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The terrifying thing about jigsaw puzzles is that you never know if you’re missing a piece until it’s glaringly obvious that you are. You can sift and sift and sift all you like through the piles of cutouts, neatly organize them into colours or shapes, but you don’t really think of counting them. Besides, there’s always the likely chance of you messing up your count.
Avery likes jigsaws a lot, even if he's not all that good at them— the whole picture slips from his mind the moment he looks away from the reference sheet, and he tends to falter over trying to align the edges of a piece together.
Patterns. It’s all about patterns.
It’s a pattern, too, when he stares at the laptop he got from that storage unit. He must’ve fallen asleep some time during New Year’s Eve, rousing only when whoops and cheers seep effortlessly through his window alongside the wall-shaking booms of fireworks. Slumping over a desk for prolonged periods of time is decidedly not good for his back or neck, so a stretch or ten is in order, followed by a drink from his lukewarm cup of water.
Strange. He only wakes up feeling this thirsty and lightheaded during summers and when he’s crying his eyes out. The accompanying ache behind his eyes and ribs certainly don’t help. A dream, perhaps? Or he just, what, decided to drink on a whim and gotten butthurt over none of his family reaching out.
Right, his laptop. Chromatic lines would occasionally burst across the otherwise blackened screen, lingering afterimages in his mind. They settle into shapes at times, bundles of flowers and looming ferns, oddly specific things that are simply a figment of his weary state. On occasions that he dares not ponder over, they look like eyes. Eventually, he manages to reboot it, finding everything to be as it should be.
At least, that’s what he thinks. Probably a missing app, corrupted in that weird crash.
Soylent makes him feel all weird and sick, though he doesn’t know why. He turns every bottle this way and that, gazes warily as his colleagues drink it, noting how his stomach simply churns. Is he allergic? Last he checked, he doesn’t react to a thing ever, but stuff like this changes, right?
And it’s not just Soylent, see, it’s tea, too. All of them sends him into a nauseated fit that mysteriously vanishes when he looks away. The smell of their leaves, every blend, every mixture all serves to ward him off. A shame, really, because Avery remembers liking tea, or someone close to him does.
He walks by electronic shops on cool evenings with his gloved hands tucked into his pockets (shaking, shaking, curled like they’re wrapped around the handle of something splintering), and pauses everytime to stare at the countless displays. Circuitry spell his name in copper, wires become his string of wool through a decrepit labyrinth. The screens reflect his eyebags back at him tauntingly as they catch flecks of gold from the setting sun.
Avery is very much a green person, and, considering how his closet has been of all conceivable spectrums of viridian since he could remember, it is not going to change any time soon. There is, however, one possession that he dearly covets for no discernible reason that breaks this pattern. His bracelet (consisting of a little golden squid) is a pleasant royal red. He likes red, he thinks, and then wonders why that he is unsure about that fact. To reaffirm himself, he buys more crimson to add to his collection, and feels more and more doubtful day by day, if not the slightest bit comforted.
There are nights that he spends standing aimlessly in the quiet of his apartment’s kitchen. He has a framed (green, of course) photo of himself as a child, all teeth and dwarfed by a large straw hat. Beside him is his cousin, frozen in time whilst biting into a crisp red apple. They’re in a field, seeded and sowed and very recently watered by the rich brownness of it. ‘Nong Keaw and P Jay, ta Pop’s farm,’ the small scrawl in the corner reads.
The apple is disgusting.
The thought comes without fail whenever he sees the photo, and he doesn’t know why. He places the photo face down one evening, and the thoughts stop.
Patterns, patterns, patterns. He wishes he is good at them. He wishes he knows why he feels so changed, so different, so wrong. There’s a jigsaw that he’s sure is missing from the pile that makes it so his lungs don't cooperate. Most days, he’s dazed. Grieving for something he’s not quite sure exists.
House music and jazz never really are his thing, but, as of late, it’s all he listens to. He learns them, commits them to memory, makes note of which ones he thinks he’d want to reccomend (to who?). He can’t find it in him to skip tracks of the genre when they come up as something in him says it would be rude.
Why would it be rude?
Patterns and questions, questions and patterns.
Amidst all this stranded and uprooted feeling, he is comforted by a sense of comraderie. Oh, he’s not going through the worse out there, definitely, but there’s an idea he latches onto of someone as lonely as him on New Year’s Eve.
Avery didn’t have any aversion to yellows. In fact, some of his trinkets were as jolly gold as they can be. It reminded him of the sun, of warmth and giddiness that comes with rolling down grassy hills shrieking.
His aversion with yellow starts after New Year, which he attempts to remedy by painting over planters and coasters. Any yellow clothing he has is donated, and paintings given away. It’s fine, though, his apartment is as clustered as is. The yellow flowers of his otherwise green skateboard irks him so much he considers selling it once, much to his own horror. Easier fixes exist, of course, like paint, again.
He comes across a yellow door, once, the entrance to a lovely little house a couple blocks away, and it takes everything in him to not seek out the nearest axe to hack it down. It would’ve been vindicating if he did, he knows, and wonders why he knows.
Avery is not directionally challenged, despite what his occasional mishap in games seem to indicate, and he would argue they were very acceptable mishaps. Therefore, the way that crossroads prickles at his skin and raises the hairs on his arms is a bit rankling. He’s taken a habit to going right no matter what his destination is, though, if he’s sure of crowds and their reliability (and validity— his mind is a bit addled), he chances a go at turning left. Precautions, and all that. He’s put off by the notion of turning left at crossroads, like it will bring him a lifelong worth of bad luck. Some superstition to suddenly have, especially for a guy who loves walking around.
All in all, something must’ve happened at New Year’s Eve— something he has forgotten, something that has him feeling three steps to the left of himself since waking up to his (not Avery, but his) laptop acting out.
Yellow is bad. Yellow is bad, bad, bad. Red makes him feel loved. Blue orchids specifically make his lungs seize and thoughts sluggish. The apple is disgusting. He isn’t safe, and he is nothing, and he is special.
Avery searches. He pours hours and hours into browsing that damn laptop, desperate for a note, a recording, anything.
It doesn’t feel all that surprising when he comes up blank, but he doesn’t stop. Though weak and wavering, a voice tells him that if he does stop, it would all be for naught. So he searches, and he finds.
Derek Hutchins is a name he does not recognize, but the sticky note slapped onto the inside of his bed frame leaves him reeling. He wants to carve those letters into himself until he doesn't feel so cold anymore, rip into them with his teeth and swallow through papercuts until the lonely recedes.
… Alright, so that might’ve been a bit odd.
Derek Hutchins, Derek Hutchins. Avery finds nothing on him, except three whole hastily scribbled sticky notes on the underside of his desk.
Where are you?
I’ll find you, okay?
Why do you go where I cannot follow?
There is no Derek in his contacts, no receiver under that name in his email, not a trace of life or proof of existence. It leaves him baffled, obviously, about his newfound (is it really new, though?) obsession with the name, and instinctively he knows he would cast the world aside for this stranger— which in itself is a terrifying notion. Surely, if they are this important to Avery, then there would be traces of them around in his life, right?
Avery tries to recall if he knows anything about them, and draws an resolute blank. No voice, no face, no birthday, nothing.
Trees flush, wither, are blanketed by snow, and New Year’s Eve rolls around again. He won’t call himself a shell, because that feels wrong in many ways, but is willing to accept stilted. His peripherals have long started being occupied by shadows donning glittering armor that stares and beckons, cajoles to him with a soothing voice to keep going forward. Professional help is an option, but, whatever is happening, Avery prefers to think over. It’s not like he’s impacted to the point of being unable to get out of bed everyday.
There’s another chair at his apartment now, furnished with a soft red cushion and backrest. It sits opposite to his green one at the kitchen island, and has its own coaster of a similar vermillion shade. Whenever he manages to look at it without bursting into confused tears, he feels… he feels, period. A great many things that ranges from warmth to mournful sorrow. Regardless, though, it feels right.
He’s sat at his desk again, painfully aware of the lack of notifications from his phone. This year, he refuses to be the one to reach out first, and he was right to have decided so.
Content is not a feeling Avery often feels; there is little to be content about in his life, unfulfilling and lonely as it is. Here, though, simply playing games in his room while the red chair at the kitchen island watches his back fills him oddly.
With the countdown just minutes away, he’s scrolling through feeds of videos, a bit bored. Anything yellow and blue his eyes skip over automatically, and anything red he stares at a bit longer.
Goodbye from d3rlord3 stands out to him, and, before he could even think it through, he drags his mouse over to the thumbnail, and clicks. As the video loads, blinding him with the white backdrop of a document, he sluggishly drops his eyes to the channel name, and the world slips away without fanfare.
Oh.
Party poppers and fireworks sound faint compared to the blood rushing in his ears, and even that is nothing against the ragged breathing playing through his headset. Avery flinches at the sound of something falling hard against the desk in the video like it was him dropping dead.
Oh.
When the countdown begins, Avery’s sobbing wails could only be mistaken for something celebratory.
He did promise Derek that he won’t ever forget again, didn’t he?