Steady Ground | ✔

8 | You can't leave, you just got here!

"Atlas?"

The voice that spoke wasn't Arrone's.

But it was familiar. Not the heart-wrenching familiar that he no doubt knew the voice would do to him. No, it wasn't his mother's voice; but even still, his gut knotted.

Atlas turned to see his best friend from high school. The one he never bothered to contact again the day he dipped out on their first rent payment and left Atlas alone in his first week of university. Atlas remembered that the man had left for his drug-addict girlfriend, and he hadn't seen him since.

August stood only a foot away.

He flinched back at the closeness, but when their auras stopped touching, his old friend vanished from sight.

And like a flip was switched, his photobook began to burn in his arms once more. It heated red-hot in his arms until he half-threw, half-dropped it on the ground in between them. The thing had its own aura, it seemed, as it bridged the lights between him and his friend as it started shuddering, its pages flipping to page 6.

"Whoa, whoa, hey!" August exclaimed. He carefully stepped over the binder without a second glance when a photo of August's acne-ridden face appeared on the page. It was a picture of their graduation, a navy colored graduation cap slanted atop his wild blond hair. "What was that for? I haven't seen you in years, man, and you're out here throwing things at me."

He sounded exactly the same.

"Go away!" He wasn't sure who he was talking to: the illusion standing in front of him or the possessed photobook.

Atlas couldn't get himself to ignore them, though. His wariness remained deep in his tense muscles. All he could do was stumble back, away from both of them. August's skinny frame vanished once more when their lights stopped connecting, and Atlas was once more plunged into a world of ink.

"What's up with you?"

Not seeing August only made it worse, now that Atlas knew he was there. The blank emptiness around him no longer felt void of life; it felt filled with it, brimming with it. Anything could be just outside of his touch, and that thought horrified him.

If fear hadn't fully set in before, it did then.

His heart pounded hard in his chest when August didn't reappear for a long moment. All he heard was a quiet tch and then nothing. Even if his friend was pursuing his backwards steps, the sand below muffled every sound of his feet hitting the ground.

And then he couldn't take that thought anymore.

He gasped, stopping in place. "What the Hell is this?" he begged. "Where am I? Where's my manager? Actually what am I supposed to do right now?" He squeezed his arms so tightly around himself. "I swear to God tell me before I go insane."

"What are you babbling about?" August asked. "Look, how about we go back to my grandpa's house. I'll show you around. It's been a long time since you've been through his arboretum – he has a bunch of new sculptures now that are pretty sick looking."

His grandpa's house?

Suddenly the strange landscape made sense: the sand and grass; the scent of flowers and evergreens; the massive plate of plastic that only extended as tall as Atlas was.

He remembered the sand garden vividly, now. On summer break, August always invited him, and his crazy grandfather would show them around. It was never well taken care of, and the sculptures were always rusting more and more with each visit.