For as long as I can remember, when me and my sister were young, we always watched very obscure media. Most of that all thanks to our grandmother. She always managed to find very random toys, shows and games. We never questioned where she would source these things, assuming she'd picked them up at a car boot or dug them up from the attic full of things from her childhood. Now that I sit here at the desk of my monotonous 9-5 office job I look back fondly on those times, wishing just for one moment I could go back and experience those simple joys once again.
My sister had long since moved across the world to pursue a career in medicine, something that looking back I never could have imagined she'd be doing. I don't see her nearly as often as I'd like to. we facetime occasionally but she rarely comes home to visit except for major holidays. I try my best to go visit my grandma whenever I get the chance, which isn't as much as I'd like it to be due to all the overtime I'm doing at work. My grandma is the sort of person who can't stay still, she's always up doing something whether it's gardening, pottery, training for a marathon. Anything. She's probably done it or considered doing it in the past few years since her retirement. when I look back on all these memories from my childhood my mind immediately goes to those days at her house with my sister. Recently those thoughts have become more frequent ever since my parents up and left to go on a 'no contact year abroad'. A year which then turned into 5 years. The most I'd receive in terms of 'contact' was a crudely written postcard with a happy birthday/christmas card. It was clear to me not much thought had gone into this message, the postcard was crumpled and stained in what seemed to be coffee and there were clear traces of tipex that was covering a previous message. As much as this tore at my heart, part of me was still grateful they'd at least thought about me at some point on their adventures - even if just for a passing second.
Recently I've found myself dreaming more and more of my childhood, specifically a few tv shows we used to watch. However none of the details of my dreams were coherent. A variety of different settings, characters and bright colours flew across my mind. Despite the lack of coherence, every detail felt so real and there were many occasions I'd wake up in a daze unsure of what was real. Most recently there was a particular character which kept showing up, a yellow puppet with blue hair, attributes that were very common in the kind of media our grandmother would share with us. But something about every appearance of this puppet there was a consistent sense of familiarity which was unchanging from night to night...
"Y/N!....Y/N!" I feel something shake my shoulder forward slightly.
"Wake up... Y/N!!" I groan as the nudging on my shoulder becomes more persistent and aggressive. The image of my younger self and sister sat in-front of a TV set, which displays an image of that oh so familiar yellow puppet, fades away.
"Y/N please! Sara is coming!" upon hearing that god forsaken name my eyes shoot open as if I'm a sleeper agent who just heard their trigger word.
I hear, who I have now identified as Joshua, breathe a sigh of relief which is soon cut off by a forced cough which radiated through the almost empty office. just as i'm about to lift my head off the desk, I spot Sara rounding the corner. At that moment Joshua pushes the pot of pens off the side of my desk and they all clatter to the ground. I immediately throw my gaze down to the floor which is now littered with stationary. Sara's eyes dart in our direction, where she sees Joshua on his knees scooping up the pens as I am leaning down in my car holding out the pot to collect them.
"What happened here?" Sara speaks in a tone that reeks of condescension.
"Just an accident, all under control!" I respond, lifting my hand up showing a thumbs up in the direction of Sara. I can't see her face but I already know she's rolling her eyes with a scowl on her face.
"Yep all good, no need to worry!" Joshua pipes up, incidentally looking in my direction to notice I have a piece of paper stuck to the side of my face. He quickly pulls the paper off and crumples it into his pocket as we both stand up. We both let out a nervous laugh as Sara looks at our guilty faces. She looks as though she's about to scold us but sighs before speaking, deciding it wasn't worth her time.
"...You two can head home now, the cleaners are coming in early tonight for the conference this weekend. The last thing I want is you two distracting them with playing your 'office olympics' again."
I can't help but think back on that one Thursday evening myself and Joshua were in charge of putting together some documents for a proposal the following day. We'd been working on it for the past two weeks and we were SO over it. What started as a few jokes with the cleaners soon turned into a whole tournament with opening and closing ceremony. The following morning we were met with a stern talking to from Sara accompanied by a CCTV video of our highlights from the evening. It was the first time in a long time i'd really had fun, I don't regret it despite the consequences. Those being our one-week suspension from the new creative programme and our desks promptly being moved to opposite ends of the office. However this didn't stop us from using any excuse to pass by each others desks to bother each-other under the guise of using the photocopier or heading to the water fountain.
"We'll see you on Monday Sara!" Joshua muses,
"Bright and early!" I chip on the end as Sara rolls her eyes and walks away.Grabbing my coat and bag, I make my way out of the office with Joshua chirping beside me about his plans for the weekend.
YOU ARE READING
Welcome Back Home
Fanfictiona self insert story based off the arg Welcome Home. i do not own the rights to any of these characters, all respectively belong to Clown Illustrations. this is just a fun story which should not be taken as fact. may include some sensitive topics bu...