Chapter 2 - Dreams

Joe starts to remove himself from the ground, once again to find himself eating dirt. This time it was not because of dizziness or anything like that, but because he was not. He had felt sluggish since he arrived here, but now he felt better than he had ever before. ”Oh, what the hell?” he thinks. Slower this time, paying attention to his strength and speed, he stands up. Then his stomach lets out a loud growl. “Getting hungry it seems.” Joe stretches and finds that he has much better control of his body now. He shadow boxes a bit hopping on his toes like a fighter in the ring. “Nice, I feel like I’m in better shape than I ever have been.”

Joe bends down picking up the wrapped bread he had dropped. As he examines it, hoping that it is still good and can satiate his empty stomach, a window appears. Joe reads the notification.

[Dry Bread - Type: Food; Weight: 0.5; Value: 0.02; Rarity: Common; Quality: Poor]

“Well that’s new, and a little reassuring I guess.” Joe begins to eat the bread, choking a bit as it quickly dries out his mouth. He unties the water skin from his belt and quickly uncorks it. He then gulps down a big swallow of water to help wash down his unsatisfying meal. Thinking of the previous window about the bread, he focuses his thoughts on the waterskin. “Yes!” he exclaims as a new notification appears.

[Waterskin - Type: Container; Weight: 1.0; Value: 0.1; Rarity: Common; Quality: Basic]

“That’s handy.” he thinks as he mentally pushes away the notifications. Joe satisfies his stomach as much as he can with the dry bread and water, and then rewraps the bread. Then he goes about tying the water skin back to his belt. “This isn’t going to last long I’m afraid.” He mumbles to himself thinking about the short supply of food and water he has. Pondering over his meal options, he looks to the sky. A bright moon and stars have risen into the sky giving off enough light that the lack of a sun does not leave him in the dark. His surroundings are extremely quiet without any of the noises one would expect to hear outdoors, especially at night. “Not even insects are coming near this place. If this world even has insects. I’m going to need to rest soon, and I fear I will not be finding any cities anytime soon.” He thinks as he scans the night hoping to see the glow of a lit up city in the distance.

After traveling for a while Joe notices a copse of trees just a bit off his current route. Still completely quiet and his eyes getting heavy, he thinks the trees might be a good place to rest and heads toward them. He also thought it may be a good place for a predator to hide, but his sleepiness overruled that thought. After stumbling several times on his way he made it to the first of the trees. A bit afraid to sleep on the ground, Joe climbs the tree. The rough bark of the tree scrapped his arms up a bit, but the tree has many sturdy branches and he would feel safer up there. Settling in a spot with nestled branches, he uses his rope belt to secure himself in the tree. Even though the resting spot was not very comfortable, and Joe still feared something showing up while he was in such a precarious resting spot, his sleep deprived body quickly gave in and fell into a deep sleep.

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“Joe, Joe, wake up.” a feminine voice says.

“Just a little more sleep.” Joe grumbles as he covers his face with a pillow and swats away the hand trying to shake him awake.

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“No, you gotta get up and go to work. Just think, only one more week and we’ll both be on vacation and won’t have to think about work for two weeks.” the voice says cheerfully. “And, you will have all this as much as you like.” she jest.

Joe removes the pillow from his face to see the ‘this’ the feminine voice was referencing. “Alright, alright, getting up.” Joe says. “One more week and I’m the luckiest man alive. I will have my beautiful bride, a beautiful view, and no damn work.” Joe slowly gets out of his bed. Then, with a stretch and a yawn, he sleepily walks toward the bathroom trying not to trip on his dragging feet.

“You are such a horrible morning person. We’ll have to stay up late and sleep even later.” she says jokingly. “Serious though you look like you had a rough night. Everything alright?”

“Carlie, I tell you, I had the weirdest dream. It was like a video game, one of the horror ones, but felt so real.” Joe says as he opens the bathroom door. Thinking to get one more glance at his fiance getting dressed, Joe turns only to see a familiar looking lump of burnt flesh. Joe loses strength in his knees and tries to scream, but no scream comes out. He then stumbles backward through the bathroom door, noticing late that there is no longer a bathroom behind him. He reaches out to grab the door frame but misses.

Joe begins to fall. “Ah, no, no, no.” he exclaims, voice cracking, eyes held tightly shut but leaking with tears. He fell and fell. After what felt to be an eternity of falling, Joe opens his eyes. “I thought the sensation of falling was supposed to get you out of the dream.” he thinks “Is this hell?” Images of the past flash by as he continues to fall. That time he got dragged by his dog in the snow trying to walk him. His first kiss, with Myra Perkins under the bleachers at a Junior High pep rally. His father’s funeral, where he held back his own tears to try to be a pillar of support for his mother only to break down alone later. Happy, silly and sad moments in no concernable order, continued to pass by sending him into a whirlwind of emotions. After a while he just closed his eyes to try to regain himself. Then, he heard something for the first time since he started falling. The sounds of traffic, and crowds.

Joe reopens his eyes and looks about to see just empty space. Noticing the direction the noise is coming from he looks down. Below him he notices a scene playing out, one that was quite recent. He tries flapping his arms, without a care of how dumb it looked, but to no avail.. He is falling straight toward the sidewalk he walked along daily to get to and from work. The same side walk where “that” happened. He closes his eyes again and hopes that he doesn’t feel the pain of splatting on said sidewalk. Though he then thinks if that would put an end to the nightmare, he could deal with the pain.

After a few moments and no impact, Joe opens his eyes. He then realizes he is now standing in a crowd of people walking hurriedly beside a busy street. Joe looks down to see he is in a suit and carrying his briefcase. Joe clinches his eyes shut again and tells himself “This is all a dream, all a nightmare. I’m going to open my eyes and be in bed next to my beautiful fiance.” Not truly believing a word of it. At best, he thinks he is asleep in a tree having a nightmare. At worst, he is in hell and this is his punishment cycle.

Joe opens his eyes, and he is still on the sidewalk. A horn of a semi truck blairs. “No, not this.” he thinks. Some form of light is drawing a weird pattern around two teens in front of him. Joe is frozen in place. People are diving out of the way of the odd light show. The two teens, a strong wind blowing their hair upward, embrace each other in fear. One guy, one girl, two identical glowing patterns under their feet overlapping. Joe finally manages to get his own feet working and turns to run. As he turns and takes a step, he runs into a large man’s chest. The man, phone in hand, was filming the chaos to probably post on some social media site. As Joe runs into the rock of a man, he bounces back and falls into the edge of one of the light formations. Just as he lands on his butt, the wind causes his tie to slap him in the face for good measure and light bursts upward from the ground painting the world around him white.

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Joe jolts upward, bashing his head on a branch. “A dream. That really felt like a dream. A really fucking bad dream, but a dream. And this... This feels real. The hunger pains in my stomach definitely feel real. Is this a new reality for me?” He thinks as blood starts to trickle down his face. “Ah, got myself good.” Rubbing a drop of blood between his thumb and index finger “This too feels real.”

Joe gathers his bearings, rubbing his eyes and trying to focus. “Carlie, I truly am not a morning person. But, a bang to the head will definitely wake a guy up.” Waking up the rest of the way and calming his racing heart, he prepares for his day. He is coming to terms that this may just be his reality now. Also, he is wishing he had gamed more or read those books about living in game worlds. “Maybe then I would be more prepared for this world.”

He unties himself from the tree and begins to climb down.