The Eternal Dreams Trilogy (Most Imaginative Setting Winner 2012)

Chapter Two: The Kids Don't Stand a Chance (Part 2)

        “I was so busy this summer I never got a chance to see Inception,” Osias mourned as we passed by a rundown movie theatre. “You guys know how excited I was for that movie? I guess I thought I’d eventually get around to it. I avoided spoilers for weeks and now I guess I’ll just never know.”

        “It was about dreams,” I said, having seen the movie without him.

        “Of course it was,” he said with a sad little chuckle. “I’ll never get to see the end of the Mass Effect trilogy either. I had my save file ready and everything. So many unresolved strands.”

        “You mean in the game?” I asked. I had a feeling he was talking about something else entirely.

        “Yeah,” he replied with a hesitant nod. “In the game.”

        “Forget about games and movies,” Cora sighed, swiping at the dead grass with her polearm. “Just imagine all the things we’ll never get to see. Life after high school, what jobs we would get, each of our weddings, assuming any of us would have one, what our kids would look like, assuming again that we had any. I didn’t even get a shot at a mid-life crisis.”

        It felt like our entire lives up to this point had just been training—lessons learned to prepare us for the big leagues of careers and marriage. If we died in here, all that training would go to waste.

        It all felt like a waste anyway. Through all the schooling and all the talks I had with my parents, I had assumed it would all come together somehow—that suddenly, it would all make sense. The simple truth was that I didn’t at all feel prepared for the big leagues. If there was a moment all people felt when they suddenly understood that they were ready, I hadn’t experienced it yet. I wasn’t ready to start.

        “Why don’t we just stay?” Thalia asked. “We can just hide from Malise and make this place our new home. Grow old and die together in here. It’s probably a whole lot better than what we can get out there.”

        It was a terrifying thought that had never once crossed my mind. It wasn’t the thought of never going home again that frightened me though. What scared me was how good it all sounded. Malise and her relentless attacks existed in the other world, just in different forms. We weren’t going to be safe no matter where we chose to live, so why the hell were we trying so hard to get back in the first place?

        “We can’t,” Cora stated, aggravated to hear such an option was even being considered. “We can’t just keep running and hiding. That’s how we ended up in here in the first place. We can’t just do nothing and wait to die. We couldn’t do it back home and we certainly can’t do it here.”

        “That’s just it,” Thalia whispered, sounding as though her mind was already made up. “We’ve always been told that we’re supposed to do something with our lives, but what the hell is that thing supposed to be? Why am I wrong in wanting to do nothing?”

        “That’s enough Thalia,” Cora snapped, sticking her polearm into the ground. “We’re getting out of here, whether you want to or not.”

        If it weren’t for Cora, we might have all just given up right there. She was the only thing keeping us going. Thalia nodded submissively and kept moving, but it didn’t look as though she was walking of her own accord. It looked like she was being pulled forward against her will, too tired to fight back. My friends were falling apart in front of me, and there was nothing I could do.

        “I’ve failed you all as a leader,” I whispered.

        “Come on man,” Osias said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “You can’t take all the blame, we were all there. It’s not like you’re doing any worse than when Kanoa was in charge anyway. He got us into trouble all the t—”

        “Nobody ever died following him,” I interrupted.