It was a pleasant spring morning.
The birds were chirping, flowers were blooming, and the students of the Electi Rehabilitation Academy were flooding the halls, talking about this or that. A mildly tall, blonde haired student exited dorm 13 in what felt like forever, blaming his hermit-like activity to the mountain of schoolwork given to him by his “very considerate” lecturer. He patted himself to make sure he didn’t forget any of his belongings in his dorm, as he often had the habit of doing: Notepad - check, phone - check, wallet - Hm…
…wallet…
He left the hall, and a few seconds afterwards, came back out with wallet in pocket. He was ready to finally go out of his room and have some well-deserved rest and relaxation.
“Hey, dude!” said a voice in the hall. He looked, and saw one of his oldest friends from the school. “Finally out of that cave, are ya?”
“Oh, fuck off,” he answered, “you know that Mr. West is relentless with his exercises.”
“You know he doesn’t even check them, right?”
“I know, I know, but like…” he realized he didn’t actually think of a way to finish that sentence, “just wanted to get it done with, I guess.”
“Couldn’t imagine actually caring about social studies, but off you go.”
His friend could best be described as “looking like a 90s brooklyn mobster;” he had mildly short black hair, wore a leather jacket with a button-up shirt that wasn’t quite his size, ripped long black jeans, and wasn’t particularly blessed in the height nor slimness departments.
“What are you up to, anyways?” he asked, leaning on the wall next to him.
“Well, I think you’ve noticed I haven’t been leaving the room all too much in the past few days.”
“Kind of hard not to.”
“So I’ve been thinking I’d just… go outside to the garden and relax.”
His friend looked at him with a bewildered expression. “Really? That’s how you want to cool off? Not like, go out?”
The blonde looked out of the window. “I don’t know, I just feel like it’ll… relax me, you know?”
“Yeah, yeah,” said the shorter one dismissively. “I will never, for the life of me, understand what your preoccupation is with the school garden.”
“Hey, I just like trees.” He liked nature as far as he could remember himself, so it was still a surprise that his black-headed pal kept being surprised time and time again by this fact. The boy didn’t consider himself too deep of a person, so if you’d know something about him it would be his unreasonable likeness to grass and other earthly surfaces.
“I didn’t take you for a hippie, man, but whatever makes you happy. I’m gonna go ahead, don’t have too much fun there eh?”
“Yeah yeah, see you later.” He waved him off and continued to the door.
The gardens are a pleasant change of scenery for students that are often either stuck in class or in their dorm, a habit he could crown himself as the poster boy for. Grass, trees, bushes, places to sit on for five minutes and walk off, great stuff.
The blonde walked over to his usual spot and sat down under the morning skies, taking in the mundane scenery; an incredibly well maintained and beautiful garden stretched in front of him, decorated with trees of various sizes and colors, well-trimmed hedges, and a large patch of grass to sit on and relax in.
There were less people outside than there were inside, with only a handful of students visible. Of those students, he could make out James, sitting on the grass eating half of a roast-beef sandwich, Leaf, sitting alongside him without a meal, frosting his paws off, and Splats, loudly announcing her latest escapades to the two listeners, not caring whether they were actually listening to her.
The tired kid had a… thing, for Splats. Most of the school did, really. Everyone could recognize her green beanie. She usually wore her green jacket, open to expose some kind of revealing crop top or straight out sports bra, there was probably never a day her midriff wasn’t exposed. A pair of black spats with an orange stripe, and a pair of the ugliest magenta shoes he had ever seen. She wasn’t his tastes, he’d rather listen to nails on a chalkboard than deal with her vicious personality, but for some reason she just attracted him in many ways he would rather die than admit. He wasn’t sure whether it was just a casual crush or something more, considering it was an intense feeling, but he only felt it whenever she was in his sight. On the other hand, looking at Splats and the other two munching away, it seemed like everything around her was more… Vivid, would be the word. The flowers bloomed with more intensity, the grass felt like it was greener and more detailed, and even just they looked like they were “more alive” than anyone else at the school.
He was jealous. He looked at himself, and he looked just like anyone else. Tired, going about their day, wearing something not particularly eye-catching. These guys always seemed like they had something going on.
Just after he finished that thought, the dorm-building door was flung open by a blue-colored, metal humanoid that had blue hair for… some reason, probably to resemble the likeness of a student. That’s the best explanation he’d be getting, he assumed, so he didn’t quite question it. ERA had weirder things than robots. The robot exclaimed something about how the door was closed shut with “[a] GIANT LOG CLOGGING THE DOOR HANDLES” and demanded to know who it was. Splats responded with a mocking gesture, saying she set it up an hour ago. The robot seemed to glow in some aura, an-
Wait, log? He just came through that very same door a few minutes ago. There wasn’t a log there, as far as he could remember, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to open the door, no? He didn’t consider himself particularly strong, especially when compared to a hulking metal contraption. But on the other hand, Splats said that the door had been clogged for over an hour, and he didn’t see her put the log there while he was sitting, so it’d make the most sense if the log was there before he got there. Yeah, that made sense.. He was starting to remember seeing a piece of wood blocking the door, so he might have just misremember- wait what?! How could he remember a log blocking the door if he went through it? How did that make sense?
The robot left the half-broken door and was now getting into a heated argument with the hot redhead, but at this point the blonde was more concerned about the giant leap in memory he just bore witness to.
‘I guess this is just some sort of prank,’ he thought to himself, ‘someone else just placed it and Splats took the credit for it. Yeah, that’d be it. That makes sense. I’ll just go over to the door and see who it was.’ He was being rational, of course, because otherwise it’d mean that either his brain or reality were making shit up as they were going along, and it couldn’t be reality because it’s reality, and it wasn’t him because… because it isn’t. Can’t be.
He got up from his spot and walked over to the door, hoping to ask whoever it was that did that practical joke how did they do it so quickly. He looked around the door, and there didn’t seem to be any hiding spot nearby. ‘Maybe they’re behind the log,’ he pondered, so he looked at
the
log
.
.
.
The log was gone. The gigantic, wooden log that apparently blocked the door and now was smashed to bits by a wannabe metal sonic was just not there. He looked around, and not only were there no scraps of wood either, the door seemed like it had never been bent by the robot’s push.
‘Ok, ok, ok! This is… I… It’s fine!’ he assured himself. He’ll just go back to the robot, and make sure that it did indeed smash that log, because it was either that or he’s been plagued with the worst case of dementia in the school.
He turned back to the gang, who had already left their picnic area and were walking to the main building, an aura of beauty and luster still encompassing them.
The blonde started power-walking over to the gang, when he noticed that James waved the others goodbye, and started walking back to the dorms in his direction. Great! He started thinking of what to ask James, and when he opened his mouth to ask the shaggily shaven boy - James just walked through him. Just… straight past him, as if he was never there. As if he was just so unimportant, he could choose to ignore his entire physical existence and keep on with his business.
After a few solid seconds of complete shock and terror, the boy looked at James, and noticed that he, too, had the aura that Splats did. W-what?? Was he gay now, too? Wait, no, shut up, not the time to think about that. Why was James of all people entranced in this aura of cleanliness? He wasn’t attracted to James in the slightest - he looked like a poorly-shaven hobo - but James seemed to have some aura where everything around him was more detailed. Around James, the grass blew and the ground had color and vibrance. Away from James, the grass had…
It- it had…
What, did the grass, have…
‘Nothing?!’
The grass was just indescribable. It was grass, surely, and it was green he presumed, but beyond that he couldn’t tell you how it was. Texture! He could describe the texture! The blonde bent over to the grass, touched it, and did not feel anything. The grass did not touch his hands. That’s a lie, he was touching it, but he wasn’t… he couldn’t feel heat, cold, he didn’t feel the grass blades scraping against his skin, the moisture from the sprinklers, the dryness from a lack of sprinklers, nothing.
When not around James, the objects were nothing.
He looked back in panic at the rest, to warn them of the technomancer’s latent Electi god-abilities, and noticed that the aura still followed them. It wasn’t James, it was their ‘gang’ of sorts. The interesting kids, the more popular and really unpopular kids, the ones who had their own style that somehow stood out for one reason or another - they were dictating reality with their presence.
‘No, no, no,’ something told him, ‘you’re just overreacting. It wouldn’t make sense for us to just house multiple reality “anchors” in the school.’ It wouldn’t.
And it doesn’t. You’d think it would be obvious when reality itself appeared prettier- real-er even around certain people but until now it was never this… surreal. Until now people didn’t pass through him or reality didn’t shift to correlate to what these anchors claimed to have happened- he could feel things that weren’t around these people… right?
The blonde shook his head. This is getting a little too much, the details didn’t matter as much anymore now that reality was seemingly breaking down at his feet. He had to talk to someone, anyone- of course! His best friend, the one he bantered with before reality began to crumble, if he’s quick he could still catch him before he disappeared to wherever he was going.
He turned heel and dashed back into the dorm building, opening the door with relative ease, half expecting that log to make a comeback for whatever reason. He could still see the effects of James passing here - the hallways didn’t look as bleak as they previously had when he passed here before, or maybe he was in the presence of yet another one of the anchors- none that he could see for now at least.
After an amount of walking that felt serviceable to his expectation of when he would find his friend, the blonde could spot him. He walked up to him with a huff.
“Hey, man- fuck you are not going to believe what just happened.” The blonde said without breath, holding his knees and letting his body recover from the most physical activity he had… ever?
“What happened mate? I warned you to not have too much fun.” The boy snarked, to the surprise of the blonde, with no movement whatsoever.
“Shut up man, I’m serious. Something freaky is going on.” He turned his head to gaze upward at his friend, only to wish he never looked up from the floor.
He looked as he always did. His boots were out of style, his jeans ripped right in the spot you’d assume every ripped jeans would. A jacket he found extremely dull yet something in him told him it was old-school and his face.. for a mere second-
Was completely featureless.
He couldn’t even recall how he looked like in the first place, and it only now occurred to him that he only referred to his best friend in general pronouns.
What’s his name? Jake. His name is Jake, but why did it feel like only now he got that information?
What of his Electi ability? Stretchy limbs, of course. How could he forget that? He didn’t. He never did, that fact was as clear as day to him, but up until now that he noticed Jake was holding a drink he didn’t have before with his noodle arm, he never saw him use that ability. Yet his mind told him he always did.
Certain details about the wannabe punk began to spring to his attention. His greasy hair, the cheap perfume, the music he listens to that he could never stand- but it was never there before.
Yet it feels like it always has been. Just like that log on the door.
Other questions began to pour into his head, along with unrelenting panic and fear. Who was he? What was his name? What was his own Electi ability that got him into this academy? How did he get in here? Where did he come from?
How come he never questioned these things until this very moment?
He knew the more he thought about these questions that the answers would come to him, but he couldn’t let that happen. He clenched unto this sliver of uncertainty and took off into the hallway with his thoughts screaming at him.
“H-Hey, what’s wrong? L-“ Jake started but it was too late for his voice to reach the blonde. He ran. He had to, he couldn’t stay still and let whatever it is that’s fixing the world around him seal his mind in a real-fake bubble of reality.
For once in his life, he felt something real. Fear and panic aren’t the best emotions to genuinely feel for the first time in your life, but a small part of him that wasn’t screaming internally was glad for it.
In his crazed jog he bumped into another student, nearly causing the two of them to fall down to the floor. Before he could even apologize he realized that this student as well lacked a face like his friend Jake. He couldn’t stay still and question it. He didn’t bother apologizing either, not like they could hear it without ear holes in their fleshy ear shaped things.
He could feel his legs burning from the effort, the hallway never seemed to end, with turns taking him to more stretches of halls that lost detail with each turn he took, outrunning the world that was trying to catch up with him, seemingly as confused as he was.
First, the decorations were gone.
Then, the doors and windows,
the lines in the flooring,
the walls,
the faceless students,
And then finally,