The first thing I’ll tell you about falling into a wormhole, spatial tear, or whatever you can call something like an abrasion on spacetime, is that it hurts like all hell. Maybe not for everyone, but when you fall through one without any sort of protective equipment? Its like being torn apart at the cellular level and being rebuilt. Results can vary, I’ve heard. I consider myself mostly lucky.

But, you’re probably confused on why I brought this up yeah? Well, my name is Joshua Viettell, and up until a few minutes ago, none of this was even relevant to my life. 22 years old. Average height, weight, and looks. I was literally the definition of normal. My grades in school were average, mostly. And beyond working at a tiny little furniture store in my hometown, my life wasn’t really full of much else.

And the furniture store was pretty much where this whole excursion started but you likely want more so I’ll start in the morning.

I woke up a little past six in the morning. That point in the day where your brain just begs you to sleep, you know? But, sleeping doesn’t pay the bills though I wish it would. So of course, I dragged myself out of bed in my typical grouchy manner. What I called my pajamas, an old shirt and pair of sweatpants, clung to my body lightly with a thin film of sweat I had worked up over the night. It was almost always hot in my room this time of the year.

The house was just as eerily silent as it was late into the night, my parents and rest of my family still basically unconscious unlike my poor self. The alarm being set to go off twice helped to abate my sleep deprived annoyances, but what really helped was a nice hot cup of coffee. And, hopefully, a shower. I rolled over and gazed blearily at my phone on the table.

6:02 am.

Small mercies, I slept two extra minutes. I dragged myself out of bed and stretched, resulting in my body popping like a glowstick in various places. Briefly, I sniffed myself to check for any deadly stench on my body. BO absolutely sucks, but none today as usual. I let out a relieved sigh and tip toed into the kitchen. Thank you, more awake me. I love you, always prepping the coffee maker for the morning. I tapped brew and then made a deadman’s march to the bathroom.

Never smelling, despite working up a sweat was probably the only thing about me that was technically absolutely not normal. I pushed the wooden door to our overly white bathroom, the only things not actually white were the faucets and what not, as well as a thin wooden frame around the mirror. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes best I could and started the shower on high heat. After tossing my clothes into the hamper, I stepped in.

So, to reiterate, I did say I was mostly normal, aside from the BO thing. Still true, but there was also the fact that I despised my body for the most part. I could live with it, but I simply didn’t enjoy doing so. Which is where the numerous scars along my arms like tally marks come in. Childhood was…

Well, it wasn’t fun. I have some dark pasts and frankly, living to this age was something I had never reasonably expected to do. I had moved on past the physically hurting myself phase to other forms. People saw physical damage, usually. Anything else was a mystery, I let the heat of the shower soak into my body as I lathered up. I’ll be the first to tell you that my past isn’t the worst it could be, but things just piled up. I’ve been accused, berated, and mocked almost every day of my life.

Now now, you’re probably thinking I should see a therapist which would be reasonable mostly, I suppose. However, I’ve accepted my life. I didn’t like it, but it was mine. So as my hand brushed over old scars, I traced the tips of my fingers over each one. Some I had caused, some were innocent mistakes or unfortunate ones. Some… not so much. But it had been years, I had grown, and none of those would happen again.

I mused in silence after I finished cleaning myself and stepped out of the shower. In the mirror, a pale-skinned face greeted me back. Brown hair, brown eyes, normal mouth, normal nose, and some extreme eyebags, this was me. Not the best description but whatever you’re thinking is probably right. I started brushing my teeth and kept musing over my everyday life. The same thing, week in, week out.

The world for me, stinks of boring repetition. The world outside was cool, sure, but only if you were near anything that could be happening. What kind of person wouldn’t want to be one of those superheroes, like Ironwall, Bloodwright, Quark, or any of those superhumans scattered across the major cities? I wouldn’t say no, but actively seeking it out s way too much trouble. If it knocks on my door like a Girl Scout with thin mints, let’s go, but otherwise…

I like to think I’m normal in this case, if not mostly rational. I didn’t know any superheroes, so the chances are low to begin with. And does a town with a population of three thousand even need a hero? I scoffed around my toothbrush. No.

I gargled some water from the sink and rinsed my mouth of toothpaste before tossing on a clean(?) pair of my sweats. Can’t be reasonably sure they’re still clean, after all. It’s not that I don’t do my laundry, per say, it’s more or less that…

Well, to be frank I don’t have a room for myself. It sucks and there’s very little I can do about it currently. Try as I might to move out away from my family issues always cropped up and my money went elsewhere. My family was never particularly well off. You would think that would stop them having children, but I was the eldest of a grand overall total of nine. Five of, five¸ live here with my mother, stepfather, and I. Plainly, it’s exhausting helping care for them, not that I didn’t love them, but I have my own problems.

With a sigh, I looked in the mirror again. My hair, shaggy and uncut for so long, was everywhere and completely unstyled. I hadn’t done anything with it in ages. My dark brown eyes, accentuated by the deep eyebags surrounding my eyes, only served to give me a lonesome quiet air. A crooked nose, from so many accidents or… Well, nothing important particularly. And my slightly larger than average lips were cracked from what I can only assume is some level of dehydration, but I don’t know much of health issues.

The only thing I was happy with about myself was that I didn’t give an air of rugged and stern man. Still, there was a reason I rarely worked the register, as much as my manager liked me. People just simply weren’t comfortable around me, not that I blamed them. Depressed? Maybe, but sure as hell tired, tired of everything. I let another sigh loose and slapped my cheeks. Get it together, Josh.

A quick stretch, followed by the sounds of my back popping once again, and I felt as set to start the day as usual. The only issue was to find where the hell my pants had been tossed after my mother had finished the laundry. As I made to search around the couch, my bed, my phone buzzed on the small table. The screen lit up to reveal the only notification over the course of the night and the newest one.

The first was from shortly after I fell asleep. One of my coworkers it would seem, again. A message over messenger asking me to cover their shift for the rest of the night. I ran my hand through my hair wearily, no one to blame but myself. In all my time at the store I had yet to deny a shift, so sometimes it was weeks before a day over. An obligatory okay was all I sent out, just like I normally did. The other was from a friend online.

From DorkyDancin: Omg, Ylva, you should totally see this! They got more pictures of those things!

Dorky is… well, she’s something else I suppose. A total nerd, but if she didn’t open her mouth you really wouldn’t know. If you think valley girl meets gyaru aesthetic, that’s literally what she looks like. I’ll be honest if she didn’t completely throw me off when we first met, it’s a bit of a culture shock but hey, she rocks it so kudos.

I squinted at the link she had sent, another article about those weird occasional spatial portals or whatever the hell the things were. A few people had disappeared for a few months, usually somewhere halfway across the planet, and ended up as yet another superhuman. None in my town yet, except the one I had seen for a grand total of five seconds as it swallowed some bird. Never saw the bird reappear again.

This time it was about some girl who had poked half her body into the damn thing and gotten pictures of… My heart physically stuttered and after catching my breath I stared at the thing in utter shock. A glowing crystalline bridge, shimmering with every color of the rainbow stretched out across a large ocean to reveal a golden mountainside city. The little detail I could make of it, considering it was a photo taken on a phone, was gorgeous. And yet, it felt eerily familiar.

From Ylva: That’s absolutely gorgeous, but I feel like I’ve seen it before? Is there anything else?

I slipped my phone into my pocket and resumed the search for the lost pants. I highly doubted she’d respond any time soon, probably just found it while she was invested in whatever band fanfiction she was reading this time. The pants finally revealed themselves, positioned between the bookcase and the wall behind the couch.

Only like fifteen minutes to work. Goodbye coffee, you were loved, but someone else will drink you.

My shirt wasn’t a problem, not as sweaty as it could be, and I merely needed to swap into my work one that was down in the run-down old car I had. I slipped back into the bathroom and dropped the sweats into the hamper before slipping my jeans on over my hairless legs. Before you ask, I have shaved my legs yes, but if you lived in the house I did, you would too. I swear that my siblings somehow get sticky crap in every nook and cranny they find.

Getting a damn wad of gum lodged on the lower half of my leg was bad enough to begin with. With the fact I ended up with a sizable portion of my leg bald, I figured I might as well do the entire set. That, and frankly, I absolutely despise body hair, it feels gross. I grabbed my keys off the kitchen counter and set out the door finally. The neighborhood was mostly silent, except for the birds.

My car sat there, the black sheen really the newest aspect of the damn thing. It was nearly thirty years old, with far more miles than it ought to be running on, but it was better than walking to work at least and it wasn’t a far drive. I slipped my key in and started her, first try for once. Small miracles.

The radio booted up, though low to provide something as background noise. I reversed out of the driveway as it finally turned on. I hadn’t been able to change stations in weeks, much as I might like, but it at least wasn’t something in Spanish or one of those generic morning talk shows. If it had been, I would have replaced the broken buttons as soon as possible. Super 109.9, the one and only radio channel for any news related to superhumans, supernatural events, and really anything in-between. The dull noise was particularly audible in the eerie morning silence of a small town like this.

“In other news, Instagram user OllyJollyMolly,” I snorted to myself at the username, “stepped through what scientists are calling Tears. Though only partially and for a few seconds, she managed to get a picture of the other side. While scientists are uncertain if all these alleged tears all lead to the same place, they have verified that, if the picture is real, its of nothing on earth. Meanwhile…” I tuned out the rest of the broadcast. If that picture is real… Something tells me it has to be.

I shook my head and rolled into the parking lot, after fermenting in my thoughts for a few more minutes. The drive itself was short, but I’ve walked it before and a five-minute drive is leagues better than an hour and a half long walk. I pulled into my spot beside the manager and took my shirt off, grabbing the one with the company logo from the passenger seat and tossed it on.

After checking my pockets for everything, I stepped out and locked the car. It wouldn’t stop anyone from taking anything, sure, but I felt a bit better even if I had nothing of actual value in the damned thing. The air was cold, as the main part of town was further up the mountain. I shivered and quickly walked into the building. The manager, David, or Uncle Dave as he told anyone younger than him to call him, was already at the register getting everything set up for the day.

“Oh good, you’re on time kid, mind getting the new stuff rolled out from the back?” I stifled a yawn and nodded, glad that Dave was sensible enough to keep it a decent temperature in the store.

“Sure, it’s that dresser and a few chairs today right?” I asked as I walked towards the storeroom.

“Yup, old Janie bought the others for her granddaughter last week. She’s headed out to college I hear,” Dave smiled at me. The man was either on something or just really enjoyed life, lucky him.

“Oh, good for her,” I answered as the door to the storage swung open with a squeak. The floor creaked as I looked over at the old dresser he had shown us pictures of last week. The thing had to be an antique, wear and tear was pretty heavy, even if he had polished it up just after delivery. I ran my hand across it’s surface, marveling at the smoothness and age of the thing. It had to be as old, if not older, than my grandparents. Dave knew his job, all that history and the thing looked in tiptop shape without losing a bit of it.

I let a small smile touched my cheeks, before turning around to look for the dolly. It was never in the same place, but currently that was utterly important. My foot touched nothing but air, and I looked down. An odd sort of black greeted me, the only thing out of place as it grew rapidly, and my leg disappeared into it. No stars, no light, just a literal absence of space. I blinked as my mind started to process the fact that I was actually falling into the thing.

Well, shit.

But, at least I think you’re up to speed on how in the name of Odin I know what it feels like to fall though one of the things. Now, how to explain what the hell happens next because I don’t know yet.