Chapter Text
Grian never did like his life they much. His dad kept leaving for the milk, his mom was an alcoholic, and he didn't even have to talk about high school.
So he wasn't that impressed when they moved to the pink palace apartments.
Wow, new place, why was it so excessively pink? At least Sam wasn't here.
It was a dinged-up old place with a lot of weird neighbors and the guy next door gave Grian a doll that looked exactly like him.
And that was just weird. Because Grian is a boy and he doesn't play with dolls, thank you very much. That's a girl thing.
The only thing interesting was the dreams. Every night, Grian dreamt of crawling through the tiny door in front of the bricked-up wall and ending up in another world.
In that world lived Grian's other family and other neighbors and literally everything there was so much more interesting. Circuses with jumping mice? A garden full of towering creative buildings? Yes!
Too bad Grian kept waking up again. That was the bad thing about dreams. They were never real.
Sometimes Grian wondered why his dream didn't have an other him in it, but he decided that rationalizing dreams was weird. They were just dreams. They weren't supposed to make much sense.
So Grian wasn't that bothered when his other mother asked if she could see buttons onto his eyes. Of course he agreed. It was just a dream. Avoiding the plot and stuff would just make things boring.
So she took out some needle and thread and started sewing the buttons in. Grian didn't feel a thing. Which made sense, because this was just a dream. But a part of him still subconsciously expected to actually get hurt.
And then the last thread was stitched in place and everything fell apart.
His other mother turned into some kind of creepy spider thing and started tearing his flesh apart. And it actually hurt.
Grian tried to run but a mechanical clawed hand ripped his chest open and pulled out...
Grian.
He was suddenly some sort of incorporeal glowing ghost thing that the other mother dragged to a mirror and threw through. The mirror didn't shatter and neither did Grian. He ended up floating to the floor where he met three other children who looked just like him, button eyes and all.
They told him the truth of this world but Grian refused to listen. He curled up by himself in the corner of the room trying to close his eyes, but they were buttons now. He couldn't even blink.
He kept waiting for the dream to end, for Grian to wake up. Because it was a nightmare now and Grian just wanted out.
Dreams had to end sometime. That was just how they worked.
But maybe this wasn't a dream.