Reality Bender
One
Magic exists in the world but it's too dangerous to thrive. Any time somebody learns to tap into it they don't last more than a few hours. If you have the capacity to tap into it then you realize it young as a child and never make it to adulthood.
The problem is that it is completely wild. It's like an intrusive thought on a feedback loop. Like an instinct. Reality bends for it with no effort at all, so even the simplest thoughts become dangerous. It's hard to say that anyone actually uses magic, use it and you become the vehicle for it. Like a compulsion or a trance, as you start to bend reality it bends you too, and your ending becomes an inevitability over the course of minutes or hours.
A group of men breaks into a house and a young child is terrified. Her world is ending, so the world begins to twist. The neighborhood is no longer part of the rest of reality. She feels cut off and isolated and in that instant so is everyone else nearby. This keeps it localized to just the neighborhood. She sees the currents of magic flowing through the universe like it is an infinite ocean. With a vessel to flow through, they naturally will do so. She effectively dies in that moment as the concept of a person and becomes just a vessel for everything to bend. It's a deep compulsion, a waking hallucination, the deepest intrusive thought.
She wants them out of her house, so they suddenly are. The robbers don't even understand why they are outside or what they were doing now. They see the streets are full of other kids, and the adults are suddenly nowhere to be found. She wanted her friends around instead of them. Everyone is playing and they don't know why, nor do they think about it. They always have been playing outside. The flow of magic by now is inevitable and not a conscious choice as this girl's reality becomes an expression of emotion and simple thoughts. They wander in a daze and know something is wrong but can't articulate what. The moon is out and the sky is dark but it's light outside. This dream of a space gets stranger and weirder until anyone who was there is so fundamentally separated from our reality that they are in a dream, her dream. The rest of the world ticks by without noticing a neighborhood is gone. It never existed and anyone in it never did either.
The group of men is down to just one robber. He was predisposed to use magic too, but never encountered it. He doesn't know why everyone is acting so strangely, and doesn't know where all their parents are. He knows the world is ending but doesn't understand why. He wanders out of the neighborhood and feels he is a deeply horrible person but can't remember why. As he looks back, there is just a wooded area. There was never a neighborhood here.
Two
A group of high school students go to a movie theater. They buy tickets and enter a space that is already twisting in on itself. They go through the door and are suddenly in their seats watching the movie. They have concessions but don't remember standing in line to buy them. They didnt have money for them anyway.
Somewhere else in the theater, a young child has realized magic exists and reality is already bending. The movie they're watching is unfamiliar to them, but it's what they've always wanted to watch. It's the biggest cultural event of all time. Every seat is packed, but many people aren't even paying attention like they've seen this a million times.
One student (not the reality bender) realizes something is off. The movie is not really a movie at all, it's more like an explanation of magic being given by a friendly teacher to a classroom. It's coherent but at the same time completely beyond comprehension. The student was born with the ability to use magic but never realized it so he grew old enough to become safe from it. Instead of being a reality bender, he has a natural tendency to resist the magic, to reinforce his own reality which is the normal one he has been taught and shown. He will survive but nobody else here will, not the reality bending child, not his friends or the employees.
He tries asking his friends what is going on but he can't articulate it and they are part of this new reality now so they also can't understand what he's saying. To them, this is what they came for and nothing is off about it. He goes wandering around and sees every theater is playing the same movie. Full to the brim with people all talking and watching. Eventually he leaves the building to call his parents but they're confused. They think he was at an after school event. He turns to look at the movie theater behind him, arguing with his parents about it. The theater is gone, he's outside his school and he knows on the surface this is where he always went that night. He never went to a theater. But deep down he remembers because he was able to resist it. He knows he just lost his closest friends but he doesn't remember their names now as they rapidly fade from reality.
Three
An adult is at the grocery store to purchase benadryl for some allergies with his son. The boy doesn't want to be there and especially doesn't want to take the medication. He loses track of his son as soon as they're in the door, but it doesn't cross his mind because why would he bring his son here? The boy was arguing about going and so he surely left him at home right? The store is weirdly busy. There's too many people and for some reason there are sample tables everywhere. Free samples of everything being handed out by people who don't understand what they're handing out or why. They keep wandering off from their sample tables in a daze. The dad makes it to the medication aisle which is near all the bitter food for some reason. He can't find generic benadryl anywhere, it's like the entire shelf where it should be was bought out. There's every other variation of that medicine surrounding it, with names he has never heard of. He doesn't want to buy the wrong thing for his son so he stands there searching and searching but cannot find it. Finally, he settles on the closest thing and decides to buy it. The concept of money no longer exists in the store because this reality has long since started bending for his son. He finds himself in the store's management office where the adults talk and agree on whether they're allowed to have (purchase) the thing they want. The store manager resists and argues with him that he doesn't need this item like he's explaining to a child. Finally, the dad convinced the manager to let him have the medicine and he walks out.
The father was like his son, genetically predisposed to accessing magic but like the high-school student he grew up before encountering it. He resisted just enough to leave the store. But now he's holding a weird box of medicine with a name that has never existed. He knows on some level it is for allergies, but logically nobody has ever seen this medicine or brand before. He feels like he lost something so important to him and sits in his car, distraught. Who did he just lose? He looks over his shoulder expecting his son to be there but… he never had one. Deep down he feels that he did but logically he knows that's not true. He wonders why he's holding medicine and looks up- he is outside work. There was never a store there. He never went to a store. All those people who were inside never existed in this reality now. They were swallowed up in his son's magic.
