"For the millionth and final time, my answer to your ridiculous request is no."
He seemed pretty serious about it this time. She should have given up completely at that point. However, that was not how their friendship worked. It was simple maths. You just need to add several years of friendship, subtract all of their patience and then times it all using some form of bribery. It was simple. Anyone could do it, even Bree, and she really wasn't good at maths. For Bree, calculators were for spelling out the word 'boobies'. That's all you really need to know. But to get her way with her best friend Tyler, Bree had a gift.
She will probably live to regret her choices of reading Twilight in a few years to come. For now though, she was pretty contempt with her obsession. Ever since the trailer first appeared on her screen on that rainy November afternoon, it was all she would talk about. We all have our embarrassing histories, so we'll let Bree have hers.
Tyler, however, didn't buy into it. He was forced to see it with his sister, and quite frankly made sure it would be his first and final bad taste of Twilight. Oh, poor fellow. He had no idea what he was in for. He had no idea his best friend would be thrusting the black paperback into his face whilst his guard was down. He would never look at a red apple the same way again. Tyler wasn't into this new generation of vampires, he was still very traditional about the way vampires worked. He was very adamant about staying that way too. Only, he was friends with Bree.
"Look, just, hear me out, please?" Bree tried to put on her best 'watching a puppy die' face; Tyler couldn't resist that look for long. He knew how she would try to achieve that look, and couldn't let another fictional puppy be sacrificed.
He rolled his eyes and bit the inside of his cheek. "I'm listening."
"I know this isn't your gig, you'd rather go Arnold and shave off your eyebrows, but, just, think of it as a challenge. Like, watching a ten-hour loop of something on YouTube. It's unbearable, but think of how good it would feel to be that person who made it all the way through, without contributing to any form of homicide. It'll be an achievement, a waste of time, but an achievement nonetheless."
It was a ridiculous argument to make, Tyler knew it. But that sort of stuff worked on him. After enduring another few seconds of the 'puppies are dying everywhere' look, he finally cracked; the earth slip open and he fell into the pits of hell. He was going to accept the challenge.
"Alright. Fine. Give me the damn thing." he snatched the book from her hands, which got him a vice grip hug. He already regretted his decision.
"Read it the second you get home. I'm going to quiz you on it tomorrow, and don't think you can get away with it cause you watched the film, I'm only going to ask questions about the things that are strictly in the book, and don't even think about Wikipedia, I'll know."
He was afraid to find out what she would do if he tried. He swallowed his pride, and nodded. "I'll do it, and don't think you're not going to owe me something BIG after this, you got that?"
She shook her head. He knew she would forget. She always forgot.
Tyler sat crossed legged on his bed. The book on the far end, and him on the other. He had been staring at the thing for the past fifteen minutes. He knew the longer he contemplated, the closer he'd be to receiving his punishment from Bree. He wasn't that stupid, only stupid enough to accept the deal in the first place. He inhaled more than enough oxygen and grabbed the book. He slowly pried it open, keeping it at arm's length in case something were to bite him in the face or throw glitter at him.
"Just do it, come on, the sooner this is over with, the sooner we can rot our mind with video games in attempts to bury this shit to rest."
Once more, he inhaled, and whilst holding his breath, began to read.
This was going to be a long night.
After staring blankly at her maths homework for the best part of ten minutes, Bree thought she deserved, at least, a twenty-minute nap break. Well, of course she didn't deserve one, she only managed to write down the date, and make an origami swan out of the task sheet. She grabbed her phone and set an alarm to go off in twenty minutes time. Normally she'd whip out her laptop and talk to Tyler, but she told herself not to give him a single distraction. She wasn't kind enough to give him a route way out of this bet. She smiled to herself as she buried her head into the pillow, feeling pride over guilt for making her friend suffer. It was how true friendship worked, we've all been there, surely.
It didn't take long for Bree to fall into a heavy sleep. And likewise for Tyler; he grew so overwhelmingly bored of the first chapter alone that he was lulled to sleep by the lack of stimulation. As both were lead into an unconscious state, something strange happened. Not the sort of strange that would wake you up in the middle of the night and question your mental state, but the sort of strange that dropped you into another world, and didn't allow to return. You've probably all guessed what's about to happen, but let's not give the game away just yet. Let's see how long it takes the two to figure it out for themselves.
It wasn't Bree's alarm that woke her up. It was the sound of the rain pounding on the window outside. She didn't understand people who felt soothed by the sound of the rain. It woke her up and, more than anything, made her want to pee. She groaned and rolled onto her back, allowing her eyes to adjust to the light. Wait. The light? She suddenly shot up into a sitting position, looking outside in pure horror.
"I slept all night?!" she furiously looked for her phone, plotting its death as she did so, but froze as she went to reach for the side table. That wasn't her side table. The photo frame that sat upon it certainly wasn't hers either. She slowly inclined her head to take in the rest of the room, which, to her surprise, was also not hers.
"This is a dream" she whispered to herself "all a dream, you're still asleep, and soon your alarm will go off" she slowly got off the bed, and like a chicken who was recently beheaded, began to circle around the room, looking for some sort of escape route back into her own room. She froze as she walked past the mirror, which again, wasn't hers, and noticed that what was being reflected wasn't her own face. No, it was her own bedroom. Her oversized plushie collection clumped at the bottom of her bed, the posters on her wall which she sometimes spoke to before bed, because why would you put people on your wall you weren't prepared to share your secrets with? And the strangest thing of all, was Bree herself; lying on her own bed, heavily entranced in her sleep.
Were you able to see yourself within a dream like this? She questioned herself entirely now. Her dreams never quite amounted to this much depth, nothing which came close to parallel universes; where you were able to see yourself in one and live within another. She was completely baffled. She reached out and touched the glass, hoping that with some luck it would consume her hand, and allow her to return back home. Unfortunately, she wasn't granted such luck.
She then thought back to the picture frame she first encountered upon awakening, and quickly rushed back to retrieve it. Maybe the picture inside would be an indicator to where she'd landed. She scanned the features of the picture, and gasped when she recognised the two people engaging in a hug. One of them was her, she was sure of it, and the other, well, that was the weird part.
The person in the picture hugging her…was Edward Cullen. No, that can't be right. Edward Cullen?! The Edward Cullen played by Robert Patterson? Was she somehow affiliated with famous people in this world? If so, she gave herself a mental high five.
However, in the picture his features mostly resembled Edward Cullen rather than Robert. His eyes were amber and his skin was a fair few shades lighter than hers, and she already was pretty pale (minus the flare up whenever she contributed to anything physical or mentally scarring) to begin with. Maybe she went to visit him on the set? If so, that raised way more questions than it answered.
"Belle! You up yet?" a voice bellowed from outside her door. She dropped the frame onto her foot, and bit her tongue to prevent the curse from escaping her lips. Belle? Who was Belle? And who the hell was calling her Belle? As she cupped her wounded toes in her hands, she tried hard to bypass the pain and really think about where the hell she was.
"Belle?" the person, who from the sounds of it was most likely a man, began to knock on the door. Okay, so, she wasn't quite ready for this strange man to enter the room when she was in her pyjamas. It was okay when a stranger saw you in them when you had to answer the door for a delivery, that transaction was over and done with in about five seconds, ten if they wanted to start small talk. But he was very much inside this house, and for some reason seemed to know who she was. She had no choice but to answer.
"Yep, I'm up, very much awake, still breathing." she released her foot, and slowly approached the door.
"Right, well, hurry up if you want me to take you to school, that truck won't get you very far in the state it's in" she heard footsteps begin to pound down the stairs, so she assumed that he was gone. She released her breath, which up until now she didn't realise she was holding. She began to take in what he just said to her: so, she had to be up for school (which she was very upset about, she would have at least liked a day off in an imaginary world), her truck wouldn't get her far (even though she couldn't drive and didn't own any sort of vehicle, other than a bike), and this strange man was calling her Belle (which she guessed sort of resembled Bree, but it wasn't that hard to get right). She looked down to the frame that laid a few inches from her foot.
A crazy yet totally logical explanation finally came to Bree. She wasn't in her room, she was in a picture with Edward Cullen the vampire, and some man was calling her Belle. Edward Cullen is a character in Twilight who came to fall in love with Bella Swan, a name which Charlie, Bella's father, shortened to 'Belle'. If that was the case, then, she, Bree, somehow in this world was Bella. So, if that was the case then…
"Oh my god" she squealed "I'm in the book!"
Unfortunately, Tyler wasn't welcomed into the world as kindly as Bree had been. He wasn't fortunate enough to have woken not only in his own bed, but rather no bed at all, and once the light from the large window adjacent came through and grazed his skin, it began to sizzle. His first reaction, as I'm sure many others would have been, was to curse as loudly as possible.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" He tried to find some means of escaping from this pain, and the closest thing to him was a sheet of black tarp lying on the floor. He got onto his knees and scrambled underneath it, curling up into ball and tried to nurse his wounds. Tyler was allergic to a lot of things; nuts, kiwi, squid, the typical sort of stuff. But being allergic to natural light? He was a gamer, and yes, people did joke about the possibility since gamers never opened their curtains (which he always argued was to prevent glare on the screen). Tyler went outside (unfortunately) a lot of the time, and never once had he had an allergic reaction like this. Suddenly, something dawned on Tyler. He slowly lifted up a small fraction of tarp, enough to be able to see but also enough to keep his skin from becoming deep fried. This wasn't his room at all.
For starters, he didn't even wake up in a bed. He hated not sleeping in his bed. Second, this wasn't even his room, it looked like something out of minimalistic digest; the window was practically a wall, the selves were stacked with records and books that he'd either never heard of or didn't want to associate with. Nothing was his, just the t-shirt and boxer shorts he wore.
He slowly rose to his feet, making sure that the tarp covered all of his exposed skin. He wander over to the mirror which doubled as a door that led to a potential wardrobe. What intrigued his curiosity wasn't the mirror itself, but what the mirror reflected. In it, he could see his own room; that was his bed, with the distinctive green knitted throw that his mother made for him over the edge. That was his TV monitor that had a map from Halo illuminating the room. The strangest part about this, was that he was in the reflection also. Not him as he was right now, but him asleep on his bed. He noticed that the Twilight book lay flat on his chest, opened on a random page. After much deliberation and confusion, Tyler came to the conclusion that he must have been dreaming. He must have gotten the material for this dream from the book, and so the gut sinking realisation that he was dreaming about being inside the book began to make his toes coil.
"Mother of god, I'm in the fucking book!"
Before he could curse the sun and start to break things, a knock came at the door. He froze, he really didn't want to know who could be knocking.
"Ty? You up yet? C'mon, don't make us late again!"
That was definitely a woman's voice, Tyler knew that for sure. But he was completely clueless about Twilight (as he wished to remain), so God knows who that could have been. She called him Ty, so at least he's still himself. What a relief.
"Ty? I'm coming in okay?" he heard the knob of the door begin to twist, and the 'click' from the lock retracting. He didn't have enough time to get to the door before she did, so he was left to be exposed.
She entered, and paused once she got a view of him. Okay, so, yes, he was definitely now able to confirm that she was a woman. Not human, but a woman. That's a start. She had long blond hair and skin so pale it was clear that she wasn't alive. She took a good long look at him, and began to laugh.
"Is this a new look?" she referred to the tarp around his exterior. He looked down at himself, forgetting that underneath he was sporting Spiderman undies. Yeah, best to keep the tarp on for now.
"Well, it's cold, and there was no bed, and what is up with the sun around here, it frickin' tried to turn me into KFC!"
Her facial expression didn't really give him much encouragement; she seemed as confused as he was. Apparently she ignored the situation by laughing more, and proceeded to walk into the room (uninvited), and look through the wardrobe.
"Honestly Ty-Guy, the things you come out with! You don't need a bed, none of us do, and since when do vampires sleep? And I have no idea what the sun does to you, but if anything it wants you to get dressed as soon as possible so we won't be late to school again."
Wait, back up, he doesn't need a bed because, of vampires? WAIT! Hold up! Did that mean that he, Tyler, was also a vampire…A…TWILIGHT vampire? He wanted to throw up, but realised that his stomach felt so empty that it wouldn't be possible to relieve anything from it. He was starving, but at the same time couldn't stomach the idea of food.
Whilst in a trance, a pair of very tight looking jeans and buttoned down shirt were thrown at him before he had a chance to catch them.
"Less standing, more changing, go go go!" she dashed out of the room before he could ask her anything. He sighed, and looked down at the clothes. There was no way in this world or in any other that he would dare put on a pair of skinny jeans. No way, no how. He ran over to the wardrobe and desperately searched for a better alternative. Would there be anything in here that would protect the rest of his skin from deteriorating? As much as the thought of walking around as a skeleton amused Tyler, the pain of ending up that way was definitely not worth it. In the end, the best he could find was a part of long black cargo pants, a black t-shirt and a leather jacket. It wasn't exactly to his forte, but he could make it work.
Once dressed he examined himself in the mirror. A lot of his skin wasn't exposed, so hopefully that would be enough to keep him from becoming Kentucky fried. It began to rain as he got dressed, and he hoped it would stay that way; surely if the sun was blocked off by the clouds there would be less chance of burning to ash, right? He guessed he'd just have to take the plunge and figure it out for himself.
"Ty-guy!" the voice of the blonde lady appeared again. "You done?"
He sighed, and opened the door "Yeah yeah, quit your shouting" he was going to question her on calling him Ty-guy later, that really was a thing between him and his mum. He didn't feel comfortable having other people call him that.
He shut the door behind him, and tried to mentally prepare himself before having to witness the most unbearable dream out of the sixteen years he'd been alive.
He wasn't sure on much, but the one thing he knew was that after this was over and done with, and he was back in his own bed; he would, by any means, murder Bree.