[ WP ] Whenever the protagonist blinks , they are sent into an alternate reality .

By the time I was old enough to understand what was happening to me, I had resigned myself to living out multiple temporary lives until I eventually expired some place and some time equally foreign to all other places and times I have known. It would be lonely but if that's what I had to be, there was no point in fighting it. 
 
 She was the exception to my existence. 
 
 A girl reading from a tablet, somewhere European, after 2010 but before 2200, a coffeeshop. Rose was in my gaze from the moment I opened my eyes, and for the the first time ever, I felt myself resisting the blink. 
 
 Living without consequences and the guarantee of escape has allowed me to live boldly, fearlessly. So the knot in my stomach was new, terrifyingly strange. I forced myself to talk to her. I could tell from her initial half-smile that she was confused by this boy-stranger, who spoke with confident words but a waiver in his voice and would close his eyes one at a time. But after a few minutes of polite conversation, a wise observation about the new book she was reading ( little did she know I once dined with the author for about one minute ), Rose seemed open with me and even liked me. 
 
 We stayed like this, in the coffeeshop. We had lingered long past our welcome and after hours of making Rose laugh and helplessly cough into her hot coffee, I offered to take her somewhere else. She blushed and agreed, chuckling when I confessed that I was new to the area and actually did n't know any pleasant places to take girls. 
 
 She showed me the city. Her favorite spots to people-watch, her favorite areas to hide, the bridge where she always dreamed of having a romantic-comedy final-act kiss. Of course, I could n't resist, and that's where we first locked lips. 
 
 Mistake. 
 
 Taken by the moment and arrested by her soft, cherry mouth against me, I felt my eyes flutter and close. The moment of bliss was interrupted by a sharp strike of terror unlike anything I had ever felt before. My eyes. Escape was guaranteed and it was the last thing I wanted. 
 
 I kept my eyes clenched for what felt like an eternity after her lips lifted, and the black silence clutched my heart in a vice. 
 
 Then, Rose's warm laugh rang out in the darkness, followed by a pause. `` Um... Are you okay?'' 
 
 With my eyelids still closed so tight I could hear blood rumbling in my ears, I reached out to Rose and pulled her towards me. I felt her tense up against my chest. Only after she relaxed into me and buried her face into my shoulder, I could tell she knew something was very wrong.
