Under His Favorite Tree

That Day

I opened my eyes to find myself in a weird dark place. I was sitting down before I got here and now I'm laying down on the floor. I got up and walked around for a bit. The darkness started to take form into something that I have seen before. First it was my home, then it transitioned into the school building. I tried to navigate the halls of the ever changing rooms but eventually found some weird control room. It was filled with monitors and keyboards. I tried to approach it but there was something that was blocking me. Like an invisible barrier. I heard footsteps and turned around to see nobody. When I turned back around, however, Alice stood right in front of me. I jumped back a bit and looked at her. She looked back at me and stood there.

"What are we doing here, Alice?" I asked "Do you know what this place is?" She nodded her head.

"We're in your mind, Lily," she said "This is your mind-space and every building you have seen in this place is a place that you hold dear to you." she told me. "I've seen everything while you were navigating the halls of your mind." My eyes widened in shock. She made a promise to me in the beginning that she would never read my mind.

"You broke our promise!" I yelled at her. She simply shook her head.

"I couldn't just watch you fall into the hands of irrelevance. You stopped talking to our group and slowly but surely people began to forget you were one of us." She started to walk away and head to the control system. She looked back at me and as a small smile began to grow and her face. "Think of this as a gift to help you remember who you are," she said. She started to type on the keyboard and my head started to ache in horrible pain. I screamed at the top of my lungs hoping someone would hear me. "Don't scream, no one can hear you. Plus it's kind of annoying." she told me as she typed away. I tried my best to ignore the pain but for every letter she typed, it only got worse. I opened my eyes to look at the monitor and saw that she was moving my body.

"I thought you said your powers were mind reading" I managed to say through the pain.

"They are. However, if I read someone's mind who is weak mentally, I can read the patterns of the controls the mind uses and alter them." She said still typing on the keyboard. I fell down in pain and could only watch as she terrorized the students I was friends with. She alway thought that they were nerds and losers. I found them to be quite nice and friendly. I tried to get up but the pain was immeasurable. She looked at me with nothing but pity in her eyes. She turned around and declared that they were no longer my friends. One of them tried to reason with her. Before they could say anything she slapped him across the face. She turned me around and walked away. I got up and started to bang on the invisible barrier. "Resistance is futile" she told me, not even looking at me.

"You underestimate my determination," I told her. I started to bang on the barrier harder but nothing happened. She started to reach into my pocket and pulled out my phone. She unlocked it and texted Red to meet her under the sakura tree. She stood up there and waited. She eventually saw Red making his way up there and when they were both on the hill she made a plan for me to break up with him. Before she could say anything, however, Red grabbed her by the neck and hung her in the sky.

"You are not Lily," he said "Who are you and what have you done to her!?" He yelled. Alice started to panic as she didn't expect him to grab her like that. While she was panicking I started to bang on the glass only this time, there were cracks starting to appear. I banged on the barrier one more time with all of my remaining strength and broke the barrier. It shattered and the pieces fell like glass. I approached Alice who was still panicking. I turned her around and punched her in the face. I regained control of my body and Red dropped me once he sensed that Alice left my body.

"I'm sorry, did I hurt you too much?" he asked in concern. I shook my head and laughed a bit.

"No, you did just enough pain to kick them out." I told him. We started to walk away until I felt my body get weak. I fell to the floor and saw myself in my mind again. I looked around and this time instead of waking up on the floor, I was strapped to a chair. I looked around at my surroundings.

"Jeez, did you think that you could get rid of me easily?" asked a feminine voice. I turned around and saw Alice standing there. I tried to move but couldn't. "As I said earlier, resistance is futile." she said. She went back to the control room and started to take control again. Instead of breaking up with Red, she decided that this time, it would take something more physical. Red was caught off guard and couldn't fight back. He could only evade but he was already worn down from a fight he had to deal with earlier. He started to become tired and was unable to dodge after a certain point. He didn't want to fight back for fear of hurting me. He took the hits until she hit him in the head which knocked him out. She looked at his body and then looked back at me. "If he knows that I was the one controlling you," she said as she dragged his body." He's too dangerous to be left alive!" she yelled. She dragged him to the school pool. She dumped him there and jumped in herself. She grabbed his arms and chained them to the bottom with the chains she found in the gym. After chaining him up, she ran toward the gym. She sat my body next to hers. She looked at me and started to walk over to me. "It's ok," she said, "I'll keep you here until you start to become dehydrated." She kept true to that statement as I was tied to the chair and was forced to wait for about a day. It was only then she then gave me control of my body once again. I looked around me and started to touch my body. After looking at Alice I sucker-punched her and she fell to the floor. I jumped on top of her and started to beat her up. After I felt content I got up and started to run toward the pool. I don't know how long it's been but it was a dead night. I started to sprint. I didn't want to believe it. If a day passed, then it was the day we first met. It was on this day that she met the love of her life. It was this day that I changed my view of the world and saw good in people I didn't consider. It was this day I confessed my feelings to him. It was this day that I introduced him to my parents and it was this day that I might lose it. I didn't want to believe it. It was this day that all of my hopes and dreams might be crushed, and unfortunately, it was this day when I found it.