"Hello! What's your name?"
"Alexander."
"Why's your hair so white?"
"Um, I'm not sure."
"Hey! It looks like mine!"
"Soul, stop asking weird questions!" The air around me cleared up. I seemed to be in an orphanage, which seemed strange because I know I have a family, and these people weren't in it. Eight kids in all, including myself, and a four strange adults, one with a screw through his head, and another wearing close to nothing. Whatever place this was, it's definitely a strange one. But the atmosphere seems, almost comforting to me.
"Death! Patty hit me!" A girl with long brown hair whined at the top of her lungs. Wait, what? I couldn't have heard her right.
"Now Patty, what do you say to your sister?" Some adult with black robes and a friendly white mask spoke to another girl, around the same age.
"Sorry Lizzy. I didn't know you're such a whiny baby," the younger sister retorted back.
"Hey, that's not very nice to say Patty, hey! I didn't even see you there!" The adult exclaimed, clearly speaking to me. I slowly went up to him, I swear I've seen these people before, and I've seen this house too. Everything feels so familiar.
"Kids, we have a new child staying with us from now on, so treat him nicely! What's your name?" The adult with the mask asked me.
"Alexander," I whispered back. Although everything feels familiar, I'm still really shy.
"Well Alexander, my name is Lord Death, but you can call me Death for short," he grinned as if this was some honor for me, "and that over there is Blair, Dr. Stein, and that there is Spirit Albarn, but you can call him Spirit." Death pointed to each of the adults in turn.
"Kids, introduce yourselves! We want to make Alexander feel welcome!" Spirit added enthusiastically, although everyone could tell he was woozy.
"I'm Soul, and this is my friend Black Star!" One of the kids shouted, I had to cover my ears.
"Soul and I are best buddies, right!" The other kid with blue hair cheered.
"Oh, Black Star!" Soul cried.
"Oh, Soul!" Black Star wailed, hugging his best friend tight.
"Oh, Black Star!" Soul moaned.
"Oh, Sou-" Black Star was cut off by another kid with black hair, with strange stripes on one side of his head who ran into him.
"Oops. I didn't see you there," he said unenthusiastically, while scanning me up and down.
"Your outfit is purely symmetrical. Your hair is something we'll need to work on though, and don't get me started on how uneven your eyebrows are. All things we can fix in the future though!" The kid stuck his hand out, as if to shake mine. "I'm Death the Kid, nice to meet you." I extended my hand too and shook his.
"Nice to meet you too. May I ask, why are the stripes in your hair only on one side of your head and not both? Or why do you have stripes in the first place?" I asked innocently.
"I KNOW, RIGHT? I'm hideous! Unsymmetrically hideous! Just awful!" Death the Kid screeched while rocking back and forth on the floor, occasionally stomping his fists to the ground. Two other girls stepped over Death the Kid, obviously not trying too hard not to step on his hands.
"I'm Maka, and this is Tsubaki. It seems like we're the only normal ones around here. You can ask us anything you want, okay?" Maka introduced herself, then turned away suddenly. She kind of scared me, but she seemed nice though.
"The kid over there is Crona," Tsubaki whispered into my ear, "Crona has special needs because their mom abused them, but still treat them kindly, okay?" She backed away from my ear.
"Thank you! It was nice meeting you, Alexander!" She walked away to go join Maka in the sandbox.
Wow. This place is really cool. I can't shake the feeling that I've been here before, but that's alright. I wonder how long I'm going to have to stay before my parents pick me up.
-FOUR YEARS LATER-
"Come on Crona, you have to eat your dinner!" Maka chided Crona at the dinner table.
"But I don't know how to deal with this! Which food should I eat first? Using which utencial? The fork, the spoon, the knife, or a mixture of the three? Or should I just drink the water first? I don't know how to deal with this!" Crona shrieked loudly, filling up the tiny dining room.
"Here, drink some water first, then calm down. Take a bite of the potatoes, does that help?" I offered with a smile, sitting next to Crona, I reached over and handed them a glass of water. Crona nodded, eyes welling up with tears.
"Hey! This is the four year anniversary of when Alexander came to the orphanage!" Tsubaki cheered, and everyone laughed.
"Cool dudes stay at orphanages," Soul said coolly, leaning back in his chair.
"I've been meaning to ask lately, because it's been on my mind, but, how exactly did I end up here? At this orphanage I mean," I asked my family sitting around the table, "You guys feel like family to me, but I know I came from somewhere before I arrived here."
"What do you mean? You never came here to begin with," Death spoke, sounding as cheerful as ever.
"What? What do you mean I never came here to begin with? This is my home!" I clarified.
"Easy, this place never existed," Death looked straight at me. I glanced from side to side, and everyone else paused, frozen in time, "In fact, you should be waking up now. It has been a very long time."
"What do you mean? Why is everyone frozen? I don't understand!"
"We're all characters. We were always fictional. We come from a show you watched as a kid. We're inside your mind Alexander." Everyone turned their heads toward me, all speaking in perfect unison. Black Star, Crona, Lizzy, no!
"Then where am I? You guys are really freaking me out!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, but my voice was muffled, as if I was underwater.
"Wake up Alexander, wake up. Wake up Alexander, wake up." Those words kept repeating and repeating inside my head. Wake up, wake up.
"AHHH!" I jolted out of my bed. I looked around myself, and I was definitely not in the orphanage.
"Alexander, you need to lay back down," a nurse came and gently pressed against my shoulders, forcing me to lay back in my hospital bed.
"Where am I?"
"Dear, you're in the hospital. Your parents died in a car crash four years ago, and you went mad, claiming you're in an orphanage with fictional characters. You're in a mental institute Alexander."