Atlas couldn't believe it.

He couldn’t believe this was actually happening. He didn't want to believe any one of his senses currently firing off warnings to his brain.

While he knew it was just a movie trope, surely once he had pinched himself hard enough, the dreamscape would disappear around him. That's what he expected anyway. That’s what he truly hoped for.

Harper led him to the back of the bus where her regularly used seat resided. Taking her seat, she made a motion by patting the seat next to her, calling Atlas over to sit down. Atlas almost missed the signal; his mind was occupied with how nasty the interior of the bus was. If he weren’t supposedly dead at that moment, he probably would have felt sick.

He carefully took a seat next to Harper, although it was a seat further away than she had indicated. He didn't feel terribly safe next to her anymore. He felt like he had a vibrating symphony of strings in his brain. Nothing felt stable and everything was askew. It was almost as if he could feel his feet drifting through the floor. He took a deep breath to try and regain some sort of mental stillness. He had to get some answers before it drove him mad.

"Look, Harper, this is ridiculous. None of this is real, right?"

Harper hummed a familiar tune quietly, Atlas knew it well, but he didn’t care for her recreation of it.

"The land of the living no longer accepts you, my friend."

Atlas only raised an eyebrow at her strangely prophetical statement. Something about the situation he was in seemed so real, yet so simulated at the same time. He noted the obvious change in gravity when he walked, the way he phased through Harper and most things around him. Everything was screaming 'virtual reality’, yet he wondered how that was so. Virtual reality machines weren't this advanced as far as he was aware.

And it certainly didn't explain the sudden and scary changes associated with Harper and her personality. It made him sick thinking about it. Not that anything that happened to her was of his concern, but the fact that he was stuck with someone who wasn't mentally sound was just enough to set his nerves ablaze.

"Where...is this bus going, Harper? The graveyard? The end of the world? Is this guy part of your plan as well? Did you partner with a deranged murderer?"

He motioned towards the bus driver at the front, although he highly doubted his inclusion in such a detailed scheme. Harper hissed at him in a hushed tone, not appreciating his slightly morbid joke.

"Shh, stop being a little baby and sit still. You’re not a detective so stop trying to solve things."

Atlas scoffed lightly at her comment, and she only continued upon hearing his disapproval.

"Oh, sorry, you're more like a clown. All silly and wobbly, you can’t even stand on a stage in front of people without making a fool of yourself. Bleh. All clowns should die. The world would be a happier place."

Atlas stared at the girl, awestruck at her pessimism and her frankly horrid and inhumane comment. Something of note swept through his mind suddenly, he figured it would be safe to bring it up now that she seemed a bit calmer compared to before.

"I'm a performer, but not that kind. If anything, you're the clown here. You're leaving your traces all over the place. The house and this bus? How on earth do you expect to get away with murder like that when there’s so much evidence against you?"

There was a short pause from the girl as the bus stopped at their destination. She didn't give him any verbal answer immediately, not even a glare. Until she carefully pried a small match from the centre of the ponytail on her head. Atlas squinted in the dark to identify it, he wasn’t expecting such a random item to be stored there. Before he could comment on it, she quickly swiped it against the wall of the bus. It lit up in an instant. Atlas jumped at the sudden light and held his hands out to defend himself instinctively.

"No traces left behind…"

Harper stood up and left her seat, throwing the match onto it as she headed towards the front of the bus. Atlas panicked and swiped his hands at the flame, only to find that he couldn't do anything about it. He was suddenly pulled forward by the string link between them and he came stumbling down the aisle, like a dazed groom in a wedding hall. He kept his attention on the flaming seat, watching the fire spread ever so slowly. Reaching the front of the bus, he met eye to eye with the pitiful driver.

"Hey uh…your bus is on fire, sir."

Atlas concluded that the driver didn’t notice his comment, because he lit up a cigarette as Harper passed by. He probably thought the chalky smell was due to his cravings rising, little did he know it was actually the destruction of his property. Before Atlas could even try to make contact again, his string leash was pulled on once again and he fell out of the bus backward, landing flat on his back, facing the night sky above the both of them. Harper chuckled at the comedic timing of it.

To any onlookers on the street, it would have seemed unusual to see her laugh at nothing in particular, and she knew this as she had taken out her phone. She held it up to her ear as if she were on a phone call with someone, a much more normal and commonplace situation.

"Get up, idiot. Or I'll drag you along the ground and scrape the skin off your back."

She smiled at the open air, not even acknowledging Atlas who was staring up at her in awe. He still couldn't believe how drastically her attitude had changed. She had never been this cruel to him or anyone he knew of before.

Harper waved to the bus as it departed down the street again. The large clock on the building next to them displayed the time: 7 P.M. The presentation ceremony was scheduled to start at 8 P.M, and as far as Atlas could recall, his speech was scheduled for half an hour later. Harper smiled and checked her phone again for something, giving Atlas some time to gather his thoughts on his predicament.

He sat himself up to look down the street. They had arrived at the inner city which made him suddenly realise how quick the bus ride had been. He reasoned that his house was relatively close to the city anyway. However, the bus driver must have broken a few traffic laws to get here that fast.

The tall, grey city lights lined up and down the street lit up the scene, as bright as stars themselves. Urbanistic and dazzling, they lit the way for the late-night shoppers who were weaving in and out of stores down the street.

At the end of the strip was the local theatre, standing tall and proud, walls painted black and the decorative lights white and stunning. He always loved that building; many of his best performances had been held there over the many years of his career. Yet somehow, there was a vastly different aura surrounding it tonight.

His thoughts flicked back to the situation of Harper taking his place as the top student and being nominated as the presentation speaker for tonight. Something didn't add up in his mind.

"Hey Harper, you're not actually taking my place, are you? For the speech tonight? I mean, I get that's why we're here, but you've never done this speech before. It's been my job for three years in a row."

Harper completely ignored Atlas, disinterested in his question, and she continued walking. Atlas felt the string on his wrist tighten and he quickly jumped to his feet to jog after her.

“Hey, are you listening to me? I think you owe me a bit of respect for what you’ve done to me. Or supposedly did to me.”

He was still uncertain if everything was real at the moment, but he was going to treat it as if it were all a simulation. After all, he was only tagging along with her to see what would happen. That and the literal ethereal tie between them now.

Unfortunately, Harper yet again didn’t respond to him, at least not verbally. She looked down at her phone screen as she walked and opened the messaging app. She typed out a message to Atlas and sent it.

Be quiet, I don’t want to hear you talk again. It’s bad enough having you around. Your words mean nothing to me.

Atlas felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and instantly took it out. She really did just switch forms of communication to outright ignore him. Not that Atlas hadn’t been her main concern for a while now, but she was wholly more interested in the store she had stopped in front of for the moment. With a graceful twirl, she made her way into the small clothes booth, a studio for crafting professional handmade dresses. The exterior of the building was coated with pink and purple paints and the door frame was adorned with small yellow fairy lights. It looked like a place where one would find a group of fairies dwelling inside. It was a location that Harper had visited many times during her performance career, and this was obvious once the store attendant caught sight of her walking in.

The short, middle-aged lady beamed a kind smile upon seeing the old glass doors swing open, the chime of the doorbell being the main trigger. Her short, curled hair was a bright blonde and she seemed to be fairly well dressed, donning a red velvet swing dress. A pair of purple framed glasses sat on her long nose, she pushed them up to take a better look at Harper.

“Harper my dear! How are you darling? Oh, it’s been so long since you’ve visited the store!”

Harper returned the woman’s smile with her own, her attitude completely flipped compared to a minute ago.

“Mrs. Suzanne, I’m absolutely grand, how about yourself? I see you had the place renovated. It looks stunning.”

Suzanne huffed an exhausted breath of air in response and rested her chin in her hands, elbows leaning on the front counter.

“It was a big job, but yes, it’s finally done. I feel like the atmosphere is cheerful again thanks to the new paint and all.”

She clapped her hands together, the several rings on her fingers clinking together with a pleasant chime. Harper blinked, keeping back her shock at the sharp sound.

“Anyway, I know exactly why you’re here, so I won’t keep you waiting any longer. Come come.”

She hurried out from behind the front counter and marched to the back of the store where a cupboard of steam-cleaned items hung from the rail. She sifted through the bunch before picking out a particular dress. After checking the tag on the plastic cover, she turned to Harper with an even larger grin.

“Now, I saw your email about it being a rental and all that but don’t worry, I made sure all the adjustments are there. It’s ready for you to try on now if you’d like. Oh goodness, what’s the time anyway?”

Harper looked down at her phone screen to check the time, even though she already knew.

“Ten past seven, miss. The ceremony starts at eight, so I should probably get ready now.”

Suzanne waved a dismissive hand at Harper, a chuckle in her voice.

“No need to rush, you just get changed in here and I’ll help you with all the fiddly stuff, okay?”

She handed the dress on its hanger to Harper and opened one of the changing rooms with a key on her lanyard.

"Thank you, Mrs. Suzanne, I won't take up too much more of your time."

Harper skipped into the small box-like room with the rental dress in hand. Thankfully for Atlas, once the door was shut, the string connecting them phased through the solid material, meaning he didn't have to stay in the same room as her at least. He breathed a sigh of relief.

Looking down at the string, he wondered if he had any power over Harper's movement, much like she did with him. He gave it a few hopeful tugs, but nothing seemed to be happening on the other side. Maybe he could try it harder once they were out of the store. Noting this, he sat down on a small wooden stool in front of the changing room as he waited for Harper. He still couldn't believe she had the guts to take over his position like this. It only made it more confusing to him when he realised that she must have convinced a lot of people about his sudden leaving for this plan to have worked.

His brain was hurting at the thought of the complex plan. He quickly pulled himself back into reality after he realised that nothing that he’d seen that night was confirmed to be real at all, and he had to be optimistic. After all, there were plenty of ways to exit a virtual reality.

He still had many doubts, despite what his senses told him.

Twenty dreadful minutes passed in his time of thinking before Harper finally emerged from the battle with the dress. Atlas felt no sympathy for her incompetence in dressing herself in a timely manner. In fact, it had made him laugh a few times, hearing her struggle in the dressing room. He was glad that he knew how to dress himself without causing such a scene.

"Mrs. Suzanne, I'm done!" Harper called out across the store.

Suzanne quickly came jogging over, her tinny jewellery sounding out her arrival. She quickly took a seat on the stool that Atlas was on, and he quickly leaped up to avoid being sat on, scrambling onto the ground. He simply phased through her anyway.

"Oh dearie, you look simply marvellous! Oh, I knew the dress would suit you!"

Atlas hadn't had the care to inspect the dress up until now, but he decided to look now that it was on her. He didn't know much about dresses, but it was long, shiny, and gold in colour. It was probably made of silk judging by the way it shimmered. The top of the dress cut off at her shoulders and the sleeves sat just above her elbows with a woven wavy pattern at the end. The back of the dress was home to three beautifully long flower-patterned lace ribbons and the bottom of the dress was adorned with the same lace pattern. 

"I really like it! Thanks!" Harper exclaimed with a smile as bright as the dress itself.