Daniel couldn’t turn his alarm off.

Chains of air kept him bound atop the bed’s plaid yellow comforter, view locked on the rest of the bedroom. A digital clock buzzed from the nightstand beside his bed, below a familiar lamp, yet he couldn’t reach over to turn it off. He couldn’t even try, without any arms or a visible body, let alone the ability to move his head or even understand where he was.

It was a teenager’s bedroom. He could tell that much from the colorful yet blurry posters of familiar music artists and TV shows, and the desk strewn with overdue and neglected homework amidst the controller and game console monitor. A hazy fog floated over it all, blurring the carpeted ground and the landscape beyond the windows.

The door flew open. A woman paced across the room. “Still ain’t turned this damn thing off,” she muttered. “Yeah, Donald, I’m coming! Damn!”

She left the room equally as angry, but paused at the door. The fog obscured her face, yet her voice and that name sounded familiar, and her stance as she stood. It put him on edge. His mom stood in that same way at his door, the countless times she peered in to nag or ask him something.

Her shoulders sank as she waited at the door for longer, before finally closing it behind her. Daniel tried to touch his index and middle fingers to his thumb.

No hands.

And, without the ability to move his head, he couldn’t directly look at the alarm clock, either. But, from his peripheral vision, he could tell that those cryptic red lines weren’t numbers.

Because clocks are never correct in a dream.

His grasp on the foggy reality faltered, but he seized hold of his perception — if this was a dream and he knew, he could control it. He could give himself a body. He could feel the softness of the plush comforter. He could release the chains keeping him bound to the bed, and he could finally banish the fog obscuring the true details.

And Daniel stood up in his own bedroom.

This wasn’t just a random teenage room. The poster above his bed was for an artist he’d listened to right before going to sleep, and he recognized another from a show he tried explaining as Carmen showed him the version in the new dimension.

Birds chirped a bright morning song as the sun streamed through his blinds, and his eyes immediately darted to the broken blind on the window facing out from the front of the house.

Daniel glanced at the calendar — August 4th. It was accurate, despite the fact that he never updated it himself. He paced over to the front window. Sure enough, it was his street, exactly as he remembered. Below, a man and the same woman from before rushed down the driveway towards their car.

Mom. Dad.

He tried to scream, to shout, to bang against the glass, to let them know he was here. But, only silence left his mouth, and his hand phased through the window.

His grasp on the new reality slipped even more as he heard a distant ring. Heart pounding in his chest, Daniel spun to face his bedroom. The ringing intensified. He couldn’t leave now, not when he finally made it home.

Daniel scrambled for the desk, trying and failing to grab a pen and leave any hint at the fact that he was here. As the ringing became almost pounding against his brain, his eyes darted to his trash can, and the headline of the crumped newspaper inside.

Five students killed after I-57 police chase ends in crash with school bus.

He shot up in bed, covers moistened by sweat as he peeled them away from his skin, heart still pounding. Daniel reached over to turn his alarm off, but Raph stood in front of him, drawn back in surprise.

Raph raised his palms. “You good, bro? I was finna turn it off and wake you up, but you just—what’s going on with you?”

Daniel gulped. “I think I died.”

----------------------------------------

“And this is the clue we found under the bridge, but we can’t tell what the symbol’s supposed to mean,” Carmen said, handing the carved-out stone to Cedric.

Today, they’d decided to meet up for breakfast at a local bakery, and all sat outside with pastries, bread, and plenty of orange juice.

While Carmen caught everyone else up on their progress tracking down Eternite, Daniel could only sit aside while she explained it. It was his mission, but the dream still looped in his brain.

As Cedric pushed his glasses up and squinted at the symbol engraved on the rock, Daniel’s mind was elsewhere. A part of him didn’t want to believe the details he’d gleaned. He checked his phone again, just to make sure he wasn’t crazy, and sure enough, the date was August 4th.

Two months had passed since the day he arrived in this new world, and time was still passing back home.

The newspaper article haunted him even more. Five students killed after I-57 police chase ends in crash with school bus. He shivered. The last thing he remembered from back home was falling asleep on the bus. Police chases happened all the time there — Chicago wasn’t exactly known for its peace. But was that his bus in the crash?

Was he dead?

“...huh, Daniel?”

Daniel perked up. Around the table, everyone watched him for a reply. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, what? I wasn’t listening.”

“I was saying,” Cedric said. “You’re chasing down a real conspiracy, huh, Daniel?”

“Uh…yeah. Whoops,” he laughed. But, to his side, he noticed Carmen tilt her head slightly as she watched him. “Why, did you find something out?”

“Well, I went through a real conspiracy theorist phase back when I was serious about Fighting.”

“Oh, yes,” Mr. Stone said, sighing. He sipped his orange juice. “I particularly remember the conversation where you tried convincing me that birds were a creation of our government.”

Raph cackled, and Cedirc sheepishly scratched the top of his bald head. “Yeah…I had to keep my mind busy somehow, so I took to pondering unanswered questions about our society. This symbol seems familiar to something I studied.”

“Are you about to convince my students that this symbol is proof of the Illuminati’s existence?”

“No. They weren’t called the Illuminati, anyway. There exist historical writings that hint at the existence of L'Ordre du Chevalet, the Order of the Easel, a mysterious group of artists with vague goals of preserving the lives of those they deemed worthy of the future.”

“Maybe whatever guy made that painting’s part of their group,” Rafiq said.

“Well, technically, there’s no historical record of their members. But…what did you say came up when you tried looking the symbol up?”

“Just a bunch of other old paintings,” Daniel said, opening his phone and navigating to his recent search. When he looked up Eternite’s painting, a list of other paintings came up as similar matches, for whatever reason.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Cedric squinted at his phone screen. He gasped and pinched to zoom in. “Tell me what you see right there.”

Daniel leaned over so Carmen could see, purposefully leaning against her shoulder. It was a painting of Marie Antoinette being led to her execution. In the part where Cedric had zoomed in, the exact same symbol as carved into the rock sat drawn on the side of a crate, slightly darker than its surroundings.

“Is that in the other results, too?! This might be how they marked their members!” Carmen exclaimed.

“Oh, yeah!” Daniel swiped over to another result, and sure enough, found the same tiny symbol in a cloud. “So, what, are we gonna have to play the world’s longest game of I Spy to find the next clue?”

Mr. Stone winced. “I don’t think we’d have enough time. But, here’s an alternative idea. Cedric, were there any locations important to this Order of the Easel?”

“Nowhere obvious, but…” She frowned. “It looks like the Church of Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs was pretty important to all five of these artists. Like, for this guy, there’s recorded diary writings from his wife that translate from French to her wondering why he’s always going there in the afternoon.”

“Really?” Raph scoffed. “Now, if that ain’t the most obvious clubhouse flag I ever heard, nothing is. I’m betting that’s where Eternite is!”

“Maybe, but I don’t wanna go find out yet.” Daniel pushed a grape around on his plate with his fork. “I still want to train up some more before I go take him down. Probably on Friday, ‘cause I don’t think I’m ready yet.”

“Yeah, me too,” Carmen said. “I want to practice before I try to get into Stylus’s gala.”

Mr. Stone nodded. “It’s better that you underestimate your own ability and strive to improve, rather than overestimating yourself and finding out the hard way.”

Raph averted his eyes, clearing his throat.

“But, if you all plan on waiting until Friday to challenge your targets, you do have to realize that will be our last day,” Mr. Stone continued. “You might not each have another chance to challenge another Fighter before we have to go.”

Daniel’s eyes drifted to a nearby roof. Two women shouted at each other in French, and, a moment later, the referee appeared between them, marking the start of their Fight. Mr. Stone was right, but he didn’t know his real reason. It wasn’t just to feel ready physically; mentally feeling right was a challenge with the dreams taking his attention.

Why was he seeing home?

Cedric snapped his fingers, glancing at his phone as his expression brightened. “La vache, the Fête des Tuileries is open! I forgot!”

“What’s that?” Daniel asked.

“The annual Tuileries Festival, over in the Tuileries Garden! I’ve been there every year.”

“Perhaps that could be our next outing, after our training,” Mr. Stone said.

“They got rollercoasters here? Hell yeah!” Raph pumped his fist, shooting to his feet.

“Ah, no, Rafiq. The Fête des Tuileries doesn’t have any rollercoasters, but…” Cedric chuckled. “They have something similar that you might enjoy.”

“If you don’t throw up again like you did on the plane,” Carmen said, earning a laugh from Daniel.

“Come on, man — that plane was just a bad time for me! How far is it? When are we leaving?”

“We must still begin our morning run and exercises, and Daniel and Rafiq are going to spar once again. But, after that?” He smiled. “We’ll see who has a fear of heights.”

----------------------------------------

Raph’s courage evaporated once they actually reached the fair, and stood in front of the tallest ride at the fair. People sat at either end of a massive vertical white metal bar, and once they were all strapped in, it spun slowly and went high into the air, while the seats spun around on both sides.

Immediately, Rafiq refused to even take a step closer, citing roller coaster safety statistics that even Carmen didn’t know. But, it all changed once Cedric offered to buy him lunch if he rode it with Mr. Stone. He didn’t even hesitate to agree — and soon, he and Mr. Stone were in line for the next ride while Daniel and Carmen went for the carnival games.

Everywhere he looked, cheap prices were advertised next to plushies of popular characters and every animal in the alphabet, from purple stingrays to pink bunnies, and even a Mickey Mouse that looked just like it did back home.

Cedric tailed them at first, likely for safety, as Carmen guessed. But, he told Carmen to fire an Electroshock if they needed help, and gave them permission to walk on their own.

As soon as they were alone, Daniel took Carmen’s hand in his own and pulled her from game to game. Between jug toss and balloon pop and even a claw machine, Daniel lost track of how much money he spent, how many tears of laughter he shed, or even how many times Carmen teased him on his luck with the rigged games. Sometimes she was right, sometimes she wasn’t.

But, the moment he won her a small, fluffy pink teddy bear, it was all worth it. He would’ve paid twice the price to catch her smile on camera, let alone how much she tried to deny the dimples that only showed themselves when she was really happy.

Daniel went for another prize at a basketball stall. She didn’t think he’d win there, either. He easily landed the first shot — of course he had this. He and his friends Alex and Ryan would always shoot some hoops at the park whenever they were bored of sitting at home on the game.

Alex. Ryan. The same people you’ve left for two months.

It was like the color and energy drained from his surroundings. The second shot went wild, bouncing off of the rim next to his and missing its mark entirely.

Five students killed in a bus crash.

He couldn’t even focus on the game anymore, and his third shot went wild, too. Alex and Ryan didn’t ride the bus that day. There couldn’t be a connection — he would’ve remembered something as horrific as dying in a bus crash.

A soft hand on his shoulder brushed the worries away, and as Daniel met Carmen’s eyes, the warmth and color returned. “Are you okay?”

“I—” Daniel’s throat tightened, and he bit his quivering lip to fight the tears back.

Before he could even continue, Carmen locked her fingers with his and pulled him out of the way of the next group trying their hand at basketball. She led him around the corner, into an alley between the wall of the basketball stall and another tent, and faced him head on.

“Carmen, what—?”

“No, because I know how it looks when someone’s holding back tears,” she snapped. Her eyebrows were drawn and she glared up at him, but despite the harshness of her tone, all he could see in her eyes was genuine worry. “What’s wrong?”

Daniel pulled her into a tighter hug as the memories of the last dream swam through his mind once more. He explained it all, from the first dream with his world’s version of Carmen, the second dream with Alex and Ryan, and the last one — his own childhood home.

“…and the calendar was right,” he said, voice cracking at the end. “All of this time’s been passing back home, and I think there’s a reason I saw Alex and Ryan at the park we used to play at. They didn’t ride the bus that day. I tried to sleep to pass the time ‘cause I was alone. But…I don’t remember what happened between that and waking up here.”

“And you’re afraid that newspaper article was you. That you died, and you’re seeing them at the park because they’re mourning you.”

Daniel nodded.

“Oh…” Carmen’s expression was that of sorrow. She hesitated for a moment, as if trying to find the right words, but she didn’t say anything.

His heart plunged. He didn’t blame her; of course she didn’t understand enough to have a good response. How could anyone understand the pain of having people mourn you, while being powerless to tell them you were still alive?

Carmen reached into her pocket, pulling the pink stuffed bear out and putting on a voice. “Hey, buddy! Carmen was too slow to figure out something to say, but I have just the words for you. I’m sorry you’re being tortured by these dreams and the existential crisis, but you can’t let it keep you down. It’s just more reasons we need to get you back home, so they don’t have to miss you anymore!”

Daniel blinked, unable to believe his eyes or ears.

“Now, my owner Carmen hates seeing you cry because it makes her want to cry,” she continued. “If you make her cry, I’ll beat you up, so cheer up!”

The voice she made and the way she shook the bear made it more absurd beyond belief. But, when she finished, she looked up at him with heartfelt concern in her auburn eyes, and Chip perched on her shoulder, making a heart out of lightning.

Daniel wiped his tears away, and made a puppet with his hand. “Hey, Samson! I’m Johnny! My owner, Daniel, was too starstruck to say anything back, but I can tell that’s exactly what he needed to hear!”

Carmen put Samson back into her pocket and smiled, placing a hand on Daniel’s cheek. “I’m glad.”

She had to stand on her tippy-toes to bring her lips to his. Daniel hadn’t felt himself emotionally crumble like that since the first night he arrived here, when it first dawned on him that he was truly alone. And yet, her words helped put him back together, and the kiss sealed the deal, ensuring he’d never break down again.

Once Carmen pulled away, she held his hand and led him out of the alley between the tents. “Now, if you’re feeling better, I think I should return the favor on that bear. A few stalls over, I saw a—”

“Well!”

Cedric stood a few feet away from the end of the alley, finishing a bag of popcorn, a cheeky smile on his face.

Daniel felt his cheeks burn. “How long have you been there?”

“Oh, only a few seconds. How long has this been a thing?”