Chapter Text
Dream didn’t like living alone but he wasn’t really. He lived in a village though he felt like he was living in a ghost town and he hated it. There were so many people in his village, they might as well be considered a city, but with how little everyone came out you would assume there weren’t many inhabitants. And there was no good reason for it either, there weren’t any diseases going around, or did there seem to be any contention among them. They just didn’t like coming out of the houses.
When Dream had been younger around ten or nine, it had been much more lively, there had always been kids playing outdoors, adults talking in their yards as they watched their kids, people coming back from stores carrying things they had bought, and there had been festivals Dream didn’t know what they were for but they had always been fun. Dream remembered the last year it had been hosted that something had been off, there were fewer people than there had normally been and there were almost no children there, he had seen maybe three or four in total that year, not counting himself of course. The Adults had been less as well, and there hadn't been a lot of tents either. The normal Cotton Candy tent had been missing along with more than half of the games. Dream didn’t have as much fun that year.
The next year there hadn’t been a festival, and there was barely anyone on the streets, only a few cars pulling up with groceries or new clothes from the stores and then even that had stopped. Dream didn’t even know why it happened, maybe it was budget cuts, or maybe the festival was no longer important to the people. Which didn’t make sense because Dream’s neighbors the Crafts had always loved it and he was sure that others did as well.
Dream hadn't seen the Crafts in a while, he had only seen the oldest at the festival which was odd because The Oldest was always followed around by his twin or his younger brother so the fact Dream had seen him without either of them had been a little concerning but Dream had been young at the time so he brushed it off. Which Dream really shouldn’t have since he had been relatively close to him.
The Crafts family consisted of their father and three kids. The Oldest had long straight dark pink hair with a braid in it and brighter red eyes, which Dream had always wondered how they had been so red at the time but now it seemed like a silly question. The Middle child who was a younger twin to the oldest had not looked a lot like his brother except for their eyes. The Middle Child had short wavy brown hair that tended to cover one of his eyes, his eyes had been a darker red that could almost pass for brown but not fully. He had always walked around with a guitar on his back and he always seemed to be humming something but anytime you asked what he was singing he would just smile and change the topic. The Youngest looked like their father not counting the fact the father had green eyes instead of blue. The youngest had light blonde hair that was a mix of wavy but straight at the same time, he also had light blue eyes that seemed to be full of light, and he had a lot of personality which got him in trouble sometimes.
The Youngest always was around a boy his age from across the street, a boy with brown hair and green eyes, and another boy who didn’t come out as much who had black hair with dyed white edges on the half of his hair. His eyes had been fascinating to Dream, being green and red. After seeing three people with red eyes Dream stopped questioning how that was possible and went back to focusing on other things, he wasn’t close enough to any of them to really talk to them, he had known their names at one point as well but it had been many years since he had seen them or even talked to them. He regretted that, they seemed like nice people.
Dream had spent ten years in this house without seeing anyone, it started around the time he turned ten and it was still going on as he neared twenty-one. There were times that Dream wondered if everyone had just started to be more active at night, going out for food and things at that time but Dream doubted it. An entire city suddenly becoming inactive without any warning didn’t make sense at all, unless there was something Dream had missed. Which he wouldn’t deny because he hadn’t paid attention to his surroundings that much before, only becoming hyper-aware around the age of seventeen when his parents left the house to get groceries and never coming back.
Dream stood up out of his bed sighing, he should really stop thinking about all of this, it made him feel even more alone than he already was. Dream walked over to his closet grabbing one of his oversized green hoodies and a white hat and slipping those on, not even bothering to change out of his pajamas, who would see him anyway? It’s not like anyone would see him walking around his house in a green hoodie with black sweatpants that have white cats all over them. So Dream wasn’t going to change out of them, they were comfortable.
Dream opened his bedroom door and started walking towards the stairs, glancing up at the two rooms next to him before shaking his head focusing on his steps. Now was not the time to think about the old memories he had with his parents, it didn’t matter anymore. It had been four years by now, if they were going to come back they would’ve already. But they didn’t and just disappeared like the rest of the city, or maybe they just left him starting a new life elsewhere. He had been seventeen at the time so maybe they assumed he would be fine. Dream just wished they had left a letter, or maybe just told him straight to his face that they weren’t coming back to him. But No, They had to use the ‘going to the store’ as an excuse, it was a classic, and Dream had had a lot of faith in his parents so he didn’t expect or suspect them to not come home.
Dream walked over to the fridge pulling the door open as he looked in. He didn’t have a lot of food anymore, not counting his mother's garden, which he had decimated two years ago and it took forever for to be able to grow again. So Dream had started to go to the stores as soon as he was awake and take as much food as possible, and oddly enough every time he came up the stores were restocked, so Dream never went hungry, even if it was the middle of the night and he was just run out of milk that he needed for his cereal, the stores were always open. Dream had found it weird but chose to accept what was given to him and just used the stores for their food.
Dream shut the fridge , walked over to the counter grabbing his keys and slipping on his shoes, and then went to the door twisting the doorknob as he pulled it open stepping out into the daylight, shutting the door behind him. The dream didn’t bother locking it, he didn’t see the need to anymore, if anyone was here he didn’t see why they would need to break into his house if they had a place of their own.
Dream slipped his keys into the pocket of his pants, and then kept his hand there, he liked having them in his pockets, when he had them out he felt like he constantly needed to be doing things, so when they were in his pockets his brain didn’t focus on them as much instead just looking around at the houses. None of them had their lights on, all their curtains or blinds shut, the cars in the driveways were forever dormant, some looked as if they had been hit by another car or a baseball bat, others had scratches along the side of them, and the rest looked fine.
Dream paused when one of the curtains on the second floor of the house to his right suddenly seemed to move forward as if it had been open before Dream walked in front of the house, but Dream knew it hadn’t. It couldn’t have been. Dream had walked this same path for years and that curtain had always been closed, Dream would’ve noticed if it had been open before now.
He shook his head looking away from the window and started to walk again, it must’ve been a trick of the eye, there was no way it had moved. That house had been the house of the green and red-eyed kid, the kid Dream only saw twice before everyone seemed to disappear, Once at a festival, walking around with the Craft’s youngest’s friend, Another time Dream saw him was when all three of them were playing in the yard, and the final time had been when Dream saw him walk away from the Crafts house and go back into his own house. Dream never saw the kid come out again but, he never saw the Crafts or the other kid again.
Dream was almost out of the neighborhood when he paused again turning his head towards a gate connected to a backyard that made a creaking sound as it slowly opened, but when it did open Dream didn’t see anyone there, and he didn’t see a shadow around the corner of the house showing that there was a person there which only made Dream’s anxiety grow and against his better judgment he started to walk over to the yard pushing his hand against the gate making it creak even more.
“...Hello?”
Dream whispered, tilting his head slightly, he hadn’t spoken in a while so his voice was rough and scratchy, but that was normal when you don’t speak to anyone or anything for four years.
Dream tensed when he suddenly heard the sound of grass moving, it sounded like someone had just run off but he didn’t hear the sound of a door opening or the gate groaning from someone jumping over it, in fact, the sound of grass moving stopped as if the person had stopped running. But Dream didn’t see anyone, and he didn’t see the areas where grass would’ve been flattened because of footsteps. And since it was daylight he should’ve been able to see something but he couldn’t see anything.
He started to walk farther into the yard glancing around anything that could’ve made the sounds he had heard but he came up empty causing him to sigh and run a hand through his hair. Maybe he should check the house? Would that be breaking in? Or was it fine since he didn’t know if anyone was actually in the house? Well, Only one way to find out.
Dream walked over to the back door wrapping his hand around the doorknob and pulling back, and when that didn’t work Dream pushed, the door opening with a clicking sound. So he hadn’t been using the door in the correct way, oops.
Dream stepped into the house shutting the door behind him, he couldn’t see anything in the house, the lights from the sun is completely blocked out, so he walked along the walls until he felt a light switch and turned it on, some of the house becoming illuminated and Dream could've sworn he heard a gasp when the light turned on, but he didn’t hear anything else after that, or see anyone near him so he continued to walk looking for the next light switch to turn on.
Dream turned on most of the lights, not doing the basement ones and the upstairs ones, and just wandered around checking the rooms downstairs for anyone, and if he couldn’t find anyone he was just going to assume it was his brain slowly starting to use sanity, that or it had been a bird or something on the grass. And the wind had opened the gate. Even though there had been no wind when that had happened, Dream was going to pretend there was, he didn’t want to start thinking he was going insane.
Dream didn’t even bother going upstairs when his downstairs search was done, instead, he flipped off all the lights and walked back out of the door shutting it behind him, ignoring the clicking sound he heard afterward, and started to walk back to the gate walking out of it. Dream wasn’t going to shut that one, he hadn’t opened it in the first place and if he came back and it was still open he knew he was fine but if he came back and it was shut then Dream knew he was either going insane or there was actually something going on in that house