The drive home only scared Josh senseless once when he accidentally stepped on the gas instead of the brake pedal, but no harm was done. Thank the universe. His near collision with the car in front of him did serve to wake him up a bit more for the rest of the fifteen minutes he was on the road. He was never more grateful to see the parking lot of the condo than he was at that time, even though the idea of walking in by himself still scared him more than he wanted to admit. He was just too tired to care anymore. The full body shuddering persisted, but he managed not to trip over his own two feet as he made his way from the car to the front door.
It took four tries before Josh was able to get the key into the lock, and it was déjà vu. He hadn't experienced that problem in a decade or more. In fact, the last time he had this much trouble with a lock was the night he finally got busted for drugs by his parents and shipped off to a rehab center at age eighteen. That wasn't his problem this time, at least. This wasn't something that could be solved with a two month stay and a sixty day cross-his-fingers-and-hope-it-worked-this-time treatment program for addiction. No, he'd let those old diseases lie ages ago.
This problem wasn't something he brought on himself, but it was the one thing that he just couldn't kick, or rather, was afraid of trying to sort out. The usual insomnia he dealt with, in and of itself, was something he'd had for as long as he could remember, and it was only getting worse as he got older. As soon as the singer thought he had it under control, it hit him all over again, a little harder each time than ever before. But this time around, it was more self-induced than anything else, just in effort to avoid his dreams, and it was definitely causing him more problems than he knew he'd have if he could just get rid of the goddamn nightmares.
To prove his own point, Josh lost his footing and stumbled over the rug just inside the door, catching himself on the wall just before he went down. Throwing a handful of profanities out into the empty space around him, he turned and slammed the door shut before dropping his keys onto the table, forgetting to lock the door, any door for the first time in two weeks. Making his way through the house and into the living room without bothering to turn around to secure himself inside the house, he swore, "Fuck it."
The clock on the microwave in the kitchen read four forty-seven p.m.. Josh had scheduled the entire day around working at the studio first with Matt, then later on once the brunet had left to get ready for the wedding, Mike and Ian were supposed to show up, but those plans had obviously been shot to hell. He felt a little bad about dragging Matt all the way out there for only about six hours' worth of work, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. Not only did they have work to do anyway, but he was starting to depend very heavily on having Matt around for comfort, and being at the studio provided him with an excuse to keep the younger man close at hand.
"Josh." The familiar call of his name came again, sounding very close to his right ear.
He spun on his heel, gripping the back of the couch and turning to look for the same phantom voice that he had heard in the studio and in his own home several times before. "What?" Still seeing no one, he now knew for sure that his lucidity was slipping. Nothing was making sense anymore in his addled mind, and he couldn't focus on anything long enough to even try to figure it out. He knew it and he didn't know how to make it stop. Removing his hand, Josh sunk down onto the arm of the couch and sighed angrily.
"Josh, Josh, Josh...," his name was drawled repetitively.
The singer swallowed hard, hesitantly giving in to the voice. "What the fuck do you want??"
"Josh, listen to us."
"Fuck you!" he yelled at the taunting voice, already completely over everything that was trying to crack his sanity and split it into unidentifiable fragments that could never be put back together again. "Say my fucking name again! I fuckin' dare you! SAY IT AGAIN!"
And the voice did come again. "You're dead, Josh. It's over. This is the end. You're dead. Dead."
"NO!" Josh screamed, shoving himself to his feet and walking in circles around the room. "No! I'm not dead! Get out of my head. Get the fuck out of my fucking head! Stop doing this to me!!" Often times, when he couldn't sleep, past issues came back to haunt him. He tended to re-live moments that he thought he'd forgotten and scenes that he'd tried his absolute best to distance himself from. It wasn't so unusual for Josh to spend a night here and there wishing that he could change events in his life, but this was, by far, the worst he'd ever been. Why? Why was this situation with the intruder nearly two fucking weeks ago so set on destroying him? Wasn't it bad enough that it had to happen at all? Why wouldn't it go away?
"Stop, just stop. Make it stop...," he moaned, sinking down to his knees, digging his knuckles into his thighs. A light sheen of tears welled up in his eyes, frustration, confusion and fear hitting him all at the same time.
"Calm down now and just listen. All those people who told you that you'd be okay after you were shot and nearly killed? They lied. You're not here anymore. You don't exist. Believe me. You do believe me, don't you, Josh?" the voice asked evenly, flatly, without emotion.
Josh's breathing was erratic as he squeezed his eyes closed, hoping for something, anything he could do that would get rid of the voices he was hearing. With all of the shit he'd been through in his life, one would think that he'd have experienced every strange circumstance under the sun and then some, but they would be wrong. He'd never heard things in his head before and that was scaring him more than he wanted to admit. It was terrifying him and he didn't know what to do about it. Usually it was comforting to have someone else around him, but not someone that he couldn't fucking see.
Leaning over his knees, he put his hands flat on the floor, worried that he might be sick as the voice continued to tell him that he had died. He wasn't dead. He couldn't be fucking dead. He'd lived through the shooting and had the still-prominent dark pink scar across his skin to prove it. Reaching up, Josh lightly touched a hand to his shoulder, feeling the disfigured flesh beneath his shirt.
The singer shoved himself to his feet and pulled off his jacket, throwing it at the couch as he paced back and forth across the room again, listening intently to the voice that continued to speak to him, mocking him, trying to get him to believe these goddamn lies that he knew couldn't be real. "No," he said simply, shaking his head, voice wavering. He felt like such a fucking child, unable to insist that these words stop filling his head. There was no strength behind his voice by this time. "No, it's not true. It's not fucking true. Stop it!" he said as his voice cracked mid-word. "Just stop!"
Josh was now shaking so hard that he couldn't take another step. His body felt like it would rip itself apart, falling to pieces where he stood. The chattering of his teeth was what he imagined the rattling of his bones sounded like beneath flesh and muscle as he trembled violently. He couldn't keep going this way. He couldn't keep letting these...these bullshit lies get into his head.
Sinking down onto the couch one final time, Josh pulled his knees up tightly to his chest and set his feet on the edge in front of him. He bent his head down and rested his forehead on his knees, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried the same trick he used to use as a kid when he was being told something he didn't want to hear - he covered his ears with his hands and sang to himself. Loudly. It was only a momentary distraction because the louder he got, the louder the voice got, overpowering his own and drowning him out. It rolled inside his head like thunder through mountains, and he couldn't take it anymore.
"Sleep, Josh. Just close your eyes. No use fighting it now," the voice trilled over the singer's words.
"Goddamnit!!" he screamed, pulling his hands away from his ears and balling them into fists at his sides. "Stop it! Just stop it! I can't do this! I didn't ask for this! I don't want it. I'm not dead! Fuck you!" Josh pushed himself from the couch, sniffing and wiping the back of his hand across his eyes. By now, the tears were cascading along the bridge of his nose and down his cheeks. He'd fallen apart a handful of times over the last couple of weeks, but this was the worst since the very first night he'd been home from the hospital.
This was too much. It was all just too fucking much. The blond had no idea where these voices were coming from, but he didn't care. He couldn't care, and it didn't matter. He just needed to get them to stop, and he made a quick decision to do whatever he had to in order to make that happen. "I'll kill you! I'll fuckin' kill you! I'll kill myself if it means getting you to stop. I swear to God, I will," he threatened, walking over to the dining room table and sweeping an arm across it, completely clearing it of everything that had been placed on top. As the objects slid across the floor, Josh searched the ground with his eyes until he found what he was looking for.
Picking it up, the singer held the silver letter opener in front of him like a knife, wildly swinging it around him, making pointed stabs into the air. "Do you hear me? I'll fucking kill you!!" Josh slowly backed his way down the hall, keeping the weapon in front of him at all times. His eyes were wide and frantic. A breath caught in his chest every several intakes, making his heart pause for half a second every couple of beats. The air around him felt thick, as it often did during these panicked moments, and dizziness took over causing him to grab onto the wall in order to avoid going down in a heap.
"Don't you dare come any fucking closer, you fucking bastards!" he yelled, sucking in a deep breath to counter the unsteadiness. Ever-so-slowly, it started to work and he slid a foot back, creeping along the wall until he reached the stairs, still continuing to swing the letter opener in the air around him. Placing one foot on the first step, Josh quickly climbed to the second floor and flung himself against the opposite wall, landing hard against his side.
The blond continued to back himself into his bedroom, pausing momentarily when he got to the door to rub at his eyes with his free hand while he tried to decide whether or not to lock himself in. It didn't matter in the end, he decided. "It's here. It's in me. I can't shut it out. It's talking and it's lying and it won't stop. It'll never fucking stop," he choked out.
Josh moved further into his room, spinning in a circle while he tried to figure out where to go. There was nowhere safe, nowhere that would protect him from these words that continued to fly at him from places unseen. He wiggled himself into the small space between his queen size bed and the wall, continuing to keep a tight grip on the dull metal object. Wedging his body into the back corner, he pulled his knees up to his chest again and waited for the voices that he knew would inevitably continue to send him closer and closer to the edge. Unfortunately, he didn't have to wait long.