Cascading into a swirling tornado, a small and fragile child was being thrown apart violently. His body was twirling and bending in ways no living thing should. The boy could not scream for help, his voice locked away by the mind numbing pain, yet he still pleads for it to end. He pleads to the wind and yet, nothing happens.
Well, nothing helpful.
Instantly, a swirling spike caught in the debris the wind had picked up, and stabbed straight through his heart. Seemingly on cue, as if his heart had been the only thing keeping him together so far, the boy instantly broke into pieces. Just one more mess of debris caught in this world’s natural disaster. And then he woke up.
Elliot lurched forward as he woke, unfortunately that seemed to bring upon a massive headache. “Huh!? Oh… christ, that’s the last time I’m having Chinese food before sleepi- oh what the hell…” He incredulously asked. His surroundings were strange, not his house or anything you could consider city life. Despite that, his main worry was the pain bouncing around inside his skull.
At least, until the sleep finally faded from his brain. “What’s… what the hell is happening?!” Fear suddenly struck him, piercing his veil of sleep, as he noticed his surroundings for the first time since he woke up. Surrounding him was a lush, dense forest. The trees were forming a dense wall that obscured his vision from all sides.
…It was beautiful in a way.
He snickered. “Fucking Chinese food...” He finally exclaimed after a minute of thought. Nothing good came with eating late, and this was probably the result of that. He was probably having a particularly realistic nightmare because of the greasy pleasures he partook in last night. He didn’t even exercise before sleeping, so of course his guilty conscious got him to wake up. In the end he hadn’t even changed out of his clothes before sleeping, now that he thought about it. He was basically asking himself to get fat.
He looked down at his stomach, what used to show lean abdominal muscles were now covered in a thin layer of fat… a prospect of growing up lazy, dooming him to this sad state. He was still light, but he preferred if he’d fill that part of him with muscle rather than-
"What the hell am I talking about while I’m in a forest? Why the hell am I in a forest in the first place!?"
And why was he getting sidetracked!? Pacing around the area in a small circle, he cursed his rotted brain. Damn his thoughts… His habit of daydreaming about inane things always paved a path of ridicule amongst his peers. He would look as if he was deep in thought, brooding about problems, prompting his friends to worriedly ask him if everything was right.
The best explanation they'd usually get from Elliot was a rant about why different TVs had different locations for buttons, and why the order sometimes switched, making those moments without the remote a complete and utter slog-
And here he was doing it again. Damnit.
He almost wished he was back in the tornado dream, at least then the only thing going through his head was mind numbing fear. He had no time to shame himself then. Whatever, if this was a lucid dream, he might as well have fun with it. Finally ceasing his pacing, Elliot stretched, ready to begin his trek through the dangerous and unforeseen forest!
Or, at least he would have if the blood didn’t rush to his head from jumping to his feet so quickly, filling his vision with stars. “Oh, what the… how do dreams give you headaches?! I’m in my own head!” He shouted, only to then start deliriously laughing at his own joke.
Obviously, he wouldn’t be screaming such nonsense in the real world. Even with his loose inhibitions, he’d still call himself a human being with shame, after all. His awareness that nothing was real caused him to lower his inhibitions a bit, however. Dreams were places where you could do anything, and his usually unabashed self could really let loose in this kind of setting.
Of course, that didn’t matter much to the girl hiding behind the bushes with a basin of water. She was cowering silently behind a bush, absolutely terrified at the spectacle unfolding before her. A raving loon with long black hair and deep and sharp eyes stood laughing in the clearing. He was also dressed in strange, fancy clothes, like the merchants that pass through the village would occasionally wear.
Seeing what appeared to be either a noble or merchant laughing with such manic sparked fear for her people’s lives, and her own. After all, only about a quarter of a mile south from here was her village, and she didn’t know if this person was someone important enough to cause trouble for them or not. She slowly rose to her feet, seeking to warn her teacher, but in the process stepped on a dead branch at her feet. Its crack was like thunder to her ears. She cowered behind a tree, tipping the basin process. After spilling water all around her.
The stranger’s raving stopped. She dared not speak, move, or even breath. Her racing heart didn't leave room to pay any mind to her now-filthy dress, soaked and muddy. A shrill “Eeeuh!? nope!” and a quick thudding of footsteps followed after a moment, heading directly away from her home, leaving her baffled. It seemed the crazy man had run away.
"Nope nope nope! I knew it, Goddamnit I knew this was a goddamn nightmare!" He ran for a good ten seconds before he even considered looking behind him. Nothing was there of course, and he spent a good 30 more seconds running before pretending to not be embarrassed by the whole ordeal. It had just been a sound in a dream, that obviously happened all the time, so there was no need to worry as long as he didn’t go back…
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Right?
…Of course, a fool does not only look to not learn from their mistakes but seek to repeat them. Following that dogma, the idiot decided the best course of action was to go back and see what the commotion was all about.
It turned out to be pretty easy to locate, his footprints were clearly seen in the soft loamy earth and he'd broken plenty of branches in his flight, causing a trail even a monkey could follow. It didn’t even take long before he found the spot he’d woken up in, and the bush in which the sound came from. There was something behind those bushes…
A few seconds of hesitance and Elliot had finally chuffed up enough courage to look. After all, maybe there were people around this forest? He wondered if he’d be that lucky, looking at the fauna that was covering the front of a rather indiscriminate-looking tree.
He circled the area around it and found something unexpected. Mud… and within it were the little footprints of a person, probably a kid’s... Aiming directly opposite of where he ran. “Damn, I think I scared them... “ Of course he had. Whoever this kid was, it was someone he had probably scared off with his insane babbling. He anxiously thought about what would happen if he let her be. Dreams didn’t really do things without reason, so…
He might as well try to see things through. "Well, guess it's better than nothing!" He exclaimed as he started marching off toward the direction the footprints led.
Perhaps they would help him after he'd apologize. Maybe they’d burst into spiders and chase him. Whatever would happen, at least something would happen. This was all a dream anyway, so he could forgive himself for being an idiot, just this once.
At least, that’s what he was telling himself. In reality, this all felt way too… real. Usually, he didn’t have this amount of perception in a dream. Before this one, he had never really had any lucid dreams. It was an ability he deeply wished he had; he knew blaming cheap takeout was just an excuse. In reality, the constant nightmares were always gnawing at his psyche.
For the past few years, he had daily night terrors that he shared with no one. They'd involve him most of the time running and dying in plenty of terrible ways. It came to the point where he developed insomnia just to keep away from sleep, a reason his dark eyes became such a staple of his looks. Occasionally he’d have a dreamless night in which he would close his eyes and wake up, but those days were almost worse than the others, as he always woke up covered in sweat gripping his frantically beating heart.
He knew he was being shielded from those nightmares, so he never actually went and thought too hard about it. Whatever he was keeping bottled up was probably bad for his health, and he made sure it would never see the light of day.
Despite this, he took relatively good care of his body, making sure to run almost every day. He would have looked almost normal if his troubled sleep didn’t harden and darken his eyes way above those his age. He’d fit right in a grim action movie if it wasn’t for his horribly tacky pink button-up shirt and dark green jeans (where he got them, not even he knew).
Still, it edged out his sullen-looking face a bit, and because of that they’d become his favorite wear. From the neck down, He looked like he belonged in a show directed at 4-year-olds. It was not a good look for someone who was 19. Of course, his personality was more portrayed through his outfit than his face, even his long hair was just due to laziness in finding someone to cut it.
While he was busy talking to himself, he slowly made his path to where the unknown person went. They seemed to know how to cover their tracks, but that didn’t stop him, he merely just started walking in a straight path to where the footprints in the mud earlier pointed. Now, there were plenty of reasons why this would be considered idiotic.
First of all, there were only a few footprints, so they might have just walked out of the mud and went a different way, and the way she didn’t disturb the fauna could also mean she just didn’t pass through here. It could have also been as simple as they had been as lost as he was.
Of course, it wasn’t that he was just that confident in his decision-making, or that he was making a gamble. He just never even thought about the chance that he was wrong. His idiocy was only surpassed by his indomitable luck. Thus, the youth headed directly towards the village, while the girl ran to warn them.
About 20 minutes later he finally came across a clearing, and from it, he could spot the glorious rise of modern civilization!
…Or at least, what the Amish would consider modern.
Why did this place look like it’s never seen a phone line before? He looked in horror as he saw a cart with a horse. Carrying lumber. There wasn’t even so much as a rickety old truck, which he was sure was an amish staple. Probably. This was about as foreign to him as anything possibly could be, if he had to be honest.
Which was strange, considering this definitely wasn’t a dream.
Yes, at this point, he had accepted the fact that this was the real world, and that he had been thrown into the woods for some reason. No dream felt like this, after all, and the fact that it wasn’t a nightmare had him facing the facts. This also meant that he was now a lot more self-conscious about the fact that someone saw him insanely rambling in the woods. That had him wanting to dig a hole, jump in, and cover it with a big rock. He was desperate to explain the situation to the people the villager no doubt told. The last thing he needed was to be ridiculed by strangers.
As he neared the village he saw that his earlier assumption on it wasn’t so clear cut. It certainly was primitive but it seemed much more advanced than he first assumed. The houses seemed to be connected by cobblestone roads, each cleanly paved and detailed. The houses themselves were built sturdy and neatly, almost looking like a suburb made of rather large log cabins. Some were even made of brick. Elliot was sitting on top of a particularly high and sturdy branch, allowing him to see the place better.
He was still unsure of the area so he decided to scope out the general vicinity. He heard of rural areas devoid of outside contact being full of dangerous people and whatnot. He didn’t feel right about becoming someone’s next ritualistic meal. Speaking of which, it seemed that night was about to descend soon, and he was getting hungry... But maybe he was just being silly.
There's no way the village could be that bad, right?