It was any random Wednesday in the middle of October. She was thirteen. It was just another school day, time for math. She was... Well that was the thing. She had no idea. She must be daydreaming, likely bored by class, she decided. Hoo boy was her teacher going to yell at her when he caught her zoning out. But she couldn't very well wake up - she'd tried, and it was like her brain stubbornly refused to snap back to reality. This was one weird daydream though. She was somewhere, but nowhere, because there was nothing to see, no light or dark, no sound or anything she could feel. Hell, she didn't even think she was breathing anymore; she couldn't feel any of her body. She only registered that she was thinking. If she had a mouth, she would have shouted. Actually, she would have been screaming her throat raw. It was like claustrophobia to the power of a lot – she thought, but in the huge expanse of nothing, she didn't seem to have a body. In her mind (all she did have in this twisted day-terror, she reminded herself) she pictured herself flailing and crying and screaming just because. Because she could. 'I want out someone help anyone here where am I am I even anywhere I want to be back in math anything is better than this-'
"LET ME OUT!!" Startled by the sound of her own voice, she cried out and reached up, grabbing her own throat and covering her mouth. Her breathing was rapid and shallow but she was breathing again. That's what counted in this void.
"No one is holding you here. You, yourself, came here." The voice certainly startled her, more than her own had, and she felt a sudden onset of terror. It wasn't just that she heard a voice, but that it seemed to be in her own head and it was certainly not her own – ambiguous, genderless and impossible to define.
"What do you mean? I was in math class and then... This is all some awful daydream!!" The voice chuckled, reverberating softly and somehow reminding her of fluttering wings.
"Maybe so. Yet... Why are you so helpless? So out-of-control in a dream you know is a dream?" There was a pregnant pause. "Answer me that, Kiki." Definitely just a sick imagining, she decided with a little more conviction after the indefinable voice used her name. Might as well play along until someone smacks her awake.
“B-Because I’m confused. It’s hard to control yourself when you’re in hysterics and can’t think straight.” Again, another chuckle. Lower this time too, more masculine.
“Kiki, don’t deny me, or deny yourself the truth.” The voice might have dropped an octave, but she thought it certainly raised a level in creepiness. She was too unsettled to notice the voice was less in her head and more from the expanse of the sightless void. “You’ve felt the power, resonated with it. Kiki think, think hard – you know exactly where you are.” She wanted to roll her eyes; she knew she was floating in an abyss with nothing in it but her and a disembodied voice and that was it. She had no idea where it was. But, if it wasn’t a daydream (it was of course, but theoretically…) what would she assume was the cause? She was pretty sure she didn’t die between sitting in her desk and taking her books out of her bag, no one had drugged her – although she couldn’t think of any reason or means of doing so – and she didn’t fall asleep and end up in a real, REM-stage dream in such a short time without anyone waking her. She felt her eyebrows knit together in thought, and something did come to mind. It was absurd, mind you, but she was in some fantasy where nothing existed but her and an echo-y, assumed-to-be male voice so how bad could voicing the theory be?
“Could…” The voice sounded like it drew in a shallow breath and held it – it was getting clearer and clearer by the second. “The pocketwatch have something to do with it?” It was almost a shout of glee that she heard from the voice.
“You’re very close! Think even harder now Kiki, have you heard my voice before?” She could barely remember she’d even had trouble recognizing it before. The voice was clear as crystal, definitely male, and not young, but not old either, wise and soft yes, supportive almost, but definitely with authority. And she couldn’t say she’d ever heard it before.
“I- I don’t know.” It sighed, and slipped again, layered tones and different pitches all resounding from everywhere, indistinguishable once more.
“Unfortunate. I suppose it will require still more time…” Frustration? Sadness? Disappointment? She couldn’t pull anything out of the melded sounds, or make out any conclusive emotions.
“Wait, hold on! You’re going to leave me here?” Silence. “Hey!” More silence. Lots of it, enough to drown in.
And she wasn’t breathing anymore.
