I shot awake, gasping for air, like I had just been pulled from underwater.
My lungs burned.
My heart pounded in my chest like a war drum.
"What the fuck just happened?" I croaked out loud, my voice dry and shaky.
The sunlight beamed directly onto my face, making me squint. It was warm comforting, and wait a minute is it a square what's going on? The heat did nothing to calm the creeping dread rising in my gut. As my vision slowly cleared, I blinked up at the sky.
Bright blue. A few clouds drifting overhead. Puffy.
But nothing seemed normal.
"Why do those clouds look like cubes as well?" I muttered in disbelief.
I sat up slowly, brushing warm grains of sand off my arms. Or at least, I thought they were grains until I looked closer. My eyes widened as I scanned my surroundings.
The sand beneath me? Cube shaped. The grass nearby? Cubes. Trees? Cubes. Leaves? Cubes. Everything, everything was made of perfect, geometric cubes and rectangles. Not a single curve in sight.
"Where the hell am I?" I whispered.
I stood up on shaky legs, brushing the last of the sandy cube particles off me. I turned in a slow circle, taking it all in the beach stretched out behind me, and a dense forest stood just a few meters away. Despite the sun overhead, the ocean water was perfectly still with what look like fish swimming in them, eerily so like a glass lake.
"Is this real it's like I been thrown into a simulation, am I going crazy"
I knelt down and scooped at the sand with both hands. But instead of slipping through my fingers, like normal sand should
Crunch!
A small sand cube, no bigger than a baseball, popped into existence in my palm.
"What the, did I just use my hands to get a block of sand?" I stared at the block in my hand. It was dense, solid, and some how completely stable. No crumbling, no granules falling off. Just cube in a cube like world.
"How is this possible? That's not how sand works. It's supposed to." I stopped, realizing how pointless the question was.
I was in a world where the laws of physics had taken a vacation.
"This place it's like almost like a game."
I looked down at myself my legs, my arms, my fingers. Everything about me was normal. My skin was smooth, my shirt and shorts were the same ones I wore to school earlier. My backpack weighed heavily on my shoulders, the straps biting into my skin.
I made my way over to the water and stared at my reflection.
Yep. It's still me.
A normal teenage guy, with messy brown hair and confused eyes.
"Why am I the only normal thing here?" I whispered. "Almost like I don't even belong in this world but yet here I am."
I sighed, then slipped off my backpack and unzipped it.
"Let's see what I've got Science, Math, English,Drama and Yeah, I don't think I'm gonna need these but ima hold onto them just In case. while I wasn't good in school knowledge is still power." I dropped some of the garage I had in my bag onto the sand cube floor, It weirdly just hovered a bit off the ground werid. I kept my P.E clothes and emergency backup outfit just in case. I double checked for anything useful.
Three sharp pencils. Colored pencils. A ruler. Pencil sharpener.
"Guess these are my only weapons," I muttered with a half hearted chuckle.
"Jesus… I'm so cooked if there something that wants to attack me like that box from before."
"Speaking about the box where did it go I see nothing around me did it just disappear?"
Anyways with my Backpack somewhat lighter, I slung it over my shoulder and turned toward the cube forest.
"Alright I need to focus," I breathed. "Time to find out what the hell this place is."
The cube forest swallowed me whole. Each step made a satisfying crunch as my sneakers pressed into the pixel like grass.
It was quiet. Too quiet. No wind. No birds. Just me and the soft rustle of leaves high above.
Then I heard it
MOO!
My head snapped to the side. A grin tugged at my lips.
"Finally! Something alive!"
I slowly crept towards the sound, weaving through cube trees until I saw it.
A weirdly shaped cow.
But like everything else here it was made of cubes. Its brown fur looked like someone had skinned a chocolate colored Rubik's cube. Its eyes were large white cubes with single black dots in the center, and even its tail was a cube dangling off a line of stacked rectangles.
"Okay, that's disturbing and adorable at the same time," I said aloud.
The cow lazily mooed again and wandered off, oblivious to my presence. Like it didn't have a care in the world or any natural predators.
I reached out and ran my hand along its back. "Huh" Despite the cube texture, it felt like fur. "You feel not natural but at the same time you're real man im tripping out right now."
As I walked deeper into the forest, the sound of grass underfoot was the only company I had until I heard it.
Slurpy, slurp, skreee, slurp
I froze what a creepy sound.
"What was that?"
I looked around, slowly backing up against a tree. The noise was strange, like someone sipping the last bit of a drink through a straw except more wet.
I tiptoed toward the sound, pushing a bush aside
"HOLY SHIT!"
I stumbled back, heart pounding.
A giant spider, made of black cubes, stood just a few feet away. Its eight legs clacked as it moved, its red cube eyes glowing in the shadows.
It turned toward me.
"Oh hell nah" I spun and sprinted.
Slurpy slurpy clack clack
I didn't look back. I just ran, ducking under branches, dodging between trees. " There's no way I never seen a giant spider in my world just where am i." I managed to bite back my scream
"Don't tell me ima die to a giant spider how fucked is that!" I thought.
After what felt like a lifetime but was probably just two minutes I finally lost it. I collapsed behind a thick tree, panting.
"I think I lost it" I gasped. "Lord just take me to heaven now"
But as I caught my breath, I noticed the sky had changed. The light was fading fast.
"Wait what, wasn't the sun just rising why is it going down now?"
I stood and stared up.
The sun had practically vanished behind the horizon.
"It was morning when I woke up. Has it even been fifteen minutes?"
I blinked.
"This world time moves differently here. How was I supposed to know that? I think I'm going to die I have no food or water and now giant spiders"
Fear clutched my chest. "I need shelter. Now."
I ran again, deeper into the forest. I found a cave but the pitch black inside made my skin crawl. I had no flashlight, no torch, nothing to keep the dark at bay.
"I'm not going in there. Nope! What if this cave is full of spiders or worse."
Back on the move running like a headless chicken, I can hear things in the forest almost like the sound that zombies make and more spiders. I finally spotted a mountain in the distance.
"A high point. Maybe I'll find a town."
I sprinted toward it. The terrain was odd, but helpful the grass cubes stacked like stairs. I clambered up, the air growing colder as the sky darkened even more.
When I reached the top, I gasped.
Below me, lit by torchlight, was a village. Cube houses, flickering firelight, fences and roads and what seems to be people running into there homes. It was hope.
"Yes!" I screamed for joy. "I found people!"
But fear crept back in.
"There running into there homes will they even let me in? What if I run into more spiders on the way? Or Worse?"
I dropped my bag and opened it. My hand fished out the three sharp pencils.
I held them tightly.
"John Wick please guide me. If anything tries to come at me I'll stab it in the eyes and run."
I closed the backpack and slung it back over my shoulder.
"Alright, man the hell up. let's do this."
I started to run forward towards the village my only hope
Unaware that behind me, deep in the shadows, a pair of glowing purple eyes had locked onto me. Silent and Watching me.
Slowly moving forwards Following me.