Chapter 1: Elia's fantasies
Elias Vale, a teenage boy with the world at his feet, often found himself trapped in his own mind. Living in a grand mansion that echoed with silence, his reality was as hollow as the ornate halls he walked through. He had a mental disorder called Fantasmal Reality Disorder (FRD), which caused him to fantasize vividly and uncontrollably. These fantasies, vivid and alluring, painted a world where he found solace, especially when it came to a girl named Mia.
Elias’s journey with FRD began when he was just ten years old. His parents noticed his increasingly erratic behaviour and his tendency to get lost in his own thoughts. He would often talk about people and places that didn’t exist, causing confusion and concern. After a series of consultations with psychologists and neurologists, he was diagnosed with FRD, a rare and complex condition. The diagnosis was a shock to his family, especially to his mother, Vivienne, who tried to understand her son’s condition while balancing her demanding social life.
Elias faced numerous challenges with his disorder. School became a battleground where he struggled to differentiate between his fantasies and reality. His classmates often found his behaviour odd, leading to his isolation. Adrian, his brother, was his only anchor in the tumultuous sea of adolescence, but even he couldn’t fully grasp the extent of Elias’s struggles. The prescribed pills, designed to manage his condition, allowed him to indulge in his fantasies for four hours daily but kept him grounded the rest of the time. These sessions became both a refuge and a prison for Elias.
As a child, Elias was a curious and imaginative boy, always exploring the world with wide-eyed wonder. He loved reading books and creating elaborate stories, often losing himself in the adventures of his own making. His favourite memories were the times spent with his mother in the grand library of their mansion, where she would read to him from ancient, dusty tomes. Those moments were filled with warmth and love, a stark contrast to the cold, clinical world his disorder later thrust upon him.
Elias began fantasizing about Mia during one of his prescribed sessions when he was thirteen. She appeared in his mind like a beacon of light in his dark world, a girl who seemed to understand him without words. In his fantasies, Mia was everything he desired: kind, beautiful, and understanding. She was the love of his life, his muse, his reason to escape the dreariness of his real life. Their imagined encounters were set in an idealized version of Crawford High School, where they shared secret smiles and stolen glances. The school, in his mind, was a place of warm sunlight streaming through large windows, laughter echoing in the halls, and moments that felt like eternity.
But reality was much different. Crawford High was a place where he felt alienated and misunderstood, except for the company of his brother Adrian and the indifference of the rest. Despite his challenges, Elias found solace in his fantasies, especially those involving Mia, whose presence brought a semblance of peace to his fractured mind.
