I Lose My Mind, Brother and Teeth. Don't Ask. (Ch.1 Shady)

Desperate times do indeed call for desperate measures. In my case? Dying. I spend the days crawling through the back of my brother’s subconscious like a nagging thought not worth the attention.

The void — I called it.

I don’t belong here. I never did. But until I find a way out, I’m trapped in his mind, fading more and more with every passing second.

So desperate measures? Asking my sucky little brother for help.

But today, the void was different. It pulses with color: waves of fuchsia and deep lavender swirled in slow-shifting waves. Thin, glowing threads gleamed like cracks in glass, spiderwebbing across the horizon. A Dream is forming.

Reluctantly, I shove my hand against the shimmering border. It morphed and zapped me. Hard. I snagged it back under my arm, rubbing the front of it in pain.

Oh, how I loathed these Dreams. They’re unstable, suffocating and full of dumb crap Michael probably doesn’t even remember thinking about.

The worst part? Right now, my only way out of here is through him.

My fingers flit at the edges — not good. My arms follow, flickering like a bad signal. It is a bad signal: I only have a few moments before I fade into nothing.

I slam my hand into the stupid Dream border again. It warps. Stretches. Burns. Ss if it’s mocking me, but I grit my teeth and shove harder.

My fingers break through—

and the whole world collapses inward.

The colors explode. Folding in on themselves. Dragging me down. A torrent of light and noise and a suffocating pressure. I gasp, but the air is thick and syrupy. Then, the sensation of falling takes over. A terrible drop that has no end. I shatter and snap back together. Wrong, disoriented, but still there.

I take in a deep, shaky breath I don’t need — just muscle memory from when I was alive.

Then —

Impact.

Fast. Strong. Marble tiles? My chin hits down before my legs do. Pain hurls through my jaw. Bloodied teeth clink on white tiles. I scramble to find solid ground: first-class landing, courtesy of my younger brother.

I look around, sorting myself.

Grocery store nightmare. You’ve got to be kidding me.

There’s a sickly greenish tint to everything, and the whole place reeks of something unsettling—like freezer-burned pizza rolls and despair. The aisle fades away into pink fog. The freezers are humming, but not electrically — something unnatural.

And it’s cold.

Short, old ladies wandered the aisles with empty shopping carts, yelling at dead air.

The glowing white pulse snaked faintly through the floor toward Michael, as if tying him to his place. I found Michael in the cashier's aisle, frantically hauling gigantamonguous cans of soup around him like some kind of makeshift fortress.

But no amount of Campbell can hide him from the shame of having nothing to wear but a flimsy apron.

It’s Naked in Public. How dreadfully uncreative.

Seven years dead, and he still finds new ways to ruin my life — or what’s left of it. I march over. There’s nothing I want more in the world right now than to smash the local box of Triscuits right in his pitiful face.

So I don’t.

I absolutely pummel him.

“Wh-Stop!” he cups his chin in one hand, holding out the other to stop me. “What’s wrong with you?”

My hands are shaking. I pause and clutch him by the collar, not out of a request on his part, but to take a closer look. He’s taller than when I last saw him. Freakishly taller.

If not for my sense of time, I’d say he’s around sixteen or seventeen. But my best guess? He’s barely past fourteen. His coily hair is standing an inch tall, and his eyes — darker than I remember — dart from side to side like I might punch him again.

Maybe I should.

But I don’t have time.

My palm fades and warps like it did when I touched the border.

The Dream is rejecting me.

I feel it. Parts of me peeling away. My unmaking.

“Listen to me,” I try to sound tough, but my voice wobbles. I wish I hadn’t died mid-puberty. “You’ve messed up big time. You can kill me, suppress me, damn me to nothing.

But don’t you dare forget me.”

Michael gives me a blank stare. His brows furrow. His lips part, and I can practically see my name on the tip of his tongue. Then… nothing. He closes his mouth and shakes his head. “What?” His voice comes out groggy. ”Who?”

His frown deepens. Something tugs at him. His face twists. Almost there. “I —no. I don’t know you.” His voice cracks at the last word.

For a moment, the only sounds are the squeaks of shopping cart wheels echoing through the aisles.

I want to scream.

I want to rip open his skull and stuff my name inside so he never loses it again.

He looks far too scared.

I’m scared, too. I’m scared of being unmade. Erased. With a piece of rock as my only memory. If I lose this, who will remember I ever existed? Who will know how hard I fought to stay?

At the end of all this—

It’s just endless crushing nothing.

And nothing hurts.

I let him go and flex my wrists. “Even so, I’m going to help you.” I scowl through the gaps of my blood-soaked mouth. “First, I’ll free you.”

Michael lets out a dry, confused laugh. He touches his chest absentmindedly like something is missing that he can’t name. “Free me? You?” His joke doesn’t even sound convincing to himself.

I don’t answer right away. My hands are warping, dark brown color bleeding out of the edges.

“Yes, me. And when I’m done freeing you —” I grin wolfishly and step back. Fading into static — "I’ll escape you.”