Disingenuous

Prologue

February 20, 2018

Jackson sat up from his slumber feeling an overwhelming sense of panic. His thoughts swam at an uncontrolled pace. He felt little fingers in his brain frantically reaching for each individual stream of thinking, but they all just slipped by too fast. He couldn't focus on anything concrete. It was like not being awake at all.

At first he just sat there feeling the panic. It turned in his stomach and nauseated him for a bit. After a while of getting no progress with that plan, he took a deep breath and gathered his bravery, using his eyes to assess his surroundings.

The facts came to him a little out of order. The room was lit by a flickering yellow shadow of light from somewhere above. He was lying on a lumpy couch. The fabric was purple and thick, covered in deep rips. Yellowing cotton filling was bursting at the seams beneath his aching body. It smelled kind of bad. Jackson looked around the room trying to see anything that would tell him where he was.

He recognized nothing of his surroundings.

Through swimming vision, he found he was alone within what appeared to be an empty basement of some sort. The walls were concrete and gray, free of any decorations. A washing machine and it's matching dryer sat against the furthest wall along with a short row of hampers. The dryer seemed to be bumping along, but it was low and quiet and he was almost certain it sounded broken. Along the ceiling was a lone rusty pipe running from one end of the small room, to the other. His eyes wandered to the wall directly behind him where a thin wooden staircase rose to a door just above his head level. That's where the uneven light was coming from.

Indecipherable noises floated down to Jackson through the door which sat slightly ajar. He struggled to hear it through the fog of his mind, but no matter how hard he tried, it was all white noise. He sighed, feeling suddenly ill. Panic started to seep away just a little bit when the acknowledgment hit him.

I'm drunk again, he thought almost humorously. No, I'm high. Definitely high.

The pounding in his head intensified and he felt the strong urge to lie down again. He ignored it, instead pushing his aching body off the couch. At least it wasn't panic any more. He couldn't handle the panic.

Now standing, he had to endure that swimming of his mind that threatened to knock him off his feet in full force again. A wave of dizziness hit him and he used the edge of the couch to keep from falling. When he felt a though he could walk, he stumbled to the staircase and sighed again at the ridiculousness of his condition.

I don't even know where I am. How can I not know where I am? That's ridiculous.

He blinked hard to clear his vision. It didn't help much. His eyesight was swirling, merging the colors and shapes of his surroundings in a way that made it nearly impossible to walk straight. With a deep breath, he focused his sight on the door above him and began climbing anyways.

His steps were unbalanced and awkward but he continued on his way regardless. With each step, he found his drunken stumble lessen. It reminded him of baby horses learning to walk, except less cute. He didn't think he looked cute. Not even a little bit.

When he finally reached the top he accidentally slammed the door open, and he found himself face to face with a much younger, blonde haired boy.

"Jax?" The boy laughed in surprise. "You're alive!"

Jackson looked at his best friend quizzically trying to calm his hammering heart. He blinked hard, rubbing his eyes. Behind the boy, who was called Seb, was a kitchenette, with a table and chairs occupied by a mix of people he knew and would recognize better if not for the spinning feeling. They didn't even look up at his arrival. Jackson wouldn't have noticed either way because his vision had reduced to nothing but shapes and colors again at that moment.