kids.
“Really? You’d help us out even though we just came in and threatened you guys?”
One guy yells this in Jade’s face. She looks annoyed by this.
“Of course!” Michael says with a proud smile.
“Oh thank you thank you thank you!”
The guy starts shaking his hand aggressively. The big woman starts rubbing Kevin’s head in the background.
“Well we better go pack our bags. We’ll be out of here in no time. Bye guys!”
The other guy say as they wave and walk away.
“Are we seriously gonna help those guys? I mean they didn’t even give us a name or anything.”
Kevin points out. Michael, who was waving, stops abruptly and looks shocked. He yells, chasing after the group.
“Hey wait! We need his name!” He calls out at the rest of them just laugh at him.