growing distant
Josh
“This isn’t like you,” his mother said, but she may as well be talking to a brick wall. “We were worried out of our minds,
Josh . . . Why didn’t you call us?”
Josh hadn’t spoken much at all since his mother found him rummaging through the kitchen. It had to be well after midnight
when she heard all the commotion from deep within the house. She tried waking Bill up, but he was out cold, so she simply
slipped on her robe and tiptoed down the hall. A faint glow bled out from the kitchen, drawing her in.
She held her breath before entering, not knowing what to expect . . . but hoping. Praying it was him.
The lights were off. The refrigerator door was wide open, casting its dim glow across the countertop. She gasped at the sight
of her son, embedded into the shadows, focusing on the faint pale outline of his exposed neck as he glugged down an entire
carton of orange juice. He wouldn’t stop, Adam’s apple bobbing, rivulets of juice spilling down his cheeks.
“Josh,” she released, his name a revelation.
He was here. Back at home.
A miracle.
But Josh didn’t reply. Wouldn’t acknowledge he’d even heard his mother call out his name. Wouldn’t deign to give her the simplest nod, signaling to her existence. He seemed bored.
“Josh, honey?”
When Josh was done drinking, he quickly dropped the empty container on the counter. It landed with a hollow plop, whatever
juice left inside sloshing about the bottom, before tipping over and tumbling onto its side, sending the rest spilling.
Josh merely walked away, abandoning the kitchen altogether. He hadn’t even closed the fridge, letting the cool air out. Everything
inside would spoil if she didn’t shut it.
“Josh—wait!”
His mother and father had reached out to anyone they could think of contacting. His friends. Their parents. The school. His
soccer coach. His swim coach. His manager at Ukrops. His ex-girlfriend, Lacey, even though they didn’t think the two of them
had spoken since he broke up with her. Still. They were desperate, exhausting all their options. Asking the same questions
over and over again, such a grim litany. They tried so hard to keep the panic out of their voices, alternating calls, first
him, then her, then him again, back and forth like that for hours, reaching out, but the further down the phone tree they
went, exhausting all of their contacts, it became impossible not to crack every time they asked the same question, over and
over: Have you seen Josh? Do you know where he may be? When was the last time you saw him? Did he seem okay? Was he sick? Sad? Where
do you think he could be? What’s happening to him?
Two days. Two agonizingly long days.
Sleep wouldn’t suffice, what little she got. Every second out of every minute out of every waking hour provides a proliferation
of worst possible scenarios for their son. Kidnapping. Car accident. Suicide. Just when there couldn’t possibly be another nightmare alternative to what his mother had already imagined happening to
her baby boy, up popped another. Amnesia. Coma. Running away. A cult. On and on and on.
Two days. Forty-eight hours. Two thousand eight hundred and eighty minutes. One hundred seventy-two thousand eight hundred possible options for absolute heartbreak.
Josh wasn’t answering his phone. Forever hopping straight to voicemail. When his father finally checked the location app,
they realized Josh had left his cell phone at school.
That’s when his mother really began to worry.
They called the police, but the officer they spoke to suggested it wasn’t technically a missing persons case until Monday morning. The officer even went so far as to suggest that maybe Joshua had run away. The
questions were now turned toward them: Has anything happened at home that might lead Josh to want to leave? Anything with a family member?
Why were they being interrogated? Their son was missing! They were the ones who had called the police to file the report,
not the other way around. Why the third degree?
His mother stewed. Marinated in her agony. Every time her cell phone rang, she held her breath—her heart suspending itself
mid-beat—hoping against hope that it was him, her baby, her baby boy, calling from some pay phone somewhere, out there, in
this terrifying world. It didn’t matter where he was or why he’d left, she would drop everything and find him. Pick him up.
Bring him home. But it was never him. Nothing but robocalls. Salespeople. Pre-scripted spiels from elected officials. Surveys.
Unlisted numbers. Strangers.
Never him. Never their son.
Where was her baby boy?
Josh had never done anything like this before. Never ran away. He was very open with his parents. He had a good life. Didn’t
he? He was happy. Wasn’t he? Not a care in this world. His parents provided for their child. He’d been on the principal’s
list for three years in a row. Colleges had invited him to apply for early admission. Why on earth would he want to run away
from all that?
Now that he was back, it was almost worse. The child wandering around their house, not meeting his parents’ eyes, nor answering
their questions . . . Who in the hell was this?
A cuckoo boy. A replacement child.
Not their son.
“Where in the hell were you?” his father asked, unable to maintain any sense of patience. His temper was throbbing hot now,
no longer relieved. “Answer us, Josh.”
Still nothing. The boy was impenetrable. His eyes held onto some distant spot, content with this emotional absence even with
his physical presence, here but not.
“Who were you with?”
Josh was still wearing the clothes he’d had on the day he disappeared. His hair was a bit unkempt, that auburn mop of curls.
He needed a haircut. Soon. Needed a shower.
Dad’s panic ebbed into anger so fast, it caused his wife to wince. “Don’t you have anything to say? Your mother was beside
herself. We didn’t know if you were alive or—”
“Bill,” Mom tries to cut in, but Dad’s on a roll now. There’s no holding him back.
“Why won’t you tell us anything? Why won’t you talk to us?”
Josh is wandering down the hall. Is he heading to his bedroom?
“Answer me!” His father’s voice echoes, bellows in the emptiness. The dark of the night absorbs it, thickening almost, as
if the tension is so palpable, nobody can breathe.
Josh turns to his father. His eyes lock on to Dad’s.
The house is so quiet.
“I was looking for the lighthouse,” is all that Josh says.
“The . . . what?”
“The beacon. The beam. It burns so bright . . . Don’t you see it? It draws us in.”
“That’s it,” Dad says. “I’ve heard enough. Go to your room. We’ll deal with this—”
“You push him too much,” Josh cuts in.
The words make no sense. Push who, exactly? Josh?
Something about the look in their son’s eyes—the glee—sends a chill through the room. Something is wrong here. Something is
definitely wrong. This is not like Josh.
Not like Josh at all.
He smiles.
It’s his lips, his mouth, his body—but it’s not his smile. His mother doesn’t recognize her own son in that moment. This grin
isn’t his. He’s never looked at her like that before.
“Would you like to see what you’re doing to your son?” Josh asks.
Before his mother knows how to answer or his father can manage to say a word . . .
Josh’s head snaps back.
crk
It’s such an abrupt motion, his own body doesn’t know how to respond—articulate—the hollow pop of his vertebrae filling the hall, surrounded by so many framed photographs of their family in happier times.
Pictures of vacations. Recitals. Holidays.
That boy isn’t present. In his place, within his bent body, is something else.
Something malignant.
“He called out to us,” Josh says as his head folds so far backward, the bed of his cranium now nestles itself in the center
of his shoulder blades. The exposed slope of his throat stretches so far, his mother can’t help but worry that it might tear.
His Adam’s apple protrudes from his flesh, sliding up and down as he swallows, speaking in a voice so unfamiliar to his family.
“I was more than happy to answer his cry for help . . .”
His mother’s heart halts. She brings her hand up to her mouth, as if to clasp hold of the gasp before the air can escape.
Too late. The air is gone, emptied from her lungs. She’ll never be able to breathe again. Not with what she’s witnessing.
This moment will suspend itself in her memory for the rest of her days. There is nothing, nothing else, beyond this.
“Pushing,” her son says. “Always pushing . . .”
Josh continues to fold over backward. His body, his bones, are no longer defined by the rigid structures of human anatomy.
They are improvising, finding fresh directions to bend.
It looks so painful. And yet, through it all, that grin remains.
Josh never stops smiling, even as his body defies all logic and bends, his head now reaching the back of his knees, his feet, the crown of his head touching the floor, elevating his pelvis in the air, his arms flung out at either side and curlicuing themselves, a radiating sea anemone, a fleshy starfish uprooted from the sea, limbs now curling and flexing and gesticulating wildly.
“Don’t you see what happens when you push . . .”
Another pop from his spine.
“And push . . . and . . .”
Another.
“Push?”
Why won’t he stop smiling? His mother can’t help but wonder. Why won’t he stop?
“Look at me,” he says, eyes so wide, burning with a madness that she never thought was humanly possible—not her son, no, not
her angel—“See what happens?”
Laughing now. Josh is laughing. But it’s not him. Not his laugh.
“Don’t you see what happens?” Hammering the floor now. The tile. Pounding against the ground. His head. His beautiful head.
Now nothing more than bruised fruit.
crk
Something within their boy is breaking. Cracking.
crk
Bones.
crk
“Aren’t you happy? Aren’t you proud? Aren’t you—”
“Josh! Please! Stop!”
He won’t. Josh just won’t stop. What is happening what’s going on he’s not supposed to do that boys’ bodies are not meant to bend like that what is happening
to our son?
His father engages, snapping back to life and rushing toward their boy. He does everything in his power to make him stop, stop hurting himself, but Josh somehow defies logic, defies gravity, defies the laws of man and swats his father away with his twirling limb.
A thread of blood works its way down Josh’s chin, escaping his lips as he grins. “Aren’t you . . . so proud . . . of your
son . . . now?”
He will continue this grotesque display. He will fold himself in half, then into another half, and then another, compressing
himself more and more until there is nothing left.
Nothing but that smile.
Whoever’s it is.