Real? by C. S., North Adams, MA
I knew the people there weren't real, don't think I didn't. When they were all looking the other way, I checked my hypothesis. They were really just pieces of cardboard, painted on one side. Nothing much, really. I knew that the trees and mountains were only props on a stage. The people there couldn't watch me all the time, although they tried, and I managed to discover things like this. In fact, that's how I found out the cars didn't really move. One day, I decided to roll down the window, just to feel the breeze, but there was no wind. It was really just a canvas that rolled by the windows. I reached my hand out to feel the painting, but it was still wet, and my fingertips left green streaks across the sky where there once had been leaves. I smudged the shingles off the rooftops of the houses rolling by, I smeared the doorknobs off the doors. Soon the whole painted world was a great, confusing mass of colors. There were no identifiable shapes, no definite edges, simply a blur where reality had once stood, until I defied it.
Now, of course, the two-dimensional people were angry with me for ruining their "homeland," and they came after me. Now that I knew the truth, I no longer feared them, so with one deep breath, I blew them all away into the wind. And because the paint was still wet, they stuck to the smudged scenery, no longer controlling me like before.
So this is how I came to live in that messed-up, paint and plaster world for a time. I tried to play along, pretend things were the way they should be, but you know what? I honestly have to say that after I found out that the sky stopped about 30 feet off the ground at a blue ceiling, and the moon was only a light bulb, life was even duller than it had been before: no mysteries, no excitement, just existence. Of course, that was all a long time ago, and I'm in the real world now. Let me tell you, it's wonderful to be back in a world of (basically) three-dimensional people, where you can roll down the window and feel a breeze, and the trees (thankfully) don't smudge. I doubt I'll ever find myself back there again, but even so, I often find myself checking to make sure that what I'm seeing is real. I don't know why though, because I'm not sure what I'd do if I found out it wasn't. I probably would play along, rather than destroy it, like last time. Believing in something that doesn't exist is better than not believing in anything at all.