Comari

Confused Darkness

Mari stood in the mimic of her room silent. Sunny was there, in there. He wasn't supposed to be...None of the other "Sunnys" followed her in there. Although, technically, he didn't either. He just appeared there like she did. It couldn't have been the actual Sunny, could it? Shared dreams happen, but Mari assumed they didn't work like this. It should be impossible.

She glanced over to Aubrey's flower, it still had its dim glow. Nothing in the room seemed to have changed, so Mari sighed and sat against the end of her bed. Just when she thought she had figured this place out, something new happened. "Why was Sunny here...? And how?"

Sunny sat on his bed quietly. The tears on his cheeks had dried by now and, Mewo sat in his lap still asleep. Of all the weird dreams or nightmares he had been having lately, that one was the strangest. He attempted to stand but didn't feel like he could move. Hours had passed since he woke up, but Sunny was still shaken by Dream Mari's words.

"Don't touch me! I don't know why you're different from the others, but I don't care. Stay away from me. You're not my brother!"

He sat motionless. What others? Mari almost seemed scared if she hadn't been so mad, and when he appeared in the strange darker version of his room she seemed more confused than he was. She kept mentioning "others", but who or what they were Sunny didn't know.

"You're not my brother!"

Her words kept echoing in Sunny's mind. He started absent-mindedly biting his hand. Mari's harsh words felt like he'd been stabbed in the gut and kicked while the knife was still in him. He hated that what she said cut so deep. It wasn't true, he was still her brother...Or maybe that's just what he told himself to feel better.

"You are not my brother."

The pain shifted to Sunny's hand suddenly. He tasted something coin-like and looked down. He had bitten down a little too hard and broken the skin, which caused him to start panicking. He jolted out of bed, much to Mewo's annoyance, and rushed to the bathroom. As he rinsed his hand in the bathroom sink, he realized the pain in his hand almost helped distract him from the pain of Mari's words.

He finished rinsing his hand and rubbed the cut gently. He lifted the hand to his face and almost bit it again in the same spot when there was a knock at the door downstairs. Sunny flinched and shuffled out of the bathroom and to the stairs, his hands up to his chest like a t-rex. He quietly walked down the stairs, the only sound in the house being the light tapping of his feet on the wooden floors.

When Sunny reached the door, he realized he couldn't peek out the window to check who it was without them seeing him, so he went onto his tip-toes and tried looking through the peephole to see who it was. He was a little too short to see but he could slightly make out the top of someone's head, meaning they must be about as short as he was. They had brown hair similar to Kel's, so Sunny assumed it was him.

He really didn't feel like seeing anyone at the moment since he was still shaken from his dream, so he turned around to go back to his room. "Sunnnyyyyyyy!!! It's meeeeeeeeee!!!" Sunny jolted from the unexpected yelling and sighed. It was Kel alright, and he likely wasn't going to leave.

"I could ask him to leave...I don't want to talk right now..." Sunny thought for a moment before turning around and sneaking across the living room and back to the stairs. The lights in the house were off so maybe Kel would think he was still asleep. Sunny shrugged it off and started sneaking up the staircase to make his way back to his room.

The first step creaked as Sunny placed his foot down and he flinched. He made his way up the stairs and finally back to his room. Sunny let out a sigh and flopped onto his bed. He turned to look at Mari's empty bed, still thinking about his weird dream.

A faint banging sound came from downstairs which startled Sunny, causing him to quickly sit up. "Kel?... Is he okay? Should I check on him or..." He thought to himself quietly. On the one hand, he didn't feel like seeing anyone right now, but on the other, what on earth was Kel banging on the door for?

He sucked in his breath and once more made the trek downstairs and to the front door, the banging getting louder as he approached. Sunny carefully opened the door but no one was there. It had started to rain lightly, and Kel was gone, likely back home. Sunny was puzzled. The sound hadn't stopped until the door was opened, meaning Kel wouldn't have had time to run back to his house and therefore it couldn't have been him.

"Who..? What..." Sunny sat there with the door open, blankly staring outside as rain drizzled down and cold air crept across his skin. His vision blurred as his eyes unfocused and he started to zone out.

The sound of the rain was soothing and the cold made him shiver. Eventually, Sunny closed the front door and walked across the living room to the back door. He pulled it open and stepped into the backyard, wet grass squishing beneath his feet and he walked and made his way to the treehouse he and his friends used to play in. He climbed up the ladder and sat in the doorway with his feet dangling off the edge as he watched the rain.

It was cold, he was wet and slightly muddy, but, it was a calming moment.