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General Chat => Fan Fiction and Art => Topic started by: Alvalon on July 12, 2013, 08:39:18 AM



Title: A story beginning I thought of . . .
Post by: Alvalon on July 12, 2013, 08:39:18 AM
Blinking away sleep, Mat stretched out his muscles after an uncomfortable night’s sleep. He opened his eyes to his room as he had remembered it: an absolute disaster. Clothes draped most of the few pieces of furniture besides his bed and hid the floor. Unlike he remembered, though, he was fully clothed. Even stranger, though, was that they were definitely not what he had worn the day before. Or, for that matter, anything he remembered owning at all. The pale green shirt and the dark blue jean shorts were definitely things Mat would own, but they were not his.
   The house was quiet, too, a rarity at Mat’s house. Typically, either his mother’s friends, loud, obnoxious drunks, the lot of them, or his sister would be doing something to make a racket. Uneasy, Mat walked out of his room and downstairs, which was when he became even more uneasy. The house was empty. Completely empty. Still, his stomach loudly announced that he had yet to eat, so Mat pushed the whole situation out of his mind. After all, his mother’s friends could have clothed him in his sleep; he slept soundly enough, and then left, thinking it a wonderful prank. Yes, that was it; the whole situation was a prank.
   Pouring a bowl of cereal, Mat sat down to eat, and then leave for the first day of his second year of college. He downed the contents of the bowl twice in minutes, brushed his teeth, and then stepped out of his house.
   Outside, Mat frowned. It was foggy. But there was never fog in the morning, or ever, to his knowledge. Just as he thought of the oddity, though, the fog receded away from his neighborhood, but it remained like a semi-opaque wall just outside of it. “What . . .” Mat mumbled nervously. Clothes, silence, and an empty house were all easily explained away, but the fog? “I’m in a dream,” Mat decided, “a creepy, empty dream.” The decision put his mind at ease. After all, he couldn’t be hurt in a dream. Even if he did, he would just wake up, completely unharmed, and then he would forget that anything ever happened.
   At ease, Mat decided to drive to his college anyway. Boring for a dream, but he didn’t have anything better to do. Maybe he would remember to dream people into his college.
   The thought made Mat grin as he got into his car, a beat-up old pickup truck. Pulling his keys out of his pocket, where he knew, in the absolute way of knowing that one had in a dream, that they would be, Mat started up the engine and began to drive down the street.
   As he drove, Mat reveled in being the only car on the road for once. He drove ninety miles per hour down the larger streets, ignoring the red lights, which came at every intersection, even in his own dream. “Suppose I can’t escape that particular part of life, even in a dream,” Mat grumbled, even as he appreciated the irony.
   After a few minutes of driving, Mat came to the edge of the fog. He braked, stopping just before the front of his truck touched the translucent-gray mass. Nervous, Mat opened the door of his car and stepped out. Outside of his truck, it was cold, and he heard a faint voice coming from off to his left.
   After straining to hear, Mat started to pick up the words. “I’m telling you, Ahkeen,” the voice said, sounding insistent, “this is a new region.”
   “No,” said another voice, presumably Ahkeen, “it’s just another modern city region. There are plenty of them, all the same as the next.”
   “Really,” the first voice said, louder now, “the whole place is empty. Empty means its creator hasn’t even had the time to populate the place. I’ll bet you that if we find whoever created this place, they won’t have a clue where they are.”
   Mat frowned. He knew exactly where he was; he was in his home town, in a dream. “I know where I am,” he shouted in the general direction of the voices.
   “You see,” the voice Mat assumed was Ahkeen, said, “He knows where he is, Camille.”
   From around the corner of a pizza restaurant, two figures walked toward him. One, a tall, lean man with short black hair wore clothes that Mat thought came straight from a Renaissance fair. His skin was tan, but not burnt. He wore an off-white robe of some thick, rough-looking material, and a blue cloth wrapped around his head, with a long section draping down on his chest. Four short spears with two foot long blades were strapped to his back, and a largish knife hung on a belt at his waist. The other was pale skinned with dark brown hair that fell halfway down her back. She wore a white blouse and dark blue riding skirts. Ahkeen, and Camille, Mat assumed.
   “And where,” the girl Camille demanded, “do you know we are, exactly?”
   “We are in Lakeview, my hometown,” Mat told her indignantly. “In my dream.”
   The man, Ahkeen, sighed and lowered his head. The girl smiled victoriously. “I told you he had no clue where we are,” she said to the man. “No,” she said, turning to Mat. Her face turned serious. “We are in Iz-doma. This place is no dream, although your mind did imagine it. Here, what is in your mind, can be reality. We create this world as we go, and it expands with every person who comes here.”
   “How did I get here, then,” Mat asked, disbelieving.
   “We don’t know,” the man answered, “although some think that we simply fall through the cracks in the normal world. Others think that we died, and this is some sort of afterlife.”
   “But that doesn’t matter,” the girl cut in, “after all, we are here now, so no point in figuring out how why.” She suddenly frowned, looking at him as if noticing him for the first time. “What are you wearing?” she asked suddenly.
   Mat frowned. What was  he wearing? Did these people see themselves? “Shorts,” he answered flatly, “and a T-shirt. What are you wearing? Do you think we’re at a Ren-fair or something?”



I only got so far . . . but does anyone have any suggestions/comments/criticisms? I'll welcome any input I can get.