Mentors - A Joshler Fic

Chapter 1

Tyler's P.O.V.

I walk with my head down, eyes on the sidewalk. I keep count of the cracks in the sidewalk as I walk to keep my mind occupied. I was on crack number one hundred and thirty six when a foot entered my periphery and the next thing I knew my face was pressed up against crack number one hundred and thirty six. Then came the barrage of insults that had long since lost their sting from frequent use. “Faggot, emo, freak, loser, fuck up.” My first thought was sarcasm. Tell me something about myself that I don’t know. I am a faggot, emo, freak, loser, fuck up. Old news to me.

A swift kick hit me in the stomach, I kept my head down until I heard the footsteps walk away. I rolled over onto my back and hissed a little at the pain I felt from the kick. I struggle to stand up and clutch at my side as I continue on down the sidewalk to school. I manage to make into school with no one else bothering me and I make a break for the handicap bathrooms across from the nurses office. I lock myself in the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror to assess the damage. I lift my shirt and look past the numerous scars littering my body and stare at the large purple bruise forming.

Nothing can be done about it, except endure the pain and wait for it to heal. I let my shirt fall back down over my skinny frame and have to suck up the courage to head back out into the hallway. I step back out into the hallway and its not too busy, I make my way to first period unscathed. I take my seat in the back corner of the room and keep my eyes down as I make my way there. I take my seat and allow myself to peak out from underneath my hoodie. I take in the room, as though I were watching a documentary with interest but a disconnect from reality.

My eyes immediately go to the smiling face of the most popular boy in the school. Amazing athlete, outgoing personality, handsome, and a genuine good person. Josh Dun deserved to be popular he was a nice guy, he was so unlike most people at this school. I was in love with him. I’d had a huge crush on him since I moved here. But I was a just a loser freshman, the brunt of everyone’s frustrations, I was nothing. He was a popular senior, the epitome of the all american boy. He was destined for great things. I doubted I’d make it to eighteen before I killed myself.

I accepted my fate, but that doesn’t the depressed little emo faggot that I was couldn’t stare at and have very involved fantasies about the hot piece of ass that was Josh Dun. I watched him the duration of the class, he was much more interesting than Mr. Drake rambling on about the War of 1812 anyway. I watched his hands, holding a perfectly sharpened number two pencil move across the paper as he took notes. He eyes narrowed in concentration, a little crease formed between his eyes when he wrote. Occasionally his tongue poked out of his mouth and moved across his lips, they were a little chapped. The bell rang, startling me. I moved slowly waiting for everyone else to exit the class before me. I threw my empty backpack over my shoulder and forced myself back into the hallway.

The rest of the day passed with surprisingly little incidence, and I sent up a silent thanks to a deity whose existence I highly doubted. I made my escape out of a side door, avoiding the main rush of kids exiting the building. Making sure my hood hid my face, I began the mile and a half walk to my house. My house was an old house, long since fallen into disrepair. It wasn’t pretty but it was functional which I guess was something to be grateful for. My life sucked but at least I wasn’t homeless.

I walked up the steps to my house and careful to avoid the loud creak that the door sometimes made opened it slowly and walked in. The house stank of booze and cigarette smoke thanks to my dear old father. I checked the living room and saw that he was in his usual spot, passed out drunk on an old recliner. I walked over a took a still lit cigarette from his hand and put it out and tossed it in an ashtray. One of these days he was going to catch the house on fire. Hopefully we were both in the house when it happened.

I walked upstairs to my room which was the second door on the left. I had very little in my room, just a bed, a dresser and a bookshelf with a grand total of seven books on it. I threw my nearly empty backpack full of homework I wasn’t going to do over in the corner. I sat down on my bed and pulled out my little black leather bound journal out from under my mattress. This book contained lyrics I wrote to songs, they were really stupid and sucked but it passed the time and I liked it.

I opened up the journal to an empty page and thinking back to the first time I cut myself. I’d been standing in front of the kitchen sink at midnight, staring out the window at the stars that littered the sky. I was thinking about swallowing a handful of my father’s blood pressure pills and ending it all. This was right after the incident in eighth grade. I was too much of a coward to swallow the pills, so I grabbed a knife out of the drawer, a big butcher knife. I cut myself for the first time that night on the thigh where the scar could be safely hidden.

I remember washing the blood away in the sink and watching go down the drain. I liked that, it was like I was getting rid of a part of myself. I was washing away the bad parts of me, I liked that feeling. The words flooded my mind and I wrote them frantically, not caring about spelling or grammar or anything my English teachers had ever taught me.

Nobody thinks what I think,

Nobody dreams when they blink

Think things on the brink of blasphemy

I'm my own shrink

Think things are after me, my catastrophe

I'm at my kitchen sink, you don't know what that means

Because a kitchen sink to you

Is not a kitchen sink to me, OK friend?

Are you searching for purpose?

Then write something, yeah it might be worthless

Then paint something then, it might be wordless

Pointless curses, nonsense verses

You'll see purpose start to surface

No one else is dealing with your demons

Meaning maybe defeating them

Could be the beginning of your meaning, friend

Go away

Leave me alone.

Nobody thinks what you think, no one

Empathy might be on the brink of extinction

They will play a game and say

They know what you're going through

And I tried to come up with an artistic way to say

They don't know you, and neither do I

So here's a prime example of a stand up guy

Who hates what he believes and loves it at the same time

Here's my brother and his head's screwed up

But that's alright . I got the last word down on the page and threw the book down on the bed beside me. I lied down beside the book and tried to fight off the tears that threatened to escape. But like the reality that I couldn’t escape the tears escaped from my eyes. I lay there bawling my eyes out because the sadness overwhelmed me again. I hated the sadness, but it loved me. I would find me at random times, usually at night and I would cry, and sometimes I would cut myself because pain made the sadness go away. I buried my face in my pillow, contemplated smothering myself but eventually just fell asleep.