Split-Screen Dreams, Chapter 1

Dear Reader - At the end of this piece, you'll be posed a choice as to how the story should proceed. Post a vote in the comments and I'll write based on which option is most popular! It's a community-based interactive fiction.

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Purple-haired Jenny Stoudemeyer, a 7th-grader who loved to play the tuba and collect bugs, approached 13-year-old Cosmo "Car" Carasmus, the schoolyard's star baseball player, near the side of the field one day.

"Car!" she shouted, "What are you up to?"

The scrappy, sandy-haired kiddo replied, "My parents are just getting some snacks up at the convenience store, then we're heading out to a campsite for the afternoon."

"Jealous!" Jenny replied, "Can't you take me with you?"

Cosmo smacked his baseball into his glove several times in a row. "Wish I could, friend. How was band practice today?"

"Pretty cool," she replied with a proud smile. "I hit all the right notes."

Cosmo came clean with a regret, "Sometimes I wish this town were a little more exciting. Something's gotta come along and shake it up, you know? Get people thinking or outta their seats."

Jenny bragged, "I've heard of something you might like."

Car said, "What's that?"

"The new carnival ride downtown, it's called The Time Lord. It has twisting, diverging tunnels and lots of different tracks that meet together at the end."

"Like a roller-coaster?"

"Not quite, it's all more in the spooky presentation, really."

Car twisted his face into a knot. “I’m not a fan, anyway. Those rides make me sick.”

Jenny taunted, “Fraidy-cat!”

“I’ll ask my parents if we can join you for the carnival, before it goes away.”

Jenny smiled. “I’d like that.”

—-

At the campsite, Car’s father said no almost before the request came out of the boy’s mouth. “You have too much homework to do before Monday,” his mother also said.

“Aw, man,” Car complained. “There’s gotta be something interesting to do over the weekend.” But instead of searching online or doing his homework, Car decided to take a nap.

Little did he know that, many miles within the dream realm, the Time Lord really existed, and pulled a lever within a mysterious machine, while watching Car slumber on a monitor nearby. Drumming his fingers evilly, he chuckled and muttered, “I’ll give you something to keep you occupied, Sonny.”

The Time Lord put a finger to his bearded chin and pondered, “But… the experiment… I need someone for this child to work alongside….”

The next school day, Jenny blew hard into her tuba at band practice, to where her cheeks turned red and her head swam. “It’s just like Mama says,” she says thought, “gotta give it my all.” The brass keys clicked smoothly under her fingers, helping put her innate talent on full display.

In the bathroom between classes, she looked in the mirror hesitantly; her grip on the tuba had slipped twice and it was possible, at least to her, that weight gain in her belly and hips was the culprit, that she was bulging where her instrument ought to lay neatly.

The Time Lord observed Jenny via a second screen, once she had rejoined her peers in the hallway and was on the way to math class.

He sneered and murmured, “Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner.”

Meanwhile, Car worked extra hard at baseball practice that day, shaving a full second off his best base-rounding run time.

Exhausted, both Car and Jenny hoped to get the most out of their sleep that night.

That’s when the Time Lord flipped a switch, and their slumbers became…

“Split-screen Dreams!” *thunderclap*

The two kids found themselves in separate parts of the same dream world. Who knows how they knew this was true? They just knew, the instant they each thought they’d awoken. But something felt even more odd than that. They could tell their real selves were asleep, in their respective bedrooms.

“Where am I?” Jenny wondered aloud, as she gaped at a countryside plain filled with fire-truck-red grass and deep-blue stone columns. It rained where she was, and yet did not soak her, as brisk winds carried away each drop.

“Okay, this is weird,” said Car. He sat up within a realm of geometric illusions; staircases and bookshelves and archways intertwined there in seemingly impossible ways. Almost everything surrounding Car was painted a bright canary yellow.

“I beset you, my young ones,” came a voice from within their heads, “upon a quest. Find each other, then solve my eternal riddle before your alarms go off, else you shall stay asleep… forever! Ha!”

—-

Dear readers,

My question to you is: whose perspective would you like to dominate the story from here on: Car, or Jenny?