Spirit-Sensitive | BxB

3: static

Andrew Guzman hadn't always been this timid.

Not as far as he knew, anyway. He couldn't exactly recall.

He gulped as he studied the entrance of the apartment building. No one else seemed to be around, so he could attempt this experiment in peace. Last time, he'd barely made it out of the door before that uneasy feeling had drawn him back to the safety of the indoors. He wanted to get further this time.

It had been nearly one year since what Andrew referred to as "the incident" had occurred. He'd woken up one morning, in his own apartment, same as always, but this time, he found himself lying flat on the cold floor with a pounding, insistent headache and the majority of his memories gone.

He was able to recall bits and pieces. He remembered how the world worked, and the basic knowledge he'd acquired in school. He remembered most of the art techniques that he had apparently learned in college. He knew what his first name was, sometimes, and he knew very roughly how old he was, and he knew that he had a family out there somewhere.

What was missing was everything else. What was his family like? How had he come to live in his apartment? What kind of a childhood had he lived through? Where had he attended college, and what exactly had he studied? It was a blank, like someone had torn all of the pages from a book and left only the vaguely informative covers.

On the day of the incident, Andrew had searched his apartment for whatever information he could find about the life he had lived. He was able to discern his own hobbies and what he did for a living, as well as some vague details about his background. He'd found a photo of his family. This told him that he had a twin sister, even if he couldn't remember if he was the older or younger twin, and two parents, even if he didn't know whether he was adopted or not or if they'd gotten divorced.

After that, he'd decided that the best thing to do was see a doctor about his sudden bout of amnesia. But when he'd tried to leave the building, he'd suddenly felt nauseous and like he could collapse at any moment. He'd crawled back into the building. He tried again and again over the course of several days, but each time, he found the same result.

Maybe he'd developed that thing— the fear of open spaces. There was a name for that, right? Something-phobia, started with an a? Whatever it was, whatever name it had, it had trapped him in the building.

He'd decided to keep the problem to himself if anyone asked, but no one ever did. Every person that he passed seemed to ignore him, like he had become invisible overnight. He knew that he wasn't— he could see himself in the mirror just fine. But when he spoke, no one answered, and when he waved, no one waved back. It was especially hurtful because he'd wanted someone to talk to about the strange noises he'd been hearing at night, or the creepy girl he sometimes saw in the hallway.

That void of an existence had continued for months, with no one acknowledging him, until he'd tripped running up the stairs with a package one day when the elevator wasn't working.

"Whoa," a man's voice had said. "Are you alright?"

A hand had pulled him to his feet and returned his package to him. The young man had smiled when Andrew's eyes met his.

That man. That helpful stranger. Michael Cross. Once he showed up, things started to change.

The apartment building seemed more lively, even if it was often in the form of those weird detached sounds at night, and suddenly, a handful of people would speak to and acknowledge Andrew. These relationships were often short-lived or strange, but Andrew had begun to crave any kind of human interaction. His daily meetings with Michael by the mailboxes had become the highlight of his entire day.