Samuel woke up. That very fact surprised and relieved him. It had all been a dream. Except… he was in a meadow. Samuel didn’t sleep in meadows. It seemed as though the weirdness hadn’t left, and instead had announced they were now roommates. The magical sticky laughing quicksand manhole was apparently also capable of teleportation. If God existed he was going to have a serious talk about how overpowered manholes apparently were.

But as he looked at his surroundings a little closer, his heart stopped. The grass wasn’t any species he recognized. It looked vaguely like Bermuda, but had small and hairlike white fibers attached to the blades. This certainly made it softer but what could be the purpose of such an adaption? Perhaps vestigial spines? Or maybe this was a cultivated area and the trait had been bred into the grass for softness.

After another few minutes inspecting the grass he shook himself. He needed to find Derek!

“I can practically hear him making fun of me for getting teleported to who knows where and then staring at grass.” Samuel muttered to himself. He stood up and turned around and saw Derek looking like he was going to pass out from holding in a laugh. Now that he was discovered he broke into peals of laughter.

“Well since you did my work for me, I’ll simply take a bow.” Derek said bowing dramatically. “Anyways where are we?”

“Honestly, the reason I was studying the grass is because it doesn’t match any species I know. So either someone decided to genetically modify some grass and break a whole bunch of laws by letting it grow wild, or we aren’t on Earth anymore.” Samuel replied.

“Well after being eaten by a sewer pipe just watch out for fire breathing turtles I guess. But I feel like this barely surprises me after that. I hope wherever we are there’s people. Otherwise I’ll have to put up with your droning all day.” Derek said

“That assumes you’ll be able to learn their language with no reference point at all.” Samuel pointed out.

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“I might not know plants but people can learn languages just by being around other people. Not that hard to understand when someone points at a tree and says ‘arbol’, or that they are swearing at you when they're yelling at you. Even if it's straight up aliens, it won’t be that bad.” Derek replied.

Talking about the possibility of people suddenly made the reality of their situation set in. They sat in the grass for a moment, both contemplating the consequences of what had happened. Neither of them had anyone else in their lives they couldn’t live without, but the concept of being permanently ripped away from everything they had ever known wasn’t an easy one to digest. Personally I think its a rather simple concept, you were there now you’re here but to each their own I guess. Anyways they had been running on shock up until this point and rather simultaneously crashed. They both sat there in the grass for about 10 minutes, Derek idly twisting blades of grass together.

“Do you think we will ever go back? Will we even want to?” Samuel asked rhetorically.

“I’ve been wondering the same. I had a lot of other friends I’ll miss but nobody irreplaceable. And well, I know I’d rather leave some parts of my life behind. I’m guessing you do too.” Derek replied.

While they shared the burden of their traumatic childhood, it hadn’t left them unaffected. Derek had always dealt with his trauma by hiding from himself in crowds. After he left highschool the best place to lose yourself in people was bars. Alcohol became a bigger and bigger part of his life until he emulated the mother he hated so much in addiction.

As different as they seemed, they tended to mirror each other. Where Derek hid from his pain in crowds, Samuel had countered his pain with the joy he felt learning. As Derek gradually stopped pulling Samuel out of his dorm to do something, he grew more reclusive. With his free time unfilled, he got back into some video games that they had played as kids. He discovered that nothing else wiped his problems from his mind like a video game. Samuel became dependent, and spiraled in addiction. First he was just missing some shifts at his job, but after he lost it he stopped leaving altogether. Even after he ran out of food he didn’t leave, losing a substantial amount of weight and living off of food deliveries.

Fortunately as soon as Derek recognized that he was following his mother’s footsteps he started to make changes. Since they had always shouldered their pain together, he immediately went to Samuel. The motivation to help each other was much greater than their motivation to help themselves. They became roommates again and gradually pulled eachother out of the holes they had been in. Unfortunately, like their childhood, the addictions had left their mark on both of them. While they were better friends than ever, they had grown more disenfranchised with the world, and struggled to have hope. Which is where my halfway benevolent progenitor decided they were great candidates for his usual mischief.