Terrestrial Alien ✔

Chapter 48: The Cat and the Bag

Ethan

You'd think needing to stay in bed for half a week with a free pass off from school would be a pretty sweet deal, but let's be real: it sucks. After three days of it, the room is already starting to feel stuffy and cramped, and I just want to leave.

That said, I've had plenty of time to mule over the absolutely bizarre chain of events that has lead me to this hospital bed.

1.   Joshua comes to me for relationship advice. We determine that he is one (1) closeted bisexual, and I'm still incredibly proud for helping him sort through that. We, as in me, also discover that he has a Thing (™) for a strange guy from his past, Seth?

2.   Joshua is cagey and nervous for like a week, and doesn't want to talk to me about Seth again after. I am Suspicious.

3.   Joshua's soccer game and this Mysterious Guy shows up and surprise! He's some sort of alien?? I lowkey scare off this big monster who is apparently the same guy and Joshua has a little break down. He refuses to explain anything to me after, and I am More Suspicious.

4.   It's time for my baseball game, and Seth shows up?? Joshua finally talks to me when I shock him with my Spanish, and it turns out, this guy actually is an alien? Go figure? I want to talk to him, because who wouldn't? Though Joshua is reluctant and antsy and maybe I should have listened to him.

5.   Next thing I know, Joshua is having some sort of panic attack/mental break down and? He hits this guy? With my fucking bat? And then we're running for our lives because holy shit, he really does turn into a monster?!

6.   Lowkey set the Chem room on fire, lowkey get chewed out by the principal and lowkey I'm probably going to be suspended if I'm not already. Also lowkey I don't know what happens to Joshua and his whatever-he-is for like hours, and then when I do, they're in the parking lot and Seth looks like shit and then these black-suits show up? And now it's Seth who's going apeshit, and boom: monster again. And what do I get for trying to help? Bruised ribs, a punctured lung, and a week of hospital time. Lucky me though, didn't have to go far to get to the hospital. Yay.

7.   Haven't seen or heard of either of them since.

With everything I know, a very, very strange puzzle is formed, and I only barely have enough pieces to guess at what the full picture might be like. For starters, Joshua heavily implied that he and alien-boy have some sort of history? A History that he really didn't want to talk about, and I can't help but wonder if that has something to do with how odd he's been acting lately.

Not to mention, seeing the nature of Seth, this alien monster man, it's not a stretch to assume that this History has something to do with this monster, which might better explain Joshua's odd, nervous-wreck behavior. And then, with the way Joshua acted at the baseball game... The way he sort of froze up and looked like he was far away, like he was seeing something terrible that no one else could see... And then the way he reacted to Seth reaching out to him... 

Is it possible that Joshua has some sort of... post-traumatic stress disorder?

I've been trying to figure this out for days. I've known Joshua for years now, and I never really noticed if he had idiosyncrasies aside from his pretentiousness and his high-strung morals. But now that I'm thinking about it, he does have nightmares a lot. He always had. But he'd never talk about them, so I'd never ask.

If he does have PTSD, I guess it'd widely depend on what happened. What happened in the past with him, Seth, and that monster to make him so jumpy, so skittish, so haunted? Does Joshua even know that he has this disorder? If he even does at all?