It's Not A Dream [Closed]

How has my life come to this? Marshal asked himself, staring at the unfamiliar environment before him. In his hand he held a huge egg that was probably about the size of his head. It was bright orange and felt strangely warm. As he stood in the station, he pondered how he could’ve ended up in this place that didn’t even seem like it was part of the Shibuya subway line.

* * *

“Marshal!” his mother cried out as she scurried out the door for another day of work. “Please don’t be late to school again today! Your teachers are starting to worry about you!” Marshal began to pull his blankets up over his head, as was his custom in the morning, but his mother knew him too well. “And don’t you dare go back to bed! If I come back this afternoon to find you still in bed again I will be very upset with you!” With that, Marshal’s mother closed the door behind her and headed for work.

A few silent minutes went by in the North household. Marshal was finally all alone, and he could finally sleep. That’s all he seemed to want to do lately, which wasn’t entirely out of character for him, but it was still concerning. After all he had been through in the past few years, though, it didn’t surprise his parents that Marshal didn’t really want to go much of anywhere or do anything. This month was coming up on the three-year anniversary of the day Marshal and his mother packed up and moved to Japan with his new stepfather. Marshal didn’t have anything against the guy, he was a great stepfather. It was more of the whole, “being ripped away from all your friends and moving to the other side of the planet” thing.

He managed at first, or at least he tried. He started learning the basics of the language got enrolled at the high school in Shibuya, but soon the weight of it all began to take its toll. Japanese was a hard language for him to learn, and thus Marshal wasn’t very adept at communicating with his classmates. One thing led to another, and now it was hard for him to even get out of bed in the morning to go to school.

Marshal almost fell asleep again, but suddenly his computer turned on across the room without any provocation. The monitor suddenly shone with a radiant light, one so bright that Marshal instantly drew the covers over his face to block it out. But then, as suddenly as it had happened, the light went out. Marshal sat up in bed to see an egg and some strange orange device sitting on his desk. Finally awake, he stumbled out of bed and over to the desk to examine these new objects.

“This has to be some sort of dream,” he muttered to himself. He shook his head around a few times and slapped his face gently a few times to make sure he actually was awake. After determining that he wasn’t dreaming, he looked over at the clock to see that he was late as usual.

“Oh, well,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “If I get to the train station right now, I’ll only be about five minutes late to class.” He grabbed his backpack off the floor and put the egg inside, giving the illusion that his backpack was full of books instead of completely empty like it usually was. Deciding that the device was also probably an important part of the whole ensemble, he strapped it onto his belt when he got dressed and dashed out the door.

* * *

The Shibuya Train Terminal was as busy as ever. Marshal walked around tentatively, always being nervous in spaces with a lot of people in them. He used his pass to get past the gate and waited for a train to come. Suddenly, without warning, a huge mob of people took off in a seemingly random direction, causing Marshal to get caught up as if swept away by the tide of the ocean. He couldn’t see through all the people, so he had no idea where he was going. After the mob eventually died down, Marshal was by himself, staring at a singular train in the middle of a dark platform. Realizing that the train that he wanted to catch was probably already gone by now, he weighed his options and decided to get on the train he was in front of, hoping he’d at least end up somewhere near the school.

When the doors closed behind him, the lights flickered a little. As soon as that happened, the device on Marshal’s belt began to shine with a bright light. Marshal, confused and more than a little bit frightened, tried to force open the door of the train car, to no avail. After a few seconds, the train started moving, but Marshal couldn’t really tell where he was going.

* * *

So, it seems that this device is responsible for me ending up here, Marshal concluded, staring down at the instrument of his disappearance which was casually hanging on his waist. But the question remains: Where is here? His thoughts were interrupted by a faint cracking sound. He looked down at the source of the noise: the egg he had found this morning. It began to wriggle and shake until it finally split in two, revealing a strange ball of smoke with two eyes and a big mouth. On top of its head, a flame was burning lightly.

“This day just keeps getting weirder and weirder,” Marshal muttered to himself.