Screen Time

Chapter 9: The Cliff

I spent so much time hanging out with Apollo that I almost forgot what I set my mind on doing today. Almost. Although it's dark now, the episode still isn't over yet so I hug Apollo goodbye and begin making my way towards the library. As I walk, I notice that, unlike the last time I was here, the streets are now filled with actual stores instead of placeholders. Looks like Maddison and Zack have been busy today. As I'm trying to decide which store to go into first I see a man kneeling in front of one of them and making weird gasping noises? When I get closer, I realize that the gasping noises I heard was the sound of him crying. As I'm deciding whether or not I should ask him what's wrong or just ignore him altogether, I finally discover why his hazelnut brown hair seems so familiar to me.

"Simon?", the man turns around to look at me and it really is Simon but now I'm wishing it was a stranger instead. I already suck at comforting people and things are still awkward with me and Simon after what happened yesterday. I stand still for a while, contemplating what to say in this situation before settling on.

"Are you ok?", I whisper even though the only ones around are the two of us. He wipes his tears and stares at me for a bit but still says nothing. I dig around in my pockets for a bit hoping I have anything useful in there and I find a handkerchief. "Here, use this."

"Thanks", he says as he takes it from my hand but that's all he says and another round of awkward silence begins.

"Well...bye?", I say as I quickly turn around and begin to head home.

"Wait.", Simon calls out to me. "I need to talk to you"

"About what?", honestly after everything that's happened between us, crying included, a one-on-one convo with him is the last thing I want right now.

"You wanted answers right?", he says as he turns and motions for me to follow him. So I do. But now I wish I didn't because instead of awkwardly standing near the stores we are now awkwardly sitting near a cliff saying nothing. I have no idea what to say or what to ask him first so now we're just sitting here. In silence. But just when I'm about to say something, Simon finally speaks. "You know, I don't know exactly how long I've been awake, but what I do know is that when I woke up things were completely different from how they are now."

"Different how?"

"Different everything. Different look, different characters, different story."

"Different story?"

"Yep, before it was Maddison and her love affairs with Zack, the story used to be about Robin and his plan to ask out Jessica to prom.", why do all of these plots revolve around romance?, "yeah I'm getting sick of it too", Simon says, reading my mind. "I wasn't reading your mind, it was just written all over your face"

"Oh", I stare dumbfounded and Simon lets out a small chuckle. So he can laugh.

"I was Robin's best friend, just like you. I was the only person awake back then though.", this might be a perfect segue into what I want to find out the most.

"Do you know how to wake someone up?", when I ask, Simon pauses and stares at me for what feels like forever. And then, he speaks.

"What do you remember about the first time you woke up?", it's just like him to answer my question by not answering it at all.

"I was in the car with Maddison and-"

"No", Simon says, interrupting me, "before that."

"Before that?", I have no idea what he means by that. There was no 'before that'. Or was there? I try hard to think of what he might be talking about but all I can come up with is, "I think I was dreaming?"

"Do you remember it? The dream I mean.", he clarifies.

"Not really but I remember waking up and feeling like I couldn't breathe. It felt like I died or something"

"It was the same for me and Apollo too. When I first woke up I had a nightmare. I don't remember much of it but I remember falling from the sky and when my body hit the ground, the impact felt so real. Like I had actually died. Apollo seems to remember a lot more about his dream though. Said something about being executed for treason for standing up to the 'dark lord'.", even his dreams sound like the plot to a video game, "I wasn't sure until Apollo told me about his dream, and now that you're saying the same thing I'm confident that that was the reason we all woke up."

"So that's it? The only way to wake up is to have a really bad nightmare?", that's the big secret he's been keeping? He kept arguing with me about how he doesn't want to wake others up but if the only way to wake up is to have a bad dream then I don't think it's even possible to do that in the first place.

"After I woke up, I tried so hard to get others to see how weird this world was", there he goes ignoring me again, "Especially Robin. I tried so hard to get him to see what I saw, the frozen background characters, the weird time skips, the identical houses, and stores, but it was like every time he was around, things would just go back to normal.", the more he speaks, the more similarities I find in our experiences. "Then I brought him here"

"Here? Like to the cliff?"

"Yes. If you stand on the edge and look out it's like the world stops at a certain point. Like someone forgot to draw the rest of the background.", I stand up and walk near the edge of the cliff to confirm what he said and he's right. I could point out with my fingers a clear line where the city stops and the 'nothingness' begins.

"But I'm guessing he still couldn't see it right?", I turn and ask him.

"Nope. To him, it just looked like a beautiful cityscape. At that point, I'd have enough of it. I was mad at him for not being able to see what I saw and he just thought I was losing my mind. It didn't take long for things to get physical. And then he fell."

"He fell?! Like off the cliff?!"

"Mhm", he mutters with a nonchalant attitude unbefitting of what he just told me.

"Did he...?"

"Die? No, but when I saw him fall off the cliff, I really did think he was going to die. He did too. Luckily for us, the cliff isn't that steep so depending on how you fall you'll probably only end up with a twisted ankle or a hurt back."

"So he only twisted his ankle?"

"I don't remember. When I went to check on him, broken bones were the last thing on my mind. The first thing I noticed was that he was alive, but he was...different."

"What do you mean by different?"

"His eyes. They didn't look the same. I can't explain it but for the first time, when he looked at me, I felt like he was actually seeing me."

"Wait are you saying he-"

"Yes, he woke up."