an: just watched the movie Jumanji- welcome to the jungle. I really like it, but I was not happy with the ending, and therefor wrote a story focusing on Alex and his life after he returns to his old life. How his connection to Bethany changes everything.
A New beginning part 1
Seconds after I had grabbed Nigel's hand everything, and nothing changed.
I was home for the first time in twenty years. A quick look on my calendar and the mirror confirmed my suspicion, not a day had gone by here. I was still a high school student when I returned.
Before meeting the others inside the game I had originally thought I had just been inside the game for a few months. They told me something else, I had been missing for twenty years. Time had gone by surprisingly fast. Luckily I did not feel like a forty year old man when I returned.
As I had stood in front of my mirror, trying to categorize myself with my own face again a though had suddenly entered my mind. I was no longer alone in the jungle.
Without changing out of my sleepwear I ran in the direction of the living room. Before seeing them I could hear my parents voices, discussing something as boring as the weather. Thinking back I might have surprised them both when I began hugging and kissing them as tears ran down my cheeks. After what might have been forever they calmed me down, demanding to know what was wrong.
I knew they might have a hard time understanding what I had gone through, after all it was a little hard to believe. Who would ever think to imagine that the game my father had found on the beach could transform itself into a video game and sucked me into it. That I lived in the jungle alone, hunted by dangerous men and beasts. That I waited twenty years until a group of four new players were sucked into the game. And how we all finished the quests together in order to return to our world again.
My parents would have make me see a shrink.
Instead I told them a small white lie. I told them I had a nightmare. In a way it was not a lie, it was a nightmare, just that I lived it instead or dreaming it.
When we had all calmed down I still felt shaken up but asked them if I could stay home for the day. Already knowing for certain I could not go back to class acting as my normal self without making my friends suspicious. My mom protested at first, arguing that I had probably just stayed up all night playing video games and that was not a legit reason not to go to school. Not completely sane yet, just hearing the word video game made me afraid.
It is almost embarrassing to think back at my reaction, but at that time I could not contain myself. I loudly began arguing with my mom, when that did not work my tears came back and I begged her to let me stay home. My father, who had silently stood on the sidelined during the argument stepped in, and told the both of us I could stay home.
Mom tried to protest again, but my precious father just told her to look at me. To this day I do not know what she saw, but her eyes softened and she said I could go back up to my room.
The second I walked through the doorway to my bedroom the first thing my eyes fell on was that dreaded game. My first reaction was to smash it, to break the game in order for it to never suck myself or anyone else into the game ever again.
I even had it in my hands, high over my head, ready to smash it on the floor when a new thought had entered my mind. If I broke it, twenty years from now no one would start playing jumanji. Spencer, Fridge, Martha and Bethany would never play and therefore I would never have met them. Without the game intact I could never be free from it. I might even disappear.
During our time together inside of jumanji, the four of them had informed me they were all in detention together when they found and started the game. With this knowledge I stuffed the machine, still containing the game into my backpack. Knowing the next time I was in school I would leave it somewhere they would find it twenty years in the future.
Despite the fact that I had probably only spent one day and night together with them I felt a strong bond connecting the four of us. And in this world they were not even born yet.
As I spent the day home from school I used all my time to write down everything I could remember from the game and the four friends I had met there. Every small detail which could help me identify them if I ever found them in real life. How Spencer was a small kid, and Fridge was huge and had been a member of the school's American football team. Martha had originally been a smart but shy girl who could not flirt with boys. And then there was Bethany. A girl trapped in a middle aged overweight man. She was the one I focused the most on. Her connection to her phone, and how she obviously was a beautiful girl who was popular with the boys. It might be because I was dying, but when she was giving me cps, I did not see Professor Shelly Oberon, instead my eyes was focused on a young beautiful blond girl.
From that point I was almost certain I had seen the real girl behind the character.
My erotic thoughts during the night slowly but surely changed its focus from celebrities and others around me, and began focusing on that blond girl instead. I had not even seen her properly, but she was the star and reasons for most of my orgasms in the following years.
oOoOo
Years went by, and slowly I managed to push most of the sad memories of loneliness away. Nonetheless they were never forgotten. Spencer, Fridge, Martha and especially Bethany all had a special part in my heart.
My personality had changed a little by the experience. I was still a big fan of heavy metal, but I always had a fear of games. In the past I had loved them, and spent hours upon hours playing them daily. Now I almost got sick just thinking of playing something, especially electronic games.
More than once my parents tried to make me seek professional help but I refused. I knew the reasons for my fears, and it was not something anyone could help me cure. Some of my former friends left me since the only real connection we had was based on video games, but most of them still stayed by my side. After a while they even stopped asking me what had triggered my fear, they accepted that it as a strange part of me.
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One beautiful day I got the shock of my life. I was out walking on the street and two young boys around four of five ran by me. In front was a chubby black kid, and running after him was a small skinny white boy. The one in the back yelled toward his friend "Wait for me Fridge!" A few meters in the lead the other child stopped up and turned, facing his friend. When the other child replied with a "you are so slow, Spencer" before he turned around again and kept on running away, my heart stopped for a moment.
Despite the fact I knew what I had experienced inside jumanji was real, this was the first time I had real evidence. The two children right next to me was part of that chapter of my life. They were real.
During one of our conversations inside the game I knew the four of them would live close to where I had grown up, but it felt so wrong. What if I ever saw Bethany? She would be the same age as those two boys. The girl of my dreams was a small child. Just the thought made me sick. I was in my twenties lusting for a child. Well, I was lusting for the young woman she was going to become in around fifteen years. Nonetheless I had to change something.
That evening I applied for collage in a different state and was accepted not long after. My parents was shocked by my decision considering I had never in the past expressed a wish to go to college. Despite my decision of not telling them, the both of them supported my decision with smiles on their faces.
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My first year in college was a great opportunity for me to flirt with other girls, trying to forget Bethany. It did not work.
When I flirted I imagined that it was her behind that faceless blond woman. A few times I talked with brunettes, but that felt just wrong. If I ever got as far as to kiss them it felt like I was cheating.
Whatever I did I could not change the perspective. I could not make myself forget a child which was twenty years younger than me, even when there was more than a few girls interested in me.
In the end I gave up.
I reluctantly realized I would probably die a virgin, and in a way I was okay with that. Bethany was to young for me, and no other woman would ever be the one for me except her.
To think just one day together with her had shifted my life so much. Despite everything I was glad I had met her.
oOoOo
More years went by and I became fascinated with the development of the mobile phone. As it evolved from just being a handheld phone, to something you could also send messages with and even contained a camera I began to understand some part of Bethany's addiction.
Nonetheless the development did not stop there, internet for everyone to use on that small screen came with smartphones. Facebook, twitter and Instagram became big parts of people's everyday life, for some it was almost like it took over the lives of many.
Seeing everyone around me, with their head down focusing on the small computer in their hands I began imagining how it must be for Bethany to grow up with a phone in her hands. Her small fingers holding it and playing around with it, probably sharing a big part of herself online for everyone to see. Just the thought frustrated me.
In my more low points of my life I felt a strong need to log on to my own Facebook page in order to search for Bethany, Martha, and Spencer. I was even desperate enough to want to look up Fridge. Just a short look. Nonetheless I knew if I ever began searching I would never stop.
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My mom got sick and died when I was around thirty five. Cancer.
For a moment I hated everything. Then I remembered jumanji, and the fact I had been given a second opportunity together with both my parents. It helped a little. Fifteen years was after all more than I imagined ever been given the opportunity to experience when I was lost inside the jungle.
My dad took it hard as well, but time went by and we often began having deep conversations over beer in front of the fireplace when I visited.
In one of those late nights the both of us had had more to drink then we normally did and our subject shifted from the good old days and onto questions my father had about me. He told he he and my mother even had a bet about me. He would win if I was straight and my mother would win if I was gay. They had never seen me with anyone, and he argued that I was a social man, with a good job and personality, so the both of them could not understand how I had never had a significant other.
For a moment I did not say anything except to look down on the label of the beer in my hand. After a few deep breaths I looked up and told him he won the bet. Hearing this he did not express joy or anything else, just looked at me straight in the eyes and asked me "Then, why?" It might be because we were both drunk, and the fact that I had kept the secret for fifteen years, but I asked him if he remembered that day I had argued with him and mom about not going to school, and how I suddenly began afraid of games. He told me he remembered.
After he agreed to not intervene with my story I told him everything. Being sucked into the game, and how I lived alone in the jungle for twenty years. How glad I was when I met Spencer, Fridge, Bethany and Martha. I told him all the funny things, like we all looked like characters who had strengths which did not identify with who we really were. How I even knew how to fly a helicopter.
When I had started talking it was like a dam had broken and the words came flowing out. When I told him meeting the two children on the street, and how they were my main reason for going to college my father gave a small laugh, but he did not interrupt me.
I told him how Bethany has given me one of her lives in order for me to live. How I still felt connected to her. How it felt like I was cheating on her if I ever thought about another girl in a sexual way. She was twenty years younger than me, just a child, who did not know me and I loved her without having ever seen her in real life.
At this point I was sobbing like a child.
Dad put his drink down on the table and took me into his arms. Holding me for what might have been hours before my tears had wrung me dry.
When I had collected myself enough to find my words again I asked him if he believed me. Even I had troubles believing my story most of the time, so I was not expecting him to understand what I had gone through.
Instead my father shocked me when he told me he believed every word that came out of my mouth. His belief shocked me into my core. It was now his time to talk. How my assessment of what would happen if I had come clean that morning I came back was probably right. He, and probably my mother, would just tell me it was a nightmare. Then they would had found me a good shrink. The fact that he knew three of the children I was telling him about strengthen his belief that I was telling the truth.
Dad confessed that he and my mother had discussed my behavior more than a few times over the years. They had considered everything from child molestation to abuse from classmates. Hearing the story I was giving him was both a relief to him and it saddens him since I had felt the need to carry the burden of my experience inside for all these years.
The both of us was crying at this point as we held each other.
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An:So there you have it, the first chapter. Hope you like my idea.