"Abbey had no choice but to follow through. "I hope it was just enough to get us home," he thought to himself as he walked through the door. Immediately, he found himself back at Sharon's apartment. He looked around, searching for her. He started to panic when he couldn't find her, but then a familiar voice snapped him out of it.
"What are you doing here? Did you lose something?" The familiar voice asked. Abbey turned to see Sharon with a glass of water, feeling relief flood through him.
"You ran through the door before I could stop you. I thought you were lost in another reality or realm," Abbey said with a worried expression.
Sharon looked concerned, "What do you mean lost in another reality or realm?"
Abbey took a deep breath before replying, "Maybe we were lucky this time, but in the future, make sure your concentration is focused on what you are doing. Otherwise, you could have sent us somewhere else." Sharon's face showed confusion as she nodded in understanding. "I see," she pondered to herself, "It's a good thing we managed to get here," she remarked.
Abbey didn't want to push the issue any further, so he simply said, "We have to make sure we are in the right place and not an alternate plane or realm." Sharon was taken aback, doing a double-take as she looked around, seeming confused. "What are you talking about? This is my apartment and everything is the same. Are you trying to scare me again? It won't work this time," she said, rhetorically. Abbey couldn't help but smile at her, before responding, "Oh, ye of little understanding."
Trying to explain as best as he could, Abbey let out a sigh before saying, "If you or we are trapped in a reverse world or opposite world, it will look exactly like the real world, with a few differences. You may not even know at first, but sooner or later, you will begin to notice the difference. That was what I was trying to do the moment we came back. I was trying to make sure we didn't end up there, since you quickly left before the doorway finished manifesting and you were not focused."
Sharon looked around, trying to check if there were any differences in the apartment. Then she said, "Everything looks the same here. I don't think we are in any other world." Again, Abbey did his best not to laugh at Sharon's naivety, as her actions showed a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment. He shrugged off any other thoughts before saying, "I guess we dodged a bullet." They both laughed simultaneously before Sharon seemed to remember something. "Where are my manners? I didn't offer you anything." Abbey was taken aback by her sudden kindness and replied, "I don't mind anything. I will be okay with whatever you have." He said with a smile on his face.
After some time, they finished their meals and stared at each other as if they remembered something to say. They laughed awkwardly before Sharon spoke first. "You seem to know a lot about the astral realm, and from what you said earlier, it seems you have been trapped there before." Abbey didn't say much, not wanting to divulge too much information. He simply nodded his head to indicate yes and stopped. Sharon seemed to understand Abbey and didn't press the issue any further, sensing it was a depressing matter or something more.
Suddenly, Abbey felt a tiny bit of blood flowing from his nose. He touched the blood and realized something was wrong again. "I know these signs," he said to himself. "We are in the wrong place." As he pondered aloud about things, he asked himself, "Why is Sharon in my head again? Or am I in her head?" Definitely, something else is at work here. He was once again distracted from his thoughts when Sharon asked him, "What are you thinking about? You seemed to be very quiet all of a sudden."
He smiled at her before saying, "I just thought I felt something on my nose, but I guess it's nothing. Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me, that's all." Sharon snorted before saying, "You can do that in your own leisure time. Right now, you have to help me with something." As Sharon spoke, he saw tiny drops of blood flowing down her nose too. He immediately asked her, "What is that flowing from your nose?" Feeling embarrassed, Sharon lifted her head and searched for a tissue to clean her nose.
"What a strange coincidence," he thought to himself. "What are the chances of both of us having blood flowing from our noses?" He said aloud. Sharon seemed confused and immediately asked, "What are you getting at? It's just blood." Abbey tried to clarify things by saying, "The chances of you and I experiencing the same symptoms are next to nothing. These symptoms are side effects of something else." He trailed off again, trying to gather his thoughts. "It's weird that you always change the topic whenever I try to figure something out."
Sharon thought for a moment, "Yes, it seems strange that I am suddenly being nice to you and even cooking for you." Abbey smiled at her before saying, "That's not strange at all. Those are your innermost feelings coming out. The ones you have been trying so hard to suppress." Sharon immediately nodded, "Yes, that's my point. Why am I suddenly acting on these feelings instead of suppressing them?" Abbey seemed to understand and nodded in agreement. "Our actions are not our own. It seems like someone or something is directly controlling our thoughts little by little."
Abbey started rubbing his chin, "We are experiencing a shared hallucination - a false perception of objects or events involving our senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste." Sharon was surprised by this new information. Abbey quickly reassured her, saying, "If we are both experiencing it at the same time, it can only mean we are still connected to each other." Sharon asked again, "What are you saying?" Abbey cautioned them, "We need to be careful. If we are both experiencing these blood-like symptoms, it means our life force is being drained."
Sharon was on the verge of going haywire as her mind went into a frenzy upon hearing Abbey's revelation - their life-force was being drained. "Are you telling me that we are dying?" she asked incredulously. Abbey could no longer hide the truth and reluctantly nodded his head. Sharon seemed to be struggling to breathe, as if she was being suffocated. Abbey immediately reached out to her, trying to offer some comfort. "It's okay, we just need to stay calm right now or else we will be drained faster. If we panic or show fear, it will only make things worse."
In an attempt to regain her composure, Sharon asked the question that was on her mind. "Where are we?" Abbey, still maintaining a stoic expression, replied, "That's what I'm trying to figure out. But you keep distracting my thoughts." From what he could remember, they had entered a doorway but something went wrong because Sharon had broken her concentration. He paused for a moment before continuing, "The doorway wasn't an ordinary one anymore. We shouldn't have been able to pass through it because we couldn't complete it."
Sharon interrupted his thoughts once again, asking, "But we did pass through the doorway. How is that possible if it wasn't completed?"
Abbey replied, "I only said we didn't complete it. We passed through it because it was completed, just not by us." A shivering cold passed through Sharon's body immediately when Abbey spoke those words. "Who could have done it, if not us?" Sharon replied immediately. Abbey's answer was immediate, "My point exactly." Something or someone hijacked our concentration and was able to trap us behind a fake doorway," Abbey said, genuinely surprised, trying to figure out who could have done such a thing.
Sharon seemed to have figured something out. "We were being chased by the dreamentia. Could they have done this to us?" she asked out of curiosity. Abbey nodded and said, "Yes, they could have, but something seems to be amiss here." "Ambigrams," he thought, speaking out loud so that Sharon could hear him. "What are Ambigrams?" she asked immediately. Thinking of how best to explain it, he said, "Ambigrams are words or phrases that can be read in more than one way or from more than one perspective. They can also be objects or symbols."
"Okay, but what does that have to do with where we are now?" Sharon suddenly asked. "This place is a shared memory we both have. If you look at it from a different perspective, it does not exist. It is all in our heads and minds. Someone or something is directly feeding us our own memories."
Suddenly, Abbey seemed to have realized what was happening. He looked at Sharon and yelled out, "Schade!"