How do you explain that you are bored with life, despite all that it contains? Devin was sure that if she told anyone what she did in her free time, they’d look at her like she was crazy- and how could she explain, then, that she was still missing something? How could she tell them that the world detached from her physical life that she had made a job out of wasn’t enough? How do you explain that strangers who tell you to run and glasses that let you see things that weren’t there and a job that was watching, always watching, because it must be, she refused to believe it was all in her head– Just didn’t hold her attention for longer than a day at a time?

You can’t.

So Devin kept doing her homework and texting Elliot late at night and answering notifications and pretending like anything that happened to her mattered past the moments it was happening.

Sometimes, she’d almost see the stranger, crossing the street or turning a corner in her peripheral vision, and only then would she admit to herself how familiar they looked.

The glasses sat on her desk, and sometimes she’d swear that she saw the walls surrounding her even without them on, like her vision was slowly blurring with the wall until it would inevitably take over and trap her within it.

Maybe that was why she noticed it.

She was eating dinner with her family when it occurred to her that something was off.

She picked up her fork, put it down. Waited for the walls in the corner of her eye to fade away. She reached for her glass of water, drained it. Devin was suddenly aware of something, and the longer she thought about it, the more irritating it got. She finished her food as fast as possible, leaving the table.
Devin made her way back to her room, collapsing on her– Devin concentrated. The walls around her bent to accommodate. The bed. Devin picked up her– the– glasses from the desk. She put them on, walking around the maze of walls until she found what was bothering her. A small part of the wall, one connected to a strange book that seemed to be writing itself in real time. Devin reached over to the wall, rearranging the bricks, and they fixed their pronouns.

***

They were walking to school, and they were thinking. “I know you’re there,” they whispered, and the world came to a stop.
A painful familiarity was picking at them, the same familiarity they felt around the stranger. “Who are you?”

The world did not move.

“Who are they?” Devin tried, and the world spoke a name. The same name Devin heard whenever their parents called them.

Devin was well and truly lost. In thought, in time, on the path that they had just now realized was no longer the path to school, because the road twisted ahead out of view, rerouting itself to fit the scene. They didn’t go to school here. The street signs were smudged, unreadable, as if someone hadn’t bothered to give them names. A strange feeling of uneasiness was growing in Devin’s stomach, threatening to overwhelm their senses completely. They weren’t sure when they started running.

***

They weren’t sure when the scene ended and a new one started, but it had, because Devin was no longer running. They were sitting at their desk at home, staring at the glasses that had somehow made their way into their hand. They wondered if something would force them to put them on, to go forward and follow the tugging in their stomach that they were slowly becoming painfully aware of.

Devin stood up–

No, that’s not how it went. Devin was still sitting, staring at the glasses. Look, they put them on, out of their own free will. They were floating over to the walls now, as they should.

Devin was going towards the part of the wall where they had changed their pronou–

Devin was going to find the stranger again. They needed to. They wanted to?

Devin was scared.

She was floating near a section of the wall that looked horribly familiar. Tell me, they signed. You’re Micah?

They nodded.

Are you me?

The stranger smiled and shrugged helplessly, and Devin didn’t wait for a real answer.

Can you help me? My actions aren’t my own. I don’t think they’re yours, either. There’s something else.

The world laughed, tying up the conversation. Devin remembered they had talked, but what had they said? How did the stranger respond?

Devin was in their room, the other Micah fresh in their mind, and somewhere, in another world, there was someone sitting on their bed, writing a story on their phone.

The story was about a person named Devin, with messy hair and a big window full of opportunities that they choose not to face. They were curious and impulsive and bored to a fault. This Devin was wondering now, if it would have been better never to ask, never to know. This Devin wasn’t sure if their actions would have been their own, had they never taken the job that allowed them to see them as under someone else’s control. This Devin was slowly falling asleep.

The someone else that was still on their bed checked their word count. They yawned, saving the document again. They thought that maybe Devin deserved a happy ending.

They didn’t write one.

The someone else, whose name didn’t really matter to the story but would have mattered very much to Devin, turned off their phone, turning to look out the big window next to their bed that took up more than half the wall. The window was closed, as usual. They opened it.

***

The End :)

Yes this was always going to be how it ended, and yeah it is written kind of confusing so you're welcome to ask anything.

The first time I was writing this I started thinking about how funny it was, to be writing a book about someone who can mess with the fourth wall, and whether they could then access the fourth walk of their own book. Then I started thinking about what that would mean, and what it means that I, the author, am writing about a version of myself, and the clash, and blah blah yk how it goes.

Have a good day everyone, see you around!