That’s how it starts. Like a glitch. A fidgeting image on the back of his mind, just like when the game he’s playing falters because of a bad cartridge or RAM memory overload. It blinks, he halts, it stops.
It happens again, though. At the bath, when cold water touches his skin. When cold gloved hands help him through physical therapy. He falters, his body can’t move, the cold hands start to touch him elsewhere, roaming, crawling; his heart races and then, again, it stops.
His mind is playing tricks on him. His mind - his wit - is all he has.
So he doesn’t think about it.
(But he thinks about before. Before his friends, before Jojo freed him. There’s so much he doesn’t remember about before.
He can’t think about that.)
At his sleep, deep down a slumber that looks like paralysis, ghost touches invade him; on his neck, on his thighs, between his legs, and then a faint whisper in his ear, let’s be friends, and he screams.
The crawling in his skin shows in plain sight, it’s his nails doing. His arms and thighs are marked an angry red, and they - his parents, his friends, his doctors - ask him why. He doesn’t know. All he knows is there’s something on him and it’s cold, cold hands touching, groping, taking. It’s cold, it’s dead, and shying away from all the people around him, he howls.
And more bruised he gets.
It’s trauma, they say, he’s been through death and back, it must be trauma. It will get better, they say, let us help, it will get better. But they don’t understand. It’s still in him, inside him, all over him, and they. don’t. understand.
He doesn’t understand, either.
The glitch is all he is now, a bug corrupting his system, freezing clammy hands, pain and whispers in his ear, don’t you want to be my friend? So let’s do just this little thing, yes? And the cold from these hands seeps through his bones and he’s chilling, his mind cracking from inside out.
Right when he’s supposed to heal, he’s falling apart.