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He stood in the middle of the road. In clothes that weren’t his own, an odd pocket watch in hand, and no memory of how he’d gotten there.
Josh’s head whipped to the left at the sound of tires screeching. A horn blasted at him. He held out a hand. Staggered a few steps away from the car that had almost mowed him over.
Another honk and his brain seemed to click; he was in the road.
“Oh, shit--” Josh stumbled over to the sidewalk, disoriented. Confused. And the car sped by him.
Something tickled on his upper lip, and when Josh swiped at it, his fingers came away bloody and trembling. A few drops splattered onto the unfamiliar salmon polo before Josh had the presence of mind to press the back of his hand to his face. To tilt his head and hope for the bleeding to stop.
He tucked the pocket watch into beige chinos-- he didn't own chinos-- and reached for the soft fabric around his head. Tugging, Josh came away with a garish red headband with an ugly yellow logo for some company he didn't recognize. Diecathlon. Maybe a charity, but Josh couldn't remember ever participating in anything resembling a decathlon before.
A quick glance around, and Josh was relieved that he at least recognized where he was. Just a few blocks away from home. And so he headed that way like it was a beacon. Everything would make sense again once he was home.
Blood spilled between his fingers as he wandered down the sidewalk toward his parents' house. Squinting hard, Josh kept his head down, but sunlight still seared into his eyes. Exacerbated the headache piercing through his skull.
He tried to remember what he'd been doing just a few minutes ago. What possibly could have led up to him bleeding in the middle of the street in someone else's surprisingly well-fitting clothing, holding weird objects he knew weren't his.
It was just one big blank-- like falling asleep and not remembering a dream. Where time had passed without him participating in it. Unobserved. Gone. Just like that.
He sort of remembered going to work that morning. Talking to Ray like he always did and getting scolded by Dr. Camillo.
Josh gasped, a hand flying to his head as a strangled noise escaped. An icepick through his temple, sharp enough to make Josh stumble on the sidewalk. Blinding, all-encompassing pain. And building pressure behind his eyes.
It hurt. It ached and the ache crescendoed until Josh's thoughts were pulled away from the missing gap in his memories. Until his mind was reduced to a simple wish for the pain to ease off, to ebb away, so he could keep walking home. And slowly, it retreated.
He'd crouched down on the sidewalk at some point to hold his head, ears between his knees. The grey sidewalk was stained with droplets of crimson.
He wasn't alone here. There were cars whizzing down the street and other passersby on the sidewalk. A woman walking her dog eyed him on her way past, but said nothing. The back of Josh's neck flushed and he straightened himself up.
It was weird. Like motion sickness and jetlag and waking up the morning after being blackout drunk all rolled into one.
But the house came into view, and in only a few more minutes of walking, he was at the door. Feeling his pockets for his key, he was met only by the stranger's pocket watch.
Josh twisted the handle, and found it locked. Rested his head against the front door and eyed the way around the side of the house where he knew he could climb up to his window if he needed to. And he never locked his window, so he'd definitely be able to get in that way. But he was just so inexplicably bone-tired.
He must've had an exhausting few... nope, he thought a leading sentence would help him remember how much time it had been, but he was still just as unsure as before. In any case, he must've been busy, because everything was sore and hurting.
Josh raised a closed fist and knocked on the door-- the same little knock Mom always did before coming into his room so she wouldn't catch him changing or masturbating again. A knock his parents would recognize if they were home.
Rushed footsteps approaching from the other side made Josh crack a smile. And he stopped leaning on the door just in time for it to swing open. There was a smear of red left behind on the wood.
Both of his parents had come to the door, wearing equally stunned looks on their faces. Misty-eyed and hesitant, like somehow Josh wouldn't actually be standing there anymore if they made the wrong move. Dad's eyes drifted up and down, assessing, and Josh swiped at his face self-consciously.
"Sorry, I got locked out and I didn't--"
"Joshy!" His mom cried.
He didn't get to finish the sentence before Mom threw her arms around him. Dad wasn't far behind, locking Josh in place with the crushing hug. A kiss was pressed to the top of Josh's head.
"Okay," Josh said, face pressed into Mom's shoulder. He was getting her lilac blouse all stained. Arms pinned to his sides, he couldn't do much more than pat awkwardly with a limited motion of his wrist. "Okay, hey guys. Hey, can I breathe for a second?"
They backed off just enough to see Josh’s face. And his mom held him by the cheeks, pulling him in to kiss his forehead briefly.
“Oh, Joshy, I was so worried! We’ve missed you so much,” she said.
“Did I go somewhere?” He asked, chuckling softly at her enthusiasm. She and Dad traded concerned looks as Josh swiped at his face again. “Could I get a tissue?”
“Come here, come in. Sit down.”
Josh was ushered inside eagerly and Dad sat him down at the kitchen table, pulling out the chair across from Josh. Mom was there in a flash with a box of tissues, trying to press one to Josh’s face for him before he plucked it from her hand.
“I got it, I’m fine,” he said, waving away concerned hands. She squeezed his shoulder lovingly before taking the seat next to Dad. “What’s going on? Why are you guys looking at me like that?”
“Well,” his dad started hesitantly, “nobody knows where you’ve been the past week.”
Josh stared, fingers weakening around the tissue. “What?”
“The last time we saw you,” Mom jumped in that time, “was at the police station, after the whole mix-up about the meth lab shootout--”
“The what?”
“It was just a mix-up,” she said again. “But, remember, you, Tiger, and Corey came with Dad to pick me up?”
With a slow shake of his head, “who are Tiger and Corey?”
The two traded another look. And creased worry lines settled back his way.
Josh’s eyes flicked between his parents. “Why do you guys keep looking at me like that?” The uncharacteristic worry from normally easy-going parents made Josh’s stomach flip. “Seriously, what the fuck?”
Mom leaned forward, placing a hand on Josh’s knee. Her voice came quietly-- an attempt at being calming, soothing, but it only served to set his nerves fraying. “Joshy, honey, what’s the last thing you remember?”
He could feel the headache creeping back in, intensifying as he tried to think. “Um,” Josh pressed the heel of his free hand to his temple, “going to work, I guess.” He squeezed his eyes shut.
A gentle hand found its way onto Josh’s back, rubbing a soothing pattern there as he waited for the pain to back off again. Blinking down at the kitchen table, Josh pulled the bloodied tissue away from his face. Waited a moment, and found that the nosebleed had mostly stopped. His headache thrummed in the background, like a warning, and the overwhelming heaviness in his bones seemed to grow the longer his parents went without saying anything. Palpable worry, not only in the hand smoothing over the tense muscles of his back, but in the strained silence.
Josh scrubbed a hand over his tired eyes. “I think… I’m gonna go lie down or something.”
The hand slowed to a stop, traveled to Josh’s shoulder, and squeezed it comfortingly.
“All right,” Mom said. “Do you need anything from us?”
“No. No, I’m okay,” he answered. Josh pushed up from his seat cautiously. Dad’s hands hovered, stopping just short of helping. “I’m fine, just kinda confused.”
“Okay. Well, we’ll be right here if you need something,” Dad said. “Anything at all.”
“I know.”
Josh moved to head for the stairs, but Mom trapped him in another hug before he made it two steps. And when she was done, Dad pulled him in and pressed a kiss to the top of his head.
“We’re so glad you’re okay, Joshy.”
“Yeah, I’m--” anything Josh could think to say seemed odd. He felt like he’d seen his parents just recently; his brain wouldn’t commit to the idea of having seen them that morning, acutely aware of some kind of missing gap in his mind, but it felt recent. “Yeah,” he settled on.
Josh wandered toward the stairs as Mom called after him, “I’ll come check on you in a little while.”
“Sure,” he returned absently.
He climbed the stairs as if in a dream. And part of him wondered if maybe this was a dream. The wooden banister under his palm, the step at the top of the stairs that always creaked, if this was a dream it was awfully realistic.
The reflection in the mirror at the end of the hall made him jump. Josh chalked it up to being on edge, but he barely recognized himself.
It wasn’t just the dried blood smeared across his face, though he did brush his fingers against that. He looked… different. Worn-out and exhausted. And he felt it too, but there was something about his face that just looked older, somehow. Like someone who had seen too much too quickly and never got the chance to process any of it.
But that didn’t make any sense.
He found himself heading for the bathroom. A shower to wash off the weirdness of today and hopefully take the fog in his head with it.
Josh turned the handle of the shower to warm it, and stripped down naked, gaze caught on the mirror. Scars littered his body, unfamiliar, and so faded he almost didn’t notice them at first. They’d had to have healed years ago.
The worst of them was a mangled white-pink mark on his lower leg where it looked like he’d been mauled. No-- bit by something, maybe. Something sharp and sudden. A snapping shut, metal clanging on metal, clamping around his leg.
Josh gasped and gripped the counter, nearly toppling over with the intense pain that ripped through his skull.
Head bowed, forehead nearly resting against the countertop as he breathed through the pain, he finally noticed the black ink scrawled along his arm. A note, definitely in his handwriting, but just as unfamiliar as everything else he’d had on him.
It read simply: ‘DO NOT beat Biotic Wars. It will ruin your life.’
Head pounding, Josh stepped into the shower and scrubbed the ink and blood away.