Chapter Text
He thought he was chosen long before he even understood what that meant.
Chosen meant someone picking him for him, for his attributes and his skills. Later it felt more like being made ready; being emptied out enough that something else can fit.
He didn’t notice him when he decided to give him the first hint.
The sun filtered through the thin white curtains dangling over the cracked window of Foster’s cluttered room. Dust danced in the pale yellow rays of the morning as sheets rustled, overlapping with a yawned mewl from his tabby cat, Sand Paper (he mostly called her Sandy).
A tan blanket canvassed the mattress in the corner of the room, and a tangled mop of blond hair nestled right above the top. Foster’s eyebrows tensed then relaxed as he groggily opened his eyes, unfocused and wavering as his hand shot from under the blanket to his nightstand. His fingers danced atop the white wood until he felt cold metal.
Foster pushed himself upright with his other arm and brought his white gold glasses to his face. As his eyes focused and adjusted to the light of the early morning, he locked eyes with the boy in the mirror.
He studied his reflection longer than necessary. The boy in the mirror stared back with the same pale lashes atop silver eyes and the same crease between his brows. Yet, there was something that thinned the connection between the two boys.
Someone had told him mirrors were a reflection of the soul. Sometimes it was as if he couldn’t see his.
Before he got too lost in his morning crisis, Sandy pawed her way onto Foster’s lap and he welcomed the grounding weight on his thigh. The feline purred as his slender fingers scratched behind her ear and ran over her cream-colored fur.
“Okay Sandy, time for breakfast you big fat cat,” Foster groaned out when he lifted her weight with his hands. He stood, his bare feet hitting cold hardwood which creaked under his own weight. The cat slid from his palms and gracefully landed next to his feet before slinking through his doorway and to the right.
Foster followed her into the narrow hall, rubbing at his eyes as the house woke up around him. The overhead light flickered when he flipped the stained switch, hesitating before it settled into a dull, steady glow. He frowned at it, then kept walking. Old wiring. ‘That’s all’ he would tell himself.
The kitchen greeted him with its usual stillness, morning light pooling weakly across the linoleum. He waltzed in then slowed.
Something threw him off-kilter.
At first he couldn’t place it. Everything was more or less where it should have been, yet the room felt misaligned, like a picture hung just slightly crooked. His gaze drifted to the far corner, where the large potted plant sat by the window. He was sure he’d placed it closer to the wall, its ceramic base nearly brushing the baseboard. Now it stood a few centimeters forward, just enough for its shadow to go over Sandy’s bowl.
He was sure he had not moved it.
His eyes slid next to the table. One of the chairs sat half an inch from where it belonged and was angled outward instead of neatly tucked in. Of course.
A small, uneasy laugh slipped from his throat. “I really need to get more sleep,” he murmured, though the words felt thin in the air.
The thoughts disappeared when the clatter of Sandy’s food sounded from her metal bowl. The tabby hurriedly walked over and began eating before he got the last scoop of food in. “Fatass,” he huffed with a smirk, bending down to give her a quick scratch behind the ear.
He put the kibble away, neatly placing it in a white cabinet beside the softly buzzing refrigerator. The buzz had been there since he moved in. He had looked for ways to fix it but it seemed everything he tried just caused a different issue, and the same thing happened with his flickering lights.
Foster glanced at Sandy before walking back down the hall to his bathroom. Taking a left right before his bedroom door, he was met with the subtle yet refreshing smell of Tea Tree, a mint and wood-like scent that fit with the neutral colors of his bathroom.
He padded to the front of his sink, gazing into the mirror. He could see every imperfection that was indelible, every scar cut into the boy from nervous picking, and every stress line trailing his face. He sighed and focused his gaze down to the off-white sink, picking up his green toothbrush and throwing a dime-sized amount of mint toothpaste on the brush.
He turned the crystalline knob for cold water, wetting the brush before setting it to his teeth. The familiar routine settled him—mint, motion, the hollow sound of bristles against enamel. After a minute, he noticed the water had changed.
It was black now.
Not like ink, but thick and sluggish, clinging to the porcelain as it pooled in the sink. It moved the way mucus did, stretching and recoiling instead of cleanly running down the drain.
Foster turned the knob off and backed up into the tan wall behind him with a SLAM and an echoing rattle. The brush fell from his mouth and clattered onto the linoleum under him. His chest was heaving as he glanced up to the mirror, a sense of dread pooled over him and his throat tightened. He looked back down at the sink.
It was gone. Everything that had been in the sink had just, disappeared. No stain, no residue, no slick sheen sitting in the bowl.
Nothing.
Foster carefully slid down the wall to pick up the discarded toothbrush and then approached the sink, staring down into the drain. ‘I’m hallucinating now. Wonderful.’
He left the toothbrush to sit in the sink, not daring to turn the water back on, and left the bathroom. The taste of mint was uncomfortably stuck to his teeth. He turned left to walk further down the hall into a room that was across from his bedroom.
The photography room was dim, curtains drawn tight to keep the light from creeping in. The red glow of the safelight bathed the space in a muted warmth. Rows of prints lay clipped to a various lines strung across the room, some still damp at the corners. The air was laden with the scent of developer and fixer, a smell that he had long been nose-blind to.
He crossed to the newest line of photos, scanning the images as he always did. He checked the contrast, the framing, the familiar shapes of trees and paths he’d photographed a hundred times before. Forests were easy. They didn’t ask anything of him. All he asked of forests was to sit still and look pretty.
“What is that?” Foster mumbled when his eyes snagged on a print at the end of the line.
He reached for the print and unclipped it from the line. He scanned the photo of the stand of trees—a patch of trees beside a narrow trail that lead down to Yucca Creek on his college’s campus—that he passed by almost every day to get to his first class. Everything was as it should have been, but there was a blur.
The blur was slightly off-center between the trees, vertically smearing across the photo. It didn’t resemble anything Foster knew of, just a blackened distortion or a development error.
No. It developed just fine. It was something else.
“Lens error. That’s all,” Foster reassured himself. Maybe it had been some dust, or something was wrong with the film.
With a small and quick sigh, he folded the print neatly and then dropped it into the trash can without a second thought.
He decided it wasn’t worth thinking about anymore.