WHO: Jude Maraschino and Jeremiah Blake WHEN: Day 2, Late Afternoon WHERE: The hotel. Then the Beach. Then the cliffs. SUMMARY: The boys try to wake up from their dream. WARNINGS: Denial, spookiness and death
When the staff room door finally opened, he and Tessa both made a break for it. While she stopped running once they were out of the room, Jer didn’t. He threw a look at her over his shoulder, yelled that he needed to find Jude, and kept going. He would’ve continued running until the moment he found his friend if the hotel doors actually slid open for him. But why would these doors respond to him when the last door hadn’t? Nobody was looking at him, nobody was commenting on the weird guy running through the lobby like a bat out of hell. Yet, when he got to the door and it refused to open, Jer found himself wanting to yell but holding back for some reason. Not because he thought the effort would be futile. Just because he didn’t want to cause a scene.
In his head, it made sense. He was rationalizing things without realizing. As he stood there, playing Red Light Green Light with the hotel, Jeremiah didn’t even give it a second thought. He actively ignored how this wasn’t right. Because he was scared. He was confused. He was anxious and hurt and looking for answers while fearing the answers at the same time. Closing that off meant he was none of those things. He was just being pranked still. He was playing a game with the stupid hotel doors. It was fine. Things were fine. He just needed to find Jude.
As soon as the doors opened, Jer was running again, though he had to stop short when he spotted Jude pretty much just outside the hotel. He hadn’t noticed him while he was waiting at the doors, but Jer didn’t think about that. Even though it made no sense to completely miss the person he was looking for, he didn’t let the thought sink in. He just let out a relieved sigh as he moved to stand in front of his friend.
“Jude...I don’t even know what that was. And we never found Cassidy. But I’m just...so freaking glad to be out of there. And that you’re here. And...I’m sorry. I know the beach thing wasn’t you. I don’t know what that was either, but I’m sorry I accused you. I’m just...really sorry, dude. I just want to know what’s going on here. Not knowing is like...it feels like my head’s splitting open. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
Jude was sitting, listless, against one of the pillars outside the hotel lobby. When he’d gone back to the staff room, it had been empty again. After seeing Wes and Leila, that had been the final straw. Jude had just walked back out as soon as someone else opened the door and slumped. His knees were up to his chin and his chin was on his folded arms over his knees. Jude stared at the path leading to the beach. He didn’t hear Jer approach, but when he heard the voice and saw his fraternity brother standing there, instead of reacting with relief, Jude just exhaled.
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”. Their whole fight. Jer accusing him. The Sally thing. The beach thing. None of that mattered anymore. Jude looked up at his friend. “I don’t think it’s a prank, Jer.” No one could pay these many random people. No one could have paid Leila or Wes to just ignore him like that. Jer and Tessa kept disappearing. The thing with the doors.
He lifted his head, making eye contact. “I don’t think we’re actually here.”
Jeremiah blinked. His words had come so quickly, in such a rush, that he hadn't noticed Jude's stance. He looked... defeated. Jeremiah started to frown. He felt like he was frowning more today than he had in his entire life.
He sat down in front of Jude. Part of him wanted to lean forward and squeeze his friend's shoulder reassuringly, but the rest of him didn't want to. Jer didn't wonder why. If he wondered, he'd have to acknowledge he was scared he wouldn't actually touch Jude. He'd have to acknowledge how he was also scared of the possibility that touching Jude would work. Jer thought of Hope for a moment and that was enough to make him flinch. He couldn't see Jude like that.
“I was with Max before. He thinks we're all in a dream or something.”
“A dream?” Jude's head tilted, hopeful for a moment at the thought. He shook his head. “It's either that, or we're crazy. A brain tumor. Bad jellyfish.” He looked distraught. “I don't know if you're real.” Was Jude imagining all of this? Had he gone crazy? Nothing like this had ever happened to him before and Jude was scared. He couldn't trust anything.
“I didn’t eat any jellyfish.” Jeremiah couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. He was always hungry, but he wasn’t then. He hadn’t been hungry since…he couldn’t say. He didn’t know. Jer frowned. “And we can’t both have brain tumors. The odds are super unlikely. Even if...the behavior things would make sense. And the headaches…”
Both of them having brain tumors was a terrible explanation though. Brain tumors were a big problem. He just wanted something they could fix. Jer shook his head. “I’m real. I’m as real as you are. And we aren’t crazy, so...unless you ate a jellyfish…”
Jude had been thinking more along the lines of a rare tropical poison. He didn't think you even could eat jellyfish. But it sounded like the sort of thing a hallucination of Jer might say. Or the real Jer.
He was quiet for a beat. “I saw Leila,” Jude said. “And Wes. They acted like I wasn't there.”
Jer shook his head immediately. “That proves it,” he said, slapping a hand emphatically against his knee. “Dude, if this was real, Leila and Wes would never be ignoring you. They wouldn’t even be here to ignore you. This has to be a dream. I don’t know how we’re sharing it, but we are. We have to be. Maybe we ate bad shrimp. Or...clams. Weird, hallucinogenic island clams.”
If Jude was hallucinating Jeremiah, Jude was at least impressed with his mind's accuracy. He wanted to believe it. “Maybe if we treat it like a dream it will definitely be a dream. I'd take weird hallucinogenic island clams.” That was better. Anything Jude could haggle down from insanity. “Maybe it's a rare island thing that makes your dreams feel even more real. Some kind of island fever…..How do we wake up?”
Jude hadn’t been acting like himself in days. Jeremiah’s head was killing him lately. Tumors did stuff like that to people. But Jer wasn’t willing to accept that they had tumors. He wasn’t crazy, and neither was Jude. They were just messed up from clams. If he was sure about it, Jude could be sure about it too. They wouldn’t have tumors. They’d just be fever dreaming. “Nothing else makes sense,” he said, even though part of him still knew other things made sense too. “...what do they do in movies when people are dreaming?” His brow furrowed for a second, and then Jer shouted “Wake up!” as he snapped his fingers.
“...huh.”
Jude didn’t think the island fever even made much sense if he was being honest, but what other options did they have? He was disappointed the snap didn’t work for Jer, but...banging on the door hadn’t banged on the door. Jude’s hand wasn’t broken when it should at least sting. “The whole universe has gone bloody mad.” He shook his head and stood. Jude looked at his friend.
“Water,” he said. “Or like...a fall. I saw it on a DiCaprio movie.” If the snapping didn’t work… Honestly, at this point, Jude was willing to try just about anything just to get whatever this nightmare was to stop. Couldn’t find the vacation guide. Couldn’t get back to his room. Couldn’t talk to anyone. Might as well.
The look Jeremiah gave Jude probably seemed a little worried. His brow was still dipped inward, and he was still kind of frowning. The lines on his face were definitely giving away an argument he almost made about the universe not being bloody mad, but that argument wasn’t really about the universe. It was more defending them. They weren’t mad. They were dreaming. But the DiCaprio thing was a nice shift. “Right! Right.” Jer nodded, and he kind of...oversold the enthusiasm because Jude was still way underselling it.
“After we wake up, we need to do the music thing too. The trigger with the music. In case.” Jeremiah only vaguely remembered the movie. He knew there was music, he just didn’t remember how it got into their heads to help them out. That wasn’t important. He stood up, and almost extended his hand to help Jude up too. Like, palm halfway out his way before Jer shoved it into his pocket instead.
“Let’s find something to jump off of.”
Jude and Jeremiah took turns being the positive one for each other, depending on which one of them needed it at the time. If Jer was really sad, Jude would be positive and enthusiastic to try and get him out of it. Right now, Jeremiah’s enthusiasm should have worked on Jude the way that it normally would have, but...this wasn’t normal. None of it was normal. Jude had never been in a situation anything like this before. He was scared. Still, he tried to muster an enthusiastic smile back, because Jeremiah was overdoing it and that seemed to suggest Jer was scared too.
Then again, the way that Jer rescinded his hand so that Jude wouldn’t touch him definitely pointed to Jeremiah being a hallucination. Jude didn’t comment, but believed less that Jeremiah was actually there.
“How high do you think?” If Jude wasn’t dreaming, he didn’t want to get hurt.
It would've been really great if the snapping had worked. But when Jer thought about it, snapping was for hypnotized people, not dreaming people. They weren't hypnotized. He tried not to acknowledge how nagging, discouraging thoughts were starting to creep in. He wished Jude's smile looked a little more... convincing. Jer just had to try harder though. Really sell it. If he sold Jude on the idea, he could retroactively sell himself maybe.
“Well...if we're doing this scientifically, we'd start small and work up from there if needed. Like...I don't know, a retaining wall, or a chair. See if impact is all it takes. Feet hitting the ground hard.”
There were plenty of chairs in the lobby, and plenty of pretend people not paying attention to them causing a scene in the lobby, but Jeremiah didn't want to go back there. If he stayed away from doors, he wouldn't worry about the logic behind them not working.
“I don't know if we should do it together, since we're both dreaming. That makes sense, right?”
Since Jeremiah was probably, most likely, a hallucination, Jude didn’t see why not. “Let’s do it together,” Jude agreed. He thought about high things. “There’s that lifeguard’s stand on the beach?” It wasn’t a chair, but Jude didn’t really want to go back inside either. The doors were a hassle.
Jeremiah thought about that for a moment before he nodded. The car in that movie had fallen into water, but he didn't remember if water had been the important factor or not. Probably not. “Perfect. Let's go!”
He pulled his hand from his pocket as he started walking. That was probably going to be fine. “This has been the creepiest dream, man. I was really starting to freak out.”
“What do you mean creepy?” Jude asked. His best guess was that Jer was referring to the door stuff, but that seemed off, because while it was frustrating and weird, when Jude thought creepy, he thought about like...horror movie stuff. Had something else happened?
“Well…” Jer shot Jude a quick glance. He knew that he could tell his friend anything, but it had been a rough few days for them. Jeremiah thought a little hesitation made sense. In the end, though, Jer would always choose to tell Jude things. They were brothers. “I saw Hope from the birthday party group. Not that she's creepy. She's...you know. Not creepy. But we were both a little freaked, so I went to touch her shoulder, just to be nice, and when I looked at her again, she was this like...wet...bloated version of herself. Just for a second, but...it was really creepy. And it seemed super real.”
“What? That’s weird,” Jude said. He looked back at Jeremiah as they walked to Paradise Beach. He couldn’t imagine why he’d imagine Jeremiah telling him Hope was bloated. Maybe Jeremiah was actually there after all. “And you said your head’s been hurting?” Jude looked concerned. He’d never heard Jer say anything like this before. Usually Jer was the more realistic one.
Establishing that this was a dream made a world of difference. What he saw when he touched Hope... But it wasn't real. They were dreaming. Talking about this with Jude wasn't scary because it hadn't really happened. Jeremiah was a little less tense through the shoulders. A little more relaxed. “Crazy weird, dude. It was like...she was waterlogged. Just...ruined by water. I've never seen anything like it, except probably in movies.” Jer had to have seen it somewhere. Something similar. He just couldn't remember.
“... Yeah. Since we woke up on the beach. But... I guess we didn't actually wake up. So it's probably nothing.” Jer paused, then looked at Jude again. “Or do you think it's like...a sign or something? Not nothing.”
That was weird. Jude hadn't seen anything like that. Maybe it was clams. “That why you took your hand back before?” Jer was having weird water girl visions.
“I...uh. Yeah. I just...thought if I touched you, you’d look...you know, like that.” The hesitation felt like he’d been on the verge of saying something else. Like he almost described it as something else. Hope hadn’t just been wet. She looked... but his thoughts stopped. Made a sharp turn. Drove him elsewhere. Jeremiah didn’t think anything of it.
“We could try it if you want,” Jude said. He didn’t want Jer to have to go around thinking every person he touched was going to turn into a water monster, if they weren’t. And if everyone Jer touched was going to turn into a water monster, Jude figured that it would be best to find that out so they could fix it. In a way, it was kind of nice to have a problem to distract Jude from the rest of what had happened that day. Or even the whole trip.
“Wait. Why were you talking to her?”
He frowned at the headaches. “Maybe you drank too much last night?”
“Neither of us remember going to the beach. And I wasn’t drinking, so...we were just talking about that.” Jer defended himself and Jude in practically the same breath when Hope came at him with an accusation. But if Hope was part of the dream, then defending Jude was probably a way of resolving his previous feelings. It pointed out the mistake he’d made, or something. Even if she was real, and dreaming too, his brain knew to defend Jude. Always. “Look...I really am sorry about the beach thing. I know I said it, but...that was just garbage of me. I’m really, really sorry.”
Jude shook his head. “I shouldn’t have gotten so mad about it. I like don’t remember anything about this trip. Maybe I did makeout with Sally. Maybe I did put everyone on the beach. I look around and I don’t remember getting there. Don’t know where I am or when I am or why I am. At this point, I’m lucky I know my name.” He’d ignored it. He’d blamed it on drinks or how depressed he’d been that Leila hadn’t come. But after Leila had and then ignored him, Jude had to face the facts. There was something seriously, seriously wrong with him.
He exhaled. “I hope we wake up in Pennsylvania,” was all Jude said.
Jer shook his head immediately, fiercely, because defending Jude sometimes meant defending Jude against himself. “Dude, you didn’t makeout with Sally. You...were with her. But you didn’t actually do it. And I think, if we’re losing time, and we’re sharing dreams and we can’t just snap our fingers and wake up, maybe that’s the clams too. All the weird stuff...it’s totally the clams. I know you would never do that sort of thing. Not without something really screwy going on.”
He took a breath. Jeremiah looked at Jude for a moment and then nodded. They had shared a similar sentiment earlier, with Tessa. “We will. We totally will. I mean, we might be in the lame campus infirmary with nothing but green Jello and HGTV to entertain us until the clams are out of our systems, but like...that’s doable. We can do that.”
Jude was reassured, but there was still this seed of doubt in the back of his mind. If he didn’t remember getting into the pool with her, what else didn’t he remember? He tried to think but it was like his mind couldn't hold onto anything. Just blurred snatches of images and a biting longing to be someplace that was actually familiar. A place that actually made sense.
“It's totally the clams,” Jude repeated. He wanted to believe that so badly that in the moment, he did. What clams? It didn't matter. They were to blame for all of this.
They reached the lifeguard stand, but Jude stopped before. “Okay,” Jude said, reaching forward. “Touch my hand.”
Jeremiah nodded. He wasn’t even going to complain about the HGTV. If it meant they got off of this island, and that none of this was actually real, Jer swore he wouldn’t even complain.
At Jude’s request, Jeremiah definitely hesitated though. He looked at his friend’s hand, and then at his face, and Jer had to remind himself that what he saw with Hope wasn’t real. And if that wasn’t real, he didn’t have to worry about it happening again. Even if it happened again, it wouldn’t be real. He took a breath, then took Jude’s hand...and his friend’s face didn’t change. He didn’t soften and swell and turn blue. His eyes were still his eyes. His skin was still his skin.
Jer exhaled, shoulders relaxing. “Okay, let’s do this. Let’s go home.”
Jude watched Jer’s face and was equally relieved when Jer didn’t seem to react. He let go of Jer’s hand. “No hallucinations?” he clarified. Jude smiled as his arm dropped.
“No hallucinations,” Jer confirmed, and he smiled too because it really was a relief.
It wasn’t until Jeremiah raised his hands, outstretched, to start climbing up the lifeguard stand, that he realized his attention should’ve been drawn elsewhere when he was checking for unsettling hallucinations. Jude was already climbing up, so the moment passed unnoticed, but Jer took a step back, staring at his palms. It wasn’t a red sunrise this time. Jeremiah could see it more clearly than he had on the beach yesterday. His hands were...wet. Coated. He rubbed his thumb and pointer fingers together. Blood. His hands were covered in…
But it was a hallucination. It had to be.
They took turns climbing up the ladder and then jumping. The first jump did nothing. Jude didn’t even seem to feel the impact in his feet.
When Jude jumped off the stand, Jer climbed the ladder, glancing for bloody handprints as he moved. There weren’t any. He wasn’t really bloody. He wasn’t really red-handed. He jumped, and Jude jumped again, and nothing happened. Nothing changed. Jeremiah balled his hands into fists after his latest failed attempt. He balled them up, but didn’t look at them. His skin was warm from the exertion, not from a thick, wet coating of...anything. He didn’t want to draw any attention to anything that wasn’t real, and make Jude worry. Jer was determined to not worry Jude, at the very least.
Third try, Jude moved all the way to the top of the ladder and jumped. It felt strangely just like when he’d jumped from only a couple feet. He frowned. Done jumping, Jude looked back at Jer. He tried not to let any of the growing uncertainty or fear affect his expression or the lightness of his words.
“What next?”
“Okay…” Jer said, clearing his throat. His brow furrowed as he mulled the whole messy problem over. “Maybe the stand isn’t high enough?” he theorized. Once he said it, the logic settled comfortably in his head. It felt right. “If we’ve been dreaming for what feels like two days, maybe we need a bigger jolt to snap out of it. Like...a jump from the cliffs or something?”
Jude frowned a little. The cliffs were a long way and unless they could get into their room and retrieve their rock-climbing gear, they’d have to hike to the cliff diving point.
But it was their best bet if waking up required jumping into water from a height.
Jude was trying not to think too hard about all of this, because the more he thought about it, the more he realized he wasn’t quite drunk enough to think that any of this made sense. As usual, his desire to ignore what was wrong won out against the logic that told him that if this was a dream, Jude would wake up without jumping into the ocean with his clothes on.
“Yeah, Robbie! That’s on our list of island stuff to do anyway. You know I’m always up for a bike. Let’s do it.” Jude’s only lament as they walked toward the trail was that he had no idea where the rest of their brothers were. “The others are gonna be green.”
With his theory clicking in his brain, Jeremiah’s words took on a more excited tone, a frantic energy that edged dangerously close to desperation if a person looked close enough. But they weren’t looking close enough. He and Jude were sticking to the plan. Not clinging. Sticking.
“Right?” he agreed, a bit louder, more enthusiastic, than necessary. That frantic energy again. “Even if it isn’t real, it’ll make them jealous that our dreams let us go cliff diving.”
Jer didn’t linger on the thought too long. He cleared his throat and pushed forward in the direction they needed to go. It seemed like he’d hiked the length of the island twice already, but his body didn’t seem to agree. He didn’t feel sore or tired. Jer wished that was just an excuse to boast about his athleticism, but… The thought trailed off. What did it matter? This was a dream.
“Race you there?” he suggested. If he was running, he’d be focused on running. No wandering thoughts. It had worked pretty well earlier.
Having been on a couple hikes that day and started noticing some odd things while walking slow, Jude answered by breaking into a run. “Last one there has to jump first!” he called.
That was really all Jude had to say to get Jeremiah bolting up the path. They were competitive in a friendly way, so this wasn’t out of the ordinary. But...it felt wrong. If Jer hadn’t started running, maybe he would’ve seen how transparent their eagerness might appear. How very desperate they seemed for a distraction. But he ran like getting to the top first was the most worthwhile prize ever dangled in front of him. He ran like his life depended on it. He lost track of Jude. Of his own breathing. His focus narrowed to his feet on the ground, following the path.
Every once in awhile, Jude would turn his head to make sure he hadn’t lost Jer, but mostly, he focused on the path. There was so much about the run that wasn’t right. He didn’t hear his or Jer’s footsteps. He wasn’t out of breath or even panting at all. His muscles didn’t feel used. The whole experience felt incredibly wrong and made Jude want to stop.
And then Jude wasn’t running anymore. He stood on the cliffs, blinking and disoriented. Jude didn’t know how long he’d run. If the hike happened at all, it was blur. He had no idea what time it was and didn’t remember the climb, but Jude noticed that Jer was ahead of him. He figured Jer must have won.
Something made him flinch, and Jeremiah realized it was Jude coming up behind him. They were at the top. He blinked twice, because he couldn’t really say he remembered the journey to get there. Not all of it. Not most of it, even. He looked at Jude, trying not to appear concerned.
“Alright,” Jude said, moving to the edge and looking out over the ocean. Jude didn’t see any rocks or debris below. They’d checked the water depth before, because they’d wanted to do this while they were on the island. He knew it was a safe dive, but for some reason, he felt sick looking at and smelling the water. Something about the salt, even though Jude had always loved the ocean before.
Jude ignored the feeling and offered Jer a bright smile. Jude felt better about going first. If something went wrong, he knew Jer would be there to look after Leila. “Wait for the thumbs up, unless I, you know, disappear from the water and wake up.” With that, Jude jumped.
But he didn’t hit the water.
His body slammed into a barrier, like he’d hit a solid wall, and then Jude was standing up on top of the cliff again. He screamed in pain, doubling over. The wall had been fire. He felt like he’d slammed into fire. Jude screamed and screamed, at first at the pain, but then a wave of weakness hit and Jude staggered back. He looked down at himself.
Jeremiah stood at the edge of the cliff, watching as Jude dove towards the water. If this was a dream, Jude would’ve hit the water and vanished, because the fall woke him up. But Jude vanished, and then there were screams behind Jeremiah. Jude’s screams. He wheeled around, but found himself caught frozen in his first step because the sight of his friend’s face was too haunting to be a dream. Jude was there, in pain, screaming and hurting and desperate, and Jer knew his mind couldn’t fake that. It couldn’t make Jude sound as convincing as those screams sounded. The agony in his best friend’s eyes burned through him, and Jer knew it was real. He had watched Jude jump, but there he was, right in front of him, and it was impossible even though it was clearly happening. So little had made sense lately, but somehow his mind accepted both of the things he knew: Jude had jumped, and Jude was standing right in front of him now, screaming in excruciating pain. If those two things were both real, it was almost easy to see the lies he’d been telling himself today. The excuses he’d been making. The words he had fumbled over, unable to say, or even think. He’d been dancing around what was right in front of him.
They couldn’t dance around it anymore.
Jude saw his hands in front of his face and there were holes all over them, like a rash of transparency. He could see the ground through his hands and then the arm started to fade. His whole body flickered. Jude could see the grass through his shoes. Each time he flickered, his body became more transparent.
The last thing Jude saw before he disappeared was his friend’s horrified face staring back at him. Jude opened his mouth to speak, but then he was gone.
Jer couldn’t say when he started screaming too. He was shouting his friend’s name over and over again, trying to get to him, to touch him, to stop what was happening from happening. But Jude kept fading. Nothing Jeremiah did stopped it, or even slowed it down. This wasn’t something that could happen to living, breathing people. Living, breathing people didn’t slowly fade into nothingness. But living, breathing people felt fatigue. Their muscles ached after running for miles. Their throats went hoarse after screaming a single name over and over and over again. They could open doors. They could talk to people.
He dropped to the spot where Jude had been, and he tried to hit the ground, to smash at the grass and leaves and dirt, but he felt nothing. Nothing felt him. Because…
They weren’t living, breathing people…
Jeremiah screamed. Not until his throat went hoarse. Until his world went black.