Multiverse of Magic & Mistakes (Completed)

1.1.5 Chapter 5

Bath, UK, Earth, June 2019.

Violet had had another rough night of restless sleep, tossing and turning. Each time she closed her eyes, she was affronted with visions of being in places she knew, objects, items, furniture and now people vanishing one by one, until Vi remained alone in an endless empty black abyss, screaming until her throat was raw and she could scream no longer. She had been at work, the papers on her desk, her PC, monitor and mouse, pens, travel brochures, chairs, tables and then customers, her colleagues, Mr G and the Gulliver's Travel Agency building all vanishing item by item until only Vi was left alone and screaming in a black void.

She awoke with a sharp intake of breath and grabbed her throat. Breathe, Vi, breathe, she reminded herself. Her throat was fine, the screaming and emptiness only a fragment of her imagination. It was still the middle of the night, pure black outside, and Middy still out on his night-time wanderings. Vi got up. No point in trying to get back to sleep and subjecting herself to more nightmares.

She had to figure out what was going on. The vanishing vase, the nightmares, the glowing symbols. The symbols! Yes, she was going to look them up, see if it was a graffiti tag, and find out who the artist was. Vi picked up her phone, which was on the floor by her pile of books to be read. Weird. She thought that she had left it on top of her nightstand, but it likely had tumbled off and bounced. She looked at her photos, meaning to find the picture of the glowing symbol on the pavement and perform a reverse-image search. But the photo was not there. She checked again, there was the photo of her and a colleague smiling, then there was the photo of the white-washed previous-mural wall that she had sent sadly to Lily. Ok, now that was really strange. Vi distinctly remembered waiting for the street to clear, waiting for a group of tourists to leave the pavement so she could capture an image without their feet in it. What the fuck was going on here?

Vi reached into her school/work bag and pulled out her notepad. She preferred to think on paper for things like this. She began by jotting down a list.

· Vanishing vase

· Nightmares,

· everything disappearing

· Puffin mural graffiti

· Mural painted over

· Symbol on the pavement outside work

· What happened to the photos?

Vi paused then added missing pets and zoo animal behaviour (?) onto the list.

She turned over to a blank page, thinking of the two strange graffiti symbols that she has seen. How did they go? The first one was all curves and circles, fluid flowing lines merging and twisting around each other. The one on the pavement definitely had had a circle in the middle and lines going outwards. Vi's hazel eyes glazed over, and she picked up a pen and started sketching.

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Middy sneaked back into the Talloway's house after another long unscheduled, troubling meeting with the Harmonizer. He wanted nothing more than to curl up on his windowsill cushion and take a long nap.

He entered Violet's room, tail dragging on the carpet. Her bed was empty, which made Middy start to panic, but there she was, sleeping in her desk chair, leaning over at an uncomfortable angle, hair spilling onto the table. She had fallen asleep at her desk sometimes when staying up late working on school projects, but it was the summer holidays, and Vi's laptop was not even open. Middy gingerly jumped up onto the desk, to see what she had been working upon.