omari

One Day Left

---This is White Space. I keep seeing you here, waiting for me to do something.---

Nieta watched the girl in the long sleeves lie on her own blanket. She watched her eyes tinge from indifference to disgust, and frankly, a spark of something much more sinister. Hope.

"Do you really think they'll let us be with them again?" Nieta said.

The girl didn't answer, she merely closed her eyes and vanished.

Nieta shook her head and went through the door, to all of her friends. Aubrey, Kel, Basil, Hero, and Sunny all stood welcoming her.

No. They didn't. Nieta didn't want this one, let them fade away. This wasn't going to be seen today, she wanted to be alone. She had already dreamed of them today in such a sickening way, she would just leave on her own.

---Waiting for something to happen?---

The playground was empty. A thick fog hung everywhere Nieta looked. Things became hazy and hard to navigate, she could barely take a few steps into the mist without finding herself back at the stump. The ladder to Otherworld was impossible to get to, there was no flash to guide her to Rolling Woods, Pinwheel Forest was blank beyond the swings and slides.

Nieta decided she would go to the beach. She would make sand castles and listen to the waves. Maybe skip rocks along the pier.

Or maybe she wouldn't do any of that. A figure stood on the pier. A boy with bluish hair and a sweater vest stood, looking out over the waves.

"Oh... Hi sis." Sunny gave a small wave. Nieta stood stock still, and the boy continued. "I can't find anyone, and there's a lot of fog. Not here though." Sunny shuffled his feet. "They might be across the sea. Will you help me look for them?"

Nieta was suddenly powerless before a cry for help. Her shoulders fell a bit and she walked aside her little brother, patting him on the head once and with a strain, jumped into the water, swallowing images of reedy tendrils. Sunny jumped in afterwards, finding his sister's arms to steady himself. Sunny smiled a little when he found his sea legs, and swam alongside Nieta. Quiet breaststrokes struggled over the ever-present sound of waves and unseen seagulls, until the pair found their way to a maze of freestanding piers. Nieta helped her brother up the pier and began to navigate from on side to the other, through the misty air.

"Nieta... You're not afraid of the water as much anymore." Sunny said, looking this way and that over the ocean. "That means you're scared of something else, aren't you?"

Nieta's back prickled at the words. Sunny was acting... odd. He shouldn't be here at all and yet here he was. Walking along behind her as shadows played and laughed at the edges of her vision, on islands surrounded by planks. She had just turned to see a few having a picnic when she heard from behind her.

"Is it okay to forget something important?"

Nieta whipped around and couldn't find the voice behind her. Instead, Sunny was in front of her, on the ocean's surface, standing in front of a tall curtain.

"It's scary to talk to other people. But they're just as scared, aren't they? That they're really understanding the person that they're listening to. Friends are, at least. They care about the person inside."

Nieta grit her teeth, she could feel words trying to break out beneath her calm.

"Ah. This is it. I'm sorry for coming out here like this." Sunny's appearance changed, to the more ghostly boy Nieta had dreamed of at the lake. "I hope... You can meet them again... Mari..." The boy was taken beyond the curtain, which faded as it accepted him. Nieta leapt in after him, reaching out. Only to suddenly be swallowed by ebony waters the instant she jumped out. Nieta tumbled through the dark and the surf, unsure where she was being dragged. Ground slammed into her feet and she found herself at a small pastel island. There was no mist any longer. Seagulls crowed happily, and a whale "whale-comed" the sun with a flap of its tail fin. The ocean was welcoming once again, how she remembered it from last time. She looked around the island with a glance. There was a well with a sign on it:

Ready to go underwater for college? Take the Deep Well to the Undersea Campus!

Nieta grit her teeth and descended into the well and the warm waters within. These weren't the suffocating waters of her dreams, they were clear, bright, and easy to breathe in. Even if they did carry along bubbles that got into your eye occasionally. Nieta grumbled all the way down. She had been carried into a new old adventure without any input from her. This one was where everyone was missing, and she would play the heroic role of storming the Undersea Campus, a college that was entirely underwater. Of course, she she would find all of the playground children there, attending classes and the like, eventually finding her own closest friends after a fight with Principle Jawesome the Student Loan Shark. Even after fighting, she would have to find a way to pay back their debts, which was usually achieved by the new couple of Captain Spaceboy and Sweetheart. It seems the new pair was having difficulty feeling like a couple, and were thinking it was the same as when they were friends. So, a series of antics would ensue, attempting to set the mood and getting them to kiss, only to end in the both of them attacking the party in a fluster and finding that they were totally comfortable next to each other, and maybe that was what love was all ab-

Stupid. The more that Nieta thought about the upcoming adventure the worse off it all seemed. The more she simply didn't want to go along that route. The entire thing felt like ash in her mouth. It felt silly and shallow. She found a disturbingly large piece of her mind wanting to go back to sleep and find out what happened next.

Nieta kicked a nearby mussel and turned away from the undersea campus. It was time to talk to someone else. That meant going deeper and deeper. The Deeper Well.

Nieta went against the highway and walked through several toll gates, gazing over sites where carpenter fish were building shipwrecks or ranches of sea cows. All the way down the road where it became too dark to see any longer. The Deeper Well would be around here somewhere, though it didn't look like the Deep Well. Instead, it was just a spiraling staircase down into dark waters. The sea life down here was all bioluminescent, so it wasn't like she was at the very deepest part. She could still see where she was going. All the way down to the bottom where there was a pink door. On it was a purple heart with a name in it:

Abbi

Nieta went to knock on the door but was interrupted by a singsong voice.

"Come in!"

Nieta opened the door. It was a cutesy sort of room, with stuffed animals modeled after sea life. A bed with frilly pillows was laid out to the left of the entrance, and a mirror was on the far wall opposite that. In the corner was a computer desk with figurines and some few more stuffed animals. Sitting and tending to it all was a girl in a dress with frills on the shoulders. She had blonde hair, but two tentacles joined her locks, one on each side of her head. Each arm and leg also became a tentacle past the elbow and knee, respectively. She turned and gave a spike-toothed grin.

"It's that time again, huh Nieta?"

Nieta didn't respond.

"You know, I don't think, in all the times you've come down here, I've ever thanked you for keeping my friend's world safe. Sure it's a little different, but it can't be helped when the foundations are changed that much."

Nieta sat on the bed, looking at on particular plush.

"I know... It's not my place to say. You're down here because you're looking for the truth, something a bit deeper than the same stories you've lived through time and time again. It's all breaking through. The chef boy will always find it because he was there that night, and Sunny will always know it and push you towards it. I wonder if it's because he wants to apologize, be apologized to, or have you apologize to yourself. Well I say I wonder, but I think we both know, even if we don't really know."

Nieta looked at a poster on the wall.

"The boy who keeps leaving the safety of the picnic blanket and the boy you always keep just barely out of reach from but always run towards. Ah, if you're looking for the latter I'm sure he's somewhere with the truth of it all, where he always gets too close to. You already know that though. This time it's all where the doubts started, isn't it?" Abbi continued smiling, but when Nieta wouldn't engage, she simply turned back to her computer and continued. "That appearance is a powerful armor. But for all its strengths it has just as many drawbacks. After all, the dress you wore when you saved my friend is the same dress that you discovered a fear of drowning in, if I can make a metaphor." Abbi looked back again and found Nieta standing in front of a reflectionless mirror. "Maybe the time for metaphors is over though. The end is nigh. Holding to this world is noble, but it's not his most precious thing, is it? I wonder if he'll ever see his most precious thing again..."

Abbi rose and waved a "hand" over the mirror.

"You always come and listen to my advice, at least. I think that gives me hope for Sunny's dreams. It all ends at the chef's house, if you're ready."

Nieta spared another look at the strange girl before crawling through the mirror, becoming swallowed by the dark until she found a small door. A cabinet to that place she had started out. The Neighbor's Room. She looked around the empty playroom once more, to the door of white space again. She checked her jump rope and found it knotted into a loop. A noose. It was time. All of this silliness... Too much of her wanted to wake.

She followed the misty forest path against her better judgement. Deep, deep into the woods where a treehouse stood in a shadowy grove. She tossed her noose over one branch. Instead of placing the loop around her neck though, she saw the shadow it made on the ground. It wasn't the shadow of a loop of rope, but a hole. Nieta considered it for a moment, and then jumped in. Falling down. Farther and farther. Past the Deep and Deeper wells, below the Library, below everything. Falling and falling into the abyss below.

---Welcome to Black Space---

Nieta woke to the darkness all around her. Shadows of past places abounded, and became strange. The cloud trees had frozen lightning hanging from them, and tulips swayed in unison to a nonexistent breeze. From that to the stairs of her home, where a boy lay with a shard of a broken violin piercing the back of his neck. Nieta ran up to him and turned him over coldly in her arms. His eyes were open, and a sickly hole was torn into his chest.

His arms snapped to her neck, and she was dragged down even deeper.

She woke on a black picnic blanket in and endless black expanse. Her sketchbook was here, filled with scrawls of poetry and hateful words. There was a laptop but the screen was broken, and battery run cold. Doors abounded, lined in white.

Nieta walked to one such door. Next to it was a single white key. Not one like a house key, but like on a piano. Nieta picked it up in a dispassionate way, inserting the thin end into the door. It unlocked for her.

Twisted life abounded. Fish like wrung-out towels. Crows with stakes in their wings. Nieta walked among the screams until she saw a tall shadow with a familiar shape.

".... You're here. These rooms are broken and disjointed, but the root of everything is somewhere in here... Find it. For both of us..."

Nieta walked through him and picked up another piano key, lurching space around her. Grey, misshapen houses lined the way. In front of each was a scribble of a Magical Heart. Each poorly formed and only capable of screaming.

"When we hid the truth, we did it to protect the younger ones... Instead of relying on them when we needed them most, we built a wall for them to play safely in. Can we even call them friends if we keep treating them like they're somehow in our care and us not in theirs?"

The next piano key found Nieta on an enormous kitchen floor. Drops of red fell onto checkered tiles, and knives hailed as well on every tile except the one she was on.

"I miss you, Mari. You were always there for me. You knew what I wanted to be and encouraged me, so please, let me reach you too."

Nieta was now in a fleshy room. Each wall was covered in lacerations, and in many of those cuts, an eye could be found, looking at her. Crying blood. Whispers from barely-familiar voices rang in her ears. Whispers about what a freak she was. About what an attention whore she could be.

"Back then, I didn't know what to do, everyone left and I couldn't help anyone. Least of all you. When you shut yourself away with what happened I felt so powerless. Seeing you again after so long... I don't know what to say. I waited for so long to see you and then you just appear again, but still you're so far away.

Another scene. The Hero with dark red hair was putting the finishing touches on a cake. He says to come and see, but when it was cut open, a cake-slice comes out of him instead, leaving a perfect cross-section of his organs and meat. Cats come and eat the piece remaining.

"Have you been hiding the truth, or running from it? We have a chance to face it together but... Do you still want to be at my side after everything? Will you set me free? Will you set yourself free?"

This time she was in an upside-down living room. One shadow was moving like he was yelling, but only whispers about how pretending everything was perfect was too much. He wanted out.

"Mari... I've seen your pain too. The pain you're still in. And still, I'll always come for you."

Nieta was in the Neighbor's Room. She had found Hero again. But the room was far and away too long. This Hero was excited to see his friends again when he spotted them by the stairs, only to be held tight by "Kel" and "Aubrey" as "Basil" dumped a flowerpot full of spiders onto him. The scurried over him, biting and tearing until nothing was left... Nieta left the playroom and found herself in front of a church like the one from her dreams. The ceiling was far too tall. And from it, dangling by a red line, was another dream Hero.

"Nieta..." He said. "Help me..." Red dripped over him, as he was pulled up. Nieta hung on tight and they were launched into the dark. Into a room where crimson shone in from a glass door. Hero rubbed his wrists and looked out the door.

"Do you hear that?" Hero said.

Nieta did. She walked in front of the door. This was at an end, now. This is where she wanted to be. The door slid open, and Hero made to step in front of Nieta, but she easily pushed him aside, where dark tendrils, long strands of hair, held him fast.

"It..! It hurts! What are you doing? Where are you-!" Hero stopped as his neck was snapped by a loop of hair.

Nieta stepped outside and sat in a noose like it was a swing. She rose into the sanguine air, allowing her tendrils to break the small house below. For the first time today, she spoke.

"Enough."

---...---

Mari woke on the floor, her last images were of Nieta looking her straight in the eye from her throne. She gasped several times and then went to check on her friends. Aubrey was sleeping soundly, but Basil was nowhere to be found.

She could hear something, though, a violin was playing one half of a song. It was downstairs, in the piano room. Mari quickly chased it.

A boy stood. He was deathly pale with short dark hair. He made the motions of a violin though he held none, and sound came out.

"You liked this song a lot." He said.

Mari took a step forward.

"It's not complete without your part. You would practice it again and again for hours."

Sunny focused on his fingers for a second.

"I hated it though. I felt like it was ruining everything. I liked it at first but... You weren't wrong. It takes effort to be good at something."

"I... I..." Mari couldn't find her words this time.

"I'm sorry. Would you still let me play with you? Even after what I did?"

"...Of course I would. But do you really want to play with me after I..."