Glitches (Book 1)

Chapter 14: Justin

I never quite understood how exactly I, with my profound appreciation for sleep, managed to wake up so abruptly and with so little ceremony. Usually, my morning routine involved five alarms and an occasional bucket of water to the face, courtesy of Claire. Yet, today was different. My eyes just sort of fluttered open and refused to close, despite my best efforts to convince my brain that I desperately needed more sleep. I lay flat on my back in the middle of my bed, staring up at the dim shape of the ceiling above me as I blinked repeatedly in silence.

Once my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I turned my head to the side in order to get a glance at the squat, old-fashioned alarm clock that sat on my nightstand. Squinting, I waited for the blocky, red shapes of the numbers to grow clearer. I gasped at the sight of the time as the display came into focus. 2:00 in the morning. This was quite strange; to me, waking up in the middle of the night was akin to eating ice cream with pickles. What I didn't know, however, was that the weird part hadn't even started yet.

Suddenly, I sat straight up in the middle of my bed. Only, I didn't mean to sit up. I felt the strain in my spine as I sprung up like a Jack-In-The-Box, my arms glued to my sides.

That definitely wasn't what I normally did in the mornings.

The same invisible force that had pushed me up began to scoot me toward the edge of my bed and I pressed my tailbone into the mattress, trying desperately to counteract it, but to no avail. Pivoting exactly ninety degrees so that my legs hung over the side of my bed, I lifted myself up with zombie-like rigidity and began to walk in the general direction of the bathroom. Putting one foot in front of the other seemed to take an immense amount of energy, although I, of course, couldn't feel the exertion since I had absolutely no control over my motion. My legs visibly trembled as my feet curved inward, struggling to find the correct placement for a step as if I was learning to walk all over again.

I felt like a puppet as I walked without trying to walk, stopping in front of the bathroom door and raising my right hand to push the door open with my entire flattened palm. Closing my eyes, I willed this unusually realistic nightmare to end, yet, I was forced to open them when I felt something hard being violently shoved into my mouth. My eyelids flew upward before I regained a nominal sense of security. It was only a toothbrush.

I stared at my reflection in the wide mirror that stretched across the wall of my bathroom, feeling my heartbeat grow quicker as I observed the unnatural, robotic jerks with which I raked my toothbrush across my teeth. Since I lacked the ability to swallow or spit into the sink, foamy toothpaste slid freely down my throat, making me feel like I was slowly choking. Once I was finished brushing my teeth, my neck lurched forward without warning while my mouth still hung open, spewing a mouthful of toothpaste and spit onto my shirt.

Gross.

Not wasting a moment of time, I- or whatever mysterious being thought it would be a good idea to inhabit my body- took a shower, got dressed, put on my shoes, and grabbed a granola bar from the side of my desk, all the while continuing to move in a spasmodic manner. My eyes, which seemed to be the only part of my body I was still capable of controlling, widened with fear as I descended the final set of stairs to the front door. Somehow, the more I walked, the less tension there was in my gait. It still wasn't anywhere close to natural, but I no longer felt like a one-year-old taking his first steps.

It was almost as if the person- or thing- that was inside me was getting used to controlling me.

By this time, I was starting to panic a little. No, I was internally screaming with such intensity that it was a miracle my brain didn't split in two from the sheer force of my terror. I wanted more than anything to call out and wake one of my parents, but my mouth refused to obey my frantic brain. Now, it seemed to have a different master. A master who was big on stealth. I turned the doorknob awkwardly with both hands, my fingers still pressed tightly against each other and showing no signs of coming apart. From the looks of it, my controller hadn't yet figured out how to make proper use of the marvelous human adaptation of opposable thumbs.

I opened the door just a crack, feeling a soft breeze on my cheek. Then, without causing so much as a squeak in the floorboards, I rose up onto my tiptoes. Yes, the actual tips of my toes. I felt like some kind of freakish ballet dancer as I stepped through the doorway into the chilly night with grace I didn't know I had. After shutting the door carefully behind me- once again, with both of my palms- I lowered my weight back down onto my heels and began to walk.

My parents had built our house at the far end of a street, in order to give us as much space as possible. "This way, we get our land and the land that would've belonged to our neighbors," Dad had proclaimed proudly. Back then, I used to totally dig the idea of living in the gigantic mansion that was as wide as two houses. Now, all I could think about was how long it would take me to walk all the way from the very end of the street to where it intersected with the main road far ahead of me, and how my house's faraway location dropped my chances of being seen by a passerby and being helped almost to zero.