"Chapter 9"

"Chapter 9" was published on April 12th 2021.

### Description

Chapter 9 follows Bunny as he rescues Aspen from his Nightmare Realm, but then gets trapped within his own.

CW/TW: Mention of murder, mention of abuse, crying, mention of ghosts/dead people, and claustrophobia

### Original

Here is the link to the original story, although it has been copy-and-pasted onto here for simplicity and nothing has been changed.

### The Story

*Date: Unknown*

*Time: Unknown*

*Place: Aspen’s Nightmare Realm*

*. . .*

*Chapter 9*

*~~~*

I stiffened up inside the bathroom stall, partially afraid. I was in a public elementary school bathroom, hiding in a stall, from this random kid who may or may not be the guy I was looking for, who was crying and just screamed out *I’m going to kill you*, so yeah, my day was off to a great start already. With a gulp, I carefully peered out the stall at the boy in the bathroom. He was standing in front of a mirror with the water running and red splotchy tear tracks running down his face. He also had bruises on his face and on both of his arms and legs. He had light brown hair and brown eyes with curly brown hair that was a complete and total utter mess. He wore dark purple denim overalls over a lighter purple long sleeve shirt, along with olive green sneakers and white socks. To top off his appearance, he wore a pentacle necklace around his neck. I crept out of the stall and carefully approached the poor boy who was sobbing in front of the mirror. I tapped him on the shoulder and before *I* could even react, he swung and punched me in the face.

“Oh my god you’re real,” he said quietly, holding his hands up to his face to shield a gasp. He stood motionless for a few seconds before running over to my side and helping me get up. “Oh my god I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to punch you I was just surprised and-” he started rambling off apologizes, but I shushed him and pulled myself back up to my feet.

“It’s alright, but I do gotta say, you punch hard for . . . what? A 7 year old?” I chuckled and he frowned.

“I’m 13, thanks for noticing,” he mumbled and looked away. I paused for a moment.

“13? But isn’t that a little bit old to be in elementary school?” I asked.

“Yeah, it is, but I’ve been held back a couple times.” He said, and the conversation died there. A few moments passed as he dried his tears, and then I spoke up.

“Hey, are you Aspen by any chance?” I asked, and he looked back over at me.

“Yeah, uh . . . how do you know me?” He asked, cocking his head to the side before getting a look of terror and stepping back a few paces. “You’re not here to beat me up, are you?” He asked, doing the worst possible job of hiding the fear in his voice.

“What? No. The only person here getting beat up is me apparently,” I laughed. “But in all seriousness, I’m here to rescue you.” I said, and Aspen relaxed a tiny bit.

“Rescue me? But why? How?” He asked. “Even if you take me away from here, I’ll still have school tomorrow and the day after that and for the rest of my life. I’ll come back here to this hellscape everyday regardless of anything you do, so you can’t exactly rescue me.”

“Au contraire my good friend, for I do have a way for you to finally escape this hell all together forever,” I said, and Aspen perked up with suspicious curiosity.

“Explain,” he said, crossing his arms.

“This place that we’re in right now- it isn’t actually a school you see. It’s a place called the Nightmare Realm, where you’re being trapped in an eternal nightmare until you find a way to escape or are brought out of here by someone else, and that someone else just so happens to be me. There'll be a door somewhere that, when you step through it, you can go to a place called the Void, which is a place outside of here that you can reconnect with your siblings,” I explained.

“My siblings?” Aspen asked, holding his chin for a second before he looked back up at me. “You mean Lilith and Arsenic?!”

“Yeah, them. They’re waiting for you in the Void, ready to go home-” I said, but Aspen recoiled and grabbed his head, shaking it frantically. “Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked, running up to him.

“I don’t wanna go home,” he cried. “Home is bad. I don’t . . .” He dropped to his knees and began sobbing again. I looked around, unsure of what to do and feeling quite awkward, but I eventually sat down beside him and patted him on the back. After a few more minutes of him crying, he sniffled and finally stopped crying. I helped him stand up and he gave me a sad smile.

“Alright, um . . . you won’t be going . . . there, but you will be going to some place that’s safe and that you don’t need to be sad, okay?” I tried to explain to him without saying the word home because I really didn’t want him to spend another half hour crying his eyes out. So without another word from either of us, he grabbed my hand and we left the bathroom in search of the mysterious door. After a few minutes of walking and a lot of weird glares from people, Aspen finally spoke.

“So what’s your name? You never told me,” Aspen asked, looking over at me. He had a soft voice that always had a hint of fear behind it, but you could tell that he was brave and was willing to fight for what he wanted.

“Oh, right. My name’s Bunny,” I said with a smile and Aspen laughed. Something in my heart jumped, but I suppressed the feeling. “What’s so funny?” I questioned him with a smile.

“Your name is Bunny? Like the animal?”

“Well, actually it’s Robert, but Bunny is the nickname I usually go by. Just like how Aspen isn’t your real name, it’s a nickname, right?” I questioned, and Aspen nodded.

“Yeah, that’s right. My real name is Kaden- with a K, not a C. Please don’t screw it up,” he said.

“Alright, I won’t,” I said with a smile. Silence passed in minutes while we wandered the hallways a little bit more before I spoke up again. “So . . . in the bathroom . . . what was all that yelling about? You screamed out ``I'm *gonna kill you``* and like . . . who were you talking to?” I asked, and Aspen suddenly looked away from me.

“Oh . . . it doesn’t matter,” he said sadly. “You’d probably just make fun of me for it anyways,” he mumbled.

“Hey, no, I wouldn’t make fun of you,” I said, squeezing his hand in reassurance. “You may not have known me for very long, but I promise that I would never do anything like that to you, alright?” I smiled at him as he looked back over at me and gave me a small sad smile too.

“Alright. This might sound really weird but . . . I can see dead people and . . . and they talk to me too,” he explained. “Everyone here bullies me for it, hence the bruises,” he motioned to his legs and his arms. “The ghosts were telling me to get revenge on everyone and to . . . to kill everyone here, but I don’t want to!” He screamed out. “They were telling me to do bad things, but I don’t want to do those bad things! I . . . I only want to hurt them, the ghosts.” Aspen sighed and wrapped his arms around his chest. I put my arm around his shoulder and smiled at him.

“Hey, it’s alright. You can’t control what the spirits say to you, but you can control how you respond to them. Just because they’re telling you to do bad things doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person or that you have to do the things they’re telling you to do, okay? The spirits aren’t you, so even if they’re bad, it doesn’t mean that you’re bad,” I said, reassuring him. He looked over at me and smiled his warm smile that I already loved so much.

“Thank you Bunny,” he said, resting his head on my shoulder. I felt my heart jump inside my chest and I tried my best to hold back my blush, but I really don’t think that it worked all that well. We just stood in the middle of the hallway for a few minutes, embraced in eachother’s warmth. We jumped apart when a teacher walked by and told us to stop being queer and get back to class. Being good law abiding students, we scurried off in a direction that was the opposite from our class and hid somewhere that we would be safe in for the moment being.

“Alright, so . . . we have to find the door that leads out of this place. I doubt it’d be a really fancy or out of place door because that would make it too obvious to find, so it’s best to assume that it’s blended into the area. Is there any place in the school that you’ve never been to before?” I asked.

“I’ve never been to the basement before,” Aspen chimed in. I nodded, thinking.

“Good to know . . . I say that’s where we start looking. I’m not an expert on the Nightmare Realm yet, but I have a feeling that that’s probably where we’ll find the door. They’re usually in places that you’d never think to be in or that you’d never be able to reach so that it guarantees that you’ll never escape.”

“How many, uh, Nightmare Realms have you been in so far?” Aspen asked, slightly concerned.

“Just my own twice and soon to be three, your’s once, and Lilith’s once . . . so a total of 5 times,” I said proudly. Aspen gave me a look that was a mix between confusion and admiration. He shook his head to dismiss his thoughts and then smiled at me.

“So should we get going? To the basement, I mean.” I nodded. We stood around for a moment before Aspen realised that I didn’t actually know where anything in this school was, and then he took my hand and led me to the basement door. “Okay, so . . . here it is. The basement door. It’s locked though, so I don’t know how we’re going to get in-” Aspen spoke his concerns, but I had already begun kicking the lock and it broke off in no time. “How the heck did you do that?”

“I’m strong,” I said with a wink and I bent down and examined the locks in the door. I quickly realised that I only kicked off the door handle and not the lock itself, and I pulled out a bobby pin from my hair and bent it into a shape that I could work with. Yes- I have bobby pins in my hair, you don’t think that this hair is this luxurious without my help, do you? After some messing around, I somehow managed to pop the lock and pushed open the door. Inside was dark as hell, but I fumbled around and found a working lightswitch and illuminated the dark staircase. It was steep, and dirty as hell.

“Oh boy,” Aspen said, starting to hyperventilate.

“Hey, it’s alright. Just take my hand and you’ll be okay,” I said, holding out my hand to him. He held it with both hands and I started down the stairs with him trailing behind me. As we went further and further down, the tunnel started getting smaller and smaller, which makes sense if it was leading to the exit door and Aspen had claustrophobia. He started panicking about halfway down the stairs and we had to stop so that I could go back to consoling him. The tunnel was getting darker and darker too, so the further we went made the journey more difficult. We were now crawling on our hands and knees at the staircase’s end and Aspen was freaking out, but I just had to keep pulling him along. After a few excruciating minutes of dragging a whimpering Aspen through a tight dusty tunnel in the pitch blackness, the tunnel widened and lit up, and I sighed in relief. I entered the small room and stood up, pulling Aspen up to his feet too as I stared at the door. It looked just like the one in my realm, with a black and purple theme and the same puzzle pieces. Aspen stood near the tunnel, still shaking, and watched as I arranged the puzzle pieces to form the spiral picture once again. However, when the keyhole appeared, I became slightly confused. It didn’t look like a normal keyhole, but instead was a circle. Just a plain circle.

“What comes next?” Aspen asked, clearing his throat.

“Well, this is when you’d put a key in the door, but I don’t have a key this time around,” I said, checking my pockets. “I don’t know what could be used-” I said, looking around the room before my eyes landed on Aspen himself. He was wearing a pentacle necklace- a star within a circle. “I need your necklace,” I said.

“Wh-What?! Why?” He asked, taking a step back. “You can’t have my necklace, it’s really important to me.”

“Please just trust me,” I said, holding out my hand. Aspen hesitated, but then eventually sighed and took off the necklace and placed it in my palm. I turned to the door and held the necklace by the pentacle pendant and inserted it into the circle hole, and as expected, the door started closing in around it and soon enough it completely closed around the necklace, and then the door opened. The inky black void on the other side of the door felt inviting, but Aspen was freaking out.

“Ahhh! Bunny, is that supposed to happen?”

“Yeah, it is,” I laughed. I took Aspen’s hand and tried to calm him down. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re at the end now. All you have to do is step through this door and then you’ll be brought to the Void where your siblings are waiting for you, okay? Everything will be okay,” I smiled at him.

“You sure?” He asked.

“I promise,” I said. He smiled and let go of my hand and turned towards the door. “Wait!” I shouted just before he stepped into the portal, and he turned back to me.

“Yea-” He asked, but before he could finish, I stepped up to him and kissed him. Aspen was dazed for a moment before I shoved him through the portal and the world around me began shifting back into the world that I knew, but something was different.

I wasn’t inside the apartment this time, I was outside. The sky was dark and black, but inky black like that of a black hole instead of a night sky. I looked around and the cars and people all around me were glitchy and broken, spazzing out and clipping through the ground and walls and other people like a bad video game. I began to walk and I tried to talk to someone, but as soon as I touched them, a loud blaring alarm rang through the air and pierced my ears. I kneeled over and pressed my hands to my ears and screamed in pain. I began to wonder why this was happening, but a robotic woman’s voice began to speak overtop of the alarm that answered my unspoken question.

“Attention Robert: You have been caught travelling between realms. This action is prohibited for you and as such, you have been detained. There is no escape from here and as such, you are trapped here forever. I repeat: forever.” The woman repeated her message over and over again, drilling it into my head as the alarm blared again. I stood up and began running despite the mental pain that I was enduring right now. I knew where I had to be and what I had to do to escape, and I was determined to not be stuck here for eternity like the others. I passed the cafe and saw the Caelan and Rose of this world glitching way worse than the other NPC’s of the world, but I continued on running. I passed the S.P. on the street and passed the building that Cyrus was in, both of them glitching out just as bad as everything else. As I neared the alleyway with the key, something else started happening. The ground and everything else started breaking apart and floating around, just like if gravity suddenly stopped existing. I turned from running to swimming in the air as I kept my eyes locked on the key that began floating away from me.

With determination, I boosted myself using the chunks of concrete floating around and propelled my body towards the key that I snatched and tied around my neck to make sure that I didn’t lose. The next step was to get to the portal door on the other side of town, which was going to be difficult with these newfound obstacles. However, I persisted and took a running leap, jumping off of one concrete block to the next, and trying my hardest to avoid the glitching people and things all around me. I accidently touched one though, and it felt like an electric current completely fried the inside of my body and I couldn’t move, only mindlessly floating in the direction that I’d been going before. I bumped into another glitchy person and it somehow reset my body, giving me back the strength and control that I had before, and I took off again. I don’t know how I was doing all of this, but I somehow was.

The alarm started and stopped randomly, sending waves of agony through my body every single time it did so. I never knew that my pain tolerance was so high, but I knew for sure that when I got out of here, I was going to down an entire bottle of painkillers. Mustering up more strength from within my tired legs, I jumped off a glitchy car and my body froze up again, but I continued floating in the direction that I needed, so it was fine. I had begun using everything around me to my advantage, although I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t getting very tired. I hit a glitchy person and my body unfroze, and I pulled myself up onto a glass pane from a nearby building. Looking around, I spotted the poor door in the distance, but panicked when I noticed that the puzzle pieces were floating away from the door too. I gulped and looked around for anything that I might be able to use to help me get over there faster than I was already going, but alas all that surrounded me was concrete and glitching people. Breathing in, I jumped off of my glass panel and launched myself towards the door. I didn’t see it coming, but a small glitchy piece of metal that's broken off from a nearby car had smacked me in the head and I completely blacked out.

~

When I awoke, I was floating in a black abyss. Quickly coming to my senses, I started failing around and screaming. My voice echoed through the darkness and everything was totally black, but my body seemed to be emitting some sort of light which allowed me to see myself. Thinking that this was another part of the Nightmare Realm, I tried to “swim” through the air like I did before when the gravity went wonky in my realm. After what I believed to be a while of swimming with no progress, I stopped and tried to conserve my energy. It was getting hard to breathe in here and my body started aching, but that was probably a side effect of the damage I took before. My eyes got heavy and my body went cold and limp. I closed my eyes and sighed, letting my body rest and relax. It was cold and dark and I had no idea of where I might be and obviously trying to alert anyone from in here wasn’t working, so my next best idea would be to wait to be saved. I fell asleep after a short while, but there were no dreams, and it still felt like I was awake. After an unknown amount of time, I woke up because something felt off. I looked around the surroundings, and I saw someone.

“Hey!” I called out to them, and they looked my way and gasped.