[{7:02 AM}]
Alicia watched him from his nightstand, a frozen girl in time with a frozen pearly-white smile that seemed to scintillate off the camera's lens. Her curly golden locks were pulled up into a loose bun and her cheeks were red from playing soccer in the cold. She had on the required green and white soccer uniform, her foot escalating from the ground a good six inches as it rested on the soccer ball.
The teenager reached out and turned the framed picture on its face so that she would not look at him with that imagined accusing glare.
His chin was submerged in the fleecy cloth of his pillow, his mouth more or less hidden, and his cinnamon-brown tresses in a disarray atop his head; the thin fibers jutted this way and that. It didn't matter though, because they were allowed to be messy when he first woke up.
Well, actually, he'd been just laying there, watching his care-free sister look out at him with pleading emerald eyes. He did not notice the flicker of the neon green digits at his bedside, set into motion as seconds turned to minutes, and minutes turned to hours.
Where are you now? Where the ******** are you, Alicia? Ollie-ollie-oxen-free. Come out. I'm done with playing Hide-n'-Seek.
"I'm in my room. Come and get me, Christian. I'm in my room. Right in my bed. Asleep. You've been dreaming. Wake up, Christian. Wake up. This is turning into a nightmare. Don't let it progress too far or you'll wake the bed with wet sheets. You always were a 'fraidy-cat."
The voice was muffled, originating from beneath the framed picture. Or was it his mind playing tricks on him? It sounded so close, though... so close...
-----
The phone rang.
And rang.
And rang...
Holden resurfaced from unconsciousness and tugged the phone off of the receiver.
"Yeah."
Nothing.
"Hello?"
"Hello. Is Alicia Collins there?"
His breath caught in his throat, which burned, as if he had swallowed an enflamed match. The person hung up immediately, as if just realizing his mistake (he sounded too old to be talking to a ten-year old, anyway), and Holden replaced the phone back on its cradle.
Today was going to be strange. His intuition told him so.
With a heaved sigh, he threw the blanket off of him and padded into the bathroom, ran the hot water, and stepped into the shower, where he persistently scrubbed at his scalp with name-brand shampoo and conditioner. After wrapping himself in a towel and brushing his teeth at the sink, he looked at his own steamy reflection. The hair was messier than before, after having dryed it with a towel. Dark-brown eyes met dark-brown eyes... but the image was blurred. He couldn't help but notice a slight movement of his upper-shoulder, though he had performed no such thing.
An almost inconspicuous twitch occured on his upper-brow. Did he do that, too? He brushed his fingers across the mirror, creating fingerprint smears against the steam.
After dressing in his casual winter wear (including the gray scarf, of course), he trekked outside and crossed the street without looking.
A car honked.
He waved a dismissive hand and hastened his pace.
Ms. Levick was a widow in her mid-twenties; she wasn't all looks, and practically no brains, either. But she was kind. And that's all that mattered. She put up with Holden, at least.
She answered on the second knock. He told her of the dinner party that Maggie was hosting later on that day, because it was essential to his mother that the widow attend. Why that would be was a complete mystery to him.
"Why don't you come in for a bite to eat, Holden? You look like you just fell into a puddle of water. Come in."
He walked past her as she held the door open, and then sat down on her rather uncomfortable couch, propped his feet onto her glass coffee table, and smiled up at her as she inquired how he liked his coffee.
"No coffee. Water's fine."
She went to fetch his ice-cold water, but when she set it in front of him, he examined it for a moment, and met her face with a questioning gaze.
"Ice? I'm freezing, Ms. Levick. Would you dump this out and give me warm water?"
The woman conformed as told, and he sipped the newly-refilled glass and took a bite out of a chewy chocolate-chip cookie that she had sat before him just moments ago.
"Holden. How's your mother doing? Is she still working two jobs?"
He shook his head and spoke behind a mouthful; "No... she's... working... at the Beauty Salon... downtown... Susie's... hey. Do I look like I have pnemonia to you? Because I think I might be coming down with something. Cancer, probably. Do I look like I have cancer or something?"
Ms. Levick merely smiled at his hypchondriac demeanor and shook her head.
"No. Holden, is your father still working at that god-awful plumming job-thing? We have so much to talk about. Oh, I miss Alicia. Don't you miss her?"
"I have to go. I'll see you at Maggie's house later."
He stuffed another cookie into his mouth, downed it with another sip of water, grabbed his jacket, and power-walked out the door without a 'thank you' or 'sorry' for running out on her so early.
"Bye," he heard her yell after him as he slammed the door shut behind him and skipped the two steps that prevailed to her patio. Who did that, anyway? Who put stairs that only had two steps leading up to their patio? What was the point?
After his mother arrived from work, they chatted for a moment, and then she left to go to Maggie's. He had somehow negotiated that if she didn't make him go, he would clean his room and do his homework before going outside.
He left the house anyway. Didn't lock the door. And found himself sauntering down the street, the snow surrounding him on all sides like a winterland.
A crow watched him from atop his neighbor's mailbox.
--------
[{Fast Forward... }]
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe...
Holden was assaulted by tiny wings, only detected by the wind slapping against his face. Other than that, the culprits were invisible against the obscurity of this mind-dungeon.
"Where am I?"
"Where are you?"
"Who are you?"
Who am I?"
His questions were answered by another branch of questions.
The darkness was suddenly replaced by images of himself playing dodgeboll at recess when he was ten and directing the ball at a pretty little girl in ribbons. It began to be like a movieclip; after that image, another came as swift, displaying a six-year-old girl moving scrabble pieces on the gameboard that separated her and her older brother. Alicia.
Afterward, he was confronted by his mother's face, dappled with red spots from when she was crying. She was in the driver's seat, pulled up to the familiar drive-in window that the snowcone place had. The only word audible was "Alicia".
The entrance to the museum in his perspective, gradually growing closer and closer...
A crow, perched atop one of the statue lions guarding the museum. He stared at it. It stared back at him with cold, unrelenting eyes. It didn't even flinch as he drew close to it, reached numbing red fingers toward it, and then touched its glistening green feathers.
It snapped at him, but he retracted them just in time. The bird would have to find breakfast elsewhere. It cawed, flapped its wings, and took off, but not before giving the young man one more glare of disapproval.
He continued on his way into the museum, his legs guiding his involuntary body toward the mirror.
The black mirror. Standing, majestic on its concrete stage, staring back at him with... not his own reflection, but somebody else's. A circle of strangers around him, performing the same act. Parroting his every move, it seemed.
And then, himself, sprawled out on the ground like a forgotten ragdoll, contorted in an awkward position and laying atop another's arm. They all fell unconscious. But who were these people?
The last image blurred and was snatched away so quickly that he could still see the vestige of colors imprinted in the darkness, and then all was gone.
The wings that were scathing his flesh dispersed.
And ancient twisted trees stood where the abyss had not too long ago.
His eyes were dilated and his senses were on full alert.
Something was not right. He reached for the skeletel arms of the trees, a dead canopy above him that only allowed slithers of moonlight to wash down upon them. Another source of light came from his very right, but he only laid there for quite some time, his elongated hand overlapping the view of the upside-down branches that concealed the sky like willowy sentries. Though his joints obtained no feeling as of that moment, they were so numb, he forced them closed into a fist, and then open again, trying to get the feeling back in them.
"Hello?"
His voice elicited puffs of cold fog to drift above him.
"Hello?" He repeated himself, his voice a hoarse whisper, but his mouth still emanating the coil of fog, which levitated for a moment before evaporating altogether.
All was silent.
He couldn't remember who he was, though. Holden. Holden Collins. He knew that much, but no memories popped into his mind that would usually accompany him through silence.
Perhaps if he said his name...?
"Holden Collins. I'm Holden Collins."
Nothing. Nada, zero, zilch. He lowered his hand and pushed himself into a sitting position.
"Collins. Holden Collins," he said in a James Bond voice, and then finally took in his surroundings, supressing an exasparated gasp. He didn't know this place, but he knew that it felt wrong. Bad. Morbid. Evil. And that he was not supposed to be here.
Somewhere in the distance, a crow cawed. An owl hooted. And a wolf cried out to the moon. All normal sounds fo nighttime. But not in the city. So this wasn't a metropolis.
The eye could only see so much, and so far nothing triggered his memory. There was just a stretch of black dirt... withering trees that reminded him of skeletons... and... a trail.
A winding trail that snaked between an opening of trees, and then disappeared into the darkness. If only he had a light that would guide them.
The dim, dusty light that the lightpole provided revealed silhouettes scattered around him. He could not make out features, but they all captivated a familiarity within him, though no images would accompany the feeling.
Holden brushed his fingers against the cotton material of his long-sleeve jacket hiding a burnt-orange t-shirt. The jacket was unzipped, so he zipped it to his collarbones.
"Holden Collins," he whispered again, and then, louder, "Are you alive?", directed toward the strangers. If they were dead-- no. That was not an option. But what if they were dead? What if he was... alone?
That was the thing he feared most. Not the trees, the darkness, or the howls of a distant wolf. But being alone.
"Wake up..."
The fear of being all alone.
"Please..."
The fear of going insane if nobody was there to talk to him. And god forbid if Holden were to have nobody to talk to. He'd go wack-o.
"WAKE UP!"
This dimension is parallel to the Inferior Dimension. Its vast lands are concealed with beautifully-flourishing trees, and the sun seems to watch you like a golden eye, but not unkindly. It seems to smile down at you. 
