Zackery Templeton.
Zack woke up, sinking into a cloud. Not literally, but his bed was close enough.
The bed had started out ordinary. A decent mattress, nothing special. Then, one day, it decided to surpass all its kin. No longer a bed, but 'the' bed for comfort. One that could pull you into sleep the second you touched it. One so perfect that Zack had started to fear it.
Because it wasn't some comfort, it was a toxic relationship. The kind none wanted, but everyone chose, simply because it wasn't dull.
Zack groaned, stretching against the impossible softness, then turned toward the camera mounted on his desk.
He exhaled, rolled his shoulders, fixed his hair, and in a voice that spoke of countless rehearsals, he said: "Good morning. I am Zack Templeton. And today, I am still alive."
The words were both a joke and the truth.
The camera blinked red, recording.
It wasn't a rich kid's room, far from it. But what it had, it had for a reason.
A lamp and a desk: his battleground. The place where he drilled knowledge into his thick skull, determined to stay ahead and keep his sponsors interested.
Two posters hung above it: one of a brilliant scientist who had changed the world, the other of a musician whose voice had almost done the same.
Both had mysteriously gone missing from a home that was supposed to be impenetrable. The sort that uber-rich people owned.
A window: the most deceptive thing in the room. It looked normal, placed flush against the wall. But at the right angle, it became a one-way mirror.
Through the clever placement of other mirrors around the house, he could see everything happening outside without ever being seen himself.
And then there were the pictures.
They weren't framed. They were taped to the wall like afterthoughts. Yet they were his whole childhood. Snapshots of the Templetons, his family, even if the world refused to call them that.
Zack stared at the camera, his lips twitching into a smirk.
"And today…" He leaned in, lowering his voice.
"Today's gonna be interesting."
!ERH!
Zack clutched the camera, turned around, searching for a place to throw it without breaking it, and hurled it onto the bed. Thanks to its magic sponge-like nature, the mattress absorbed the impact and kept the camera intact, allowing Zack to record the entire video for the umpteenth time that day.
I've been blessed since birth -- or at least as far back as I can remember.
Hey, this is Zackery, but please, call me Zack. All my friends do, and 'Zackery' is a mouthful in this day and age, isn't it?
Anyway, talking to myself is weird, even if this is for a school project. I never understood why people kept diaries or why they made video blogs to document their lives. Maybe their lives are that exciting, and they want to share them with the world.
Well… mine isn't.
My folks, the Templetons, have given me everything I've ever wanted and spoiled me rotten. But none of it seems interesting, or even unique enough to share. I mean… doesn't everyone already have this stuff? And for the people who don't -- wouldn't it be kind of mean to show it off?
So, instead, I'll focus on something different. I'm going to share my wild imagination.
I admit, I got the idea from a little girl who can't even spell her name. She never had any views, and yeah, she kind of went off the rails—if you know what I mean—by the end. But I liked her style: supernatural, made-up, and a little bit delusional.
The truth is, I started my first video as a rant, mocking her lack of grip on reality. But then I remembered something. These dreams I used to have of a woman with brown hair, tickling my nose so I'd open my mouth for a spoonful of porridge.
Zack flips the camera to show off his well-defined jawline, blond hair, blue eyes, and the kind of smile that made girls swoon on his channel.
See… there's no way those dreams were real. Genetic anomalies aside, my parents do have blond hair and blue eyes.
Zack pans the camera toward a photo taped to the wall—Mr & Mrs. Templeton. His mom has sharp blue eyes, and his dad has golden hair, while he was the best of both worlds and then some, according to Mrs. Templeton.
So clearly, this is more plausible than some weird recurring dream, right?
Which got me thinking… maybe that poor girl had issues because of things like that. Not being good-looking and living in a delusional state likely meant she didn't have friends.
Zack pulls the camera closer, whispering: "Can't blame you guys." He pulls back and winks.
The wall clock's cuckoo bird bursts from its tiny door, startling Zack and triggering another memory to surface.
"Damn bird!" Said the brown-haired woman, lifting baby Zack in one arm and grabbing the wooden cuckoo bird before it could sneak back inside the clock.
"That was your final warning," she muttered, ripping the bird out of the clock and tossing it toward a broad-shouldered man with skin like charcoal.
Instead of retaliating, he smirked, raised a hand, and diced the wooden bird into tiny splinters before it even reached him, leaving himself showered in a cascade of debris.
"Show-off." The woman said, covering baby Zack's eyes. "You could've simply deflected it."
"Then it wouldn't be a show, would it?" the man replied, grinning.
His voice was familiar.
Of course, Zack thought. That's exactly how he always talked.
Zack shut off the camera, discarding the memory. He didn't want to end up like that little girl from the vlog, lost in daydreams and delusions.
He glanced at the wall clock. A part of him wanted to smash it into pieces, yet he held himself back. That clock held too many secrets. Too much sentiment.
"Attention seekers," he scolded the little girl, heading downstairs.
After a hearty breakfast, he boarded the school bus, practically buzzing with excitement. Girls flocked to him, boys envied him, but none of it could shake the unsettling feeling that he was living a lie.
"Hey, Templeton," called Isaac, the class bully. "The new girl." He jerked his head toward a gorgeous brunette stepping onto the bus. "Dibs."
"I'll try to keep this contained," Zack said, motioning to himself. Then he turned to the new girl, flashed a perfect smile, and received a soft blush in return.
He turned back to Isaac. "But hey, I can't control what she does, now can I?"
Isaac scowled. "Let him lose his status. Then I'll teach him a lesson."
"Which would be... never?" another bully chimed in.
"His punchable face, then," Isaac muttered, cracking his knuckles.
"Also... never."
"Cool it," said the first. "He breaks hearts, we pick 'em up. Don't mess with the circle of lust, bro. Otherwise, you're the one with a punchable face."
"I'm changing schools," Isaac mumbled.
"Oh yeah? Who would take you?"
The group burst out laughing.
"I've got my ways of getting into Triple-S," Isaac said, puffing up.
Everyone knew it was a bluff. And even if it wasn't, they had intel: Zack had already received a personal invitation from that prestigious institute. But instead of calling Isaac out, they kept quiet, waiting for the perfect moment to pop his fantasy.
The girls on the bus were drawn to Zack like moths to a flame. They brought the new girl with them too, hoping her fresh appeal would be their way in.
Sure, Zack had broken a few hearts. Yet to the high school girls, he was still a project—someone they could fix. Turn into the perfect boyfriend.
He already had the looks. All that remained was to install a brain, and maybe teach him the meaning of loyalty—a concept utterly foreign to him.
Zack cared little at this point. No girl intrigued him, and the ones who did fell for him with ease. Like many mothers who tell their sons to "play the field," he'd received similar advice. And like any teenager pumped full of hormones, he followed it, above and beyond anyone's expectations.
While his fan club always had eyes on him, there were times he felt a different kind of gaze. One that didn't belong to admirers or haters. At first, he assumed it was the bullies. But the sensation followed him, farther, deeper, even through closed doors—and his paranoia grew.
Unable to outrun the invisible stare, Zack played it smart. He kept people around him constantly, counting on witnesses in case disaster struck.
What he would never learn was that the stares belonged to his parents, secretly checking up on him. And what they would never learn was that none among the crowd truly cared for their child.
From school to the museum, Zack clung to groups of people as the distant stare no longer felt distant. With every turn, the presence grew stronger, closer, creeping, looming, as if peeling the crowd, his friends, and even buildings away from him.
Zack found himself in a dark alleyway, with no idea how he'd gotten there or why he wasn't running away.
Two familiar voices argued behind a dumpster. Zack could only make out fragments of the conversation, his brain short-circuiting in disbelief.
The first voice—female—spoke about altering memories. Her tone was full of concern, care, and... affection. She called someone 'a child.'
Surely, she couldn't have meant him, could she?
The second voice felt eerily familiar, like his own, but older, more mature. And missing at least fifty percent of his charisma. There was no way he'd ever sound like that. Pleading to a woman? To his wife? He was born with dominance—a gift from God.
The older man spoke about Zack's fame. About his failure to lure Zack away. And their final option: 'Varnyx.'
'Varnyx? Did he just say magic?' Zack's mind spun.
He remembered that 'var' meant "hidden." He knew this because academics were one of the few things he found more stimulating than girls. Plus, he had to keep his grades up for scholarship reasons. His parents weren't nearly as wealthy as he made others believe.
Thanks to that knowledge, he could decipher the couple's strange phrasing.
Var meant "hidden," or "alternative," depending on the script. Nyx meant "night" or "mystery." Putting the two together: Hidden mystery. Alternative night. Hidden night. And: alternative mystery.
Zack didn't know which was right, but he had a strong feeling the first one was.
If you asked him, Zack would say he'd pieced all the information together rather neatly and quickly. No wonder he was at the top of his class, whether by looks or by marks.
'Wait...' His mind spun again. 'Which history class had covered ancient, forgotten, forbidden scriptures again?'
He scanned the alley for the umpteenth time. Something about it felt strangely familiar. It looked eerily similar to the ones he'd visited in his dreams: Back when "Pop-Pop" used to forget he had a child strapped to his back while running errands.
All those complaints, doubts, and distractions—that's where baby Zack got his dual nature from, wasn't it?
"Crap! I did it again… Focus, Zack, focus! Can't you—ah, crap!"
Varnyx, short for "hidden mystery." Taken further, it suggested a concealed side of existence—always present, yet never fully grasped. And if one did learn it, the concealed shadow would become the new reality, swapping places with the norm.
"How the actual F do I know all this crap?"
Another memory surfaced—one that exposed Zack's lifelong inability to curse properly. In it, his dream-dad was being scolded by dream-mom for using foul language near the baby.
"Since F'in when was baby a curse word?" dream-dad had said.
"Never! But he'll be gone after a year…"
Dream-dad interrupted, saying six months was more than enough for breastfeeding, and was promptly slammed into a wall with a force no human should have survived.
It was like watching a runaway car hit a daydreaming pedestrian.
"…After a year!" dream-mom stressed, before continuing. "So we are going to make the most of every moment with him before then—"
Dream-dad interrupted again, and this time, a fridge was hurled at him.
It's like he never learned. And yet... he did teach.
The word 'Varnyx' hadn't come from any school lecture. It was from them—from both his dream-parents.
Both of them had taught him the inner workings of "the power," even as they scolded each other for doing so.
They did agree on one thing: dream-dad's family curse. A strange heritage that made baby Zack attuned to mysterious forces.
Forces that could reshape his life into something... supernatural. Even if he chose to ignore or reject them.
After many debates—too long to fully replay—they'd come to a shared conclusion: Place a suggestion of ignorance.
Zack didn't understand a single word of that conclusion. And yet, somehow, it made perfect sense. Like the ability to comprehend had briefly returned, and with it, the murkiness began to clear.
"Will yourself away from reality with lies, and those lies soon become your reality," dream-dad finally said, convincing dream-mom with the weight of his words.
One suggestion clashed with the other, and Zack remained caught between them, like a cat perched on a fence—both agreeing and disagreeing, both believing and rejecting the premise of the supernatural.
"Is this why I see the abnormal, then reject it, only to circle back to the same damn dilemma?" he asked aloud, questioning his sanity. "What kind of F'ing—fucking…" He forced the curse word out, struggling against years of mental censorship. "…power system is this, where everything depends on… belief!?"
Zack rejected the premise. Then, seconds later, I accepted it. Later, rejected it again.
Round and round he went, trapped in a loop of dual conclusions.
"The fuck… does this magic influence me? Or whatever the fuck this is?"
Gripping the chaos with sheer will, Zack focused. He forced himself to believe any given premise—no matter how absurd, supernatural, or contradictory it seemed to everything he thought he was... And something clicked.
Pieces fell into place, assembling a key that unlocked something deep within.
"Varnyx!"
Not something he'd learned from school—not from the prejudiced educational system that served the government more than it did the governed.
No, Varnyx was something dream-mom and dream-dad had taught him when he was just seven months old.
Still wary, Zack turned his attention back to the couple behind the dumpster. They finally stepped into view, and weren't who he thought they were: Strangers.
Neither matched the dream-parents, even factoring in age.
The man was six feet tall, packed with muscle, sharp-jawed, and styled like he'd walked out of two different anime. One half of his hair was blond, the other black. The same split appeared in his eyes: one iris was bright blue, the other a cool, metallic silver.
He looked like a character some indecisive artist had cobbled together from two separate designs and called it a compromise.
The woman, on the other hand, radiated unearthly beauty. It was familiar, uncannily familiar.
Zack had never truly understood the way girls described him with words like mesmerizing, unnerving, and unreal. But one look at this woman, and he understood precisely what they meant.
"I'm going to let you go now," the woman said gently, her voice as inviting as her smile. "Just give us a minute before you yell stranger-danger, alright?"
She waved her hand, and Zack's body came back under his control.
Still clinging to the premise—still accepting instead of questioning—he stood up straight, adjusted his tie like a gentleman, and prepared to—
Wait.
He froze again—this time on his own.
Yell stranger-danger? Him? When?
Memories from earlier bubbled up.
This wasn't the first time they'd tried to talk to him.
He vaguely remembered the man with a full head of blond hair, like his own. The woman had scolded the man, then changed his appearance to jet-black hair. After more protests, she'd compromised, giving him half-and-half.
All the while, she only kept getting more beautiful, her companion's complaints about inequality falling on deaf ears.
With information pouring overboard—drowning him in madness—Zack circled back to disbelief, back on that hypothetical wall.
He ran away from the couple. Out to the street. Into a precinct. Then somehow, without knowing how, he circled back into the alleyway.
They were waiting right where he'd left them, expecting him to return as he did.
"What the fuck!" Zack cursed, eyes darting around.
Did they stand here and believe he'd return—and he did? Was their belief stronger than his?
Suddenly, the whole "belief equals reality" thing made a hell of a lot more sense. He had been a cat on the wall his entire life.
"Thank me later," the man chuckled.
"For what?" the woman snapped, slicing through him with a stare that made Zack wince on his behalf. "Cursing in front of our child? Or stripping away his ability to curse properly and letting him get ridiculed by his peers?"
Her tone was a scalpel. Her words did the rest, puncturing straight through bravado into spirit.
Zack had had enough. He chose sanity—or at least, normalcy.
With that decision, another memory returned, resurfacing as the strangers wrapped their arms around him. Their embrace was warm as their tears soaked his shirt.
"Forgive and forget us," the woman whispered, voice trembling. "Forget the lunacy, just for a while. It doesn't have to be long. Just long enough. You'll feel the truth slip away. Let it go. Be strong. And your reality will soon become one with the norms."
They wanted him to forget.
He wanted to forget.
So he did.
Zack found himself standing alone in the enclosed walls of a grimy lavatory. A busted tap sprayed water onto his chest, soaking his shirt.
No tears. No embrace. Only dripping porcelain and flickering fluorescent lights.
He pulled off the shirt, wrung it out, and chuckled to his friends later about how he never knew his strength, and normal life resumed.
Zack tapped into the supernatural only occasionally—when the cat inside him dared to step off the wall and peer into the shadows of reality.
Several Days Later
No incidents. No anomalies.
The paranormal faded like a bad dream, and when Zack finally dared to believe the threat had gone benign—
—It returned.
Stronger than ever.
Ripping the fabric of reality like it was paper, like a glimpse beyond the veil.
Zack sat with his chin resting against his palm, eyes half-lidded as he stared through the classroom window. The lesson droned on in the background, no more significant than white noise, while his pencil tapped rhythmically against the desk.
Outside, the world was still.
Too still.
The air thickened—heavy, suffocating. Like a silent warning before the storm, ripping the skies wide open.
A lightless explosion burst in the distance—no sound, boom, or shockwave; a simple gaping, yawning gash in the sky. Reality torn as if it were nothing but brittle paper.
Everything melted.
The air boiled with an unseen force, warping the sky into a sickly, pulsating mass. The classroom window bubbled and sagged, glass softening like candle wax before sloughing off in molten streaks.
Zack's mouth hung open in a silent scream as the heatwave flayed his skin. His arms peeled apart, flesh curling back like burnt pages. Bones cracked and twisted, morphing into jagged, crystalline structures. Desks rotted in real time. Chairs corroded into rust. Everything around him decomposed in a single breath.
Then came the ripping, not of sound or matter, but of nothingness.
An invisible force—impossible to comprehend—devoured everything it touched. A student who had been laughing seconds ago split apart midair, not in blood and gore, but in something worse. His body stretched, fragmented, and spiraled into a void that had no right to exist.
Zack's eyes boiled. His vision collapsed into a smear of colors. He could only hear the brittle crunch of his skull folding into itself.
And then in a blink—
The world snapped back.
Zack gasped, choking on something invisible as the classroom was reconstructed itself to its original state.
The sky was blue.
The students were chatting again—alive, unaware, unscarred.
Except... They were staring at him, wide-eyed and horrified.
A warm sensation soaked beneath him. A dark stain bloomed across his pants.
His breath hitched, realization hitting harder: He had wet himself.
No one laughed. The silence continued with an awkward, pitying gaze.
Zack coughed, tripping, and catching himself as he scraped the chair that the girls had decorated for him. His trembling hands clenched the desk. His mind screamed, 'It's a dream.' But outside, far off on the horizon, the sky still flickered.
Something remained. Waiting. Moments away from snapping reality apart again.
Pity for a pretty person often invites an abundance of help—selfless hands, unearned favors, compassionate attention wrapped in concern for mental health, of course.
Zack had never faced such a distasteful situation before. He certainly hadn't expected his devoted admirers to turn on him over one incident either.
They pitied him performatively, as society demands, but the underlying disdain was unmistakable. Palpable.
Then came the whispers—the second-guessing.
An argument broke out, and Zack was forced to defend himself.
Defend his looks.
Slowly, faces shifted. Admiration twisted into doubt.
Was Zackery Templeton really that gorgeous? Or had it all been in their heads?
A glamour of belief, perhaps.
A shared illusion.
The magic of rarity—that blonde hair, those blue eyes—so uncommon it had to be beautiful, didn't it?
Zack's greatest fear came true; instead of choosing the comforting illusion of the noms, his inner cat wandered deep into the darkness of truth and couldn't find a way out.
There, in the blackened crevices of reality, he saw it all.
The true hate his haters carried, the false admiration his fans faked, and the lies—so many lies—fed to him by the people he once called parents.
How had he missed it all?
In a family that obsesses over documenting every minor achievement, how had they never shown him his birth video? Not a picture. Not a note. Only a staged photo and a certificate—cheap fakes, easily forged in an age of AI-generated memories and photo-morphing tools.
The truth shattered him.
Zack dropped out of school. Locked himself in his room. Refused to speak or eat, unless it came without words attached.
He begged the Almighty for one more chance.
One more chance to return to the wall. To sit on the edge between belief and doubt. To choose reality over truth. To always choose reality. Never again would he question the norm. Never again would he chase answers through the cracks of sanity.
Mr. and Mrs. Templeton left food at his door. They gave him "space," they said.
They slipped notes under plates of his favorite meals, coaxing comfort through reassurance, begging him to come out. They allowed his friends to visit, despite his explicit instructions otherwise. But Zack saw through it all. The fake kindness. The strategic pity. The manipulation.
He took the sustenance and rejected the lies.
Weeks turned to months.
Friends turned to strangers.
And one day, the Templetons stopped knocking.
Time is said to heal all wounds. Hide all scars. It took a year for the Templetons to change—to break—while Zack stayed the same.
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