VINCENT

The whole room- No! The entire world seemed to shake and fill with thick ominous smoke.

<User will now be processed before being sent to start a new game>

My very skin seemed to glow, and fade. Whilst I slowly seemed to grow translucent. I reached out to hold my dear Penelope as she attempted to hug me close, but my body passed through her short frame. It was as if I were nothing more than a mirage in the distance.

"Vincent? what's happening."

<Processing has begun. The user shall depart in 10..9…>

"I don't know Penelope, but whatever may happen. I swear and pray I'll make it back to you.”

CRACK!

The ceiling began to shift and shatter away, pulled carelessly upwards. Forged into an endless abyss of stars. The ground rose beneath my feet, as the stars seemed to reach down to meet me. The clean white walls fell into the infinite expanse. Beyond the expanse of what was left of our world, and began to shrink. All around the massive wedding hall, small objects were pulled into the abyss above. The once beautiful and perfect venue was now nothing but a collection of weathered tiles for a floor, and marble pillars and arches reaching out desperately to a non-existent sky. Beyond the remains of the chapel, was truly nothing more than an all-devouring abyss itself. 

<..8…7>

But it wasn't me that was disappearing. But rather, all the world around me. Instead, like footprints in the sand devoured by a mighty wave. I watched one by one as all my family and loved ones were seemingly ripped from existence. Until Penelope and I were the only two beings in all of existence, and I couldn't even hold her close to me one last time before the end.

<..6..5..4..>

“ Please Vincent, don't leave me... Stay with me Pl-”

<All foreign entities have been removed>

I refuse to even describe what it looked like, or even how it felt like when my Penelope was finally stolen from me.  The all-devouring despair was all that I had left of her, but even that I knew I couldn't hold onto forever.

‘Please just give her back, or at least take me with her!’

My thoughts were only met with the cruel emptiness of the muffled sound of an entire world being erased.

And like that, my world shattered not only emotionally, but physically. The walls.

 The ground, all of it became infested in ethereal glowing cracks of starved light that spreads, devouring everything around me. The pillars and floor were now smeared with crystalline cracks.

Crack! CRACK! SHATTER!! BOOM!!!

<..3…2..1>

I hardly had time to process my grief. Beneath the shattered remains of reality, the room exploded with light and noise. The fragments of the original wall changed into shards of light that encircled and swarmed around me.

<...processing completed the returner game will now begin>

I felt time rewind around me as my physical body seemed to melt away. I screamed and clawed for some escape, some return from whatever was happening to me.

‘If only I could just go back.’

And then, I blinked. Upon opening my eyes to my far too youthful reflection in the mirror, shocked at the sight of my childhood self in the long-forgotten bedroom of my youth.

And that was it. My whole life was gone and I was sent back to being six years old again. It was as if my whole life was nothing but a game, and my progress was deleted.

My perfect life may have been stolen from me. But, I swear I'm going to go back, back to reclaim my perfect life.