-Chapter 3: Pretend It's All Just A Bad Dream-

When I was younger I used to have nightmares all the time. My parents even had me record them at one point, because I was having them so frequently. Most of them were nonsense, but a small number of them stuck with me and woke me up in a cold sweat. Watching my brother dying was a popular one, as was being chased and eaten alive by a horde of zombies. But these things weren't the real reason I was so shaken; after all, they're just bad dreams.

What really left me gripping my sheets and sent my heart racing was how convincing they were. I would chant to myself while these horrible things were happening around me: it's all a bad dream, it's not real, wake up! They were indistinguishable from reality while I was in them, and sometimes it would take me a few seconds after waking up to convince myself that this was the real world and I wasn't dreaming.

So, I think it's to be expected that I had hoped the crash and the body-possession was all just a bad dream. It wasn't though, and that became clear when I – we – opened our eyes to the same unfamiliar living room from last night. The sunlight streaming in through the window to the left was warming our side, but it was the ringing phone that woke us up. The man I was riding in let out a breath and rolled to the side before pulling himself off the floor, his joints popping as he went. I decided to keep quiet as he shuffled toward the loud ringing sound.

"Hello?" the man answered the phone in a groggy voice.

"Matt?" the voice on the line asked; a woman's voice. The man – Matt – paused in place with his mouth open, but no words came out. "Matt, are you there?"

"Yeah," Matt shook his head and finally spoke. "Yeah, I'm here."

"Jesus, you forgot again, didn't you?" Matt furrowed his eyebrows as he lifted the phone away from his head by a few inches. In the back of my mind – the part that seemed to be just me – I could pick up on Matt's thoughts as he sifted through his foggy memories.

"Oh, shit," Matt sighed, rubbing his hand across his forehead and glancing at the clock. "I'm running late, Lori, but I'll be there as soon as I can." Without waiting for a response, Matt leaped into action and dove into his bedroom, tearing off his clothes and yanking on the first clean outfit he touched. I mentally cringed at seeing more of this body naked. He wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder as he quickly tied his shoes.

"Matt!" Lori yelled through the phone. Matt dropped the still-to-be-tied shoe to the ground and adjusted the phone.

"Yeah?"

"Look, just…" Lori sighed. "I'll get him to school today, but can you try to remember on Monday? It may not seem like such a big deal to you, but Max gets so excited on the days that you take him in."

"No, of course I'll remember on Monday," Matt wedged off the one shoe he managed to put on and pulled up the zipper of his pants. "I just didn't get much sleep last night. Tell him I'm sorry, would you? And that I'll bring him breakfast Monday?"

"You don't have to do that; he gets there early enough to eat at school."

"I want to. I'll let you go, just…I'm really sorry."

"It's fine," she sighed. "Get some sleep, Matt, you sound horrible."

"I will, bye." There was no reply, just the background noise of Lori speaking to someone in the distance, followed by the click of the call being disconnected.

Matt – and I still had no idea what his last name was – started going about his morning routine and I tried my hardest to tune it out. It was a very strange concoction of emotions that swirled around within whatever part of me resided in Matt. I was terrified at being crushed in an accident and dropped in this man's body, frustrated that I was basically a prisoner inside the body that was not my own, and ashamed that I was encroaching on his privacy. On top of that, I was absolutely confused. How is this possible? Is this permanent? What happened to the real me?

I took a mental breath and calmed my mind. What I needed to do was come up with a game plan. I need to figure out exactly what happened to my brother and I. Oh god! Was he stuck somewhere like me, too? The panic began to rise in me and I could feel Matt's heart rate accelerate. Calm down, just calm down. In order to find out these things, I need to be able to actually communicate with the world. Thus, I need to communicate with Matt – who, if I'm not mistaken, is in some sort of repressive denial state – and convince him that he is not, in fact, crazy.

I tuned back into the real world to find my new best friend sitting in the living room, drinking a cup of coffee and watching TV. I mentally smirked at his choice of not-so-early-morning television – Supernatural – and was nearly distracted when the old guy shoved the monster into the wood chipper. It was one of the better episodes of the sixth season. So, what do I do? Just talk to him and say 'hey, you're not crazy!'? This is probably not going to go well.

Matt? Hello, can you hear me? I asked. His coffee spilled down his shirt and he jumped to his feet, swiping the hot liquid off his front with his hands. Please don't freak out on me. I'm really here and you're not insane.

"No, no, no, no," Matt pleaded to himself, forgetting the stain completely and nearly falling down into his seat. "It's not real, you're just tired."

My name is Davis Marks. I'm 21 years old and live in Washington, Missouri. The other night my brother and I were in a car accident and I woke up inside your head somehow. I don't know how and I don't know why, but I am real and you are not crazy. I figured just laying it all out there would be the best, but it looked like Matt would take some convincing.

"Well, you're not far from home," Matt muttered, then laughed to himself. "Look at me, talking to myself."

We're in Washington? Where, exactly?

"Downtown, in probably the cheapest apartment in town," his mumbling was actually starting to sound hysterical, and I wondered if just being inside his brain could actually make him crazy.

Please, I begged. Please, can you call my parents? This will prove it to you that you're not crazy! Please, I need to know what happened to me.

"This is just…" he trailed off.

Please don't say 'crazy.' I think you've run through your allotted quota.

"Ha," he laughed and grabbed the phone. "I suppose at this point a random phone call seems fitting. So what's their phone number? 777-7777?" And here I thought Matt was actually beginning to believe me. I gave him the phone number and he dialed it.

"Hello?" a male voice answered the phone that was clearly not my brother or my father.

Ask for David, I supplied.

"Uh," Matt stuttered. "Is…David there?"

"There's no one here by that name." What? The number was correct, I watched his hand dial the number with my – his – own eyes.

"Oh, sorry, wrong number." Matt ended the call and sat back in his chair. "Oh god, I really am insane."

And for a moment I considered that he was right, and that maybe I was just a figment of his imagination that manifested its own consciousness. Maybe this was what it felt like to be on the other side of crazy. Maybe I really was this Matt, and Davis never existed. At least that's what I was telling myself until Matt resumed watching his TV show, blocking out all notions of 'crazy' and 'insane' and slipping into a stupor.

I'm not exactly sure why it felt so wrong, but it did. It was alien to me – completely unfamiliar, and yet it carried such a haunting similarity that I had no trouble doubting myself. I was something of a fan of Supernatural and had stuck with the series through the good times and bad, and though not everything was crystal clear in terms of remembering what happened during which episode, I knew that this was wrong. The first episode he was watching was called Weekend at Bobby's, and was one of my favorites because it revolved around one of the supporting cast members for an entire episode instead of the usual two brothers. The second episode – if the syndication was running in order – should have been Live Free or Twihard, another one of my favorites.

It was not.

The Twihard episode poked fun at the entire Twilight series, in that it involved a series of teenage girl runaways being lured in by vampires who pretended to be exactly what Stephenie Meyer wrote them as. A fake book series which was mockingly similar to the Twilight series was even used, along with jokes about glitter and insults to the story as a whole. I imagine it would have upset a great many of the hardcore Twilight fangirls, but I had thought it hilarious and a true gem in the otherwise stale sixth season.

Instead of that, it was an episode about zombies. The plots were similar, in that girls were still being abducted and there was a nest – or I guess horde – of zombies behind it, but no mention of vampires was made at all. I sat still in Matt's mind, just watching. Those were the real actors for the show, and the episode was airing on a real TV station. This was real, as far as I knew, so what the fuck was going on?

End notes: I've read a great many meta-twilight fanfictions, and I think only one really explored what kind of impact it would have on the world if Twilight (meaning the series) never existed. Supernatural was the one that came to mind first, and had the most significant change, but even shows like The Vampire Diaries only started airing on TV after Twilight became popular.

And sorry, kind reviewer, but the man Davis is 'possessing' wasn't Charlie.