A Game Of Pawns

Chapter 3

Have you ever felt like you were in a bad dream but couldn't wake up from it? Maybe something dark and sinister is chasing you down, or you fall into a pit of hungry snakes with no escape. Heart pounding and head racing, you seek safety or clarity or both. You want to wake up but it either feels so real that it doesn't register as a dream, even if what you see is ridiculous, or there's something there that keeps you curious enough to go just a little bit further. Diving deeper into the dream until something outside of yourself puts out a wake-up call; someone shaking you awake or an alarm going off. When the dream is over, you're mostly relieved to be done with it but somewhat disappointed that you don't get to see how it ends. I've had many dreams like this but last night's was different.

I don't think anything triggered it. The day had been pretty normal. The most exciting thing that had happened was the single lightning strike that took out my power, but even that didn't seem special. How could such a boring day inspire such a weird dream?

It felt like I was asleep for a while before I started dreaming. It took a while to come into focus too, like it had to load or something. I remember flashes of color, but nothing that stuck out and I had a hard time remembering the image of what my dream was before it went weird. Then everything sort of... opened. In a play, the curtain rises to show the stage with all of its scenery and actors. This felt kind of like that.

I was with my childhood friends, Tommy and Michael. We were downtown at our favorite pizza place, Bingo's Pizza, in our usual window booth waiting for our food to come. We'd done this almost every weekend since we were old enough to go out on our own. I could see the same unfamiliar people roaming outside the window like always.

But something was wrong. Everything started normally but accelerated like crazy. I don't mean it was cutting from scene to scene like in an action movie, although it also did that to some extent, but everything was moving like someone had hit the fast forward button. My friends were talking so fast that I couldn't understand what they were saying. They also moved too fast to be real, gesturing wildly and taking sips from the straws of their carbonated drinks too quickly for any normal person to function. The drinks didn't spill out either, the liquid simply accepted the sharp motions as normal. I tried to tell them to slow down but then realized that it wasn't just them. The customers, the staff, even the people outside were all moving as if they were all DC's The Flash.

I didn't know what to do. Was I slow to them? Did they even notice that anything was wrong? I started to wave my hands frantically, trying to get someone's attention but somehow no one noticed me. Could they not see me? I shouted with no answer. Not even a glance in my direction. Tommy appeared to start laughing and hit Michael on the back as they both broke into a laughing fit that must have lasted quite some time considering the speed at which everything was moving. I stared. I could see the red and white designs of the booth they were sitting on through their bodies. I glanced around and saw the clock on the wall through the waitress's torso as she quickly approached the table with two full glasses and left with two empty ones. In horror, I looked back at my friends, studying their faces for signs of change. There was no pain or recognition of their condition in their expressions, but they were definitely growing paler by the second, slowly becoming wisps of what they were only minutes before. I shook my head and blinked hard. That was the first time I tried to wake myself up.

Within minutes I was the only one left in the restaurant, surrounded by empty tables and partially eaten pizzas. Breathing hard, I replayed it over in my mind. They never even realized that they were being erased from my world. Tommy and Michael had been laughing at a joke that I couldn't understand, customers were making their orders, workers were taking those orders, running around and tossing unbaked pizza dough into the air. Then, the dough fell with a soft splat as the people vanished. Silence filled the air and I was intensely aware of my breathing; I was still here.