I was sat on the bus from London to Oxford, checking out the latest Wattpad comments on my book. Suddenly, I glanced across the aisle and saw a very strange sight. I had thought there was nobody in the seat opposite, but I now saw a moving black line which twisted and became something like a cardboard cut out of myself, it was flat but wore the exact same clothes I was. Had I been drinking too much? I'd been quite sleep deprived lately, that could be why.
A more sinister thought filled my head. Was I being stalked somehow? My Wattpad stories were always quite controversial. Maybe someone was trying to freak me out somehow - possibly the guy I'd based the villain in my latest story on. Just like my villain, this guy was rich and had a lot of power. But wasn't this a strange way to do it, if so?
I turned back and tried to ignore the two dimensional me. But then it started speaking - in my voice.
'Is your name Kirsty?' it said. I turned around, shaking.
'No,' I gulped. 'It's Rachael.'
'So you're not Kirsty?' it said, sounding gutted. I shook my head.
'My name's Kirsty and you look just like me. So I thought you were another version of me. I thought maybe you could help.' This was getting stranger by the second. I could sense Kirsty's distress but this situation was totally implausible. I looked around at the other passengers who ignored us both.
'My name's not Kirsty,' I said. 'I really don't think I can help you.'
'Is your mum's name Petal?' Kirsty said. I shook my head.
'Don't you have a sister called Geraldine?' I shook my head, not knowing how to respond.
'What about your dad? Your dad must be called Cucumber? Right?' I laughed, thinking of what my dad would say to this question, and immediately felt guilty.
'No,' I said.
'They aren't called any of those names?' Kirsty said in desperation. I shook my head, with no idea what to do. I'd helped drunk or lost people find their way home on public transport but I'd never been in this situation before. Then she - I guessed it was a she and not an it - started full on sobbing, tears rolling down her completely flat cheeks. 'Oh. Oh. I really am lost. I somehow got to your dimension and I don't know how to get back.'
'What do you mean, my dimension?'
She handed me her phone, which was the exact same as mine except it felt like a completely flat, very thin and stiff piece of metal. 'Can you look the second dimension up on Google Maps?'
'I don't think it will show other dimensions there, maybe you need to ask, like, a physicist,' I said doubtfully.
I entered 'How to get to the second dimension' into Google but it just came up with some clubs and an art studio.
'Maybe you could go to this club, they're open until 2am, and see if they can help?' I said, and Kirsty looked terrified. Then, she said the words that I had been dreading.
'Can you come with me? I don't want to turn up at a random club on my own.'
'It's late and I've got to go home,' I said. 'Maybe I can get your number?'
We exchanged numbers but Kirsty's number was the same as mine. This was getting even stranger. The bus stopped at my stop. Some of the other passengers were giving me very weird looks as we walked to the exit.
'This looks kind of like where I live. I'll get out here as well.' I wished Kirsty hadn't said that, but I would have worried about her all night so it was just as well.
I sent my mum a text. 'Hi, Mum, are you still up? I need your help with a weird situation.'
I had a text back from her number, but it wasn't her.
'OK, Kirsty. What situation? See you soon darling,' the text said.
'Can you text your mum, and tell her I'll be back?' I asked Kirsty. I watched her do so, then the two of us walked along the road.
'I'm not used to 3 dimensional roads,' she said uncertainly.
'Do you remember what you were doing when you ended up here?' I said as we approached my house. It was 11pm at night or I'd have suggested a drink on the Cowley Road.
'I got on the bus, and then something happened.' Kirsty took a deep breath.
'Well, do you remember what you were doing?' I said.
'Oh. Yeah. I was looking at Wattpad. It's an app on your phone where you can write your own stories and have people leave comments on it.' She had Google so Wattpad shouldn't have been a shock either. Yet it was.
'Someone left a horrible comment on one of my stories, and I had no idea what they meant,' Kirsty said.
'That's not very nice. People can be quite rude on Wattpad,' I said, wanting to make some sort of bond with her, she was so anxious, and no wonder. To my relief we didn't have the same username. Her username was Kirsty32. I went to follow her on Wattpad, but it said 'user not found'.
'What did they say?' I said as I turned into my road.
'They said that my characters weren't three dimensional. I don't know what they meant. I thought there were only two dimensions, until I ended up in this one.'
'Oh,' I said, a chill running down my spine. When Kirsty turned sideways I couldn't see her at all. My mum had put the light out and it looked like she'd gone to bed. I took a cigarette out of my bag and offered one to Kirsty, having the feeling we were both going to need them.
'No, I have some,' she said, putting her hand in her extremely flat pocket and drawing out some thin cartoon-like cigarettes. At least, a fellow smoker. We walked past my mum's house to the end of the road. I offered her a lighter but she already had a very flat lighter of her own. When she lit it, the flame was flat.
'How do you have a pocket, Kirsty, if you're only two dimensional?' I said, lighting my cigarette, and I couldn't stop staring at hers. She looked puzzled.
'I - I don't know. I've never thought about it.'
'This person who criticised your Wattpad story,' I said, as the uneasy feeling got stronger. 'What was their name?'
'It was someone in a book club that I'm in. I think his name is ThePortalMaster,' Kirsty said. That was a weird name for Wattpad, I thought. I looked him up and sure enough I found him. For a second I went rigid with shock; I couldn't breathe.
He was a member of a book club I was in.
And he had been assigned the first and second chapters of my story.
'I don't think he had anything to do with it, though, it's just some random guy,' Kirsty said.
I wasn't sure about this at all.
'Can I look at Wattpad on your phone?' I finished my cigarette and she handed me the extremely flat device. I found her story. To my relief it was a romance story about werewolves, a topic I'd never written about.
'You need to work on showing and not telling,' ThePortalMaster had written. 'You need to make your characters more 3 dimensional. This is the absolute worst book I've ever read on Wattpad.'
Poor Kirsty. 'That's a horrible comment,' I said. I glanced at her first chapter, and it wasn't that bad. It was a pity we couldn't follow each other, although I was concerned it could open more portals.
'3 dimensional? What in the world are you talking about???' Kirsty replied.
ThePortalMaster replied, 'Sounds as if you need to learn how to write a believable story with 3 dimensional characters, not boring, 2 dimensional ones!'
'Kirsty,' I said, my hand shaking. 'What happened after this comment?'
'Then, I got on the bus, and had a nap, and when I woke up everything was weird.' She gulped. It certainly was. I put my key in the lock. My mum would be annoyed at me bringing a girl home without asking, but I couldn't leave Kirsty on the street.
'You'd better come in, stay in the back bedroom, anything could happen otherwise,' I said, aware she might be scared I was a serial killer. We walked quietly up the stairs and when she reached the back bedroom she gasped.
'I've never seen a bed that looks like this. The only beds I've ever seen are flat and you get into it sideways,' she said in stunned disbelief.
'Like a cartoon bed?' I said, finding an image of a stick man bed and showing it to her. She nodded.
'Yeah, like that.'