Contents on him: remote control

The television screen flickered with colors and sounds that demanded too much of Jonah’s attention, hours had past by since he had walked home from the block party. He couldn’t sleep. He attempted to induce sleep several times; warm milk, books, cigarettes, and other vices had failed. The sudden picture of the familiar but foreign architecture and landscape pulled Taj in as the muted reporter stood enthusiastically on the side of a panicked and wrecked street in New Delhi, India. The reporter’s cheerfulness puzzled him, wounded children and crying mothers wondered the streets Jonah had once called home. With a sudden push of a button, the words of the misleading reporter filled the empty room with over bearing information. The terrorist group that attacked the streets of New Delhi and claimed Raja had planted multiple car bombs taking the lives of ten and wounding more than thirty. The words sunk into his ears as the bombed sidewalks reflected in his eyes, but it wasn’t Raja who he was thinking about. It was his torn and fake identity that was forced to be reckoned with. The realization that he could not relate or understand the injured people on the screen panicked him.

Jonah frantically fumbled for the remote and pressed the off button. In the silence he heard the faint sound of a heartbeat and the shuffle of busied people in the room. He faded into the dark.

Contents on him: IV and checkboard

Two different places in the town filled up quickly with people and noise, one expected Jonah to arrive and the other forcefully kept him. One offered beer, loud music, and desperate Charlotte while the other had with nurses, cat scans, and a wounded boy. Both shared busied, frantic people; short and hurried responses; and people in critical conditions. One thing that one location had tat the other lacked was a fading heartbeat that slowly began to lose it’s rhythm. Nurses and doctors came in and out of his room, yet his parents remained out of sight.

Somewhere in the town near the rotting shed near the theater, Alec called Jonah for the fifth time in two hours. Alec felt uncomfortable whenever Jonah chose not to answer his best friend’s phone call. He quickly checked the Tajmatan residence, it was strange that Jonah lived alone without the help of any family members. Alec was aware that Jonah had no living relatives in America and had been an emancipated minor for almost four years now with the help of a supportive social worker. Yet Alec forgot about his friend’s strange past until he stepped into his apartment.

The same supportive social worker was contacted two days later once Jonah was conscience. The same supportive social worker drove him home and notified Alec of the accident.

Things were not the way they seemed.