An aching anxiety awoke Theo from his slumber. Slowly rising up to look around the room, he realized he wasn’t back in his apartment. All the events between now and the moment when he was sitting alone on the uncomfortable hard couch, hallucinating things out of his reach of consciousness were extremely fuzzy. He remembered that he called Rosa, or at least he thought he did- he couldn’t really distinguish what was a part of the hallucination and what was real life.

Theo felt a choking sensation as he looked around the room to not find anyone else that resembled Rosa even the slightest bit.

Was he in a dream?

His choking anxiety both slightly released and increased at seeing another body in the room, propped the same as him- in a dental chair, though the other individual was still out.

“Wait a minute-”, Theo whispered to himself as his eyes focused more on the person.

Long dark brown hair, the desert yellow scarf-

Emil? Theo’s heart fluttered and he felt like something was coming up his windpipe, which made him panic but he let it happen. It seemed that even if he didn’t breathe in this world- he couldn’t die at all.

He felt a big lump pop into his mouth all of a sudden, and he could breathe again, which soothed his panic.

Spitting out the contact that had just crept into his mouth, he was surprised to see a yellow tulip. He smiled briefly, putting the tulip into his pocket, but he was surprised to feel an abundance of other petals and sometimes even full flowers resting in there as well. Theo took a deep breath, trying to rid himself of the nervousness that occupied his body when he saw Emil.

“Emil? Are you awake?”, Theo called out to the other man in the room as he slowly stood up, for some reasons his instincts telling him to approach Emil slowly even though he wasn’t much of a threat.

An unwilling and somewhat lazy groan escaped from Emil’s side of the room as Theo couldn’t help but chuckle, even though the current situation had him rather scared of what was to happen, he felt a certain relief knowing Emil was here.

“Mnn... Who’s there?”, Emil tried to turn around in the dentist chair, but as he turned a few clanks sounded in the air, like heavy metal objects falling against ceramic tiles. Theo was shocked for a moment as he watched multiple double-sided butterfly knives slip out of the man’s pocket. The sudden loud clanks made Emil jump up in the chair, reaching into his half-empty pocket to take a single out and open it up single-handedly lightning fast.

“Alright, who the FUCK are you?!”, he exclaimed as he put the blade in front of him, pointing to the direction where the chuckle came from as he couldn’t exactly count on his eyes much.

“Emil calm down-”, Theo said, a bit loudly, “It’s me- It’s me Theo! The guy from the flower shop-”.

“Oh,”, Emil said, cautiously lowering the blade, still unsure if that blurry figure in front of him was really Theo, or merely an entity or demon mimicking his voice to get closer to him. He still held onto the knife as he extended out his hand to what he assumed was Theo.

“C’mon, shake my hand, Theo.”, Emil said In a serious tone, deciding to try and determine his presence by the feel of his hand. This request was a bit unusual to Theo, but he complied with the wish and extended his arm out but kept alert, even though he assumed Emil was relatively harmless, counting this was in a dream and he didn’t have any idea where he could be- this could be a malicious being inside his dreams. He didn’t really believe in demons entering his dreams until he realized that he talked to Rosa in his dream, which meant other people experienced this too- that theory just proved true when he saw Emil, but if it meant other people experienced this that meant some things must have created this state, therefore, malicious entities could exist in this world.

As Theo gripped Emil’s hand to shake it he felt a numbing and then pain in what seemed to be his wrist, near his palm that was supposed to shake Emil’s hand but was now being retreated harshly as a painful cry escaped his throat through which he could feel flower petals climbing up and silencing his cries, instead filling the air with a choking sound and then what sounded like retching as a stream of flower petals mixed with saliva dangled and extended down towards the floor. Theo gasped for air that had previously been pushed out by the horde of petals that filled his throat and his whole respiratory system for that matter, he also squeezed his bloody hand trying to stop the flow of blood from the fresh, rather deep wound in his wrist. Even though he guessed it wouldn’t really kill him since the flower choking didn’t, he felt that it was generally more normal to at least try to stop the blood flowing down his hand and onto the floor tiles below. He let go of his hand for a moment to grab onto the few petals that were dangling with his saliva off the ground.

“Oh god, Theo I’m sorry- Fuck, I didn’t realize it was you, I’m so sorry-”, Emil started pouring out apologies as the bloodstained knife simply slipped out of his grip and fell down with the few drops of blood that stained the leather of the dentist-chair like an armchair. Emil quickly rose up and stood up, about to help Theo with his wound, loosely trying to find him by locating him by his blurry image.

Theo stopped him in his tracks, weakly extending the wounded arm towards Emil in a sign of protest which Emil felt when he came close, indeed a bit too close for comfort.

“Uhm, Emil, it’s alright, I can take care of this myself- but can you please back up a bit?”, it took Emil a bit to realize what was meant by ‘back up a bit’ but as soon as he did, he felt tingling in his cheeks and took a few steps back before arguing back:

“Still- you are bleeding heavily and if we don’t get help soon you could potentially die!”

“Emil, calm down! Don’t you see? We are in the dream state.”, Theo said as he proceeded what he was doing in the first place, when he finished his last sentence he took a sharp inhale folding the bunch of diverse petals and inserting them directly into the wound. Sure, the pain wasn’t as horrible as the stab itself, but it felt like someone was pouring rubbing alcohol right into his wound. Tears welled up in his eyes but soon the burning sensation was gone as he traced his hand along where the cut was moments before, Theo had now found it to be gone.

“See?”, Theo said after calming down as he grasped Emil’s hand, which earned a flinch from him, as he didn’t really expect it. Theo then bought the hand to his own wound and brushed it on the newly formed skin.

“I healed myself because we are in the dream world.”, he continued as he let go of Emil’s hand.

“Why are we here, though? I don’t remember ever going to sleep.”, Emil said, after a few moments of silence. “And where are we anyway? Isn’t the deal that we usually wake up at least a few meters away from our material body, because this is a completely different place it seems.”.

Theo looked around again, spotting a slightly off-colored metal door which seemed to be the only thing except for the two dental armchairs in the room.

“I have no idea where we are, but maybe if we try to push that door open we may find something.”, Theo said, looking back at Emil before back at the door. He headed to the door slowly, stopping every few steps to see if Emil was following him, he suddenly felt a bit responsible for Emil, perhaps maybe it was because now he just came across the realization of how extreme his shortsightedness really was now.

When at the door, Theo stepped forward as he pressed down the big knob and pushed the door, to no avail.

“This door sure is something.”, he laughed quietly as he looked back at Emil, “Hey, can you help me get this thing open?”, he asked as he moved aside to let Emil try to push the door.

.

Nothing.

.

Just as Theo was going to try and help Emil push the door, he noticed the door started opening by itself.

“What?”, Theo stared as Emil slowly backed away from the door, which opened until it stopped to the point where a person could easily squeeze through. Theo looked at Emil for a moment before turning back to the door.

“I will check it out first-”, Theo said as he walked up to the door and peeked his head out.

“Huh?”

At first, Theo didn’t see anyone, but as his area of vision expanded he noticed two figures outside. One was a woman who was floating near the sand-covered ground, which upon a closer look had what seemed to be dried blood on her green sweater. Theo was about to ask the woman if she was alright, but the other female figure caught his attention.

“..Rosa?”, Theo said, surprised but also a bit relieved to see a familiar face.

“Oh Jesus, you know each other alright. Get out boys, I could’ve bled out twelve times while you were on with your soap opera.”, Theo looked back at the woman who spoke up, noticing that she was gripping her arms around her stomach and chest area, which seemed to have blood pooling up on the sweater.

“Anyways, blonde boy, help me out here because I really want to live out to see the day when I can floor that son of a bitch that got us into this situation in the first place.”