I'm Either Dreaming or Hallucinating Really Well12

I couldn’t sleep.  I couldn’t close my eyes long enough to be able to fall into that unconscious of dreams and life goals coming alive from when I laid on my bed to around 2 in the morning.  I gave up after looking over at the clock for the millionth time, heaving myself up.  Ezio raised his head from my side and gave a small meow.

“Sorry, buddy.  I just can’t sleep,” I told him as I pet his head.  I knew why I couldn’t either.  It was because I had just found out that Toby did like me.  I don’t know what made me so special or different from any other girl he’d ever known but he showed that he liked me from all of the nice things he did.  He never stayed quiet around me unless I was with someone else and he genuinely cared about me, as shown when he helped with my cut hand.

I needed a way to escape from this so I got out of bed, gently picking up Ezio as he was awake and licking at his paws.  Spyro raised his head but set it back down as I sat at my computer.  Ezio made sure he stayed off to the side but laid down and watched the computer screen as it came alive.  I needed to get this all out of my system as I headed to a blogger website and started typing to my heart’s content.

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I groaned as my alarm went off at 10am.  Wheatley was already up, sitting by the door with his tail wagging quickly as I sat up.  Ezio was asleep by my side but Spyro had gone over to my computer and was laying in the chair.  I smacked my alarm off and stretched in my bed.  My back cracked as I stretched before I got out to get dressed.

Light blue t-shirt with “TOBUSCUS” across it would be a good way to go and jean shorts again.  I put on my comfy light blue flip-flops too as I headed out of my room.  Wheatley ran down the stairs to the front door as I went to grab his leash from where it hung.

I had stayed up typing a blog about everything I needed to get out until my eyes were closing on their own and my fingers weren’t typing anymore.  It must’ve been around 5 or so since I had typed a lot and I couldn’t even remember slinking into my bed again.  When I had copied and pasted all of the blog into a document, I had typed around 15 pages worth of words and nearly 10,000 words too.

I yawned after I closed the front gate behind me as Wheatley pulled me forward.  He was obviously ready for his walk but I couldn’t help my eyes from drooping or stop my yawns that were continuous.  I decided I’d take Wheatley to the dog park again and as I approached, I saw a familiar little dog at the fence.  As I entered, I heard his owner’s voice calling.

“Hey, Krystal!” Toby called as he ran over.  I let Wheatley go play with Griffin and the other three dogs that were there.

“Hiya, Toby,” I said with a smile.  Toby smiled back.

“How’d you sleep last night?” he asked me.  I wasn’t sure if I should have answered the question correctly or not but I didn’t want to rude...or brutally honest.

“I slept pretty well.  Woke up once,” I replied as I headed toward a bench nearby to sit down.  Toby sat down beside me and watched me.

“That’s cool,” Toby said as we watched our dogs run around.  It got quiet after that since I didn’t really want to say much.  My tired self was making me just want to go back to sleep but I couldn’t just sit there all day.  I just wanted to go back to my house and fall asleep for another five hours with Ezio and Spryo by my sides and Wheatley sleeping on the floor.  “Hey, are you okay?”

“Huh?” I asked as I suddenly sat up.  I looked over at Toby after sitting up and he was looking at me with a slight smile and, what looked like, a blush.  “What?”  Toby chuckled before replying.

“You leaned into me and you took a nap for about a half hour,” Toby replied with a smile.  I blushes immensely and stared at him.

“I...I did?” I asked with a gasp.  Toby nodded.  “I...I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” he said, still holding his smile.  “It was...nice.”  I could see Toby was going to add something else soon and I knew I was blushing a lot.  “Um...Krystal, are you doing anything today?” he asked me.

“Not that I know of,” I told him.  “I finished what I had to yesterday and I only had planned on walking Wheatley.”

“Would you like to grab some lunch at my place?” Toby asked me.  I couldn’t resist spending more time with him.  I did want to see where and how things would go.

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“All right, I have leftovers from last night from KFC with plenty of popcorn chicken, biscuits and mashed potatoes and gravy, if you like Nuggets in a Biscuit.  I have sandwich material and I could cook something together if you’d like,” Toby said as he rummaged through his cupboards in his kitchen.  I chuckled.

“Leftovers are fine,” I told him.  He grabbed the KFC bag out of the cupboard and pulled out the food before placing them in the microwave, one at a time.

“I wasn’t planning on this but...I thought it’d be nice.  I didn’t have much planned today,” he told me as we waited for the chicken to warm up.

“Mm-hm.  I wasn’t expecting this either,” I replied.  “But, um, what drinks do you have?”  Toby jumped up as he went to look in his refrigerator.  We had decided to just come straight back here after going to the dog park; Wheatley and Griffin were playing nicely and they had tired themselves out.

“I have Coke, Sprite, Mountain Dew, water, Hawaiian Punch...” he started to name.

“Hawaiian Punch is fine,” I told him.  He picked up the carton and went to grab some cups.  He poured two cups of the red sweet drink before handing it to me, as the microwave went off.

“All righty, lunch is served!” Toby said as he set out everything.  I chuckled as he popped the lid to the mashed potatoes and biscuits.  The steam from the reheated food felt good.  As we ate, we talked about upcoming video games we would like to see or play.  The one we wanted the most was Assassin’s Creed III but the one we looked forward to the most was the announced Deadpool video game.  We ended up talking about it throughout our lunch and when we finished, Toby invited me to play video games.

“I don’t know, Toby.  I think I should walk Wheatley back home,” I told him as he cleaned off the table.

“Aw, come on,” Toby cried as he put the trash in his trashcan.  “It’ll only be for a few hours.  You can call your parents if you really need to.”  He smiled as he said it, hoping I would stay and I knew I would do anything to stay with him a little longer, not just because we liked each other but because I wanted to play video games with him.

“Well...okay.  What games do you have?” I asked.  He pulled me into the living room and plopped me down on his sofa.  I giggled as he ran to pull out games from his tv rack.

“I have Assassin’s Creed, Gears of War, Call of Duty, Left 4 Dead...”  As Toby listed all the names of the games he had and spread them out in front of me, I couldn’t help but notice he was trying really hard for me to try to get to like him more.  I couldn’t let this continue as he placed out a 20th game.

“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Multiplayer and let me use my Xbox LIVE account so I can have my custom class,” I told him as I reached for a controller.  Toby looked up at me and smiled as he picked up the game and turned on his tv to play.

When the start-up screen and loading screen showed up for the game, I signed in on the second controller and the battle began.  Since we had a split screen, we tried to make it easier with how we would play; since I was second player, I was on the bottom screen so I sat on the floor while Toby played on the couch.  We were kicking some major ass in the game as we dished out bullets, threw grenades and flashes and knifed our enemies in the back.

On multiple occasions, we helped each other out, yelling, “Behind you!” or “On your right!”  We were an amazing team, not to mention how well we could work together.  Over a microphone system, it would be slightly delayed and that delay would be the end of you if you couldn’t get the message in time.  In the ten games we played in an hour, I was getting an average of 3 kills per death and Toby had 6 kills per death.

“Any other game you wanna try?” he asked as he paused the screen to take us to the home screen.  I chuckled as I reached for Left 4 Dead.

“Try not to scream, okay?” I joked with him as he went to put it in.  I hated Left 4 Dead to be honest; I’m not a big zombie fan and I hate zombie movies or anything zombie related.  Not because it looked horrible but because zombies just gave me the creeps since it was inevitable that the zombie apocalypse was indeed a thing of the future.

I got a little spooked as we started the game and ran around shouting at every moving thing we could, hoping it was a zombie and not a member of our team.  I hated the special ability zombies, like the Smoker, the Boomer and especially the Witch.  She creeped me out the most and when I heard her cries, I instantly ran the other way.  It was inevitable that we would cross her path on the way to a checkpoint and I made Toby go ahead to get her.  I jumped and screamed anyway once the first shot was made and started shooting at her immediately, making me her primary target.  Luckily Toby saved my hide and we continued on.  We finished the level together in nearly two hours but we were exhausted from our fingers moving around so much as well as our eyes shifting.

“I cannot ever play that game again,” Toby said as he collapsed into his couch.  I chuckled as I sat, panting quietly, on the floor.  The game had scared me so bad, I was sweating from fear.

“I hate that game anyway,” I told him.  Toby looked over at me.

“Are you okay?” he asked as he sat up.  I nodded.

“I just hate zombie games.  They always give me the creeps,” I told him, shivering.  He immediately went over and put his hand to my forehead.  That contact made me gasp slightly and breathe in his scent.  Caramel, chocolate and butterscotch again floated into my nose and surrounded me as he looked at me.

“You feel really hot.  Should I make you something to eat?  You look pale,” he asked me.  Toby was even a caring gentleman.

“No, no, it’s fine.  I just need some air,” I told him as I slowly got up.  Toby helped me and made me sit in his couch.  He opened the window, which let in a cool breeze.  When I looked outside, it was already getting dark.  “How long did we play?” I asked him.

“Only a couple hours but lunch was a bit late,” he replied.  “I’m going to make you some grilled cheese and soup, okay?  I don’t want you to get sick.”  He left my side to head to the kitchen.  He was even making me lunch?  This was unreal.  I laid down on the couch, trying to calm myself down as well as will myself to cool down.  Zombies were nothing too scary and they were easy to deal with; just shoot them in the head or cut off their head from their bodies.  No connection to the brain, a zombie’s body couldn’t do anything.

I hadn’t realized I fell asleep until Toby was shaking me gently.  I opened my eyes slowly and saw Wheatley sitting nearby, his ears laid back.  Once I opened my eyes and sat up, his tail was wagging and he barked once, sounding cheerful.

“Yeah, Wheatley was worried,” Toby said with a chuckle as he placed my food in front of me.  “I made chicken noodle soup so I hope you don’t mind that if you had a preference.”

“No, it’s lovely,” I told him as I gently picked at the sandwich.  We ate in silence aside from Toby occasionally talking to our dogs.  He made sure to feed both of them too, placing out a plate for Wheatley to eat some food.  Wheatley scarfed down the dog food like he normally did as Toby sat down to finish his sandwich.  I was sipping at the broth after having slurped the noodles and eaten the chicken.  It was a delicious dinner and a great one to start with.  “Thank you very much for dinner.”

“Of course.  Should I, uh, give you a lift home?” Toby asked as he got up to put away the dishes.  I nodded again as he came back.

“That would be very nice,” I said as I got up.  He took up Wheatley’s collar, told Griffin he’d be back in a bit and helped me out the door.  When we reached my house, he took my hand again and kissed it before wishing me a good night and thanking me for a great day.