[07A] - Explorers

We stared at the cards nailed to the wall with colored thumbtacks for a few minutes. We were on the first official visit to my museum of horrors. We admire that work that is unable to understand or decipher. We stopped for popcorn and faced again. Sometimes it distracted me and caught me admiring my madness. I could touch it and smell it, I didn't care where it came from, or if it was just an HD-4D projection of my mind. I was amazed that my mind was able to convey something so realistic.

After four hours we gave up, we lay on the floor of the outside area facing the illuminated sky. The full moon shone over the ocean and a few stars appeared.

"I think the puzzles are over, maybe we are not supposed to find an answer." I turned on my stomach looking at Hayden who was playing with shuffling the cards.

"Or are we missing something ..." Hayden stared at each of the letters as if searching for the smallest letters within the words.

- What are we missing ...?

Hayden looked at me without reply and shrugged, continuing to shuffle.

The night got colder and we decided to sleep. I didn't have to show where everything was, he was already at home.

I lay in bed mentally tired from that day, it was a lot to assimilate. I stared at the ceiling for a while, letting thoughts flow, but before I could go too far I blacked out. I dreamed of Hayden, a dream without words, I just saw his face smiling at me on a black sand beach. The feeling that was taking me was wonderful, difficult to describe.

I woke up like the day before, and all the previous ones, thinking that everything was a dream, and when I opened my eyes everything would be normal. Like every morning I got frustrated.

I remembered Hayden and jumped out of bed in fear that it was all a dream. I ran to his room and opened the door carefully, praying that he was still there.

When I finally managed to spy on the bed, it was well lined and the room untouched as it was when I arrived in that house. Was a real Hayden just a dream? Was it a lie in my mind?

- No.

The touch on my shoulder made me jump with a start. The scream caught in my throat. I looked at Hayden with relief, he was still real.

With a smile on his face, he held out a glass of juice to me. I took a sip hoping he would say something that was clearly on the tip of his tongue.

- I don't think we're looking for the answers in the right place. You found clues when you went to my house, but you only saw me when you went to the house next door. What if we looked there?

I looked at him still drinking the juice. That seemed like a good theory. I hadn't explored the houses in that neighborhood much, after finding the one I liked, I stayed there.

- We can try ... - he said wiping his mouth with the napkin he handed me.

- / -

We left the house and went to the neighbor. I remembered my expectation when I entered there the day before.

"You're thinking a lot," Hayden said, pulling me inside.

I looked at him puzzled, could he read my mind? He was part of it then ...

- Sometimes. When you're nervous or scared, I usually can't. It used to be easier to understand your thoughts when I was alone in your mind.

- I can't accept how real you are.

- I am as real as you want - your voice then subtly changed, a change that in the next second I could no longer say what it was.

He then left me behind and started looking for the top floor.

The day before, I was so ecstatic that someone else was there that I hadn't noticed anything. Looking around me, I felt a chill in my belly. Hayden had not lived there, but the house seemed to be an upgrade from his previous home, the same style, a choice of more modern and expensive furniture, but with details that screamed his name. The vinyls are neat and tidy without the record player nearby, the sneakers next to the door lined up. Every part of that house was chosen for his personality.

The more we looked, the stranger it got. We found a photo album where he was always alone in different parts of the world, always dressed like a backpacker in silly poses.

There were a passport and some documents. The clothes smelled like him. Hayden had a varied literary taste and a keen palate. The cookbooks on the kitchen shelf were full of markings and notes. Next to the pool, a towel rested on the sun lounger and sunglasses were on it. It seemed out of place, but at the same time, it was the organization Hayden would do.

I felt my cell phone vibrate in my pocket.

I looked at the new notification from my only friend. The other Hayden had posted a new photo.

"Him again." I threw the phone at him, tired of the other Hayden.

He grabbed his phone in the air and looked at the photo. The shock in his eyes made me curious. I approached, leaning over him. I took the device back without believing what my eyes were seeing.

Hayden and I on a black sand beach with two other people in the background were too distant and blurry to recognize.

- Like? It was a dream? How did he set this up?

Doubt emanated from Hayden's body to mine, creating an aura of panic. Nor did he believe it. I went down to look at the photo caption. "Warm".

"I think we're on the right track," Hayden commented.

A message then appeared at the top of the screen.

Hayden: I told you to forget. You fucked up ...

Me: What did I do?

Hayden: ...

Hayden is offline

Would this ever end? Would I go back to the chaotic world full of people? Did I really want to go back to the real world? To the old and boring world full of repetition and monotony? I had gone crazy, I was able to project such a real human being to the point of touching him, why would I want to change that? Perhaps I could continue as I was, I was not prepared for a new stage in this journey. All I wanted to do was take advantage of Hayden around, that I could feel his warmth ...

- Don't even think about it - Hayden said sitting down and opening all the other cards before I could intervene - You need to finish this. As excruciating as it may be, I will not meet your need for human interaction. Don't you realize that it is special? Why of all the people in the world were you the only one forgotten?

- Special? I don't think I wanted to be that kind of special ...

- Enough! - Hayden said irritably - You are regretting, doubting your every thought. We will discover the root of it all and you will see that there is a reason for everything. You can be pretty boring, you know?

- You are very annoying! You keep telling me what to do, you are part of me, not the other way around.

- Exactly! If I want to do this, then deep down you do, because I am you, I know that even you can't take any more of them with regrets and doubts.

I looked at him scared, I didn't expect him to shake me and throw truths in my face. But I was really doing it, self-sabotaging myself. If I wanted to get out of there, I needed to be more proactive.

- Let's look in the last room - he ordered turning his back on me and went ahead.

The last room was where all the junk was kept. Old-fashioned lamps, some cracks in the corners, boxes with old papers, some books ... We opened one box at a time inspecting every sheet of paper, every piece of the broken object, and every pocket of old clothes.

It was not necessary to go through all the boxes to get to that photo, the same one that the other Hayden had posted a few minutes before. I held the photograph feeling a kind of nostalgia that I never felt before. How was it possible? What kind of photoshop genius could foresee an image I would dream of? I hadn't noticed, but even the small details were included. The mole Hayden had on his jaw, the leather bracelet he wore. The flaw that I had in the corner of my eyebrow that was almost imperceptible and the ring with the small emerald that I wore on the ring.

I felt a tightness in my chest. It was strange to look at that photo. I turned the image around trying to understand. Written in beautiful calligraphy was our new clue. Hayden approached me and read aloud:

- "Our beaches no longer exist,

a sea of ​​sand is what remains.

Some gods ask for sacrifices,

I ask for a thought.

21 ° 49'20.6 "N

50 ° 03'57.6 "E

-THE"

- Coordinates! - Hayden and I screamed in one sound.

For the first time, a clue was clear. An exact location. Regarding all the metaphorical bullshit, we had a certain destination for the first time.

- Where do we have to go?

- I don't know - I took the phone out of my pocket, playing the coordinates on Google.

We look at the point in the middle of the desert. There were no roads, Google Maps itself did not know how to get there. I averaged the map and calculated that it would be about 600 kilometers of the pure desert if we were in a straight line.

Why not choose a cool place full of buildings and security. Why launch me into the desert? Hadn't the sea been enough already? I didn't die adrift at sea, would I die wandering in the desert?

"We have to take a chance," Hayden said, trying to gather all the certainty he had (not that he had much).