"A Sanctuary Safe and Strong"(Marianas Trench)

Chapter 2

Laughing to himself about the idea of Matt Webb, one of the most low key, albeit quirky guys he knew being a premeditated murderer, he shook his head and keyed open the front door, stepping inside the house and closing the door behind him. Josh dropped the keys and his sunglasses onto the hall table, as was his usual routine, except when he forgot and somehow managed to lose them - through no fault of his own, he would insist if asked. He shrugged out of his black leather jacket and slung it across the hook on the wall after sliding his phone into his hip pocket and dropping his wallet next to his keys. "Stay," he ordered all three of the inanimate objects, hoping they'd still be there the next time he looked for them. In his life, there were no guarantees. 

Josh yawned and made his way into the kitchen to grab a soda from the refrigerator, hoping for a bit of a caffeine kick. He may not have been at the studio any longer, but that didn't mean he didn't still have ideas running through his mind that he wanted to jot down before it was time to attempt sleep for the night somewhere around his usual bedtime of two a.m.. As he leaned back against the counter and uncapped the bottle, tipping it up against his lips, he heard a muffled sound coming from somewhere inside the house. Odd. He lived alone and the two cats and dog he had as pets were currently staying at a close friend's house due to the long hours he was spending working at the studio lately, doing his best to write and record a new album in its entirety with his band before the end of the year.  

He hadn't locked the front door behind him when he came in, he realized. Maybe Matt had come back to tell him something and had let himself into the house. That had happened more than once in the last fifteen years that they had known each other. "Matt?" he called, walking back out of the kitchen, through the living room and into the hall where he could get a good look at the front door. Josh gripped his soda bottle tightly in his hand as his eyes searched the empty hallway. No Matt. No sign of anyone.  

Maybe he'd just imagined it. He must've. It was probably nothing. Just one of those strange house settling things he'd always heard about. He wasn't very used to being completely alone without his stereo cranked up as loud as he could get away with, so maybe he'd just never heard... 

Thump. Again. There was a shuffling sound, as though someone was quickly flipping through paperwork and tossing stacks of things aside. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He was still trying to convince himself that it was nothing to be afraid of as he took another tentative step. Josh pocketed the small black cap, but refused to put the bottle down. It made for a really shitty weapon, he knew, but at least it was something if he needed it. And he hoped to hell that he wouldn't need it. 

The singer crept as slowly and noiselessly as possible along the wall, stopping only briefly to listen for more sounds. Of course he heard another loud thud coming from the next room over. It was a spare room that he'd turned into an office of sorts. It housed almost all of the musical equipment he kept at home, including several electric guitars, a couple of small amplifiers, an acoustic guitar or two, the upright piano that had moved from house to house just as many times has he had over the course of the last decade, a keyboard, some low-level recording equipment, and a computer for a bit of mixing. That room was where he spent most of his time writing and testing out new ideas that came to him at three o'clock in the morning when sleep wouldn't come as easily as he had hoped and he didn't feel like driving all the way across town to the studio. In a sick twist of irony, that's where he was planning to spend the next few hours. 

If he was a smarter man, Josh would have left the house and called the cops rather than investigating for himself, but in the moment, he was the bravest idiot he knew. He spent a minute debating over whether or not to open his mouth and say something, but he figured that even the stupidest of people wouldn't come out with their arms raised and admit to being caught rifling through someone else's belongings.