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Chapter One

Ding! Ding!

"Uuugh," I groaned. "What do you want?"

Ding! was its only reply.

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I do not know why such a small thing would annoy me. At first, it did not. It was a harmless little sound that crammed my phone, telling me that I have a gazillion messages that are all exactly the same. It even haunted me after I had stuffed it underneath a mountain of folded clothes an hour later, because now I could not hear it, and suddenly I must. I made it ten minutes with the phone tucked away before I just had to pull it out. I figured that I would rather listen to it than live in a paranoid state about how many text messages I am receiving.

Not like having it out was any better. The sound was relentless, driving itself into my brain. Ping!

Ping! Ping! I was about to Ping! off the floor from sheer nervousness. Okay, that was not funny, but my humor was getting shredded along with my sanity.

I tried to turn on a movie while I worked on more papers, hoping that would blend in with the pings. But even through the loud volume I could hear them. I was almost sure that I was hearing them because I wanted to, but these texts were starting to get really annoying. And a little nerve-wracking.

Who was behind all of these texts? Why was I getting them every single minute? What did they mean? What was the guy trying to do? I tried to find the first message, hoping for a code to finally put in so it would shut up, but I could not find any. I looked through all of my emails, even the really old ones, but found nothing.

"Of course the idiot would use his own email," I muttered. "But how come they cannot see that they put somebody else's phone number instead of their own?"

The pen barely touched the stack of paper in my office. I meant to clear half of it today, but the pinging had scared me even more than I would like to admit. It really was just a sound. But with the wild weather that was still raging outside a perfectly beautiful day, these non-stop texts, and a heavy lack of sleep, I guess it would only make sense.

"Maybe I am imagining all of this," I laughed giddily. Another Ding! from the flip-phone answered me, turning my smile into a frown and I sighed. "Maybe not," I said wearily.

What the stick was going on? I really wanted to know. The day had never felt so long. I thought it was taunting me, the sun rays clawing for any extra second they can grab onto. When I finally curled into bed, nothing had changed, except for the light. The wind was still blowing magically, the dings continued, and most importantly, lots of paperwork still awaited me.

Leaving the light on, I stretched for a nearby clipboard that held some papers. Maybe I could work on these before going to sleep? I tried to focus on the words amid the dinging, but I could not make them out. I rubbed my eyes. Was I really this tired?

I looked up, but my vision was still blurry. Raising my hand to try and clear my eyes again, I gasped. "Why is it . . . glitching?" Boy am I relieved that nobody was near me. My fear was naked and it would have been humiliating. But this was still disturbing.

Shakily, I put aside the blankets and walked into the kitchen. A glass winked hello in the light and I grabbed it, filling it up with water from the fridge. Just as I was about to take a sip, the glass slipped and crashed to the floor. I flinched, but the noise was nothing compared to my right hand. Or, the lack of one.

I forced myself to slowly inhale and exhale. The room started to wobble anyway and I had to clutch the counter with my other hand, squeezing my eyes shut.

"This is not happening," I chanted. "This is not happening, this is not happening, this is not happening!" I raised my arms to my head and nearly gagged when, instead of my right hand, I felt a stub.

"Stop!" I shouted, not really knowing who I was yelling at. I just had to do something, and yelling seemed good enough.

The house started to creep up on me. Noise intensified. The ticking of a clock seemed to rack my head even though I only had digital time-tellers. I tried to block it all out by curling into a ball and raising my arms to my head to cut off the noise. It did not work. So I sat there, feeling like the house was going to swallow me alive, when suddenly everything stopped.

Or, not quite. My ball position broke and I felt the woosh of air come from below me. Opening my eyes, I looked ahead. Everything was black except for a huge Error 404 Not Found sign that dominated the background. It fizzled, throwing sparks of blue and pink everywhere. One landed on me and I seethed from its burn.

But it was beautiful. The white letters pulsed slightly, like it was breathing. Slow in, slow out. I found myself matching its technique and I allowed myself to fall. This was fine. I would be okay. Everything was silent except for the woosh of air past my ears. No more Ding!'s to be had. No more paperwork in sight. Just a black, endless void with beautiful words that put on a show. That was all that mattered.

I have no idea how long I was falling for. The words never dimmed away or got smaller and the temperature remained cold. I knew that I could keep falling forever. It was peaceful.

"Mind the ground!"

Flinching, I writhed around, wondering who had spoken. Bad idea. I slammed into something hard. 

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*Cracks knuckles*

All righty, people! Thanks to SOMEONE, I just had to make this. Thank BeetletheSilkWing1. But seriously. I read their book Hiding in the Blue. They are amazing at writing! Go check out Corrupted Crown too, and I am going to read their Project Null soon enough. Anyway, I wanted to change up Purple's name, and I came across Violaceous. It is not a name, but a purple color, but it sounds so much like violate that I had to do it. It fits how I want to see him as, and so therefor it must be. :) 

I hope you enjoy this! I will try to continue with it, but school starts tomorrow, so I have no idea how that will go out as. I am writing Across Time and Worlds too, do not worry. But I had to start this one.