𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆
'It starts and ends with you and me.'
When a young girl finds herself stuck in a movie, she quickly learns that the only way out is to make it to the ending. But when an ill-fated character worms his way into her life, she fears...
GASPING for air, Neil sprung up straight, his hands clasping his neck as he let out an array of heavy coughs.
It only lasted several more seconds before he collected himself, heavily panting. But surrounding blue walls ticked his brain awake. And he blinked down hard, swallowing down his last uneven breath.
Suddenly, a blaring horn sounded in his ears, his body jolting vigorously and his eyes widening with intense fear.
There were no birds tweeting outside, there was no silence. Just a cacophony of yelling overlapping on the other side of the walls around him.
These blue walls were decorated with posters of people he didn't recognise. He didn't have time to register if they were film covers or not, his senses too heightened all of a sudden.
The air almost felt thinner, and the room smelt of sharp lavender.
Looking down at himself, Neil noticed his chest was still bare and he still wore his dark pants. But he paid it no mind, swinging his legs around the single bed and standing to his bare feet.
His toes shifted against the feel of a dark blue carpet; his skin was more familiar with glossed wood. But then as if remembering the severity of the situation, he marched across the room and to the window, his hands tearing through the silver line between the curtains to pry them open.
He had never seen a street so busy.
Across a wide road was a never-ending line of towering brick homes, and above was a cloudy blue sky, sunlight peaking down on the abundance of vehicles.
People peeked out of their windows from their driver's seat, shouting at each other, beeping their loud horns.
And suddenly Milly's voice echoed in his mind.
The blue walls with posters and the singular window that overlooked a busy street.
Neil staggered back, his face creasing with confusion.
But then everything else she described reeled in his brain.
He rushed over to the single bed, lifting up the mattress unapologetically. And surely enough, along the line of planks supporting it were three in the centre surviving with duct tape wrapped around it.
Neil released the mattress, letting it bounce to a stop.
He turned away from it, faced with a desk that had a bulletin board overhanging it.
When he ambled towards it, he grew even more confused by the sight of photographs with people he didn't recognise and sheets of paper pinned along it. Letters, notes, tickets.
And then something in particular spiked his attention. A phrase he recognised well.
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His eyebrows dipped.
His familiarity only made him more perplexed.
But he kept his eyes moving, letting them fall onto a certificate underneath it.
It was a certificate to celebrate someone passing their driver's license. That someone the certificate was addressed to followed a little lower along the paper.
