I am afraid | [tobias]

up with your turret; aren't we just terrified?
shale, screen your worry
from what you won't ever find
don't let it fool you

"I am afraid!"

His eyes opened and he was somewhere far, far away.

He stumbled, red sand crunching beneath his boots, scarlet sky staring down at him in a sleepy yawn of late evening, crimson waters lapping at the shoreline.

"Where—" State of confusion, or maybe a state of delusion. He looked at the back of his hands, counting ten fingers to make sure he wasn't dreaming. What happened?

There was some kind of knowledge there, but he couldn't quite place it. What had he screamed before?

("I am afraid!")

Why would he have screamed that? He didn't feel afraid. Uneasy, off balance, perhaps, but not afraid.

Should he have been? He checked his surroundings, only to find them vacant. He was alone, but he didn't feel that way. He felt.. He felt—

He searched his mind for the words.

"At home?" the voice was all-knowing, echoing as if it were said from the other side of a very long cave. The words rolled across the sand, fell into the ocean somewhere deeply into the horizon.

"Yes," Tobias admitted, searching for the person who had spoken. The voice was familiar, but not close enough for Toby to recognize from a single word.

There was no one.

"Why is everything red?" He could hear leaves rustling in the wind somewhere far off, despite there only being beaches and shorelines as far as his eyes allowed him to see.

"It's how you saw the world before. Red and alone; you against the world."

Tobias furrowed his brow; "R—Really?"

He sat down hard, resting his chin on his knees and staring at the blurry lines where sky met sea. He couldn't really tell where one stopped and the other started; it all sort of bled together.

The voice was right.

Tobias versus the world, and the world always won. He had these names in his head- people he was worried about. Lenox. Farley. His parents.

Had they left him?

Is that why he was supposed to be afraid?

"Where are you? Who... Who are you?" There was a long silence that followed. Perhaps the voice had left him, too.

"Not yet," the voice said. There was worry in his tone, whoever it was. Tobias wished he could place the face that matched it. Not his father, none of his friends, no one— he had no clue.

"When can I know?" He asked, eyes fixed on the sky far above him.

"When you understand."

He gritted his teeth. "That doesn't make any sense," He groaned, falling onto his back. He rest his hands on the back of his head. It was as if he couldn't stay angry for too long before things felt easy again and he couldn't help smiling.

He saw a sun directly above him, small, insignificant, but it hadn't been there before.

"Because you don't understand yet."

"How am I supposed to understand?!" Angry again. He felt peacefulness washing over him but he brushed it off. This wasn't contentment. Being alone wasn't contentment.

But was that not how he had always lived? Alone and angry? Red silence, eyes looking in the same places and hoping something was different?

His eyes welled up with tears.

"Please! I don't want to be alone!" Thunder cracked in the sky, red as everything else, and the waters became wild with frenzy. The ground cracked beneath him, red light bursting in like light leaks on a camera, and Tobias looked up at the sun one more time before he found himself laying on a different beach, with a milder temperature, and this one seemed to be in color.

Before he could pick himself up, a face that was familiar, but wasn't, popped into his line of vision.

"Tobias," it was the voice again, and he was standing over Tobias at that very moment. His breath caught, and he grabbed the boy's ankle just to make sure he was real.

"Reese!"