The Drawing Board

Teaser #3 (Fractured Reality - 1)

IMPORTANT NOTE: All teasers are not finished chapters. At the very least, they will show the concept of an upcoming plot point in the story, or a fraction of a full chapter. Please note that the teaser chapters may not appear at all or may not appear in this form when the story is released.

This is a teaser for an upcoming book, called "Fractured Reality" (or at least, that's what I think it is going to be called...). If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask them in the comments! This is the third book in the “Ego Sickness” trilogy. It won’t be out for a while, at least not until early or mid 2021. The “redacted” names in this teaser do not correlate with the redacted names in the “Afraid of the Dark” teasers. Think of them as two different sets of redacted names. Without any further ado, here is the teaser. You’re welcome, EinBoi. Enjoy!

- Red

[REDACTED_1] quickly realised that there was something wrong the moment he opened his eyes. It was for the simple reason that when he opened them, there was nothing but darkness. It wasn’t like the darkness of when you wake up half-way through the night and could barely recognise the objects in your room. No, this was pitch black. Almost as if he had never opened his eyes to begin with. In fact, he forcefully blinked a few times just to make sure that his eyes were open. But nothing about the darkness changed. Had he gone blind? That thought scared him. He didn’t want to think about it. Instead he kept his eyes open and stayed still. Maybe his eyes would adjust to the darkness. He couldn’t see for now, but he had four other senses which he could use. Just calm down, and think… one step at a time, let’s work through this, he told himself, trying to give his mind some comfort.

Taste. Probably the most useless to him right now. But still, could he taste anything? There was… something, that was for sure. The back of his throat felt slightly sticky as if it had been previously clogged with something. On his tongue, there was a very light metallic taste which he couldn’t quite place. This didn’t matter though; taste wasn’t going to help him out here.

Can I see anything yet? He asked himself. He couldn’t. Okay, next step, keep working through this.

Smell. Again, not a very useful sense right now, but it was still one which he could use. The air around him was strange. It was the type of air you would get if you went into an attic or a room that hadn’t been opened for a long time. It was stale, dusty, and dry. The type that made you want to cough every five minutes, as it would constantly irritate the back of your throat like an itch which you couldn’t scratch. Aside from how the air felt as he breathed it, it did in fact smell strangely. It was as if someone had mixed cleaning chemicals with gasoline or oil. It was almost as if someone had mixed a hospital with a car repair garage. He hoped that the things he could smell were not some sort of toxic fumes. Are they toxic? Is this why I can’t see anything!? He thought to himself, panic suddenly racing through his mind. No… no, you just need to wait for your eyes to adjust… calm down… but his words weren’t reaching him. He forced himself to continue his task. He had to find out something. He was going to have a fully-fledged panic attack if he didn’t.

Sound. That was the next thing he focused on. Could he hear anything around him? He could hear his heartbeat, drumming in his ears at a racing pace, along with his quick and shallow breaths. His own fear was deafening him, banging against his head and inside of his chest, sending him deeper into worry with each strike. You have to calm down, you’re making things worse for yourself! He took a deep breath in through his nose and held it, taking in a lungful of dust as he did so. He held it for as long as he could before exhaling deeply though his mouth, then breathing in once again. He repeated this a few times, until his heart had finally stopped trying to hammer through his ribcage. Once more, he took in a large breath and held it. But this time he didn’t let it go. He instead listened for a while. Could he hear anything now? It was quiet, but yes, there was a sound. A very small huff of air from somewhere in the room, followed by a slight whistle. Is someone… snoring? Am I not the only one here? He focused as well as he could but couldn’t quite make out where the noise was coming from. It seemed to be coming from multiple places at once. He breathed out once again.

Can I see anything yet? He once again asked himself. He strained his eyes through the darkness. The vague outlines of objects were starting to reveal themselves. He practically sighed with relief. He still couldn’t see well enough though. So, he moved on to the final sense which was working correctly.

Touch. What could he feel? He knew that he was laying down, on what he thought was the floor. He could feel a hard, smooth, and cool surface beneath his fingertips, a thin film of dust coating the top of it. Slowly, he felt around his to see if he could locate any objects around him. His left hand quickly came into contact with a wall. He felt around for a while and worked out that he was in the corner of a room. There didn’t seem to be anything on the walls, at least not at the level which he was. He felt around the floor some more, before he found something long and thin, made of some sort of soft, fabric material.

Holding onto the object which he had found, he slowly pushed his way into a sitting position, and then onto his knees. Slowly, and somewhat cautiously, he shuffled closer towards the object and began to feel along it. He felt the shape of the object carefully, moving along it to see if he could work out was this fabric belonged to. The fabric was loose, almost as if it was a blanket on the floor, but the material which it was made out implied that it wasn’t a blanket. It felt more like denim, the material which some jeans are made of. But this can’t have been jeans, because it wasn’t the right shape. However, it could have been a jacket. He picked up the object carefully. It was definitely a jacket; He could feel the arm sleeves now. He could also feel that the denim jacket was heavier than it should have been. “There must be something in the pockets...” he murmured to himself, before realising that he was speaking out loud and cutting himself off. That past place... that experience... it had made him a little more reluctant to make unnecessary noise, especially when he was on his own – or didn’t know if he was alone.

Carefully, he felt around on the inside of the jacket first. Not finding any inner pockets, he tried to locate if there were any outside pockets. There was one breast pocket, and a familiar rectangular object tucked inside of it. Quickly, he pulled it out and began feeling along the edges of the metal and plastic rim, before he came across some buttons. He clicked one, and the black rectangle suddenly lit up into a phone screen, the change in brightness hurting his eyes. It wasn’t his phone; the home screen was wrong. His home screen showed a picture of his dog, Khaleesi, but this screen showed a picture of a skeleton with a scythe and goblet. He recognised it instantly, but that logo didn’t matter right now. He swiped down from the top of the screen and located the flashlight button. With a simple ‘tap’ a bright neon white beam of light illuminated the floor around him, flecks of dust dancing gently through the air.

The floor itself was made of alternating black and white tiles, some of which had scuff marks and scratches across them. He scanned the area of the room which he had woken up in, looking across at the walls. At one point, they were probably white, but age had taken a large toll on that. It was now a murky beige, with lines of darker brown where water damage had eroded them away to a soggy, sagging mess. He swooped the torch beam across the wall, further towards the ceiling. The plaster was cracked and crumbling away in certain places to reveal reddish brick work underneath, while copper pipes that across the walls and into the roof had rusted, turning to the mouldy green colour which copper fades to with exposure to the elements – or exposure to time. He turned around and searched the rest of the room to locate if there was anything noteworthy. There certainly was. In the corner which was furthest from him there were three arcade cabinets. The strange thing was that there was no indication as to what games they actually were. The plastic casing on the machine was grey. No characters. No letters. No colour. It was like they were nothing more than prototypes for what the shape machines were supposed to look like, and therefore held no games inside. Instead of being a fun filled box of wonder, it was a sad, hollow and grey shell. On one of the walls, on the side of the room which he was on, there was a poor excuse for a door. By ‘door’ what that really meant was a hole in the wall. A door shaped hole in the wall, with its edges breaking down into two dusty piles of decaying rubble. A few rotten wooden planks had once boarded the room up, but now the majority of them were splintered across the floor, although a few did remain. You could simply duck under them, they weren’t much of an obstacle. Has this room been boarded up to prevent something from getting in? Or stop something from getting out? He questioned to himself, but he clearly wasn't going to get an answer, but that wasn’t the main question which he had to investigate right now.

[REDACTED_1]’s biggest question was why were two of his friends lying unconscious on the floor, in a circle of bloodied footprints.