Weird World

This world… is not normal. It’s not everyday you find yourself fighting a twelve foot entity, or sleeping upside down because you’re stuck. I’m Jupiter, I know, weird name my parents gave me. But I always went by Jr., since that was the name of my grandpa had before he kicked the bucket. That was a nice bucket too… Anyway, enough about my name. How about I tell you how I ended up in a place like this? Well, it was twenty years ago when it all started, I was about five years old at the time. I still remember the pink walls of my room, or well, the whole house. I laid in my bed, dozing off when I heard this… sound. Like a house was getting flipped upside down kinda sound. And next thing you know, I wake up in a hallway. It wasn’t a normal hallway either. It went on for infinity, and it curved slightly the more you walked. And there was doors on the sides, each one having a number carved into them. The walls were brown, while the doors were white with golden handles. The first door wasn’t that bad, it just was a room with mushrooms everywhere. Man I hate mushrooms. Though I can’t say the same for the second doors, because inside were people. But they weren’t really people, because they had TV has heads. And the tried to get me from the doorway, but luckily I closed the door. And that’s when I learned, they can’t leave their rooms. That’s when I started calling the hallway, “The Hallway.” Pretty neat, huh? Hehe, that’s what I thought. But the more I looked, the more realized I was the only human in this world. Or, whatever it was.

Those twenty years passed like crazy, first was my hair. When I first came, my hair reached my shoulders. Now they reach the floor! Twenty years does do a lot, and it thickened like crazy. I guess brown hair is pretty easy to get thickened, I think. And it also got darker, a big contrast on how pale my skin is. Since I never actually have been exposed to sunlight. Only suns I ever saw were Sunheads, and I don’t go near them. Since they have tried to kill me, and I got a lot of scars after that. Practically my whole body is covered in scars, since i’ve been through a lot. But something that did go good was back in the Hallway, where I now have sticky notes on. If it was green, that means I wouldn’t die. But when it’s red, that means stay out at all cost. But another bad thing that has happened is… well, I might have gone a little insane. I mean, imagine being alone for twenty years, talking to toys as if they were alive. But enough of my story, now let’s talk about what i’m doing now. I was in my favorite room as I call it, “The Game Room.” It was like an arcade I played when I was home, except there was people. And the floor was a yellow carpet, but all the games worked. So, it’s a win-win for me. I was playing my favorite game, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! I have beaten that game at least over five hundred times, and that’s not an exaggeration. I’m probably downplaying it, I kinda lost track five years ago, but I never get bored of it. I could always see in the reflection of the game, my big, ocean blue eyes shining with a wide grin on my face. And even if I was twenty five years old, I haven’t changed a bit.

As I was about to defeat the flingo man, I suddenly heard the sound of something getting flopped onto the ground, a groan behind the noise. But it didn’t sound like a entity at all, they really only groan if I hit them with something. Curiosity got the better of me as my head started to turn, and what I saw is something I couldn’t imagine in twenty years. There was a man, a human, living man, laying on the ground as if he was sleeping before he showed up. And I know he was not there when I entered the room. He looked a little younger than I do, like, at least twenty three years old. He had this curly, dirty blonde hair, and it reached his ears. Along with bangs that fall slightly over his eyes. With light, fair skin that almost blended with his body, with a pair of wireless headphones around his neck. And, I have to agree, he got them long legs. But he still looked a bit shorter than me. I couldn’t see his eyes, but in my best guess, i’d think they are brown. Maybe a doe like eyes. I was frozen, my hands were frozen on the buttons for the game. And my eyes widened when he started to stir, and I felt like a deer caught in headlights. His eyes fluttered open, and indeed as I guessed, they were brown doe eyes. His eyes were drowsy from sleep, his curly bangs falling over his eyes slightly. I stayed completely still, holding my breath unconsciously. The game continued on, but it quickly turned into background sound.

The digital chirps and synthetic punches of Punch-Out!! felt deafening in the sudden, heavy silence between us. I didn’t move. I didn’t even twitch. My hair—that thick, floor-dragging curtain of chestnut—was pooled around my feet like a protective shadow. The man, Theodore, groaned again. It was a wet, heavy sound—the sound of someone who had just been chewed up by the laws of physics and spat out onto a yellow carpet that smelled faintly of ozone and old pennies. He pushed himself up on shaky elbows, his wireless headphones slipping down to clatter against his collarbone. When his eyes finally landed on me, he didn’t scream. He just stared. I probably looked like a ghost or a forest hag to him, all pale skin, scarred arms, and enough hair to weave a rug. “Is...” His voice was raspy, cracking from the dry air of the Game Room. “Is this a dream? Did I die in the arcade?” I felt a bubble of hysterical laughter rise in my throat. I hadn’t used my vocal cords in—well, I talk to the toys, sure, but they don’t usually ask questions back. I swallowed hard, the sensation of my own throat moving feeling alien and stiff. “If you’re dead,” I croaked, my voice sounding like sandpaper on stone. “then I’ve been a zombie for two decades. And let me tell you, the benefits package sucks.” Theodore flinched at the sound of my voice, his doe eyes darting from me to the flickering arcade cabinets, then to the door that led back out into the Hallway. He scrambled backward, his long legs tangling momentarily before he found his footing.

“Who are you? Where is... where is the exit?” I slowly stood up, letting my hair unravel from the floor. I saw his eyes track the length of it, widening in genuine horror. I reached over and hit the power switch on the arcade cabinet. Little Mac faded into a black screen, leaving only our reflections: the terrified, modern boy and the wild, scarred woman who had forgotten what the sun felt like. “The exit is a suggestion, not a destination.” I said, trying to mimic the cool, collected tone of the heroes in the games, though my hands were shaking. “I’m Jr. And you just checked into a hotel that doesn’t believe in check-out times. You have a name, Newbie? Or should I just call you ‘Long-Legs’?” Theodore’s breath came in short, jagged hitches, the kind that made his chest ache under that cream-colored shirt. He didn’t look like a fighter. He looked like a guy who would apologize to a wall if he bumped into it. He kept staring at the floor-length cascade of my hair as if he expected it to grow legs and start crawling toward him. “Theodore…” He managed to choke out, his hands trembling as he reached up to adjust his wireless headphones, a nervous tick if I ever saw one. “My name is Theodore. And I... I have a panic disorder, so if you’re a monster, could you please just... do it quickly?” I felt that familiar twinge of a dark joke bubbling up—something about how the entities here didn’t believe in “quick”—but I bit it back. The way he was shaking, he looked like he might actually shake apart and turn into a pile of confetti.

“Relax, Long-Legs. I don’t eat people. The food here is mostly canned peaches and whatever the vending machine in Room 402 decides is ‘organic’ today.” I said, stepping closer. I saw him flinch, his eyes darting toward the exit. “Don’t. The Hallway is in a ‘mood’ today. It’s curving left, which means the Entity in 104 is probably out for a stroll. You stay in the Game Room. It’s a safe zone. Green sticker, see?” I pointed to the neon green square I’d slapped onto the doorframe years ago. Theodore followed my finger, his gaze lingering on the scars that crisscrossed my forearm like a roadmap of bad decisions. Theodore’s gaze traveled from the green sticker to my face, then back to the floor. He looked like he was trying to solve a math equation where the numbers kept changing into spiders. He stayed huddled on the yellow carpet, his hands white-knuckled as he gripped his own knees. “Room 104…?” He whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the dormant arcade machines. “I was just... I was at the mall. I was looking for a new charging cable. There was a flickering light in the hallway near the restrooms, and then...” He trailed off, his breath hitching again. “And then the world did a somersault.” I finished for him, leaning back against the Punch-Out!! cabinet. I crossed my scarred arms, trying to look like I had everything under control, even though my heart was hammering a rhythm that could’ve been a techno track. “Classic. For me, it was a house-flip. For you, a mall-glitch. Physics here is more of a ‘vibe’ than a law.”