Augustus & The Human Stranger

MAYBE IT’S THE GLOOMY WEATHER OF THAT PARTICULAR MONDAY NIGHT, that 24-year-old Augustus Yang walks home with a sort of disconnect between his eyes and state of mind.

It is like any other day. Clocking out of his shift at the local sandwich store. Aside from the pay check he receives there, he wonders if all he does there is waste of time.

But it’s not like he has a choice anyways. He wouldn’t even be here if he had a say in this.

Frankly, Augustus feels that he doesn’t seem to have a say much in his life either. Away from home, miles away to be exact. His life always felt like it was steered by everyone but him, be it by his own father back home, or the people in HR that ghost him after every single job interview.

But to complain about this seems like a one-sided perspective. Part of Augustus, although unhappy, is comfortable with the lack of need to make choices for himself. Perhaps he fears the responsibility or even the possibility of a wrong choice. A coward he is, albeit a capable one.

Augustus seems both comforted and made uncomfortable by the idea that he’s always doing what is expected of him. It seems easier that way, or so he believes. To say he lacks freewill, however would not be entirely true either.

The same walk home almost every day; the same unfixed pothole that fills up like a bowl of disgusting road soup every time it rains. There’s no difference between a Monday and a Wednesday in these circumstances, at least not in Mr. Yang’s perspective.

A turn at the end of the block, and then two left turns after that. Same old, same old. It has reached the point where he’s not even bored anymore. Sometimes Augustus just finds himself feeling numb more than anything else. He might as well be dead. He might actually be happier that way.

. . .

Tick, tick.

Adagissimo, the old clock hung high on the bedroom walls fills the silence gently. 3AM comes along without a warning as Augustus lays out a sigh.

“I’ve gotta set my alarm,” the boy grumbles quietly to himself, his fingers tapping on the phone screen. Another day of work to prepare for tomorrow. It might be the only thing that’s keeping him moving.

Sleep issues seem to be a common occurrence in Augustus’ life. It might not be a friend but it had frequented enough in his life that he has become accepting of its existence and fixture in his life. He believes that it has a hand in making his dreams every night interesting, regardless of whether or not they even made any sense.

Even the way he dreamed hasn’t changed over the years. Always vivid, always making him more tired when he wakes the next day. Maybe consistency is his main strength, although not always rewarding.

But tides do change, even for the most consistent folk out there. That same night Augustus tries to sleep, he was surprisingly not interrupted by any dreams of his usual routine.

Tick, tick.

The clock ticks like a lullaby of white noise into his eardrums. He drifts slowly, tickety-tock, into his sleep. He sinks into his mattress.

Tick, tick.

A gentle breath, a soft indent in his stomach.

Tick, tick.

Right before Augustus could rest his eyes and mind. Moments, even seconds, before he can allow himself the rest he needs.

Tick, tick.

CRASH.

His heart almost jumps out of his throat, immediately throwing himself up from his bed.

“What the fuck was that?” Augustus speaks under his breath as he fumbles towards the cause of the noise. It sounded like it came from the balcony’s metal roof.

Shoving aside the balcony doors, Augustus finds himself facing upon a pair of hands, tightly gripping onto the guardrails. Those hands look frail, it is a surprise that they even have the strength to hold on.

Beyond the metal guardrails, a person who seems all too calm when hanging for dear life. Their eyes lock straight onto the boy in front of him. Augustus just freezes in his steps, trying to take in whatever that is going on in front of him.

"Hello,” the person happily greets Augustus in perfect Cantonese, a dialect he hasn’t heard for years ever since he moved away from home. Everything about this was extremely jarring to the brown-haired boy. But the other person’s words seem to help Augustus snap him back into reality a bit more.

He rushes towards the person hanging before him, hoisting him back up with all his might to pull them into safety.

His feet slightly slipping on the balcony’s terracotta tiles, Augustus falls into his seat on the floor with the odd stranger right in front of him. They don’t seem to be fazed at all by the chaos from seconds ago, with the stranger only looking at the panting Augustus before them, who feels like he was the one hanging from the balcony for dear life.

“What the fuck dude, are you trying to kill yourself or something?” Augustus huffs in between his heavy breathing. But all he got for a response was a pair of eyes squinting at him, studying him as if he is some unknown lab specimen about to be tested.

The stranger squints a little longer before relaxing his eyes. Finally, they break their silence in a way slightly monotonous.

“Yang Jun Yuen, age 24 human years, am I correct?”

Stunned and a little bit afraid, Augustus stares at the weird stranger who somehow knew his name; his birth name to be exact. A name that he has never shared with anyone ever since he moved here; a name only his immediate family and old schoolmates back home would be familiar with.

He hesitates, but his mom has never taught him to be rude.

“...Yes?”

The stranger’s eyes lit up in joy, Augustus could’ve sworn their eyes glittered like a glass marble in the sun. But now wasn’t the time to admire the beautiful stranger, especially when they’ve just crashed right into your home.

“Great! It seems that my coordinates were slightly inaccurate, but I’m glad I managed to locate you!” Somehow the stranger sounds enthusiastic despite the situation, and of course to Augustus’ absolute horror and surprise as well.

“Human infrastructure is so unnecessarily complicated, don’t you think? So many people share the same coordinates in this big tall structure, it was a pain to find you so precisely.” The stranger continues yapping on, dusting themselves off the ground and back on their two bare feet.

“Wait--wait, who the fuck are you?” Augustus hastily gets himself back on his feet as well, just in case he has to run away.

Somehow the stranger didn’t seem to pose any sort of imminent danger to Mr. Yang. But that doesn’t mean he should completely let his guard down. The stranger wore nothing but an ill-fitting dark green T-shirt from a university Augustus could never dream of entering in the first place. Worst case scenario, this stranger might just be another random pervert that he could simply beat the shit out of if necessary.

“I am who I am before you, and I was assigned as a guardian for this phase of your human lifetime,” the stranger speaks with full certainty, they almost seem genuinely insane in Augustus’ eyes. Straight to the point, and yet still made zero sense, or so the boy thought.

A stalker perhaps? Someone he’s ghosted in the past? It can’t be, not someone who looked like that.

“I think you got the wrong guy, um, whoever you are.” Augustus backs away gently, his hands reaching for the sliding doors in caution.

“No. You are Yang Jun Yuen. 24 human years old, living alone in this city. Alone and lonely at the same time, working a service job you hate and has nothing to do with your economics degree, and you are still too afraid to tell your father that you haven’t landed your successful finance job that you studied so hard for the past 4 years-”

“That’s enough. Get out of my house or I’m calling the police,” the boy interrupts the stranger in front of him, clearly having struck a nerve. And why does this stranger know so much anyways? Last time he checked; online data breaches haven’t gotten this advanced yet.

“I know my data is not wrong, so clearly I’m exactly where I need to be.” The stranger brushes pass Augustus, entering his home. A breeze of cold air touches the boy’s skin as the stranger passes him, a breeze so cold it sent a chill down Augustus’ spine.

The stranger’s presence somehow did not feel human despite their human-like appearance. Something felt off. Not scary, just off. Off, yet androgynously beautiful in its own right.

Augustus follows the stranger closely behind, still extremely wary of their every move. Every sway of their hands, every breeze against their feathery black hair. He didn’t want to miss a move, just in case the person before him turns out to be absolutely insane.

To be fair, their fashion choices seem crazy enough in itself. But perhaps Augustus was crazier, letting a random stranger into his home and not calling the police. Part of him is definitely worried about anything going wrong, and yet the other part of him is somewhat enjoying the thrill, as this might be the most interesting thing that has happened to him this week. Heck, maybe in his entire life.

Augustus found the stranger’s movements a little odd. Poking around his stuff as if they had never seen anything of that sort before. And last time he checked; he wasn’t some kind of rare specimen collector with oddities in his home. All he had were some second-hand furniture and some laundry lying around his small apartment.

“You seem to have a lot of these garments for one body. Isn’t one enough, they are only for decency’s sake, no?” The stranger adds as they walk pass a pile of dirty laundry on Augustus’ couch.

“Does this guy not wash his clothes? What the hell?” his eyebrows furrowed; Augustus was visibly disgusted as he thought to himself. As if he himself hasn’t been procrastinating doing his own laundry for the past two weeks.

‘This person must be crazy,’ Augustus thinks as he watches them pace around his living room.

“So, um, what are you here to do exactly?” Augustus asks, still following the stranger close behind.

“Exactly what I told you,” The stranger replies swiftly, frankly too calm for someone who made such an entrance.

“What, are you some kind of guardian angel or something?” Augustus Yang might have officially lost it, he might as well be as woo-woo as the stranger before him for asking this sort of question.

“Whatever label you find as humanly comfortable with or makes sense for you. My existence is what it is, and I am here to do what I am here to do.” The stranger crouches down, picking up Augustus’ phone charger off the floor and closely inspecting it.

Augustus was growing annoyed at the stranger’s long-winded way of talking. He just needs to know who this stranger is, and how to get rid of them.

“Alright, Socrates. Can you just explain yourself normally?” Augustus speaks, barely hiding his annoyance that’s painted right across his face.

A pause. The silence seems to eat up all the air in the room. It however, didn’t last for too long.

“I am not Socrates. He is dead.” The stranger replies monotonously, not even batting him an eye.

Maybe this was all just some weird dream Augustus is always used having. It wouldn’t be too out of the ordinary for his dreams to be so real, vivid, and full of shit. Or at least this is what he’d like to believe. Maybe this is what people call lucid dreaming.

“You know what, I’m going back to bed. This is just some shitty dream,” Augustus speaks to himself, almost laughing as he walks back into his bedroom. He has work in a few hours, and if this is still there tomorrow, it will be tomorrow Augustus’ issue to deal with.

The stranger remains crouched on the floor, unfazed by Augustus’ lack of belief in them. They seem more intrigued by the phone charger, plugging it in and out of the socket in amazement.

Augustus stares are the stranger’s actions in disbelief. Further confirming to himself that this is just some weird dream. At this point he is too tired to care anymore, as he turns around to go back to bed in his room.

Maybe this was just some sick way his subconscious was trying to remind him of his short-comings in life. Just reminding him of things he’d always tried to desperately avoid.

Sometimes, Augustus feels like he isn’t even trying to avoid the problems that have built up over time. It’s just more so that he doesn’t know what to do with all those problems. The solutions have always seemed so out of reach. He feels like as if he is grasping at nothing trying to figure out what is truly wrong with himself.

But tonight, wasn’t the night that he figures it all out, reaching enlightenment like a Buddhist monk in a temple far away from civilization. Tonight, is the night he tries to sleep at least a few hours so he doesn’t turn up late to work in a few hours.

But little did he know, Augustus would find himself facing every single thing that he has done wrong and still is wrong with him over the course of the next few months, with of course, the help of the beautiful stranger sitting in his living room, who just broke his only phone charger by getting one of the prongs stuck in the socket hole.

Augustus doesn’t need to know that. Not yet at least.

Not until the morning he wakes up; not until when he actually needs to charge his phone.

. . .