Chapter 8: Strained Friendship

The deafening darkness was unbearable. The mortal coils of my soul were intertwined with endless threads of nothingness, making up the human being that was myself. Even amongst the silence of this blank void were the faint sounds of familiar voices calling out my name. At least, what I believe to be my name. The same thing is repeated: Sam… Sam… Sam..

My painful thoughts ceased, as I realized that this is a new reality that I must accept. For whatever reason, my life ended, and I’m not exactly sure how. All I knew was that someone ruined something, leading to my undoubting end. I guess this wasn’t too bad, though. At least I could feel at peace; floating through the ethereal blackness of death.

Interestingly, after what felt like a millennium of pure nothing and repetitive sounds, something changed. Instead of just one name being called, another rang into existence: Marcus… Marcus… Marcus…! This was a louder and even more familiar voice. But the name itself was so disassociating… I haven’t been called that for so long. Who was crying my old name out into this blank space? 

“Marcus! Wake up, man!” The blank void was suddenly filled with a pool of reality and existence. This time, I could tell that this blackness was none other than the inside of my eyelids. Once I realized the environment around me, the rest of my senses came into vibrance. As abruptly as I had passed out, the smells of the dorm room and the feeling of the air overtook me. I opened my eyes just to be greeted with a barrage of brightness emitting from the room ceiling light. 

“Oh shit, are you awake? Marc!” Flint’s familiar voice called out again from right over me. The blinding lights made it difficult to see even his huge blurry silhouette, but eventually, my sight adjusted. It didn’t take long to discover that I was lying on the floor, staring at a panicking Flint. I soon discovered that my entire body was aching, and my nose was uncomfortably wet. I slowly lifted a finger to touch the wetness and found my nose bleeding. By looking down at my body, I discovered that my shirt collar was also damp with my blood.

“W-what the hell hap–” a raging headache pierced my speech. I grunted in pain as the headache ensued.

“Marc, bro! I told you to just lay off of it!” Flint angrily whispered. He stood up and checked his phone. “Not even a minute passed… can you get up?” He reached down to help me onto my feet, but I pushed his hand out of the way and got up by myself. My headache was still apparent but no longer as severe once I was on my feet.

“Where’s the tissue box,” I said out loud. It was more of a statement to myself than a question to Flint. I limped over to my closet and rummaged through the mess until finding a clean, folded rag, which I took immediately. Being careful not to put myself into another past-vision accidentally, I rubbed off the blood spread around my face and neck.

“Man, are you okay? I’m serious you need–”

“Shut up,” I cut him off. He instantly fell silent. After I cleaned off the blood to the best of my ability, I quickly changed shirts and massaged the sides of my head. After a long moment of speechless thinking, I finally spoke again. “Why in the hell would you freak out like that?” His eyebrows furrowed at this question.

“What do you mean ‘freak out’? I was trying to stop you from doing something stupid, but you went ahead and did it anyway!” 

“You’re not the boss of me! I’m a grown-ass adult, and you’re acting like I’m a little kid doing drugs. Plus, your pushing me around probably fucked with my past-vision and gave me a seizure! Nothing would’ve happened if you just kept your mouth shut.”

“Are you serious, Marcus? You are a little kid! You ran away from me when I tried to stop you from doing this shit! You’re being an immature little ass even though I already told you enough! Ever since you started getting these visions, you began to look worse and worse. It straight up looks like you’re deteriorating!”

“That’s cus you’re alwayyyys looking for an issue with what I’m doing. You’re the one that suggested the past life theory anyways! If anything, you should be just as excited as me.” He laughed sarcastically.

“Ohhh, I’m sorry. I should be very excited because my friend is a crackhead psychic who doesn’t know when to stop.” He made mocking crying sounds as he said this. “I’m such a bad friend because I’m actually looking out for you.”

“Who’s the immature asshole now? Or is it considered grownup and mature to mock other people?” Flint gave me the middle finger and grabbed his backpack.

“Whatever, I’ll see you later.” Before I could gesture back to him, Flint angrily opened the door and strutted out of the room. He nor I bothered saying goodbye as he walked out, which was better that way. Once the door slammed behind him, I found that I was alone in the room, with nothing but my thoughts to accompany me. I could’ve been fine, but no… he just had to mess with me. Why the hell is he acting like this?

I realized that there were still some dry blood stains on my forearms, so I again grabbed the rag to wipe them off. Once I was somewhat cleaned up, I silently turned on my console and put on my headphones. There was nothing else I had in mind for the rest of the night, and I didn’t care about wherever Flint would go, so I decided that playing video games would be the best solution. However, before I started playing, I noticed that I had gotten several notifications in the past hour, surprisingly all from Melissa.

The first notification was a text saying, “Hey, this is Melissa from Anthro! Did you decide on a place for the study group tomorrow?” The next one was a call, associated with another text saying, “Can you call now, or is it a bad time?” Of course, since I haven’t responded, her last text was simply a, “Make sure to get back to me as soon as you can :)”. I opened the messages and started a text but stopped before I went through with the entire message.

Right now isn’t a good time to talk to Melissa. I feel like if I’m not careful then I could say something to her that I’d deeply regret. Nevertheless, I really wanted to respond to her, so I made a mental note to reply as soon as I woke up tomorrow. I turned the phone off and resumed focusing on my game.

I woke up late after a long Flintless night of playing video games. Even this morning he was nowhere to be found. Probably crashed at someone else’s place, but not a worry to me. My math class started in five minutes, but I didn’t bother with getting out of bed. Instead, I recalled my mental note and opened up Melissa’s messages on my phone. My fingers hovered over the keyboard as I thought of the best place we could go study. I decided on the safe option of the library, so I texted her to meet me in front of the library at six. 

After I sent the text, I set the phone back down and stared up at the ceiling. I was so unmotivated to go anywhere today, it’s practically a miracle that I’m planning on doing that study group. Most likely Flint won’t go, which was alright to me. Right now, even the sight of him would probably sicken me.

As I stared at the ceiling, all sorts of thoughts flowed through my head. I realized that this was the first time that Flint and I had fought, so it’ll definitely make the rest of this school year troublesome. As for the blank hell that I experienced, I’m worried about going into another past-vision without help. It quite literally felt like I was going through endless years of pure nothing. What if one time I try a past-vision and I truly have to spend the rest of eternity in nothingness? What if I’ll never truly discover who Samuel Platt is?

Then, of course, there’s Melissa. I want the study session to be more than just a study session, of course. I don’t think asking her out today would be the best move, but I definitely want to make our meeting today more than just about class. Hopefully, I can make something out of myself by breaking out of my introverted shell.

I flipped over and faceplanted into the pillow, groaning all the while. It seems so unfair that I’m barely a month into school and life-changing shit is already happening to me. It seems unfair that my future is being determined within the past few days. Why is it that the only time I begin to feel special is the time when everything is going into an uncontrolled spiral? In high school, I did all that I could to get away from my dad and to get away from being defined by my birthmark. Now, the only thing that changed is that I want to find out more about my mark, but at the cost of potentially ruining my friendship.

These thoughts were becoming far too overwhelming, so I forced myself out of the bed. If I’m going to be stressing myself out by simply thinking, I might as well go to math class and do it there. The class had already started, so if I leave now then I could at the very most be late by ten minutes. As I pulled on a pair of fresh jeans, though, my head started surging painfully. I could barely stand on my feet, eventually causing me to trip over the pants and fall back against the bed. Not wanting to go through with anything else, I flopped back onto the bed and passed out.

The next time I woke up, the Sun shined dimly through the blinds of the window. The lights shone on my eyes, annoyingly waking me up. My surging headache was no longer there, but the exhaustion was still apparent. It was a mystery as to why my tiredness wasn’t going away. Luckily, once I checked the time, I found that it was two o’ clock. That still meant there was a good five hours before meeting up with Melissa at the library. I looked over at Flint’s bed, which was still empty, but now ruffled. It seemed that he had come in while I was sleeping and left before I could notice. No complaint, though… still not going to talk to him civilly, so it’s for the best. 

It took a while for me to sit up, and once I did, everything seemed woozy. I had just woken up from a six-hour nap, yet I still feel tired. Have I not gotten enough sleep last night? Maybe it was a bad idea to go to bed at one in the morning… but still, altogether that’s half a day’s worth of sleep. I looked around the room while slapping my face, forcing myself to wake up. On the ground beside my bed were my jeans, which I presumably kicked away during my sleep. Rather than putting them back on, though, I decided it best to go ahead and take a shower; maybe that way I can fully wake myself up. 

Disregarding my desire to lay back in bed, I forced myself up and put on my shower shoes. I had to grab onto the walls and catch myself from losing balance as I prepared my shower caddy. Once I got a fresh set of clothes and my soap in place, I sluggishly opened the door and stumbled into the hallway. The walls were moving in and out, pulsing strangely at my touch. Somehow I knew where to go, even though the world slivered around me disorientedly. After trekking through the endlessly compact hallway, my hands felt the doorknob to the bathroom. Once inside, I did my best to stabilize myself as I shuffled carefully to the shower. If someone else was watching me, this may look ridiculous. Even so, I made it to the vibrating curtains and stepped inside the slithering shower.

I couldn’t tell exactly if the water was active, or even if I was lathering soap on my body. Even so, the shower wasn’t doing anything to wake me up; I still felt as exhausted and as unhinged as ever. I decided it best to leave the shower, so I placed my hands on what I believed to be the shower handle and turned it counterclockwise. Somehow, doing this completely bewildered me, causing me to fall backward onto the cold, tiled ground. 

“Appf… h-h-help… nerrrr…” I reacted to the fall. Each word that I muttered came out as nothing more than nonsensical moans and gibberish. I disgustingly pushed myself onto my feet and grabbed my towel and bag.  The tiredness was now becoming too overwhelming… I need to get to my room now. I lunged towards the bathroom door and busted my way out. The cold hallway air made me realize that I had no clothes on, so I did my best to wrap the towel around my waist. The hallway stretched further and further as I stumbled back to the dorm. The door only seemed to stretch into the distance, each time I gained ground. The shaking walls and moving trash cans acted as support for my stumbles, which simultaneously helped me push myself toward the room. After what felt like an endless marathon of unpredictable obstacles, I found the dorm door. 

I scrambled for the student card, which I knew for sure was somewhere in my phone case. It jumped away from my fingers with every attempt at grasping it, but eventually, I took hold of the squirming card and swiped myself into the room. Being greeted by the atmosphere of my humble abode, I immediately collapsed onto the ground. Just as quickly as I had fallen, everything went black.

I thought that I had fallen unconscious, but once again, I was aware of the blackness around me. Suddenly fear overtook my body, as the possibility of living another void-filled eternity arose. Unexpectedly, the void switched to a series of flashing colors and noises, as if going through with the procedure of my past-visions. This overtly confused me, since I was sure that my hand was nowhere close to the birthmark. Even so, the flash colors and noises transitioned to me– Sam Platt– standing in a bathroom.

“Okay, you got this, Sam. You have been waiting for this kind of moment your whole life. You can’t fail now,” I declared, staring at my reflection. The reflection that stared back at me was a clean-shaven, handsome Sam Platt. I had only ever seen him in the picture of his death scene, so this is the first time I’m getting a vivid depiction of his face. The black suit resembled that of the beaten, worn-down suit that’s in my other visions… could this be the day he died? Am I currently seeing what he was doing before he got killed? 

“Why are you nervous… why am I nervous?” he skittishly laughed. I realized that even though my speech felt natural, I wasn’t actually trying to speak at all. Perhaps because this is the past there’s nothing I could necessarily do to interact with it. The best I can do is lay back, and allow Sam Platt to go through with his life. “You’re older than some of the guys in there… you have more experience!” Indeed, my voice– his voice is more mature. There was a sort of vocal fry in his pitch that definitely conveyed his age. “All it is is a sales pitch, and I may have a chance at a promotion. Easy as that!” He adjusted his tie, and looked down at the sink, blinking slowly. This time around, everything felt more disassociated, as if I was going through an out-of-body experience. If anything, I could finally differentiate between me and Sam.

“Are you almost done in there? They’re asking about your whereabouts,” a female voice asked from outside the bathroom.

“Oh- yes! Sorry!” Sam drew his fingers through his hair and cracked his neck before carefully opening the door. He was introduced by the pleasant face of one of his coworkers, who I noticed to be the woman that works at the front. She smiled up at Sam and picked a spot on his suit. 

“Nervous? You shouldn’t be. I talked to Devin before and he has nothing but excitement for your pitch.” 

“That’s what I’m nervous about,” Sam replied, smiling. “Don’t want his expectations to be too high.” He thanked the coworker and began walking away to an office door. Before he actually reached the door, however, the setting switched to the inside of an office. A bold, slightly younger man was shaking Sam’s hand considerably, with a big smile on his face.

“Thank you, Mr. Platt. Some of your marketing schemes are things that I definitely haven’t thought about, so I’m looking forward to working with you later on!” He gave a pat on Sam’s back and guided him to the exit. “I’m going to talk to the rest of the team, so I’ll report back to you later.” He winked, then slowly retreated back into the office while closing the door behind him. I could feel Sam’s excitement and slight relief from the presentation. It seemed that whatever he presented went well.

“I see that it went well,” the female coworker grinned as Sam walked past. “Told you that it’d be fine.” Sam grinned back.

“Thanks, you kinda helped me out back there.” The two of us stared enthusiastically at each other. Sam opened his mouth to say something else, but before I could hear what he was about to say, the office environment faded into a pitch-blackness. 

I woke up in a cold sweat. Expectedly, I was back in the dorm room, still lying on the floor. The world around me was no longer moving or slithering about; everything seemed back to normal. As for my exhaustion, I felt even more rested than ever. It was as if I had been in a deep, comfortable sleep. 

I realized that I was still naked and partially covered by my towel, so I got up and put on a fresh set of clothes. As I did this, I remembered the meeting with Melissa, and my energy and exuberance come back in full blow. I finally felt like I’m able to talk to her, and maybe even… I noticed the outside was suspiciously dark. Before I could succumb to an unbridled panic, I grabbed my phone which was on the other side of the room. Upon looking at the screen, a grisly six-fifteen shined at my face. It was– without a doubt– a fact that I'm late for my meeting with Melissa.