In Charlotte's Eyes

ONE: Charlotte's First Dream

It was dark. Charlotte was conscious. All around her, it was dark. She looked to the floor. She could see the soft, curved outlines of her feet reflecting off the floor. She continued to look around for something, anything.

Suddenly, she could hear a noise.

It was an amalgamation of noises, all soft yet unpleasant. It sounded like scraping glass. She turned her head, only to see nothing. She took a step.

“Charlotte.”

The sounds of scraping glass were behind her. The noises were much clearer. She turned around.

Parker was there.

Except.. it wasn't him. Not him exactly. He was a mixture of triangles and various other shapes, slightly transparent in color. His face was lifeless, yet animated. It clearly resembled Parker, but it wasn't him. He was smiling at her.

“Parker..?” She muttered, aghast.

She stared at his face, as it alternated between two expressions, both exactly the same, yet slightly displaced from one another. This soul-less mirror of Parker was unsettling.

Then, his body split into two, and his face stopped flickering. Charlotte gasped. The two pieces of Parker slowly shifted apart from each other, then sank into the inky floor. As it sank, a fire started where he disappeared. The fire was similarly-looking to Parker; a conglomerate of semi-transparent shapes, colored in the illusion of a fire.

Charlotte dashed to it, staring at the floor where Parker’s split body sunk. The sounds of the pseudo fire began getting louder, combining with the sounds of scraping glass.

Then, the noises stopped. The visuals of the fire were gone.

Charlotte was alert again, and she looked around. Nearby, there was a large garbage dumpster, filled to the brim with trash bags. A few trash bags littered the feet of the dumpster. But what caught her eye the most was Parker's body, laying down against a duet of trash bags.

Charlotte ran towards the dumpster, breath hastening.

Parker’s body was lifeless again, but not in the dystopian lifeless from earlier. He was completely limp, his face erased.

Charlotte knelt down to his corpse, gently picking him up off the trash bags.

“Parker..” She murmured, eyes and lip quivering.

More scraping glass. A message glitched silently onto Parker’s body.

“you break my heart”

Then, the message vanished.

Charlotte let go of his body. It plopped back into place, comfortably resting on top of the trash bags. She let him rot away.

She stood up and averted herself from him.

“Moldy..”

White noise.

“Moldy..”

A crack of glass.

“… … …”

“Moldy?”

Charlotte’s eyes snapped open. Her heart was pounding. She scrambled to sit upright, looking to her left to see who was next to her.

It was Whippy Creamy. He was lightly kicking his legs over the edge of the pool, his lip curled. He made eye contact with her, brows raised. “Oh, finally, you're awake.”

She was back on The Plane. Of course she was. She had never left. That vision with Parker was.. just a dream.

“Uh..” Charlotte’s throat was shaky. She looked down. She quickly gulped. “Yeah.” Her strange dream still vividly replayed in her mind.

“We were all kinda worried about you.” He plainly said, staring outwards. “You alright?”

Her eyes darted to him, then away again. “Yeah.” She paused, sucking in a breath. “H-How did you get up here?”

“Oh, we carved out a ladder so that we could climb up.”

Already? Charlotte looked down. She couldn't see any ladder anywhere. Whatever. She'd see it later.

“Yeah. So I was tasked with making sure you were okay while everyone else is figuring out what to do next.” He sounded bummed.

“Ah.”

Charlotte looked down at the floor she was sitting on. It was damp. All the water that spilled from her body made the wood around her slightly darker. And her body was.. mostly dry. Some moisture still lingered within her, she could tell, but it was almost all gone. She sighed.

“Anyways, I'm gonna go back to the others now.” Whippy Creamy’s voice caught her attention. He was standing near the edge of the pool. “You coming?”

Charlotte looked away, still feeling uneasy from her strange dream. “Oh.. Sure.”

He stifled a chuckle. “Heh. Cool. Just follow me.”