Inverse by Mikey Luke Mitchell (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

metal circular plates around my temples, wondering, what if it wasn’t a dream, what if my connecting to the headset still let me receive messages whilst in proper sleep. I dismissed these quickly, my character was still rejuvenating, which meant the headset was switched off, it couldn’t have been. It was nothing more but my thoughts of Brett manifesting themselves into a nightmare.

I plucked up the courage to get my groggy self to open the curtains, as I shied away I noticed my mum standing in the framing of my door.
“Hey honey, When you come back from school I will be gone, sorry I’m going to miss your birthday.” She walked over and gave me a tight hug.
“It’s okay mum.” My mum makes a big deal out of family stuff, I on the other hand wasn’t that bothered she was missing my birthday, it sounds much cooler to have a free-house on your birthday than having your mother planning people to come over.
“Your dad already left for work, he didn’t want to wake you but he says bye. I left you some money to get food, I’ll ring you tomorrow to let you know where your presents are, don’t go snooping.”
“I wont I promise.” Yeah right. I hate not knowing anything, first thing I’m going to do is snoop although I was sure I wont find it, my mum is really good at hiding things.
“And please, for goodness sake, don’t play on that game for long, it’ll be the end of you that thing.”
“You know you should try it one day, I bet you will be hooked.”
“Exactly why I don’t want to play it, you get hooked to things that are bad for you, like drugs.”
“That’s a bad analogy.” I
“You know what I mean, that game is still new, I bet they will find out some long term effects of some kind. Before 1950‘s they thought cigarette's wasn’t bad for you and look at them now, cancer sticks they call them.” Did they really think that? I mean come on, it’s smoke people must’ve been that stupid. I brushed off my mums doubt in my mind.
“Oh well, have a good time!” I said, patting her on the shoulder then proceeding to get my towel from the chest of drawers.
“Have good time and a pat on the shoulders, thanks Will. I’m your mother not some, frat thingy-bobby. Give me a proper a hug.” She smiled and gave me a tight hug, again. “Have a good birthday.”

After a shower I checked my screen and seen that Ray and Randeep were logged in, I was going to log in myself but I didn’t see the point in spending only twenty minutes. Instead I put on some morning TV show going through news updates, the first time I watched the news in a while, there wasn’t much to going on in local Ohio, I was going to switch to national american news but with the house alone and quiet I was starting to feel a little homesick. I miss the busy roads of Birmingham, the heaving city centre, the sounds Birmingham’s famous bullring market, the merging shouts of the market owners claiming to have cheaper fruit and veg, and the customers shouting back their requests so they could be heard above the noise. I turned on BBC24 to watch what Britain had become, I had grew up in a Britain were the worse that could happen was snow, any bit snow meant national shut down and Labour were just another political party to moan about, but in the past five years, Britain had become much more of a civil war zone. Within three minutes of watching, my TV was bombarded with red breaking news banners followed by pictures of bombed and vandalized churches. The breaking news banner was describing a mosque planted with a bomb killing twenty four people. The reporter went on to talk about the incident of a eight year old christian girl that was beaten by a group of muslim extremists, right before election time five years ago, which sparked the nation to choose the neo-nazi racists, BFP political party. Ever since, not a day goes past where hate-crime hasn’t gone on somewhere. I decided not to depress myself with such things, I was glad I was living in america, but at the same time I did miss England but before I switched it off the reporter said something.
“Sebastian Ivanivichko the new head of a terrorist group based in Britain from a bigger band of pro-christianity extremists. His name is sparking up some hype with the police but no plans have been found, theres no picture of him not even a record, is this even a real person the public argue.” She turns towards her co-host. “It’s true how can we find or look out for a man who has more evidence of his non-existence.” The two carried on arguing in a normal reporter banter, but I swear I have seen that name before, suddenly I could feel my brain try to put a face to it but it was useless, it’s like having something on the tip of your tongue but you know you wont be able to get it. I assumed that I must of heard the name on the news before.

I prepared my special breakfast and got a knock on the door, which means it was Ray ready to give me a ride to school.
“What is that?” Ray said as he looked at my gooey treat on my plate.
“Blueberry poptarts with frosting paste on it.”
“Hells yeah! I’m surprised your not bouncing off the walls though.” I grabbed my satchel, wrapped my oozing poptart in kitchen roll and headed towards his joyrider car, it was red with flame patterns on the side and custom sound system, completely joyrider indeed.
“Man, theres no way your going into my car with that dripping mess your eating.”
“Your kidding me right.”
“Nope, finish it.” I scoffed three bites and started to feel sick, something as sweet as this needed to be eaten slowly, Ray smiled at me eyeing up the poptart, he could see I was struggling. I rolled my eyes and passed it to him.
“Thanks!” He said grabbing it from and heading towards his car with it in hand.
“Seriously Ray?”
“My car, my rules, now get in were going to be late.”
He speeded down the country-like roads putting the music on full blast. The subwoofer literally shook my chair at each beat, which suddenly stopped.
“I wanted to talk, it’s about you in the game.”
“Uh huh?”
“I’m worried about you Will.”
“You talking about me and Brett?”
“Yeah, Will, Brett told me about the time on the ship as well, when you broke his arm, I’m worried that you can’t control your character, I mean isn’t that like a major warning in the handbook, have you been sleeping?”

I know he was being a friend and all, but I felt like I was being grilled. I was suddenly angry that Brett and Ray had talked about me behind my back. If it was any one else, I wouldn’t give a shit.
“Yes I have been sleeping, and yeah I have reported it there’s actually nothing I can pin it down to and I’m guessing Brett didn’t tell you, he has also been having the same problem.” I failed to leave behind the anger.
“I’m not trying to get on your back about this Will, I am generally worried about you, we all are.”
“We all are? So what, Brett comes out as the good guy. Hasn’t anyone noticed what he’s been like the past month or so, leaving us, ignoring us and then talking to use like nothings happened.”
“Brett hasn’t come out as anything, I personally don’t care that much for him anyway. You on the other hand is the only person I can actually stand to be around. If I was gay I’d totally be into you.” He said laughing.
“That’s not cool.” I laughed back.
“Homophobe… anyway, back on the track, I noticed that email you sent to Amy Waddle, you haven’t told us about that Will.” That came out of nowhere.
“Amy Waddell, pronounced Wa-dell and you were all logged out slash sleeping, I weren’t going to wake you lot up for it.”
“You didn’t even post it on the Guild Wall.” I then wondered to myself why I didn’t bother to post it, I always did.
“It’s not mean’t to be a secret was it? Giving Amy permission to enter our island.”
“Ray, no, not at all.” Now I was being grilled. I gave Ray a look that said. What the hell dude.
“Well I don’t know, you might have had some kind of weird plan.”
“It was meant to be a secret, I’m setting you up.” I let that sink in and Ray did a double take.
“Seriously?” He smiled wide-eyed at me.
“No. Dude you don’t even know what she looks like.”
“I don’t care I would cyber sex a pig right now.” nice. Funny thing is, you could probably get that arranged.


We got to school just in time for the bell, which mean’t not enough time to talk to my friends before hand.


I ran to my two-hour psychology class and managed to nicely blend in with the queue that was still walking into the class room. I took my seat towards the back and got out my books. I wasn’t friends with many in my class but I sat next to, a really sweet girl, but she was ugly. As much as I tried not to think like that, you couldn’t help it. Buck teeth, glasses that magnified her eyes like some deranged crazy person and spots. She held her head high, literally, her chin was at a thirty degree angle and she would give you the side eye when she spoke to you.

The teacher went on to describe the discovery of digital conscious communication, of course most of us already knew. It was actually by mistake, an experiment was taken to see if the participants dreams could be affected by digital messages, during one of the early stages of sleep the psychologist’s computer started to malfunction, but actually it was the participant controlling it. After a brief overview of the study we all sat in silence writing an evaluation of it. I zoned out half way through thinking about my birthday tomorrow and I started to feel a little more excited about it, but there was still no plans. A gathering perhaps? I would be nicer to spend socializing time out of the game for once… or maybe I could set up a party in… No Will. Stop. Borderline pathetic.

Miss Franklin went onto to talk more, but her words seem to drone into an ambient background noise. I felt no need to listen anymore I was acing psychology, it was only till Miss Franklin stopped talking that I really noticed the therapeutic sound of scratching, I looked down to my notepad and seen deep black marks from my biro, I had bits of black dust like paper shavings scattered around my notepad, I had really dug into it with my biro causing at least four or five pages to be ruined. I brushed off the shavings receiving a disgusted sound from my ugly partner whilst she gave me a threatening side eye chinned up side eye.
“Thirty-three?” She said to me confused and intrigued.
“What?” I said looking deeper into her crazy person eyes… I think she