Terrestrial Alien ✔

Chapter 2: Digging a pit of lies

For some reason, Joshua just can't seem to be able to get to sleep tonight.

     It's been an hour since being put to bed, yet Joshua still finds himself unable to sleep a wink. He lays utterly still beneath his fluffy sheets, his wide eyes unable to stop staring up at the ceiling above his bed. His gaze traces over the constellations plastered to it in tiny sticky glow-in-the-dark stars, the cheap and easy to buy ones that hardly give off any light. Even so, they've become invaluable to him. They've been there since he'd been old enough to fear the dark, and while he's gotten over the fear now, the stars still remain.

     But his mind isn't on the stars, not really anyway.

     Instead, he's focused on a certain monster he'd met that day, one that may or may not be from those very stars. He wonders restlessly as to where Sundo had run off to, and why he'd run. After their emotional hug, Joshua had pulled back to bandage up the boy-creature's wounds, keeping up a light conversation in an attempt to learn more about him. Sundo hadn't supplied much, but he'd mentioned something about being in a crash, and Joshua assumes it must have been a car crash, which would easily explain the other boy's scraped up appearance.

      Once Joshua had been yet again content with his work in fixing Sundo up, he'd all but commanded that Sundo put on the clothes he'd given him. He'd been eager to introduce him to his mother, so he wanted him to look decent, but it'd all clearly been a mistake. As soon as he'd mentioned meeting the older human, Sundo had frozen up, and --as if she'd sensed herself being mentioned-- Joshua's mother had called up to him for lunch not soon after.

      The timing of it had been horrible, and Joshua can still remember the shift in Sundo's expression from uncomfortable to fearful. Since his focus had been on Sundo, Joshua hadn't realised he'd forgotten to respond to his mother until he'd heard her footsteps at the foot of the stairs. At the sound of her calling up again, Sundo's green eyes had gone wide and his posture stiffened. Joshua had tried to stop him, but he couldn't hold him back before the scared boy had bolted for the door, racing down the steps past Joshua's confused mother, and had escaped out the garage door.

      Joshua's mother had, of course, asked who that had been, because she hadn't seen him clear enough to recognise him. For some reason, Joshua had lied. He normally never did, but this time as he'd looked up to her with a bewildered expression, his first impulse had been to keep Sundo a secret. So he did. He'd told her that it had been one of the neighbors' kids, Marcus, whom he went out to play with occasionally, and she easily believed him.

      Now though he lays in bed, Joshua can't help but wonder if he should have told his mom. What would she have said if she knew how he'd found him naked and injured in the middle of nowhere? Would she know why he has those tattoos? Joshua had been constantly tempted to ask throughout the day, but in the end, he never did. Fear of his mother being skeptical or not knowing kept him back, along with the constant nagging memory of Sundo's fear of her.

     If there was no problem in her knowing, why would Sundo be afraid? Joshua hadn't seen Sundo for the rest of the day after he'd run off, and occasionally he had wondered if it all had just been some heat-induced delusion. But he knew it couldn't have been, he knows it happened. He remembers it all so clearly.

     Skritch. Scritch, skritch. . .

     Joshua blinks in confusion at the sudden foreign sound, his thoughts dragged from their place deep within his mind. Glancing around in confusion, he can feel his heartbeat accelerate somewhat as he searches for the creepy sound's origin.

  Skritch, skritch, skritch, skritch.

     It definitely isn't his imagination, he knows now, as the sound comes again with more urgency the second time. It's coming from his right, near the... window. Joshua bolts upright in bed at the realisation, his eyes locking on the timid silhouette perched on the other side of the glass.