NOVEL NEXT Where the hell am I?
As Matt held the broken shard of glass against his forearm, he thought of everything that led up to this moment. Matt can say with certainty that he hated his life. He wasn't very smart, nor talented, the only skill he could really take pride in was his ability to sing. He was also short, around 5’7, and had a boyish face that made him look younger than he was. He had hoped to grow a beard in order to look more manly but unfortunately he realized he is unable to grow any facial hair, the same for body hair although he wasn't upset about that one, he never liked the look of chest hair.
His family life was a mess. His mom was clinically insane and his dad took his anger out on him. Even with his fathers attempts at controlling his anger with anger management classes, he still used the family as an outlet for his rage. Despite this Matt still loved his dad. After goring up and being thrown into society with no training wheels he realized his dad was just a broken man, plagued by missed opportunity's and unfair treatment. He had a couple friends throughout his life, but no one wanted to stay with him after finding out how much of a wreck he was.
Nineteen years old and in his sophomore year of college now, Matt was extremely depressed and alone. He wont get into specific moments but this had all led up to his decision that he did not want to live anymore. It wasn't any one particular reason. Just a general sense of not wanting to live. Matt had not enjoyed anything in awhile. Everything he did took monumental effort that he rarely managed to sum up, things he used to love were meaningless to him now and it ate at his phyche. Nothing thrilled him and there was nothing that made him look forward to the future. On top of that Matt had never been great at handling emotions, and instead of pushing through the rough times, he decided to be a coward and take the easy way out. The only reason he hadn't done this earlier was he felt his dad would completely break if he died. At this point though, he was so done with life he couldn't bring himself to care.
As Matt held the shard of glass to his arm, he struggled to focus. He had taken some acid and smoked a lot of weed earlier to make the pain easier to deal with, the high was ramping down so he was regaining some of his clarity. He was currently in his dorm room shower, his room was empty as his roommate was somewhere partying. While he sat on the cold tile floor he couldn't bring himself to feel much, only guilt at how hurt his dad will be when he hears about this. Matt slowly closes his eyes, breathes in, and pushes the glass into his forearm, feeling the rough glass cut all the way down to his muscle, and drags it down to his wrist. Opening his eyes he stares blankly at the blood gushing from his arm. ‘So this is how it ends’ he thinks dully. He closes his eyes for a couple minutes, causing the acid to kick in again. He feels like he's in his body but at the same time floating through space.
‘Is this what an out of body experience feels like?’ Opening his eyes he's brought back to reality by the situation he's in. Matt absentmindedly notes that blood is shooting from his arm, spraying the tile walls an ugly crimson color. He's slightly surprised he feels no pain from the wound, just a dull throbbing sensation. And as Matt watches his blood flow down the drain in a steady stream, he feels himself getting lightheaded. He weakly leans against the wall and closes his eyes, realizing something that slightly annoys him right before he passes out.
‘Damn, i'm going to die a virgin’
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Matt slowly opens his eyes to the sight of a blue sky framed by strikingly red trees. Matt squints his eyes in slight pain from the bright light. Looking around the crimson color of the trees causes the memories of what he did in his dorm room shower to come flooding back, hurting Matt's head. Matt quickly sits up and grabs his head in pain. “Ugh, where the hell am I?” he says as he looks around, taking in the gorgeous scene before him. He is sitting on a hill that overlooks a beautiful crimson forest, with red grass and trees stretching out endlessly before him. In the distance he sees some kind of tower? Castle? Type structure sitting on a cliff overlooking an absolutely massive city. ‘That place looks way bigger than even New York City and Boston put together’ Matt thought to himself in slight awe. ‘How the hell did I get here though, and where even is here? This place doesn't look like anywhere I've heard of before. I've never seen or even heard of red grass before’
Standing up Matt almost trips, ‘My legs feel shorter than they should, no wait, my whole body feels like that’. It feels like all his limbs are out of whack, he believed the sensation he was missing was called
Proprioception. The ‘sixth sense’ that allows humans to feel where their body parts are in space without looking. As Matt relearns to walk, he realizes that his shorter limbs aren't the only weird thing. He feels like his hearing has been cranked up to ten, although his eyes slightly hurt from the glare of the sun ‘it feels like when I turn on my phone at three am and get flashbanged’. As Matt's eyes slowly adjust to the light he feels like his vision is slightly worse than it should be, not by much, but just enough to be noticeable. The sensation of suddenly having amazing hearing is like that feeling of popping your ears on a plane. He can hear a bird singing somewhere in the distance and can hear the scratching of a squirrel climbing a tree with surprising clarity. Looking down, he sees that he's in a pair of slightly to tight jeans and a white T-shirt that shows of a bit more of his collar bone than he's used to, 'not a big fan of the skinny jeans, ill have to change out when I get the chance' Looking around he realized he's not sure when that chance will be.
Running a hand through his hair with a sigh he feels something abnormal on the top of his head. Grabbing the weird appendage with his fingers he shivers at the feeling ‘are these… cat ears?’ He shook his head in denial ‘that can't be right.’ Pulling on the appendage only causes him to grit his teeth in pain. Dropping his hand back to his side he decides to focus on more important things at the moment, namely ‘how the f*ck am I alive’. He was sure that he bled out, but looking at his wrists he sees no wound, in fact his skin looks better than it ever has. While looking down at his arms a strand of hair gets pushed in front of his face making him pause ‘isn't my hair dark brown? Why does it look white’ grabbing a piece of his chin length hair he tries to bring it infront of his eyes. ‘Definitely not dark brown’ he thought as he looked at the almost snow white piece of hair. Letting go of the hair with a huff he thinks to himself ‘This is all so disorientating, it almost feels like I'm in a daze. I wonder if I'm still bleeding out on the floor and I'm just tripping on LSD right now.’ It all felt a bit too real to be a hallucination though.
Matt sighed to himself and decided the only way to figure out what was going on was to walk to the city. Although something about the castle on the cliff seemed slightly familiar to him. Ignoring the feeling he started walking down the hill to the city ‘It's going to be a long walk’ Matt thinks to himself in annoyance. “Oh well, better start walking then”, and with that sentence he heads off with no idea of the adventures and chaos that await him.