STRANGERS

"Welcome to the brain."

Welcome to the brain. You have lived here for as long as you can remember.

A boy in a hospital gown woke up, shivering, sweating, hyperventilating. Sunny, his name was. A blue skinned boy with dark hair and eye-bags. He was in a headspace, a space that represses his fear and rids of his positive senses. A boy that feels isolated, like there nowhere to go or no one to go to. Not even his friends. Who he thinks would never forgive him.

He frantically left his room before they got there. He opened his door, squinted, and peeked at the outside world. Everything was unnatural. The sky, the grass, the trees. Sunny fidgeted as he carefully walked to the playground, which was empty, as always, but making a million sounds. He could only see people when they saw him. And they turned heads with a disgusted look on their faces.

He walked to the mirror. He hadn't owned one at home, so he had to sit there to get ready.

A floating mirror. You are all alone.

His past friends looked at him with hatred, disgust,channeling an endless repetitive saying:
'We know you did it'

Sunny sat there in silence, clenching his fists, biting his bottom lip, trying not to move. A ball was heading his way, and as a young boy with paranoia, he flinched. His ex friends turned to him slowly, blank looks on their faces. They paced up to him, and punched him in the stomach.

He grew nauseous, his eyes twitched, he threw up, almost masking the entire ground. He vomited a long, red, juicy chord. His intestines. A part of his vision went black. Then another. Then all of it.

The boy was back in his room. Blood on his mouth and hands. His room was empty, like a void. All he could hear was ringing and gusts of wind. He looked up at his lightbulb- oh wait, it's no longer a lightbulb, it's a noose. A worn out, splinting noose.

He looked behind him, staring at his shadow. He stared for exactly 5 seconds, then closed his eyes for 5 seconds, then opened them again. The shadow had grown eyes, then a mouth, then was able to talk.

"My god, you're still in here?"
"Yeah, it's shit."
The shadow giggled and looked at the ceiling. "Woah,nice light, but I think somethings missing fro-" ...sunny put himself in the shade,preventing his shadow from merely existing. His shadow was his only friend. What he didn't know was that it's his sense of forgiveness, which he is forcing away.

Sunny put himself in the light again and stared deeply into his shadows soul, deeply.
"You know I was just kidding. C'mon, can we atleaaaaaast chat???"
He nodded hesitantly. He's not usually the type to forgive. Ever since he killed his sister, his sense of forgiveness vanished. Yet was reborn, as his shadow. Something he'll never acknowledge when or if he wakes up. If he doesn't, it will not exist, as there is no sunlight underground. What a sombre boy. He's just a thin, short boy in a hospital gown with scruffy, pulled out hair and bruises covering him like a leopard print with a knife.
He collapsed onto the floor after zoning out, then nodded off.
As he woke up from his peaceful nap, he decided to finally visit basil. The one who had attended him with his murder. The one who framed it as a suicide. To confront him.
"Basil?"
"SUNNY?!"
Basil jumped and looked over to sunny with red,widened eyes.
"Why wont you tell them what we did, Basil. I genuinely need to know." Sunny asked
"What WE did?? That was all YOU. You killed her. Everyone loved her, she loved herself, and you killed her, you sick fuck."
Sunny started shedding tears. His sense of guilt punched him.
"Basil, what are you even talking about? The only reason it happened in the first place was because of YOUR UNNECESSARY CRITICISM. If you hadn't said all that bullshit Mari would be here."
Basil laughed maniacally.
"DONT MAKE ME LAUGH YOU PSYCHO, ALL I EVER DID WAS HELP YOU FROM GETTING IN TROUBLE. IT IT WEREN'T FOR ME, EVERYONE WOULD HATE YOU ON THE SPOT. IF I TOLD THEM NOW WHAT WOULD THEY THINK SUNNY? WHAT WOULD THEY THINK? THAT YOU BLACKMAILED ME? THAT YOU THREATENED TO DO THE SAME THI-"
Sunny took a few steps back with mere shock on his face.
"It was you, wasn't it. You told them everything yet excluded the blame on yourself."
"OF COURSE IT FUCKING WAS, BESIDES, YOU TRIED TO KILL YOURSELF AFTER YOU KILLED MARI, JUST LIKE A DOUBLE HOMOCIDE."
Sunny started crying as he pulled his blade out of his pocket, but before he had the chance to strike, basil had caught his eye with garden scissors.

He awoke once more. Yet on a staircase. A staircase. As his eyes opened, he started sobbing. The atmosphere around him was dark and fuzzy. He could see translucent hands slowly growing opaque. He ran, but the stairs grew longer. He saw the bottom, but could never get there. As he steadied his vision, he saw a teenage girls body, a girl in a white dress, with long, black hair, twisted and stuck in a broken violin. The girl was bloody, unconscious. Sunny cried harder, but couldn't hear himself scream or anything. He was basically only mouthing things. As he somehow made it to the final step, a large hand grabbed him, his vision then shattering. He woke up in his room. It was most likely a lucid dream, but it felt too real for that. He didn't think he was dreaming. As he took a peaceful night walk with nothing but the breeze surrounding him, he gets the chance to do activities in the playground without being hate crimed. After finally getting the chance to do something, Sunny decided to look in the mirror. As he opened his eyes, he stared in shock and panic. His right eye, it was gone.