OSN SHORT STORY #RealLife30

By Hilde Kate Lysiak

As I sat starring into my phone a little voice inside my head told me I should probably get up. There was a lot of blood, the voice told me, and somebody needed to clean it.

Then I decided against it. I knew I had a lot of things to do but it was kind of hard to think of a world outside of the screen on my phone. Outside of this screen.

I like to fantasize that nothing I did existed outside of this screen.

See, inside the screen everything was perfect. Everything had a purpose and was exact.

Inside the screen there was RealLife30.

Inside the borders and through the glass of my screen I had a whole existence inside of RealLife30 where I could control anything.

Real life was blurry.

Reallife30 was clean.

I worked as an accountant. My life was numbers.

But that was before my vacation.

I had saved up all my vacation days, but instead of going anywhere I decided to stay home. That was not my intention at first.

But my intentions rarely work out.

I was going to go on a road trip to California. I had never seen the big trees. It was something I had always wanted to do.

I had saved up a lot of money. But as the days went by I kept putting it off. 
I was not at all upset that I spent to weeks of my life in RealLife30.

When I got back everything became blurry. All I could think about was getting back. Nothing else seemed to matter. 

But when I looked deeper, I saw nothing. Just a blank screen. So I plugged it in and waited. Fifteen minutes later I tried again.

Still.

Nothing. 

As I stared at the blank screen I began to feel terrible. I started to panic.

I tried one last time to turn on the phone but nothing happened. I started to cry.

Then I stopped. I saw the screen suddenly light up with the bright white. Everything was okay now. 

You might think I’m unhealthy. I understand that. But you just don’t understand RealLife30.

It was not affecting anything in my life that mattered to me but that didn’t matter. It just came to me suddenly that I didn’t need my phone anymore. 

So suddenly.

Now my life has been simpler. Everything makes sense. I’m back in control. And that little voice inside my head has finally been silenced. And I no longer worry about all the blood.

I mean, why would I? To think that enlightenment came in understanding that my life was just a game.

This is my new world. And I’m better now.

And I owe it all to RealLife30