"A Sanctuary Safe and Strong"(Marianas Trench)

Chapter 34

Walking quickly back through the lobby to his office, Josh grabbed his wallet and opened it, pulling out everything he had with the tips of his fingers, trying not to stain the bills. Skimming over it, he counted out roughly two hundred and twenty dollars. Was a four minute walk with a sixteen year old to keep away the monsters under the bed and the boogeyman in the closet worth that much? As he handed the money over, he decided that it was.  

After wearily thanking his rescuer and sending the boy on his way to wherever he was originally headed, Josh was alone again and more than a little traumatized after that ordeal. Maybe...maybe it would be best to just try to get some sleep. Leaving the building by himself had turned out to be a disaster, something that he wasn't ready for. If he could sleep, he might be able to forget it and move on. But first, he had to clean up. 

The dirty bathroom mirror revealed bloody stripes up his cheek, down his chin and neck and across the front of his tshirt. The only good news about that was that it detracted from the faded blotchy yellow and purple bruising around his eyes from the initial backhand to the face. "Ugh...," Josh moaned, dipping his head down to the sink and using his left hand to awkwardly cup some of the running water, gently washing away the gore. He watched as the water, thickened by drying blood, circled the drain and disappeared, all physical evidence of what he'd just been through now gone. 

A couple of minutes later, his skin was clean again, though there was little he could do about his shirt and pants unless he ran them through a washing machine, which he'd eventually have to do anyway unless he wanted to continue to throw away his clothing, buying new to replace the ruined. It was a possibility anyway. But for the moment, he was strapped. Josh had given away his ready cash, and besides, he really, really didn't feel like stepping into a store looking like "Freddy" or "Jason" or any of those ax or chainsaw wielding fucks. Maybe in the morning he'd just get to his place a little early and throw a few more clean clothes in a bag to bring back with him. He anticipated this problem happening again in the future, and he had to be ready next time.  

It was just a little after eleven p.m. by the time Josh settled himself down onto the couch with a couple of blankets and a pillow, the alarm on his phone set to ring at eight o'clock. If he was a more steady sleeper, he was sure he wouldn't wake up until the obnoxious beeping pried his eyes open nine hours later. But, as it was, chronic insomnia often ruined that idea and he was only able to sleep for a few hours at a time. That would certainly prove to be the case tonight. 

The singer spent two fitful hours trying to get to sleep, finally feeling his eyelids slip shut for the final time somewhere around one a.m.. He'd given up hoping for sleep after the first twenty minutes, frustration winning out. He grabbed his phone to browse around on the internet, keeping himself busy rather than lying there with nothing to do. Halfway through watching the thirtieth cat-playing-piano video, the yawning started and Josh was sure that he'd wind up dropping the fucking phone on his face eventually if he didn't shut it off. He'd done that more than once in the past and his nose was already broken. The blond didn't want to risk breaking it worse (was that even possible?), so he set the phone down and pulled the blankets up to his chin, nearly completely asleep before he knew what was happening. 

His dreams were unnerving, but not nothing he hadn't already been through in the past. Though, this time, he continued to bring himself back to that same street corner he'd stood on earlier in the night, cowering only against what his imagination was able to conjure up. But in this fevered nocturnal vision, the teenager who had helped him was gone, replaced by Matt who had appeared out of thin air. Josh woke up gasping and tearing at the blankets just as the dream version of his bandmate pulled a small black revolver from the waistband of his pants, all while telling Josh that he was glad he could be there for him.