The basement was not the same at night.
Those short, wide, foggy windows near the ceiling separated Clayton
from the endless, pitch-black
space
outside.
The couch cushions, the blanket, and the gaming chair
all said shhh, relax, be comfy,
but the night said... nothing.
It was just there, being silent as the lightbulbs buzzed.
There was no gray or white light coming into the room,
just a yellow glow from the ceiling and bluish rays from the monitor.
Artificial, just like everything else.
...
Everyone else slept, not moving, maybe dreaming,
waiting for whatever would happen the next day.
Meanwhile, one man sat in his basement and stared at pixels all night.
Until late 2021,
Clayton never went to sleep before three or four in the morning.
Some of the most important things in his life happened right there
in that very basement
while the world outside was tucked up in their beds.
But Clayton does not remember those things anymore.
He does not even remember that every night,
when the clock finally displayed 3:00,
he would turn the computer off and the room would get a little darker,
less blue.
That he would then turn the lights off and the room would be
black.
It felt colder.
...
And he does not even remember
that every night, he would stagger over to the couch.
The warmth of lying under the blanket in silence.
He does not even remember that every night,
he would take out his phone, open Wattpad, and read some fanfiction about himself.
Colorful ads always flickered between the paragraphs.
He would scroll and click
and scroll
and click,
and some words would be absorbed in the sponge of his brain.
And occasionally,
he would read something powerful and pause for a second.
Other times,
he would read something exciting and scroll faster.
Then he would finish the book and go to sleep.
And wake up.
...
He read a new fanfic almost every day.
There were so many stories,
so many pages,
so many words,
so many different versions of "Dream".
It would be impossible for Clayton to read them all
but he tried to do it anyway.
Every once in a while,
Clayton would remember that the books were somehow about him,
and he would wonder
why
somebody had written that book.
Who
would spend hours typing all those words for no good reason?
And whenever he started a new story,
he would see the absurd number of views and comments,
and the questions would pop back into his head.
But he tried to forget all those questions
as he breathed in the night.
...
Clayton noticed that the stories were always full of typos,
bad grammar, fancy fonts, lowercase letters, photos,
and those ridiculous hyper-realistic fanarts
that made him ask all the questions again.
He noticed that they always focused on the same traits.
How he wheezed when he laughed
and his green eyes
and golden-blond hair.
He chuckled.
It's a little funny how everyone believes what I tell them.
In the stories, Dream was cute,
or funny, or badass, or shy, or outgoing,
or whatever, whatever,
whatever.
That Dream always used his online friends' real names.
It really doesn't matter. That's not me.
He fiddled with the blanket uncomfortably.
...
Sometimes the main character would be "y/n":
"Insert name here".
Why do people want to be with me so badly?
Too often, the stories would be romantic.
Dream and "y/n" would be talking in real life and not even know it until-
Yuck.
Clayton tried to avoid reading these ones
because the questions of "why" and "how" would jam in his mind and refuse to be ignored.
Sometimes the stories would just be about him and his friends having fun together,
getting drinks together at the nearest coffee shop, going to the beach, meeting girls.
Something about the stories felt a little fake.
Maybe it was because they never mentioned a basement.
...
Sometimes Technoblade and Dream would be the two stars of the fanfiction.
It didn't matter at all because the stories were all the same.
Stories. They're just stories, just stories, you can forget about them, relax, relax. Shhhh.
...
But Clayton read them anyway
as he sunk into the couch cushions.
Then his eyelids would get heavy,
and he would put the phone down
and lay on his side, staring at the wall
as the little red light on his monitor flashed
on, off, on, off
until his eyes closed.
And the world would always be quiet and dark for the next few hours.
Sometimes, he would dream about the story he had just read.
But it didn't really matter,
because he never remembered the dreams when he woke up.