Man On His Way Home (man on the verge of losing his fucking mind) - Original fic, 4.1k words
Ok so brief warning but this piece that I'm posting here isn't exactly a fanfic; but instead some original fiction that I wrote up as a writing exercise, of sorts. I'm posting it here 'cause I had to check, and apparently posting original works goes against AO3 community guidelines.
Not really sure where to post this otherwise. Any of y'all have any ideas for some platforms where I could share my original fic pieces? I'd be extremely grateful for any and all suggestions regarding this.
Fic under the cut, for now.
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You wake up, with a start.
Your periphery seems rather blurry, and you feel as if you’re unaware, somehow, of the environment that surrounds you. You’re in a room that you don’t recognize, sitting with your hands laying idly upon a computer keyboard.
Make. Model.
That thought, like some intrusive voice, rings out in your head, and demands a response. You shake your head. What the hell?
Your keyboard, dumbass. What’s the make? The model?
You suck in a sharp breath. That voice in your mind is surprisingly mean to you. You take a very brief, unenthusiastic glance at your keyboard.
Uhhh, I don’t know. You think to yourself. It’s… glowing. Probably LED. Some sort of gamer keyboard, I guess. Why do you ask? You try to engage with it, by asking a question back.
What are you doing, right now?
You blink. That voice in your head really doesn’t listen to you, huh. You’re starting to get a bit frustrated at it. You snap back. Gimme a damn break dude - why does ‘what I’m doing’ even matter to you? Why are you even asking me any of this?
What. Are. You. Doing. It repeats itself. I’m asking you a very simple question, you fucking idiot. Just answer me. Or are you really incapable of doing even that?
You grit your teeth at its words. You bring a heavy hand up to your face, and start massaging your temples. You’re really starting to dislike that voice in your head. You take a small pause, and drag out a sigh. Inside your own mind, something clicks its tongue at you, and decides that you aren’t worth it.
…Alright, man. The voice in your head mutters. You’re really just gonna be like this, huh? You uncooperative fuck.
That's it. We’re moving on to the next question.
~oOo~
You wake up, with a start.
You find yourself in a moving car, gripping onto your steering wheel for dear life; as you almost swerve into the nearest guard rail, and drive your vehicle straight into the line of trees standing beside the road. You know this path. It feels more empty than usual - but it’s the highway that you drive, going to and from work and home.
Your car is going uncomfortably fast. Definitely speeding, but you don’t know why. You try to put some gentle pressure on the brakes - but the car only seems to move faster. When you glance down very briefly at the pedals, you realize with horror that there are no pedal brakes on your car. There's only a second accelerator pedal, in the place where the brakes should be.
Now don’t you go trying the handbrake. The voice in your head taunts you, a smug tone underlying its teasing words. At these speeds? You’re actually going to flip your car. And you don’t want to die just yet, do you?
You inhale a sharp breath, and resist the urge to yell at the silence that surrounds you.
Calm down, you try to still yourself, as you attempt to steady your erratic breathing. Calm down. Think. What can I do to stop the car? What can I do to get home safely from this?
Instinctively trying to detach from the crisis at hand, you focus on the harsh beating that you feel in your chest. You feel through the way that your chest heaves in those heavy, rhythmic states of up and down, and up and down. An endless, active rhythm, reminding you that you are still, in fact, alive.
Speeding alone in a car on an empty highway, finally driving home - you can’t let yourself die here. Not now. Not yet.
Not like this.
In between short gasps of air, you try to take a deep breath through your nose, and then snap your jaw shut. Trying as hard as you can to stop the air from escaping your lungs - you forcefully still your erratic heart by gulping in a deep breath, and trying to hold it in. You feel almost nauseous; like your head’s about to spin out of control with panic.
Just keep your eyes on the road, man. You think to yourself, eyes wide and frantic. Don’t panic. We can get through this. Don’t think about anything unimportant right now. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters as much as what’s in front of you now. You have to live. So don’t lose focus, now. Don’t you fucking dare-
Make. That other voice in your head drones. Model.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” You yell at the empty space in your car. “Stop fucking talking to me!”
The voice in your head almost makes you jump out of nerves, and you grab at the steering wheel just a little too hard in one direction. Your car veers out to the center of the road, for a brief moment - but you catch yourself just in time to force the vehicle back into the correct lane, before you completely lose control.
Incredibly rattled now, your breathing is back to being very erratic. The panic that almost subsided, for a second there, now clouds your mind and all your thoughts with a vengeance that can no longer be stilled. Unable to ground, or placate yourself; you resort to short, desperate bouts of gasping behind the steering wheel. You’re unmistakably trembling.
You’re having a panic attack. Oh my god - you’re having a fucking panic attack at the worst time possible. Why are you like this? Why can’t you do anything right?
Make. Model.
That other voice in your head continues on, monotonously. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to shut up anytime soon.
You click your tongue. Fuck you. You think, to nobody but yourself. Fuck you, and fuck off.
Make. Model.
There’s a growing impatience in its voice. It’s not going to stop until its questions are answered.
Your already iron grip on the steering wheel gets tighter, as you dig your fingers into its rubber handles. Honda Fit. You finally snap back at it. Honda Fit. 2021. Hybrid Model. Are you fucking happy now?
There's the sound of someone sighing in your head.
Finally. The voice tells you. Now, I need to ask you.
What are you doing, right now?
You resist the urge to verbally snap back at the voice in your head. I'm driving. Obviously. And also trying not to fucking die at the moment. You take a small pause. Are you gonna help me out here, or not!?
For a while, you hear no response back.
The world continues to move on in an ominous, speedy blur around you. As you sit there you are hit with the sudden, gut-deep realization that this hollow metal box that you're currently driving is moving at speeds never reached by any living land animal in the natural world. One of the grandest feats of human engineering; you very briefly reflect on the fact that the personal automobile is in fact one of the utmost pinnacles of modern technology, built upon years and generations of iterative upgrades and endless manpower poured into creating it, and everything around it.
You are riding on, and controlling one of the most successful products of human history - and it is an absolute killing machine.
You suck a small breath in, and blink away any tears that threaten to cloud your vision. You don't understand why any of this is happening. You just want to get home.
Why?
The voice speaks up again, its small voice slow, and thoughtful. As if it's asking you to clarify your thought process. As if it actually cares.
You feel your expression harden at its sudden, soft words. You don't trust it. Whatever this voice is - it's not your friend.
So, that's why you decide to not answer the question.
…There's a million reasons why I’d want to be able to ‘get home safely’. And if you aren't fucking dense, then you should probably be able to understand why. Like, for one; not fucking dying.
You choose to snap back, instead.
First of all, I'm not exactly ready to die. I got some important shit I gotta do, and somebody I still need to talk to. Ya know; things that are actually important to me. I'm not leaving it all behind, just like that, without any warning. Are you fucking kidding me? Who do you take me for? Some sort of coward?
‘Cause I'm not trying to run from this shit, until I see everything through. I ain't planning on dying here, bro. Use your own goddamn brain if you want an answer to your stupid question - you’re really not helping me out here, right now.
There's a brief pause.
You're not answering the question. It replies back to you, flatly. That isn't what I was asking you.
I was asking you why you wanted to ‘get home’. As if ‘getting home’ was something that actually mattered to you.You literally just spewed some bullshit about ‘oh woe is me I don't wanna die here’ and all that - but you never actually answered my question, dude.
Somewhere in the farthest reaches of your own mind; you hear a long, dragged out sigh. The voice in your head tries again.
Why do you want to ‘get home’? Tell me - what about home is so important to you?
You grit your teeth. You really don't want to entertain that question directly. Because you hold the answer to it so close to your heart - it feels incredibly difficult to conceptualize it, or even make shape out of the wordless feelings and sensations that constitutes what the word home means to you.
It's important to you, and so you hide it away in a place where nobody can see it. Untouchable, and unmentionable - you don't want the world to understand what it means to you, or why you do things like this, in order to ‘protect’ it. You don't want the world to know why it's so dear to you.
Home. Such a simple, harmless word.
Yet you've shrouded it behind so many layers of mystery, fantasy, and theoretical structures that you can't even clearly acknowledge what the word means to yourself, either. You don't even know why it's so precious to you. All you know is that it is.
You don't know why. The reality is that you don't have an answer to that question.
I'm going to ask you, one more time. The voice sighs. This is your last chance to answer me.
What is ‘home’ to you? Why do you want to go home? Why does it even matter to you?
You don't respond to the voice. At the very end of your wits, you clamp your eyes shut, and sharply turn the wheel. The last thing you are aware of, is the suffocating, gasping feeling of your seatbelt very tightly digging into your neck and chest - and the sensation of the entire world spinning the wrong way up.
You black out before you can feel the impact of your car flipping, and then smashing into the pavement.
…You actual fuck up. The voice growls from somewhere, tiredly. Did you really just choose to kill yourself before you could answer the damn question? Are you fucking kidding me? Be so for real right now, man.
You avoid answering things you don't know the answer to. And for what? Why do you even do this shit? It's not like you're going to escape having to answer your own questions. All that you've done is just prolong the pain. The questions that you have for yourself are still gonna remain, until you find the answers to them, yourself. Until you are satisfied with what you're saying.
This shit isn't for anyone else but yourself. So why the fuck do you keep acting like this is all for some bigger cause, or whatever? Like anybody actually gives a shit about what you tell yourself, in your own head; about things they won't even have a say in changing?
I know you. You're not going to listen to anyone, until you find a ‘solution to the problem’ that you are satisfied with. It's not like anybody else is able to change your mind. So why do you keep running from the only thing that forces you to answer your own questions?
Why do you keep running from yourself?
There's a slight pause. The world around you is otherwise completely silent, and entirely black. You are very definitely dead, at this point.
…Whatever. The voice sighs. Next question.
~oOo~
You wake up, with a start.
Don't breathe in. The voice in your mind snickers before you even begin to realize where you are. Or you might just explode.
Suspended, and alone. In a dark, almost unimaginably wide void. You gasp as you look around you, and realize that what you’re seeing, glistening in the conceptually impossible expanse that surrounds you, are stars. A lot of them.
Oh no. You think to yourself, as you begin to panic. No. No no no. Is that a fucking planet that I’m looking at? Please don’t tell me I’m actually just drifting around in outer space, right now.
You flail around and try to turn your body, trying to maybe change the trajectory of the direction you’re floating in. Of course, it doesn’t work, and the only thing that you manage to pull off in zero gravity, is the very annoying, nauseating effect of slowly rotating in place. Like a squirming, panicking, very much alive and horrifically mentally aware rotisserie chicken. You look to the location far beyond your feet, and that’s when you first see it.
The blue, living planet, in all its glory. Your home. Planet earth.
Make. Model.
That voice interjects in your head, once again. It’s definitely making fun of you, right now.
You bare your teeth and grimace. Are you ACTUALLY shitting me right now? That’s fucking planet earth! You seethe at the voice, internally. Make? Model?? What the fuck are you even TALKING about!?
Easy there. It just chuckles. Fighting me’s just gonna make everything worse for you. You should know this by now. Calm down bro. It’s for your best interest.
Also? The voice muses. You’re allowed to just use your voice, ya know. It’s not like anybody’s gonna notice you ‘acting like a deranged person’ while you’re floating around in outer space, of all things. Just relax. Do what comes natural to you, dude.
“...My brother in Christ. Look man, I know that you’re just another voice in my head; but when I find a way outta this mess? I need you to understand that I am going to physically hunt you down and then slaughter you like a pig.”
Exercising your sense of humor, amidst this very odd and dire situation that you find yourself in, huh? Very good. Continue.
“Bitch.” You just scowl. “Absolute fucking bastard. I’m going to fucking beat your ass.”
Ha ha ha. It laughs sarcastically at you. Yeah yeah, do whatever you need to, man. I’m just ‘another voice in your head’, as you said. It sighs languidly. Just answer the fuckin question and we’ll both be out of this in no time. Alright, champ?
You basically hiss at it in response. “Fight me, you pussy-ass motherfucker.”
…Alright. Okay. Enough with the expletives. There’s a slight pause. I guess I did tell you to ‘do what comes naturally to you’, didn’t I? Knowing you, I guess I should’ve seen this coming, huh. Whatever. Just answer the questions - as honestly as you can, please.
What are you doing, right now?
“Well, for starters-” You huff. “I’m apparently floating out of orbit from planet-goddamn-earth, as we speak. And no, I don’t know why.”
You don’t hear any response, back. Still entirely rattled by what’s happening around you (but unwilling to show it), you decide to continue on loudly and mindlessly ranting at the disembodied voice that is without a doubt listening in to every single word of complaint that you’re about to throw at it.
“I am somehow not dead; or even exploded into many tiny meaty little gibs, like they say I should be, according to the sci-fi novels.” You cross your arms close to you, and tap at it in agitation. “Look, if this is all just another stupid nightmare that I'm having - I gotta tell you that this specific scene is kinda really lame, dude. I mean - It's not even that scary. Betcha thought this would rattle me something, cause I'm agoraphobic or whatever, right? Well guess what dumbass,” You spew out the words before your brain actually gets a chance to catch up. “I’m already getting used to simply existing in the infinite and never-ending void-like expanse that is space! This shit doesn't even scare me anymore, because I don't give a fuck!”
“I mean… I'm still alive, somehow. I'm still breathing. I don't feel all that cold, and it's not spectacularly uncomfortable to just float around like this. Just annoying.” You tap on your arm a little quicker. The lack of any response from the voice is making you feel antsy. “Plus - I'm alone. There's nobody here to bother me, or stop me from doing anything. I get to just think about shit, without anybody getting in my way.”
“Like, how I'm kept in a suspended state of movement thanks to the law of inertia. On this trajectory, I’d probably just go on forever, drifting away from earth, and maybe into the sea of stars that float around and within the milky way galaxy. Travelling through the solar system, like a very, very slowly moving asteroid.”
You subconsciously hug your limbs a little closer together, in some sort of fetal position that helps you feel a little bit safer. A little more guarded. A little bit small. You look up from your slow rotation, and catch sight of planet earth. It's painfully beautiful.
“I could just go on like this forever, couldn't I? A lone traveller, navigating through the infinite expanse of time and space - endlessly floating around, unanchored to anywhere or anything. Truly free, in a sense. Free to do whatever the fuck I wanted to do, without the need to answer to anyone I didn't want to. Unapologetically honest to myself, and my own desires.”
You subconsciously realise that what you're going through is a slow, isolated and uncontrolled spin away into the depths of outer space. Far away from home. Far away from anything that actually matters to you.
“I'm… free.” You mutter, unconvicingly. “Yeah. That's right. I'm actually free. There's no need for me to be bound to anyone, or anything aside from myself, anymore. And that's… that's happiness, right there. Right?” You feel something slowly welling up from behind your eyes. “I don't need to be anywhere, and I don't need to be there for anyone. I don't owe anybody anything - and nobody owes me shit, either. I'm free.” You try to force out a wobbly, unstable smile, and fail, as your face immediately scrunches up instead.
“...Oh god. Fuck.” You begin to sniffle, as the facade collapses on you. “I'm never getting back home now, aren't I?”
The silence drags on around you. The voice doesn't yet grace you with a response, as you find yourself still floating around in the empty, and dark expanse of space. The galaxy feels incredibly wide around you. And it's uncomfortable for you - when just existing on planet earth already felt so big. Almost too big.
“...Dude,” You quietly mutter at the voice, too shaken to keep putting up your ‘strong front’ any longer. “There's… still some place that I have to go home to. This is something that's really important to me. I can't stay here.”
Why?
Your head perks up at that internal voice's sudden appearance. You don't fight it, this time.
“I… I don't know how to explain it. The why.” You barely muster. “The idea of home is just such a dream, to me. I guess. It's not something that I actually know a lot about. It's not even something that really lives in my memory. I've never actually experienced homesickness before, either. I don't really know what that even feels like.”
You hug yourself closer together. You've been alone for so long… sometimes that position is the only thing that reminds you that people are supposed to be warm.
“I think ‘home’ is supposed to be someplace where you feel safe. Somewhere where you don't need to feel lonely, and a place where you don't always feel cold.” You bury your face in your crossed arms. “Maybe it's somewhere that isn't always quiet. Maybe it's someplace that you'd be able to actually hear somebody else's voice in - or like, the faint background sounds of something playing on the radio, or whatever. Maybe it's someplace that's filled with the sound of music. Possibly even somebody's warm laughter.” You sigh, as longing spreads through your lungs, and stains your ribs. “At least… that's how I like to imagine it. The concept of home, for me.”
So it's important to you, then.
You quickly gulp back something that rises in your throat. Probably a sob. Probably some tears. You've been crying a lot, after all. “...Yeah.”
…But you don't actually know what it's like. And you don't actually have a ‘home’ at this very moment, now do you? Why would you want to ‘go home’ to a place that you don't even know? Is it even real? Does that ‘home’ even exist?
You bite back your immediate words. Something undoubtedly nasty. You take a small pause, before you say anything. A long, shaky breath.
“...It doesn't.” You eventually muster, weak and defeated. “It doesn't actually exist. At least - I haven't found it. Yet.” You sigh, and slightly rub at your sore eyes. “I'm still looking for it. A way to get home. A place to go home to. Wherever that ends up being, for me.”
“And no,” You continue on, dejectedly. “I don't know what having a home is actually supposed to be like. And maybe I'm just romanticizing all this shit, and just making stuff up in my head, like I always am - but this is the only thing that I could say I've always wanted. Something that I've been looking for, for my entire life.”
“Home.” You mutter to yourself, as you turn your gaze to the large blue planet, floating silently before you. Somehow so real as it exists in front of you - and yet, simultaneously so far away. Like a beautiful fantasy that you could never touch, no matter how much you tried to reach for it. “Someplace I could say that I belong in. Somewhere I could call home.”
You extend your arm, and reach a hand towards the direction of planet earth. If you frame it just right - it feels like you can almost catch that blue globe within your hand. You could almost pretend that everything you've ever wanted is just within reach.
All you need is to grasp it. To hold that thought gently in your hands, and keep it close to you. To treasure that warm thought, and protect it.
“Home.” You repeat to yourself. A little softer this time. “I need to go home.”
The voice inside your head only sighs.
…You're kinda fucking insane. A tad too intense about shit. At least that's how you come across, sometimes. You know this about yourself, right? It huffs, a little dismissively. Still, you actually answered the questions, this time. Good for you.
You’ve earned the right to take a break. For now.
~oOo~
You wake up, with a start.
You’re sitting in a room that you almost don’t recognize at first, with your hands laying idly on top of some keyboard, staring at a computer screen. There’s a written-out word document in front of you. About ten pages long.
Wakey wakey. Eggs and bakey. A voice in your head chirps sarcastically at you, as you stare vacantly at your screen. Question time’s over, dude. You can stop dissociating and being actively insane about shit, now.
You blink, briefly. And then sigh, as you feel yourself finally settling into yourself.
“...What the fuck am I even supposed to title this thing?” You decide to mutter to nobody in particular.
Uhh, I dunno. Maybe use your brain, dumbass. The voice scoffs at you. You got free will, man. Use it. Or something.
You hold back another sigh, and try to think up something that summarizes this entire mess of a story. The voices in your head tend to be very helpful and also eloquent and incredibly kind-hearted individuals, whenever they decide to randomly grace you with their presence.
“Man On His Way Home”
You type in, and then pause. You reconsider something, and decide to add some more… context. An in-title footnote; one could say.
“Man On His Way Home (man on the verge of losing his fucking mind)”
