Peach Silhouette

42 | finis

I awoke to the sound of silence, as usual. I sat up, stretching my arms. I grabbed my sweatshirt off the floor from the night before, throwing it over my head. I walked into the bathroom, frowning at my messy hair. I ran my hands through it a couple times, satisfied when it returned to its normal state.

I glanced at myself in the mirror, blinking.
What a strange dream.

I looked at my phone. My timeline on Twitter was filled with people and art. I liked a few tweets, then reloaded the page, bored.

I scrolled some more. I looked up from my phone, sighing. The sky outside my flat was gray and boring.

"Typical London weather." I said to no one in particular. I heard a light pitter pattering behind me, and I turned around to see Cat. He jumped onto my lap, purring.

"You only love me when you want breakfast. Fine, come on then." I stood up, Cat following me to the kitchen where the food bowl was. I poured some food into Cat's bowl, yawning. I wandered over to the fridge, opening it. There was nothing appealing, so I turned instead to the pantry. I groaned. There was nothing appealing in the pantry either.

Then, as all people do, I opened the fridge again as if I had hoped food would magically appear.

Nothing did, of course, so I decided to settle for cereal. I grabbed a bowl out of the cupboard, and dumped an unholy amount of fruit loops in along with some milk.

I heard keys unlocking the door to my flat, and I turned, confused.

“Good morning sweetheart, I got coffee.”

Sapnap held up two paper cups from the nearby coffee shop.

“Sapnap?”

“You haven’t called me that in forever. And why are you looking at me like I’m an alien?” He asked, laughing.

“It’s nothing, I’ve just had the strangest dream.” I shook my head, raising my eyebrows.

He sat down at the island, Cat jumping on his lap. Cat was never nice to people unless they were familiar.

“What about?” He asked, sliding the coffee towards me.

“How long have we been together?” I asked.

“Pfft, is that a joke? You’re the one who’s always been best with dates.”

“I’m testing you heh,” I narrowed my eyes at him in mock suspicion, slipping back into the dynamic that felt so familiar.

This was familiar. This was normal.

Literally just a dream, that’s all it was, dumbass.

Right?

“7 years, counting the talking phase and when we were dating.”

“Correct! Ding ding ding, we have a winner!” I laughed and he rolled his eyes.

I glanced down at my hand, suddenly noticing the ring that shimmered dully in the gray light.

Suddenly all the odd confusion went away. We talked about a video we were recording later with Dream, and all returned to normal.
~

"GEORGE~" I jumped back to avoid the bright green character careening towards me on my screen. I watched as Nick crept out from behind an obsidian pillar as I led Dream on.

Dream was slain by Sapnap

"That was fun." Nick spoke first after we finished the extra scenes video.

"Maybe for you, because you won," Dream retorted.

"It was nice to do Manhunt again though, you must admit.

"Yeah, I guess it was." There was a weird sense of hesitancy in his voice, one that I felt was also in mine.

"You sound off, Dream. Things ok in swamp land?" Nick asked.

"Oh it's nothing, I've just had the strangest dream."

And that was how it ended. Not like the storybooks or the fairy tales. A tale unraveled only to be rolled up again and placed on a shelf.

They never discussed it with anyone but their own internal voices, it felt too personal to ever speak out loud.

For a long time, George and Dream wondered if they had seen into some parallel universe - if that life they'd lived all in one night ever existed anywhere.

But the world does strange things to our memory; things become fuzzier as our outlook becomes tougher.

George and Sapnap lived long, happy lives. They even adopted a young girl from Cuba and raised a family.

Dream travelled the world as he always wanted to, only ever settling down when he met a headstrong woman in Buenos Aires - but that's a story for another time.

Promises were made and broken, and relationships were formed and lost.

And one day, after finding an oddly familiar ring with a moon engraved on it in some obscure drawer, the tale was written down.

So I leave you with this, reader. A tale of a life I never lived, and words I've never said.

As C.S. Lewis once wrote,

"Reality is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect."

~