Chapter I

The Boy Called "Oddball"

[Part I]

[R e a l i t y]

  He was in a dark place. 

  He drew in a deep breath. Cool air rushed to flood his body and fill his head, leaving no space for any trace of thought. The air brought a certain lightness with it, and he felt as though, at any given moment, he would float away like a bright balloon on a windy Summer day.  He was lying down, his back pressed against a hard surface. The darkness offered nothing for his darting eyes to latch onto, so he simply kept them shut, feeling the ground seem to sway and tilt and heave violently beneath him without anything to hold and stabilize himself. Somewhere in the void, something was roaring.

   He slowly drew in another breath and held it for a moment this time before letting it slide back out. 

   This was a familiar place. A safe palace of nothingness and hard surfaces and vertigo. Nothing was unnatural here. 

   Another slow breath. The icy air gave off a hollow sound as it flowed through his mouth, drying out his tongue. His brain began to wander through its familiar vessel. His head felt empty: devoid of thought, of feeling, of coherence. There was a thick fog overlaying everything there, rising and falling in time with the movements of the bellows in his chest. His mouth was parched and his throat wasn’t much better. His stomach was a caged animal, growling and churning about violently in the throes of hunger. Somewhere, not far above it, a pulsating metronome kept the time for the endless march of life through his veins; he could hear that march faintly rushing behind his ears. His arms and legs were splayed out; they felt loose, as if his bones had been stolen and replaced with ribbons. 

  Another breath in was held this time. He went beyond the depths of his own physical being. He broke loose of his shackles of flesh and bone and began to wander freely through the space. The air was cold, making his skin prickle and sending tingling waves rocketing through his body. There was nothing fresh about the atmosphere here: it tasted used, recycled, and stale. The surface he laid on was made up of countless,  densely-packed hills and valleys that came together to abrade his skin. Some faded notion told him that these hills and valleys were supposed to be soft, but they were anything but that. The roaring was to be explored next. His mind sauntered towards it in the dark, and the closer he got, the more distinct it became. It wasn’t roaring, it was rattling; the sound of thousands upon thousands of tiny pebbles striking glass or metal in nature’s futile attempt to overcome the barriers of his haven. 

  He breathed out. He was aware. He was alive. He was thoughtless, nameless, and alone in the black void. He returned to his skull to wander through its vacant halls and scrape at its walls to conjure the right word that would name this feeling. It began to take shape, to materialize from the swirling mist that obscured all in his head. 

   Pea—

   A harsh sound pierced twice into the void like arrows let loose from the bow of consciousness. The word shattered and scattered about like broken glass. The darkness began to flicker with faint light. 

   Ignore it, his instincts whispered, ignore it. He drew in another breath, grasping to catch hold of the phantom feeling once more. 

   The sound came again. A beep. The sound had a name now. A small, faint beeping noise. From a clock. 

  The dream began to disperse and lift away. The sounds and sensations of his body dulled. Countless nameless voices rushed to fill his silent skull with commotion again. Each and every stimuli had to be given a name. Alertness took precedence over entrancement.

  He was aware. He was alive. 

  He was awake. 

  Oddball’s eyes slid open, as if of their own accord, and the veil of abstraction began to lift with them. He was staring at the ceiling. The normally gray, textured panels had taken on a pale color from the light of the window. He was lying on his back on the floor, at the foot of his bed; the coarse carpet pressed uncomfortably into the skin of his neck and arms. The fog continued to dissipate from his mind as more details took shape. The alarm clock was noticeably louder now, still crying intermittently from the corner of the room. It demanded to be attended to. Rain was pouring outside, clattering against the window panes. He began to sit up. The muscles in his back protested with a deep, aching pain and stiffness that made his movement slow, and his face twisted into a momentary grimace. The air rushed to fill the places it hadn’t been before. Oddball shuddered. 

  He rubbed his eyes, clearing away the last traces of drowsiness. Clarity returned to his mind, with memory stepping in to answer unasked questions. 

  “Must have fallen asleep,” he muttered to no one in particular. It was quiet, and the silence swallowed up his words. The screaming alarm clock responded with its periodic wail for attention. Then all was still again. He gazed at the window to take in the silence, to swim in it, to drift in it. There was something tucked into the corners of his subconscious that he wanted to air out with words, but no matter how deep he reached, he couldn’t seem to take hold of it. The thought just wouldn’t take shape. The feeling eluded lucidity. So he resigned himself with a sigh. No sense in sitting here all day. 

  He sat there for a few more moments anyways, before he slowly rose to his feet and ambled to the wooden dresser at the back of the room. A quick tap on the alarm clock brought it the peace it desired. The crimson numbers of the digital display read “10:37 AM”.  He stared at it with some mix of feelings that was far from pride or happiness: a sinking, almost painful feeling in his chest. He wasn’t sad. He just… 

  He dashed the thought from his mind and pressed onward with the morning’s routine. Feeling sorry about it won’t bring the time back. 

  A black zip-up hoodie hung lazily from one of the drawer handles. He pulled it on, pausing briefly to fight a little with the sleeves. They kept trying to swallow his hands whole. A few steps brought him into the bathroom, and the harsh lights clicked to life, making him squint. 

  It was a small, cramped room, with faded wallpaper that was probably older than he was and dull linoleum floors that had a slight stickiness to them no matter how many times or how vigorously they were scrubbed. There was a grimy shower that he wouldn’t dare to stand in barefooted; a toilet, a small countertop with a single drawer underneath, a sink that was much too large for the countertop and dominated most of the space; and a mirror that was an irritating half-inch wider than the countertop. Cramped between the sink and the wall were a toothbrush, a bottle of soap, an almost-empty tube of toothpaste, and a large, handmade wooden box. There was an inscription in the box's face that he let his fingers and eyes wander across without actually reading. He opened the box. Nestled inside was a smooth, plastic mask. It was black, and largely featureless, save for the two white scrim ovals that were set into its surface as eyes. A question mark had been crudely drawn down the middle of the mask in white paint. 

  Oddball lifted the mask over his face and secured the straps around his head. Then, he looked up into the mirror. It was natural there; a black mask among black clothes, with only the pale skin of his neck and hands visible. Brown hair spilled messily over the mask’s edge. A small pit began to form in his stomach when he saw how messy the rest of it was, frayed and sticking out in every direction. He began to frantically comb his fingers through his hair, silently cursing himself for falling asleep with wet hair, but it was no use. He brought his hood up, trying to cover it as best he could, which worked at least enough to be satisfied with. He tugged at the edges of his garments a few more times to straighten them out and closed the box. 

  The inscription on the lid read: “The face of my brother…”

  Wandering to the other side of his room now, he swept a few items up from his desk and carelessly shoved them into his pockets: a key, an old wallet, and a phone with a few new messages he couldn’t be bothered to read at this time. An old, worn digital camera hung from the corner of his desk by a sturdy lanyard. He gently lifted it and passed the lanyard over his head, letting the camera rest against his chest. 

  He checked his pockets to make sure he had everything. Key, wallet, phone, camera. All set. He walked out of his room, making small adjustments to his hoodie as he did so.  Oddball searched himself once more as his hand wrapped around the handle of the front door. 

  Keys, wallet, phone, camera. All set. 

  The door swung open, bathing the room in grayish-pale light. Cold air and the clamor of falling rain washed over him and flooded the surrounding space, filling every gap. He drew the smell of rain-soaked concrete into his lungs and held it there for a moment. His lips hinted at the ghost of a smile. 

  Yeah. 

  Today won’t be so bad…