Still Here Brother : Omori AU

Chatper 2: Whitespace

     Mari stood in a white room, no, a whitespace. There were no walls, and it didn’t even look like there was a floor either despite Mari feeling the solid ground. She looked around, there were white floating hands everywhere, with a red faint light surrounding it, but nothing else other than that but whitespace. ‘This must be a dream,’ Mari thought. She was amazed that she was able to think about that. Of course she had lucid dreams before, but this felt...a little too realistic. Mari started walking, not knowing what else to do.

Some of the nearby floating hands dashed towards her and grabbed onto her wrist. She flinched as her sight went pitch black and was greeted back by the sharp bright whitespace again.  “What the hell…” She whispered, touching a hand to her face.  Mari looked around, noticing her surroundings had changed. 

She stood on a white rug with a black outline, there was also a black opened laptop laying on the floor as well as a white closed sketchbook and a black tissue box. “Meow?” Mari looked down to see a black cute cat. “Mewo? Mewo!” She smiled down at her cat and bent down to pick the black cat up. Mari buried her face into the neck of the cat’s shiny coat. It was cold. Now thinking about it, she didn’t see Mewo when she was up earlier. Maybe the cat was hiding somewhere?

Mari gently placed Mewo back on the ground and stood up, remembering where she was. Mewo just looked up at her.  Mari looked around and decided to dig a bit more. She opened up the sketchbook on the floor and looked over the abstract drawings. Whoever owned this sketchbook seemed to really like red and black. The drawings were a bit creepy, one even just being a really decent artwork of a raw slice of beef.

Mari shuddered and placed the sketchbook back down on the ground. She decided to check the laptop next and opened it up. There really wasn’t much she could do on it except check on a digital entry journal or stare at the discomforting wallpaper, which was a creepy black and white photo of a brick wall. Mari opened up the digital journal, the entries of it were all labeled “Day ???” while the text underneath them all were all just a repetition of a mixture of two sentences, “Today, I spent time in Whitespace, everything was okay.” and “Today, I visited my friends, everything was okay.”

Mari logged out of the laptop and closed it, that was a bit strange. Mari stood up, she looked around to see what else she could do. She noticed a tall white door that wasn’t there before next to the carpeted area. 

She walked over to it, Mewo following behind her. A shadow cast over Mari as she walked in front of it. Her hand turned the knob, she wondered what could possibly be behind this mysterious door. 

The door didn’t open, it was locked. “Oh great,” She sighed. She thought she was getting somewhere. She started kicking the door. THUMP

“Huh?” It sounded like something had fallen nearby, Mewo ran over to the sound, “Mewo where are you going?”  Mari followed after the black cat. 

The cat stopped at something lying on the floor, a jump rope?  The jump rope was bright red and it looked quite new with shiny black handles. ‘Why is a jump rope here?’ It kinda looked like the jump rope in the chest that sat underneath the treehouse in Mari’s backyard. 

Mari picked it up, Mewo just meowed at her and purred, rubbing her leg with its body. She tied the shiny red rope around her waist, maybe it could be useful for something. 

She walked back to the rugged area, maybe she could try opening the door again? Mari walked over to the white door and tugged at it, this time it opened. The door opened into a bright light, so Mari couldn’t really see where it led to. Mewo meowed and stepped into the light, disappearing from view.

Mari soon followed after the cat, disappearing into the light.

******

“Woah…” Mari breathed. Mari walked out of the plain white space into the magical colorful realm. The room had a light pink flooring, which was covered in confetti, candy wrappers, and toys. There were holes here in there which looked as if it lent to space beyond. The room had purple wallpaper and a big yellow cat with purple eyes peeked from behind the wall smiling at Mari. 

    ‘This is definitely a dream,’ Mari thought. She looked down at a few orange cards which looked like they were stacked before but someone ran over them. She picked them up and placed them into a neat pile, she couldn’t help herself. ‘Hey, this kinda looks like the inside of the treehouse...but more...colorful and bigger?’ She realized. Mari recognized the large yellow cat that was looking down on her from that cat calendar that seemed to stare at you wherever you walked around, and this cat really did!

Mewo meowed and stepped on the colorful steps that were across from where she was, Mari followed Mewo and noticed that there was an odd-looking snake on the colorful stairs. She walked up to it and the snake looked at her and threw clams at her from its mouth, “Here’s your allowance for today..sssssss,” Mari looked at it and picked up the clams, “Thanks…?” Mari looked down at the clams in her, ‘An allowance? So is this some sort of currency?’ She didn’t know exactly where to put them but watched as they disappeared in her hand in thin air. “What…?”  Mari didn’t know exactly why, but she knew exactly how many clams she had, 50, ‘Dream logic,’ She thought. 

Mari headed up the stairs which lent to a brightly lighted doorway. Mewo meowed and followed her. She squinted her eyes as she went into the bright light, shading her eyes with her hand. When the light wasn’t so bright, Mari looked around. Mari seemed to be in the middle of a very colorful woods. She looked at where she came from, which was a pink colored stump with a hole in it, it seemed…somewhat familiar.

“Huh.”