Fake It Til You Make It

Chapter 1

I May Have Wished on Too Many Stars As a Kid

You had wished to go into your favorite fantasy worlds for as long as you could remember. In your youth, you would escape from the harsh reality of the world by devouring books at every given opportunity. This soon evolved into fantastical shows and movie series, then to fanfiction where you could insert yourself, or a projection of who you wished to be, into the full story of your choosing. Or you could imagine soft moments with your favorite characters, or maybe them mourning your death (or the reverse, even) if you were feeling especially lonesome.

That style of escape had slipped past you when you graduated high school and subsequently started college. You began to lose the time you would spend divulging in your fantasies, instead spending all of your free time working on assignments, studying if you felt up to it, and working a part-time job to save up some money to hopefully soon get your own place and finally move out of your parent's house.

You missed it, honestly. Being so carefree and devoid of responsibilities that adults have in your day and age. Not to mention the world had gone to shit, digging itself deeper into a hole that it had desperately been trying to fill for several years.

You just wanted to feel like life was worth living.

You weren't especially remarkable, as you were always better at thinking rather than creating, but you did like to splurge into your hobbies at times. It was hard not to when not doing so made you feel like an empty shell of who you once were.

It must have been a coincidence that you decided to take the freeway that night on your way home instead of your regular side streets. It must have been a coincidence that you'd forgotten to take out your bag full of extra clothes and amenities on laundry day. It must have been a coincidence that you were already used to desert heat, having lived in the southwest your whole life. It was a coincidence that you'd known how to handle a gun since you were 8, having had an outdoorsy and gun-loving father.

It was surely by coincidence that you decided to swerve out of the way of a driver going against traffic, and they swerved the same exact way you did. Surely.

But... if it was, why were you sitting in the middle of nowhere in the blink of an eye? You don't remember there being any open plots of desert in that section of the freeway. Nor a major absence of the regular desert plant life you had been so used to.

Where the fuck were you?

You started panicking, as any sane person would have if they were in your situation.

The only familiar things to you were your bag of things and the thin black rectangle that was your phone laying next to your now sweating body.

The first thing you did after taking inventory of the things around you in an attempt to calm yourself before you went into a panic attack was grab your phone and attempt to call 911. You were just in a crash for christ's sake.

One peak at the corner of the screen when the call immediately didn't go through told you something was indeed very wrong.

"No... service?"

What? Since when could you not get cell service in the middle of the city?

You felt the anxiety in your chest grow exponentially again.

"Fuck me, fuck this, fuck off, what the fuck is happening!?" you muttered to yourself, now in full-blown panic mode.

Your head swiveled around quickly trying to find any sign of life, even if you knew it may be nothing more than a heat wave mirage.