To say the least, Hailey was confused.

Around her was an endless void, blue like the sky, with floating platforms of rock leading upward.

As surreal as the scenery was, it was a relatively simple place. That didn’t make her arrival here any less strange, though. Hailey knew she had almost closed her door, then she’d blacked out and arrived here, standing up as though nothing had happened.

“Hello?!” she yelled out, still perturbed by the conversation she was having just seconds ago.

Nobody answered, of course.

She turned around, searching every direction. Aside from the rocks and the sky…there was no sun, nor anything else in sight. She tapped on the stone beneath her, testing the weight of her foot. She was surprised to see it didn’t weigh as much as it should.

She began talking to herself, “Let me guess, it was her. Nobody else could’ve done this. Not unless some random person…wait, why am I so at ease? I should really be panicking right now since I’m in some other dimension or whatever, but this feels like…home.”

Hailey exhaled. Whatever she was dealing with, she didn’t feel any reason to be afraid. If Kait got her in here, she would get her out.

For a few minutes, she tapped her foot on the stone below, waiting. She was dressed the same as she’d been before, except, she noted, her pajamas looked…better, somehow. She curiously ran a hand through her hair. No knots, silky smooth. That was strange.

Hailey shrugged, figuring there was no good reason to stick around. She began leaping between the stone platforms, each almost six feet apart. She would have been worried about a jump of that distance over an infinite void, but with half her weight gone, she was confident in her ability to move between the platforms. As she climbed up, she thought the world seemed to flicker, like it was turning into something different. But it was just her imagination.

She shook off her confusion and kept jumping up into the infinity above. It wasn’t exhausting or scary, but it was a little fun. Despite the difference in her weight, she felt entirely comfortable in her body, able to climb the rickety set of floating platforms with no hesitation.

Then, almost without her noticing, she reached the last platform. As she leaped on the final one, all of the rocks she’d jumped on previously instantly collided to create one large platform. A black mass of mist appeared directly in front of her. It was a portal, she intuitively understood.

“How ominous,” she said sardonically.

She noticed a green mist swirling behind her. Hailey had an innate understanding of the portal. “That one will get me out of this place,” she said, but as she took a step toward it, a feeling of guilt overwhelmed her.

I’m taking a step back, she thought.

After hesitating, she took a step forward instead, causing the green portal to disappear. “Black portal it is.” She stepped closer. Her hand shook. Her body wanted to quake. What was beyond the portal? Apprehension kept her still for another few seconds.

Not far from her, a new platform suddenly appeared, with Kait atop it. Hailey watched with a vaguely surprised expression as Kait shook her head, dizzy, then leaped off the platform. She locked eyes with Hailey. “Thu theis es the Polo Reelm,” she said apologetically.

“Excuse me?” Hailey said with confusion.

“Thistle ain util!” Kait stomped on the ground in anger, “Yaaaahhh!” She cleared her throat, then spoke in a harsh accent, “This…is the…Polo Reelm?”

“What are you saying?”

Kait tilted her head, “I don’t…speak…your lan-gu-age.”

“Since when?!”

“Allcayth,” Kait shook her head, “I h-elp?”

“You better help.”

Kait raised an eyebrow.

“This is some type of dream, isn’t it?”

After some deduction and narrowing of her eyes, Kait nodded. “Polo Reelm.”

“I don’t know what that means. Can you get me out?”

Kait raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

She threw her arms down. “Oh, COME ON! You seriously came here, and now of all times, you can’t speak?!”

Kait gave a good-natured shrug, then chuckled. “Sorry.”

“What use you are.”

“Nuh util?”

Hailey stuck her face into Kait’s. “NUH UTIL,” she replied sarcastically.

Kait crossed her arms, then shook her head.

“So, tell me what to do.”

“Go there.” Kait pointed to the black portal.

“I-I don’t think that will end well…”

“Go there!”

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

“Fine, whatever the witch says.” Hailey and Kait walked to the portal; then, after a moment of hesitation, Hailey stepped in.

When Kait followed Hailey through the portal, she saw a room. Inside were many pods of desks, each occupied by a student: some silent, some talking, and others looking at the clock that hung on the wall as if it were their salvation. Hailey stood in the middle of the room, right beside Kait.

“What’s going on?” Hailey asked.

Kait shrugged. “Really nun cert.”

“Wait…is this my English room? What are we doing here?”

Kait tapped Hailey’s shoulder, then pointed to a student. “You?”

Hailey looked to see that the student was none other than herself. “Oh, this is a memory. What’s it about?”

The bell suddenly rang, causing everyone to go on alert.

The teacher stood from her chair. She was a red-haired woman, maybe thirty years old. She tapped the floor with her shoe, then spoke, “Okay, everyone, let’s go to lunch!”

Most of the class was quick to pack and leave in a disorderly fashion.

The teacher looked at Hailey as she started to leave. “Hailey, could I speak with you for a second?”

“No problem,” Hailey said, breaking from the line of students to stand in front of her teacher.

The real Hailey’s eyes widened. “No…”

The scene continued despite her apprehension. Her teacher placed a piece of paper in her hands. “First, you forgot your name on the assignment.”

Fake Hailey took the paper, snatched a pen from the teacher’s desk, then scribbled her name down on it and presented it to her teacher.

“And second, you didn’t read the whole thing, again. You were supposed to color the pillars specific colors.”

Fake Hailey gave up hiding her annoyance at being held up from lunch. “Are you seriously telling me you care about whether or not I color-coded my paper? This isn’t a coloring book.”

“All I’m telling you is that you aren’t paying enough attention to the directions. What if you lost points on the YTU test because of something like this?”

“Then I’d lose points.”

The teacher waved her off. “If you don’t care, you don’t need to. It’s only my job to make sure you know when there’s an issue.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure it is your job to make students care.”

“Fair. Fair. You can go now.”

Fake Hailey raised her arm in goodbye and left the room. “Bye.”

The world cut to black, with the two ethereal spectators standing on nothing.

“Why did you show me this?” Hailey said, looking at Kait with a furious scowl.

Kait looked around, unsure of what Hailey was saying.

The dimension slowly gained color, even as Hailey’s anger grew. “I know what happened this day. Why did you lead me to see this?!”

Kait shrugged, “Null clue mean.”

“I-I don’t…”

“Nuh runaing from ye preste.”

“What do you mean?!” Hailey cried out in frustration.

The world, which slowly regained its color, had set the next scene. It was the school library.

“No, please…” Hailey pleaded to nobody in particular.

Walking through the library toward the entrance, was him.

Hailey stopped. She looked down, averting her gaze from what she knew would happen.

Fake Hailey, who was on her phone, walked through the entrance.

“Oh, sorry,” she said as she bumped into him.

“O-oh, yeah.” The guy didn’t have time to say much before she walked straight past.

For a moment, Fake Hailey walked left, then something caught her attention. “Oh, it’s out!” She jogged to a bookcase and pulled out a book.

Meanwhile, Kait watched as the man returned to the library a minute later carrying his backpack, which was missing before.

“So many things I could’ve…” Hailey muttered, trailing off.

Kait wouldn’t turn her eyes even though she had a feeling she knew what would come next.

The man walked to the left, escaping Fake Hailey’s notice entirely. He walked into a room at the very back of the library, and then…

A few seconds later, there was a gunshot followed by a scream.

“No, NO, NO, NO!” Hailey’s eyes homed in on Kait, whose back was turned as Fake Hailey rushed to the room in a panic, passing by the killer without processing his guilt. She walked in the room–

“NO!”

The world distorted, the seams of reality breaking and shifting. The gunfire echoed and echoed through the realm, cracking through the air over and over and over.

“Why?! Why would you show me this, Kait? Do you hate me?! JUST. GO. AWAY!”

Kait felt queasy, stepping back as light contorted and shifted in nauseating patterns. “Calm don!”

“I WON’T CALM DOWN, WITCH. THIS IS WHY SHE DIED, AND YOU DIDN’T!”

Kait sighed, looking down in pity.

“Just…leave.”

The world fell, and in some strange, incomprehensible way, Hailey knew it was about to crash.

“Frain.” Kait shook her head, then vanished.

Hailey stood still. There was nothing to be angry at anymore, just a void. She wanted to scream, but it seemed pointless. She wasn’t sure what was happening or where Kait had gone. She didn’t know anything at all. The world was silent as it fell.

There was a silent crash.

She felt heavy.

She didn’t feel like moving.

It was dark.

She stood.

She waded forward.

Light.

As thought returned, Hailey fell onto her knees. When she looked up, trying to grasp her situation, she saw a white realm. Bubbles floated through the air, filled with images of various words, items, events, and even ideas.

Hailey didn’t feel like talking, so she laid down and gazed up at the bubbles, like watching the clouds on a sunny day.

A bubble passed by containing the word, “Onomatopoeia.” A stupid word she didn’t think about much.

“Ghostier pepper.” Nobody could figure out what vegetables were put on the cafeteria’s terrible pizzas, so they came up with silly names for them.

A page ripped from a book for a tabletop role-playing game which mentioned a magic spell that she remembered pretending to use with her friends, “Power Word: Kill.” She’d point at them, yelling the spell’s name, and they’d pretend to die.

An image of herself lying on a picnic cloth, staring into a pocket mirror. She’d almost forgot about that memory. She’d played tennis with Linne and Abbie and had a small picnic.

A video of a cheesy mecha show she’d loved as a kid.

They were all things she’d kept to the back of her mind, rarely dredging up to remember. Like a trash can…feels like home.

She looked backward. There was nothing to see behind her. No void, no black, no white, just a feeling that told her there is nothing beyond this. She looked forward. Everything she hated about herself was ahead, and she really didn’t want to see everything.