The In Between

Chapter five

• Run in with the demon bois • 

James

 • October 29 •

Ricky woke up the next morning and almost fell off the tree. Go figure.

The smog was gone, so he wouldn't die from that, but he would definitely die from the fall.

"Don't die." I said, grabbing his arm.

"Thanks," he said, yawning. "What time is it?"

"You expect me to know?"

"I guess not," he yawned again. "How long have you been up for?" I ran a hand through my hair.

"Uhhh like three-ish hours?" We were at a point in our nonexistent relationship that I felt like I couldn't block him out anymore. I mean, he would ask me millions of questions afterwards if I did so, so that is a contributing factor.

"That's not healthy,"

"No, it's not. But I'm fine."

He stretched his legs out.

"I'm too tired to walk and my legs hurt too bad," he said.

"Well that sucks," I said, hopping down. "Bye,"

"James don't leave me," he whined.

"I'm leaving you,"

"No, james,"

I climbed down more branches.

"James, stooooopp,"

"I'm not stopping." I jumped down a few branches.

"James—" I redirected the light to go into his eyes. "OW, JAMES,"

I snorted. He came after me.

"What do you think the disaster is going to be today?" He was weirdly optimistic about it, which wasn't good and might be a symptom of going into shock, though I wasn't quite sure that he ever came out of shock since three- no, four days ago. "I hope it involves murdering birds again. That was fun."

"Hopefully nothing. And please check out your desire to murder birds, it's unnerving," I told him.

"Well I would if I was alive,"

"You kind of are. You aren't dead, dead, which means you're alive, dead. So you are alive."

"Yeah well, I'm still dead if I'm alive in the In Between."

"Yes, I guess,"

We had walked around a bit and came across a flower field, which was a perfect place to stop and rest. So we thought.

Ricky really seemed to like the flowers. We sat down near a patch of roses, sunflowers, calla lilies, carnations, daisies, and plenty of other flowers that seemed like hybrids.

The sun was beaming down pretty bright, which was good for me, since I sort of need the sun to not die.

"You know what just occurred to me?" Ricky asked, while picking up a rose, presumably forgetting they come with thorns. He pricked his finger. "Ouch."

"What?" I asked him, even though I wasn't very interested in what he was going to say.

"Well, since we aren't technically on Earth anymore, that isn't really the actual sun."

"Yeah, I guess not." I've never really thought about it before. This could be a dream like hallucination after death and I would never know it. Ricky might not even be dead yet. And if I went farther into this conspiracy theory type question, I might not even be dead. I might be still alive, In a dream that might only be a few minutes long in real life. I might wake up in a few minutes and go back to school, nothing changed except for me. I hoped that didn't happen, because I preferred being dead than being alive with Ricky's stupid friends.