The Summer of 2019

Briar didn't get out of bed nowadays unless she absolutely had to. Since school was done for another three months, she made her sheets into a safe haven. In her bed, she could sleep and pretend that everything was okay. That people around them weren't slowly disappearing, one by one, for reasons no one could understand. She wasn't often pulled out of her bed. There were only two people who really could. One was her mom. If it hadn't been for her, she wouldn't have made it to most of her classes during her first year of college. She would come in and coax her out to eat, to take a walk with her so she could get some fresh air. She couldn't get her to come to tai chi anymore, but she did get her to go through the stuff she learned every now and then when she wasn't having too bad for a day. But that was rare.

The only other person who could do it was Sadie.

Sadie had moved down to Kentucky with her family to be closer to family. Her father was certain that it was the end of the world, that God was coming for them and their sins, and his mother wanted to be near family if that was true. She couldn't complain. She had lost a lot of her friends to this damn thing anyway. It was pure luck that they moved to Kentucky, to an area close to Briar's. She put that to good use and tried to help her friend the best she could, while she cooped in her own ways over what was going on. Scarlet herself drove down a lot. She had started doing that once she got her driver's license, but it was hard to come down with her school and job. It took all she had to not completely drop out of school, and one of the only things stopping her was that her mom and grandma would absolutely kick her out.

That, and that Violet would never want her to drop out. When she came back Scarlet didn't want to give her old friend a reason to be disappointed or at fault. Yes, even after so long and the pessimism in the media, she was still clinging to the idea that her best friend would return the same way she had disappeared; out of thin air. When she came down to visit, she herself couldn't get Briar out of bed, but she could usually provide encouragement and make it easier on Sadie. She wasn't there the day that Sadie came into Briar's bedroom after her mom had informed her she was there and she didn't give a damn enough to drag herself out from her covers. She was waiting for them in their usual coffee shop, a couple blocks away.

"Briar," Sadie said, gently but loudly. Briar sighed and pulled her pillow over her head, refusing to open her eyes. Sadie shook her head. She was expecting that. She crossed to her bed and grabbed the pillow, pulling it off of her and dropping it onto the floor beside her. She'd pick it up once they were done. "Briar, get up," she commanded.

"Why should I," Briar muttered into the pillow. Sadie sighed.

"Because it's time for our weekly coffee outing with Scarlet." She grabbed Briar's arm and yanked her up. Briar made a noise much like a whine but after nearly a year and a half of doing this, it did nothing for Sadie. "Come on. Your mom was nice and picked out an outfit for you." She shoved the blankets off Briar and pulled her out of bed. Briar barely put anything into it, but she didn't immediately plop to the floor like she had done several times before. That was a good sign. "It'll be fun, Briar."

"Nothing is fun anymore," Briar muttered and Sadie could only sigh. She really couldn't argue about that.

The cafe was almost completely empty. There was an old couple in the back, sipping their coffee quietly. The woman working the register looked like she'd rather be dead than be there. Briar knew she looked the same way. But she didn't complain anymore now that she was out, only looking forward to the moment where she could go lie back down in her bedroom. She had peach tea, like usual, and it tasted bland; like usual. Scarlet had gotten raspberry tea herself, while Sadie got herself some coffee. Briar didn't know what type. She hadn't been listening. When Sadie went to their orders, it was quiet between her and Scarlet. That wasn't out of the ordinary. Sadie was really the person who was holding them together. If she hadn't been there when Violet disappeared, Scarlet and Briar would've simply stopped talking to each other. When Sadie did come back, she tried her best to start up a conversation. She talked about school, asked Scarlet about her job, tried to get Briar to talk but soon gave up; it was obvious what she was trying to avoid though. It always was. But like always, they fell onto that subject.

"I looked through my old messages with Violet," Scarlet muttered after sipping her tea. Sadie sighed.

"Why? That just depresses you, you know that." Scarlet shrugged and traced the rim of her cup with her finger.

"I only cried for an hour," she said offhandedly before she pushed on. "After I ran out of messages, I moved to the group chats. And... And I looked at the last photo she sent us."

"We've all looked at that photo a million times," Briar grunted, speaking for the first time since she ordered.

"I know, but I noticed something." Scarlet pulled out her phone and moved to her gallery. After she had pulled up the photo, she placed her phone in the center of the table. Briar made no move to look at the picture, pointedly looking away and bringing her cup to her lips. Sadie, deciding to humor her friend, leaned over and looked down. Her heart panged and she took a slow, deep breath. They knew this picture very well. It was the last message they had ever received from Violet, and it was broadcasted on the TV every day at eleven a.m., five p.m., and ten p.m. Violet was in front of her computer, leaned back into her desk, holding a peace sign up and grinning brightly while her hazel eyes gleamed behind her glasses. "Look behind her," Scarlet's nail tapped against the screen and it zoomed in to what was behind their missing friend's shoulder.

There, behind her, was her desktop monitor. Sadie squinted, then sighed when her eyes began to hurt. "Scarlet, I don't see anything new. It's some launcher for a game."

That was the thing that made Violet's last picture so... Well, chilling. They didn't know what she was doing in her final moments before she just disappeared in thin air. They don't know what had happened to cause her glasses to be left beside her desk, with one lens cracked and the other quickly shattered, to be found by her grandma the in the early morning. They didn't recognize that game launcher, even though they all knew what games they played. Hell, half the time they were playing together.

"I know." Scarlet swipe to the left and the photo was replaced by another one. It was the picture from before, but Scarlet had cropped her out and left only the monitor left. "I found out what game it is." Briar looked at them and furrowed her eyebrows, but didn't make any move to lean forward and see for herself. She sipped her tea. "I sent it to my friend Corey. He's really good at editing pictures. He ran it through his program, sharpened it, and brightened it up." Sadie stared, squinting, as Scarlet zoomed in on a certain spot. Sadie became as still as stone.

Glowing up at her, in white blocky letters, was Minecraft.

She leaned back and stared at the photo, then looked at Briar. "It was Minecraft," she said. Briar blinked at her, then grabbed the phone and pulled it close so she could look at it. She stared down at it before she furrowed her eyebrows.

"But the Minecraft launcher doesn't look like that." She said, setting the phone down.

"I know," Scarlet gushed out. "I think I might've found something."

"Found something?" Sadie asked. "What are you talking about?" Scarlet huffed.

"I think I know what happened to Violet! And to all of those people for that matter!" Briar and Sadie stared at her.

"Don't tell me..." Briar stopped and took a deep breath. "Don't tell me that you're trying to say Violet, and all of these missing people, have gone missing because they played Minecraft." Scarlet's cheeks flushed red but she didn't back down.

"What I'm saying is that they disappeared because they got sucked into Minecraft."

Briar and Sadie stared at her. Suddenly, Briar stood up and pulled out her wallet. She threw down a five dollar bill to cover her tea.

"This was nice, guys. I'm going home," she said, grabbing her cat bag and slinging it over her shoulder. Sadie and Scarlet jumped to their feet.

"You can't, I drove you," Sadie was saying while Scarlet slammed her hand onto the table.

"Don't just brush this off! It makes sense, damnit!" Briar turned and glared at her friend.

"How the hell does that make any sense?!" She hissed. "All of these people, that have been disappearing out of thin air; you're trying to tell me they're disappearing because they've been sucked into Minecraft?!"

"It sure as hell is a lot better than that alien theory!" Scarlet snapped.

"Actually, no, it isn't! Aliens, I can believe! But this?!"

"It makes sense! SetoSorcerer disappeared with the first batch, just like Violet!"

"Seto has disappeared before," Sadie said, trying to stay neutral to this. "He probably went off the grid again to be with family."

"What about Sky?!" Scarlet hissed.

"What about Sky?!" Briar snapped.

"He's gone too! When I went down to Washington to see some family, he was in their broadcast!"

It made sense that they missed some people in their own broadcast. The states only showed pictures of people who had disappeared in their state or in their sister states. That's why Violet's picture burned into their eyes every night. "That doesn't mean he got sucked into Minecraft!" Briar snarled.

"Markiplier disappeared, and Pewdiepie finally did too!" Scarlet hissed. "DanTDM, basically all of TC, Sethbling, even Paul Sores Jr- they've all disappeared and Minecraft was a huge part of their channel, if not all they did!"

"You're grasping at straws!" Briar snarled before she stepped back. "I'm going home! I'll take the damn bus!"

"Briar!"

She didn't listen to Sadie. In her right mind, she'd feel bad. In her right mind, she'd listen to what Scarlet had to say and give it some thought instead of just hurling it back into her face. But she wasn't in her right mind. She hadn't been since she woke up one day and found that her girlfriend had disappeared into thin air, and a large population of the world was beginning to follow. Every day she went about, hoping she'd follow after them or worrying that her mom or anyone in her family would go next. Every time she saw Violet's picture on that broadcast, another piece of her died.

As she stormed down the sidewalk, it began to rain and it just fit in. As she walked, it struck five, and on an electric board installed to a large building on the block she was on, the five o'clock daily broadcast began. Briar gritted her teeth and grabbed at her head as the newscaster, a middle-aged man this time, went through the same spill the woman from last night did. She broke into a run, sprinting through the rain, covering her ears as tears began to stream down her cheeks. She ran like a criminal being hunted by the police. She ran like a rabbit being chased by a fox. She ran and ran, all the way back home, moving by pure instinct, and tried to run from the hell that had turned into her life.