Call The Dead A Bluff (Fransykes)

Chapter 2

The soft sound of Joshua's fingers dancing through the keyboard was the only thing to fill the room. His glasses rested on his face imperceptibly, his eyes flickering between his hands and the screen. He was completely still besides that. It was something that people pointed out at times, how he looked like an android whenever he wrote. Joshua never took it seriously but now he realised that, yeah, he wasn't a hundred per cent human. The edge of his lip twitched.

Something he loved about writing was the way it sucked him into another world. Loved the way his universes were within his reach, were on his hands so he could reshape and modify whatever he wanted to, he could erase everything and play it out again, over and over, make everything be the way he wanted it to be because Joshua was a god. He loved writing because he had all the control.

Funnily enough, writing took him to the clouds but it was what grounded him. Writing was the only thing that made sense.

Sometimes.

You see, Joshua... Joshua didn't know what was happening. Ever. He was just there, most of the time. Of course, he had his moments of rage, of happiness, of sadness. Faint moments. But again, for the most time, he didn't mind just existing. He was there and that was alright with him. But other times Joshua longed for contentment. Longed for empathy. Longed for care within himself. He longed to be a person that everyone else seemed to be around him. Max was highly empathetic. He'd feel happy for someone's achievements. Lee. He felt sadness for other's loss. Matt, both of them. They'd feel rage when someone suffered injustice. All of them felt for others. Joshua, though? He liked to make other people believe he could be empathetic. He liked to make people feel like he cared. He liked to be the nice guy that's chill about everything, that makes sure everyone's having a good time.

Joshua simply couldn't give a fuck about anyone else but himself.

Call him selfish, call him an asshole, call him whatever you want. But keep in mind that he didn't choose this. He didn't pick the emptiness, didn't pick the void inside his soul when it came to others. He didn't decide one day that he would be emotionless. But not always, not really, he was fine. He had quick happy moments, quick sad moments, quick angry moments, quick scared moments. Quick, quick, so quick he couldn't grasp them, so fast it was gone in a blink, so light that it would leave before Joshua could feel.

He fucking hated it.

But writing changed that. Writing put him on the skin of the normal people he created, writing made him feel for them, writing made him someone else. Writing made him be who he wanted to be even if just for a second. Writing was the faint light Joshua got on the end of the tunnel after years, decades in the dark. Because Joshua was so blind, he couldn't see, he stumbled on his own damn feet in that silent room he was put on all by himself. Writing gave him a direction. Writing and reading and breathing in and out other realities that only happened inside his head.

Maybe that's why he was always inside his mind. Maybe that's why his friends would always tease him for being with his head in the clouds, maybe that's why being alone was so freeing. Because there he didn't have to act excited or sorry for someone when he couldn't give a fuck about them. Being alone allowed Joshua to rest down and breathe in, shut his eyes and feel.

But lately being alone was... Lonely. Living in his one-stored house with nothing and no one but himself wasn't feeling much like a little bubble with all the oxygen in the world. And Joshua should be panicking because his bubble popped and the oxygen was mixing with the toxic gas that surrounded him and now Joshua was fated to suffer a suffocating death.

Joshua had nowhere else to breathe. Nowhere else to go. Nothing else to feel.

But he could always write, always have a quick whiff of the toxic air that other people seemed to either adore or despise - Joshua couldn't understand those people. Why would they hate feeling? Why would they despise the only thing that made them human? - But that seemed to become all he had. Joshua let out a sigh.