STORY STARTER
Submitted by Robin Marlowe
Write a story in which the protagonist starts to see cracks in their reality. Force the reader to ask: are they uncovering an illusion, or falling for a delusion?
If our senses can be fooled, then how do we know that our world is real?
Fractured Reflections
As the sun dipped below the skyline, casting long shadows through my window, I felt it again; the tremor, a flicker at the edges of my perception. It had started as a whisper, an unsettling nagging in the back of my mind, but now it roared like a tempest. I sat on my bed, the familiar clutter surrounding me a half empty coffee cup, and crumpled papers. Yet, everything felt off, like a painting with colors that bled into one another.
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath, willing myself to dismiss the unease. But with every inhale, I felt the cracks deepen, and it wasn’t just in my mind. There was a pulse in the air, a low hum that vibrated through my body, urging me to look closer. I opened my eyes, and the world before me shimmered. The walls warped, and my reflection in the window seemed to hesitate, a heartbeat behind my movements.
“Just tired,” I muttered to myself, shaking my head. “Just tired.”
But that night, sleep evaded me, and I stared at the ceiling, counting the imperfections in the paint. Each mark morphed into a different shape. A face, a place I had never been, and then a door. It was a door that didn’t belong in my room, yet it beckoned me with a silent promise. I had to see what lay beyond.
The next morning, I woke up with determination. I marched to school, my heart racing, convinced that I would find answers. As I walked through the halls, I noticed small things the flickering fluorescent lights, the whispers that echoed just a beat too late, the way my classmates seemed to move in slow motion. I felt as if I was drifting through a dream, and the world around me was a poorly constructed set, waiting to collapse.
During lunch, I confided in my best friend, Mia. “Have you ever felt like…everything is just a little off?” I asked, hoping she would share my sense of impending fracture.
She looked at me, a puzzled frown creasing her brow. “What do you mean? It’s just school, right? You’re probably stressed about finals.”
But her words felt like a trap, pulling me back into the mundane. I needed to break free. That night, armed with a flashlight and a sense of reckless abandon, I crept into the attic, where dusty boxes held remnants of my childhood. I rifled through the clutter, searching for something, anything that might explain the cracks in my reality.
That’s when I found it a small, metallic cube, unlike anything I had ever seen before. It pulsed softly, as if alive, and instinctively, I reached out to touch it. The moment my fingers brushed its surface, the attic dissolved around me. I was no longer in my home but standing in a vast expanse of swirling colors and shapes, a cosmic dance of light and shadow.
“Welcome, seeker,” a voice echoed, reverberating through the void. I couldn’t see its source, but the tone was both inviting and menacing. “You’ve glimpsed the truth, but are you ready to embrace it?”
“Truth?” I echoed, bewildered. “What do you mean?”
“The world you know is an illusion, a construct built to keep you complacent. But you have the power to break free.”
A vision flashed before me—my life as a series of interconnected threads, each one a potential reality. I saw myself becoming a scientist, an artist, a traveler across galaxies. But then, those threads frayed, revealing darker possibilities, where I was lost, consumed by my own delusions.
“Choose wisely,” the voice intoned, growing fainter.
I blinked, and suddenly I was back in the attic, the cube clutched in my hand. I realized then that the cracks I had seen were not mere figments of my imagination but windows into an expansive truth. The question now loomed large in my mind: Was I uncovering an illusion meant to liberate me, or had I fallen into a delusion that threatened to unravel my very existence?
All I knew was that I had to find out.