Why I Can't Have Friends

Everytime. I hate to be alone, but it seems that's the only way to keep me from losing it. The void is ever consuming. It will never let me rest. I will never be free. I will only feel pain and misery.

I'm sorry, you're probably confused, aren't you? Let me explain, I'll fill you in with the basics.

I'm a Sophomore in a very nice high-school in a very nice town. We don't deal with trouble, we don't have gangs, violence, ect. I have a small yet dependable group of friends. We have each other's backs. But the past was a mess. The past of our lives nearly torn us apart, especially between my friend...who for the sake of privacy, we'll call him Eric.

Eric and I met early in our Freshman year, at a dance. Life was perfect, we were both in cosplay, and found each other. I used to joke we were destined to meet. We sang every song, danced every dance, laughed and had an incredible night. We swapped numbers, and neither of us slept that night, we were having too much fun messaging back and forth, laughing, joking, and telling our life stories to one another. We were practically identical. It was incredible. I felt as though I had met my twin, that we were simply separated at birth. We bonded into something special almost instantaneously. He was always kind, gentle, loving. He was funny, and, despite being younger than me, he was always like a....father figure, of sorts. He was, and still is, incredible. I thought things could only go upwards for me. My life was finally going to go my way. A way that was filled with a best friend, a happy end. I wasn't going to be scared, sad, whatnot. Cheesy feelings, right?

Little did I know the affect this kid was going to have on me.

Little did I know the horrors that would bleed from every instance of my deepest and darkest subconscious.

Life had been going on as usual, and school had been out for...roughly five hours, if I can remember correctly. Eric and I were talking as usual, we were talking about our lives. What we wanted to do together when we got older, going to the same art school, moving in together, visiting Japan, we had it all figured out. I looked at the time. 10:00 PM... Way past when I usually went to bed. The exhaustion hit me like a truck. I felt ready to pass out.

10:00 PM, SEPTEMBER 18: hey gtg to bed, night dad lol love you!!!!!!!!!!!!

10:04 PM, SEPTEMBER 18: Sleep well, my child. Love you.

Now, I normally take ages to fall asleep, but this night, sleep came as soon as I hit my head on my pillow. I entered a dream-like state, as I do every night.

This time was different. Cliche, but bear with me.

I was in school. The clock read 1:30 PM. Lunchtime. I walked through the halls and in the classrooms. There were no students. I wandered everywhere of that whole school for what felt like hours. It's massive, mind you. Nobody. There was no sign of life, it seemed it was another dream where I was alone. I wandered back to the entrance in a place the other students and I call "Pride Rock". We're the Lions. Go figure. But...my friends were there... I could have sworn they weren't there before. In fact, I knew for a fact they weren't. I had entered this landscape to a barren and cold place. No people. I approached them, relieved I wasn't going to be stuck here alone for however long my brain was in the shut down mode of sleep, calling out there names and hugging my other friend who we'll call Lola. However...they didn't answer me, including Lola. Even in my dreams to this day, they will always answer me, so I was struck in an odd expression for a moment. I tried again, and again, over and over, when I realized the world surrounding me was monochrome. Black and white, with the occasional burst of red. I looked at myself. Color. Then I slowly turned my head to the clock on the wall.

1:30 PM.

Lunchtime.

I was confused as why that was. I walked up to the clock and tapped it, it wasn't broken, but yet it would never work.

I felt my anxiety kicking in, I was scared, I was stuck in an empty world with friends who couldn't hear me. I was stuck in a freeze in time. I began to cry, I know, it sounds stupid as all hell, but I've always been emotional, jumping at everything and panicking over nothing. The sound of static and and my own voice filled my head. I curled into a ball and slumped against the wall. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. Yet...

It all stopped just like that, and the sound of footsteps filled the air. It was all I could hear, getting louder and louder. I looked up. Eric...! It was Eric! I was so relieved! But despite it all, he seemed...off. His usual light blonde hair was jet black like a puddle of oil. His normally bright, dancing, happy, laughter-filled eyes were empty and cold. He always wears flannels, t-shirts, jackets. Eric now, however, wore a black suit with a bright red tie. He was also much taller than his real-life counterpart. He was comforting, yet... unnerving. He approached me, smiling one that, in real life would be warm and loving. Here he looked, sinister. As if he had something up his sleeve. He greeted me, welcoming me, and telling me of my surroundings, stating as follows:

"You are in a broken mindscape, a reality which there is no hope. No laughter, and no joy. Our friends are broken, stuck in a time and space. We are all that remain, my child. Welcome home."

Home...? We...? I was so confused, I tried to explain to him, I'm asleep, this isn't my home... His expression turned malicious and rage-filled. Eric had never been mad at me, the only time I saw when he was angry was when he was defending me from somebody he deemed a threat to me. Seeing...Eric, so angry at me, and his already void eyes darkened and fueled with a rage to this day not even I could understand. He raised to strike, and I thankfully was awoken by my mother. Thank God, that weird dream was over. The more I thought about it, the more worried and nervous I got.

Eric and I shared a study period together, and I was writing down my experience from the night before. I come from a spiritual family who have a meaning for everything regarding dreams, and have learned to write my dreams down for examination. So I wrote. I wrote about the colorless school. I wrote about the cold emptiness of the world. I wrote about... the Eric from my dreams. I was so focused in my writing, I hadn't even noticed that Eric had sat down next to me, and was reading intently over my shoulder. I heard his chuckle, and I jumped, very startled. We shared our thoughts on the strange experience. He joked how he'd fight himself to keep me safe, and as the hour passed, the once frightful dream turned into nothing but a ridiculous joke, even I was in tears, laughing hysterically at Eric's jokes and jabs at the person we had dubbed "Void", Eric was nicknamed Space Dad, so he created the name Void Dad, causing me to chime in how he was just Void, he was too violent to be a dad. We made joke after joke about it again and again.

That was the stupidest thing I think I could have ever done.

That night, as I lay in bed, I giggled to myself about how it was just a stupid dream.

The darkness and the cold blank school returned, confusing me, I never dream the same thing twice. I felt a hand on my shoulder. There was Void. He stared at me with a calm, yet furious expression in his pale face. I can never forget what happened to me, and, if you don't mind, I would rather not describe it. I was frightened, and awoke in a cold sweat in the early morning, which is strange, I usually wake up at around 3 AM. I looked at myself in the mirror. Tired eyes and messy hair, the usual. Until I saw my wrists. Void had grabbed my wrist in my dream...and on my wrists, were bruises, shaped like fingers had grabbed them. That can't be possible... I thought to myself, and saw my upper arm.

A large, black "V". Eric's handwriting.

I ran to my bathroom, trying to think of some sort of logical explanation at to how that V got there, but every thought was a dead-end. To top it all off, the V wasn't coming off.

Not even Eric could get it off when I showed it to him, he practically rubbed my arm raw, yet it still remained... I tried again at the end of the school day, and... It came off, as if it was just written on with a marker. I suppose whatever purpose it was supposed to play, it had fulfilled just that.

The nightmares didn't stop, continuing for weeks. Even Eric had started to become a bit worried by it. He claimed that he had started to dream in the same environment, yet... no Void was around to torture him. Why was this happening to me...? What was this all for...? I had taken some noticeable changes, I had deep bags under my eyes, I was so tired, I became much more irritable, more angry, lashing out at innocent people, and friends. I never wanted to, but I was so tired, upset, frightened, fearful. Could you blame a guy?

I had begun to hallucinate... He was everywhere, Void was following me, everywhere, stalking me, destroying my life. I could swear I had been lifted in the air and thrown onto my bed by him. Other times, I would find Eric shouting over the phone in an argument that had apparently been going on without my knowing. It was startling, to say the least, how one dream could eat away at you at spiral out of control.

Eric and I are still friends to this day, but we'll never forget the terror Void has set into our minds and hearts. I am in a constant terror of his return, the destruction he's caused, the pain and suffering. He's clawed away at my brain and terrorized me for so long now. Maybe this is why the voices and the screaming from the deepest corner of my mind say I can never truly have friends...