postictal | ic inbox; entranceway

oh

[Which event? he almost says. But he thinks he knows which one.]

if its the one im thinking it was
it might have been me

[Isn't it always.]

wait

[Please, god, please don't say the dream event.]

which one
?

[It looks too intense without the question mark, so he adds it later, trying to soften the blow. Not like Tim needs anything softened for him--he's handled shit Jay can barely wrap his head around--but Jay doesn't want to make things harder.]

[Especially if it's the dream event.]

just ask her

[He doesn't remember. There were dreams. There were moments where reality was eaten through and something leaked in through the points where the static created a gaping hole where It could peer through and see them - ]

the dreams maybe

[Or the tape. Entry #67.]

[Great. Perfect.]

maybe?

i mean i don't remember
*sent too soon sorryu
*sorry
i don't remember if anybody got into mine
do you know for sure she got into yours?

[Let's just sidestep the question of whether or not they were in each other's heads.]

[It was before the agreement, anyway.]

[Either way, it was fucked up. He was--look, it made sense at the time, back when the information in Tim's head was a greater guarantee of safety than Tim himself. Tim was unpredictable. Information's neutral. Information doesn't have an agenda.]

[No. No, come on. Focus.]

[We're not gonna get anywhere like this, working solo.]

[Wonderland's not home. Nothing Tim knows is gonna help here, and having Tim around has helped an awful goddamn lot, minus an attempted murder once or twice, so he's just got to focus on what's important right now.]

[Besides, knowing Tim, he probably wouldn't want anything to do with Jay's head, anyway. Then again, Jay didn't exactly get a choice where he ended up. What are the chances Wonderland decided to give Jay a break this time around?]

[Rhetorical question.]

[God, focus. Max. The weird things she said. Her connection with Alex. What she saw. Keeping her safe. Working with Tim to keep her safe.]

[He starts typing again.]

besides if it's the dream event then she could have gotten it from me the same way

i dont know who got into mine
thats the problem

[He never found out. Figured that, on the off-chance that someone did go venturing into his head, it would've been best to never bring it up. To trust that it would be enough to let any memories skimmed from his gray matter sink, emptying into the background radiation of whatever other horrors they doubtless encountered.]

[He remembers, vaguely, running into other people's heads. Maybe they were lucid dreamers.]

great so NEITHER of us know if she got into our heads

[And that's who's important right now.]

[~~A wave of guilt drowns out the relief.~~]

not going to suggest it to her unless there's a good reason
don't want to give her anything she can use

[That was more honest than he intended, but he's distracted. Two conversations at once, plus the notifications from the rest. This is what he gets for posting to the network.]

other ideas?

let's just see what she says first

[Admitting to it - to what he's done, to what he's allowed to persist without his consent and without any digging further into what might have bled across lines. Asking questions just makes it worse. Asking questions just gets people thinking about it, and he's not going to ask questions if there's even the vaguest chance that it will stir up a memory or two.]

[Some memories are better off buried.]

assuming she says anything

[He knows how this works. They contact you. They tell you they need help, but they have their own ideas about what help means, about what you need to know.]

[Or they don't know anything.]

[Or they know something, but it's not their fault they don't tell you. They're scared, and it's your fault anyway. You were too cagey, you dragged them into this, and now you have to--]

[What?]

[You have to find out what happened. If they're still breathing, you have to keep them safe, however you can.]

i'll keep you updated

thanks
i guess

[He guesses, because for once it's Jay doing damage control on what Tim is presuming is his mess. Doesn't remember anymore. Doesn't remember the full extent of it. She saw It on the tape, the one with Alex - or did she see It leaking through the rifts torn open in the fabric of Wonderland itself?]

[Does he still have that tape? Did his Mirror take it? The fuck does he do if he does?]

thanks also i guess

i mean i'd be way more lost if you hadn't told me she knows
probably say something i shouldn't
so

same

[It's not quite coming back from the park to a dingy hotel room for two. It's not quite swapping theories in a campsite parking lot as Tim dangles a cigarette out the passenger-side window. It's not quite peering into Alex's cupboards, straining to reach the top shelf of the closet, listening to the shuffling in the next room as Tim does the same.]

[They're not just duplicating the work. They're not both holding a camera, not both following the same trail, not both hunched over the same coded message, squinting beneath twin lights over twin beds.]

[What the fuck kind of circular conversation is this, honestly. He shouldn't be - he should be furious, right? Hello, another thing that Tim has been willingly hiding from him! Another thing Tim hasn't thought to mention, even if he definitely should have!]

[Maybe if you weren't so screwed up, if you weren't so fucking lost in your own head, you selfish, self-absorbed little - ]

probably should've mentioned this sooner

[Yeah, he probably should have. Would've saved Jay an awkward encounter with her in person. Tim fed him just enough to make him curious, but not enough to keep him from making an ass of himself when they finally met. If there was any kind of ulterior motive there, though, Jay's got no idea what it could be. Not like Tim would stand much to gain from Max being mildly weirded out.]

[Maybe he just said more than he intended, less than he should. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe not everything everybody does is calculated to screw Jay over personally, and god, it sounds dumb when he thinks about it that way.]

[Besides, Tim did tell him eventually, before Jay got a chance to screw things up further. Maybe it's too much to ask that he told Jay everything he knows, but it won't catch him off-guard this time. He knows Tim's a liar.]

[He also knows they've got an agreement.]

better than nothing
at least you told me before max did

if you're talking about the event it sounds like you have just as much idea what's going on there as i do

unless you're talking about something else

Edited 2018-09-20 02:24 (UTC)

i just
don't remember who knows what anymore

[Unreliable. Unreliable. Can't remember shit, can't remember shit, can't remember what's been told to you and what hasn't. The keystone to being a liar is that you're supposed to be able to keep your stories straight. Can't keep them straight, can you? Never could.]

[Rotten liar. Even the things you thought you were good at - rotten. Rotten to the core.]

[Huh.]

[Back home, right at the end, Tim seemed like the one who held all the cards. Alex, even more so, and often totheark, but Tim was another one. He had opinions on where they should be going, what they should investigate, what was worth their time and what wasn't, what Jay should know and what he shouldn't. He fed Jay pills, kept the camera running while Jay was unconscious. Jay was never exactly the driving force in this case, but right near the end, he felt like something was slipping, like he was losing the tiny scraps of control he still had while Tim was acting steadier and steadier.]

[It's not quite that anymore. Free food and a roof over their heads does wonders, seems like. Don't even need to visit the doctor to get a prescription; just get your ~~friend~~ to sacrifice a memory or two. Even if Tim's got some experience on him, Jay's getting there. He's getting used to it. He's got projects, now. He's using his crappy, closet-generated laptop for more than just editing footage.]

[But this might be the first time Jay's ever gotten the feeling Tim is as lost as he is.]

[Correction: This might be the first time he's ever had it spelled out so bluntly. Makes him seem a little more human. A little less of a concept.]

i mean

[A giddy sense of relief hits him. It's gone in an instant, but it enough to have him typing, before he can regret it:]

you're not the only one
if that helps

[You're not the only one.]

[Words he ventured once. A sort of olive branch, a peace offering. Frantically putting forth the only thing he could: the reassurance that he himself never got. The reassurance he desperately wishes he could have gotten, even once. To not hear that he was an anomaly, a strangeness, an unknowable variable.]

[You're not the only one.]

[You're not alone.]

[Does it help?]

it's not like anyone here ever knows whats going on really

[Deflect. Play it off.]

yeah

[Back into easier territory. Back to Wonderland, back to where you're not alone doesn't carry the same implications.]

[But it wasn't a denial. It wasn't an I'm not like you, wasn't a maybe Alex wasn't the problem - maybe you're the problem. He didn't do anything to reaffirm the natural goddamn order that Jay's always out of the loop, that Jay will always be out of the loop, and that everybody's better off that way.]

[They're not alone.]

[Does it help?]

this place doesn't exactly make it easy

[History of memory problems. Brain like a sieve, leaking like a sprung canteen. So you lose words here. You lose pieces of yourself, bit by bit, trickled out between clasped fingers. And it's not a big deal, because it's at a slower rate than he's used to.]

[It's impossible to care when so much of your memory has been ripped apart at the seams more times than you can count. (More times than you can remember.)]

its hard to keep track is all

[Hit a wall. Gray. Barrier. Panic's the only thing that can jolt him out of the mindless, empty-eyed daze he sits in most of the time, and even that feels like it stirs at him less and less.]

[It is. It's hard enough without being able to trust your own head, without being able to guarantee that the way you remembered it was the way it actually happened. At least here, it's only a word at a time.]

[As far as anybody knows.]

[As far as his footage so far has shown.]

[It's why he keeps going through it, even when he doesn't find any gaps. It's hard to keep track. Hearing it all played back helps him keep it all straight.]

[Tim's not going to want to hear that, though. He'd get it, Jay bets, but he's not going to want to hear it.]

agreed

i mean i tried to get the stuff with the queens straight but all i got was
you saw
it might have helped
but it didn't exactly answer anything

[Jay quirks an eyebrow, wincing as he realizes neither Tim nor Max is going to see it.]

at least there's food i guess
and it's not as empty

[You're the only other person I've seen at this hotel other than the staff, and we have adjoining rooms. I don't even know you. You said it yourself--I'm a stranger!]

[Would she have liked it here?]

[He's not thinking about her. He's not. Even with her--even with Max here, he's not.]

[The Queens. It was easier with Hearts - he knew where he stood with her. She was nasty, and self-absorbed, and capricious, and that was easier because he could just go in knowing that from the start. Because she telegraphed it, plain and simple, and even if one could never guess where her anger would next be directed, knowing that it was there was enough to go off of.]

[The White Queen is just...blank. Blank page. Not knowing if there's an underbelly, some vibrant undercurrent running beneath, is the hardest part.]

as what
a hotel?

as all of it

[Too much. Too much of his own thoughts, the way he wrote the narrative in his head rather than the objective reality of the situation. They weren't alone out there. The rest of the world hadn't stopped existing just because Jay started living out of motels nobody else wanted to stay in.]

if that makes sense
i know we saw other cars on the road
it's just

[He can't exactly get out of explaining it now, can he?]

what's the last person you saw? before you came here i mean
the last person who WASN'T involved with alex

i don't know
not like i was ever a really social guy

[Brian disappears off the map without a word, and he doesn't question it. He just thinks: oh. It's fine. It was inevitable. The first real friend he remembers ever having, and he simply vanishes, and Tim doesn't see a problem with that because it never occurred to him that Brian wouldn't inevitably get sick of him.]

[Co-workers? None he knew by name. His boss? A contact on his phone, and nothing more. Friends? After Brian, he never had any.]

[Even so much as venturing onto the street began to feel surreal - the evidence of people who existed beyond the scope of his own life, the possibility that the world could exist outside the scream of static and the shutter-click of a camera lens.]

me neither
maybe that's part of it

[If he were social, if his heart didn't crawl up into his throat when he had to talk to the guy behind the counter at the gas station, would this have been easier? If he had friends--like, friends outside the Alex Kralie circle, would they have helped him out from the beginning?]

[Would they have gotten along with Tim?]

[God, why is he even thinking about this? They don't exist, and the best frame of reference he's got for these fucking...imaginary, theoretical friends is the same old cast and crew, banter captured on tape. Weeks he doesn't really remember.]

[Besides, Brian knew everybody. Look how he turned out.]

felt like nothing else existed

brian just vanished
i never asked why

[Just...hadn't seen him in a while. When everyone disappeared, when the film shoot turned out to be a bust, when the cast and crew just solemnly trickled out of his life, one by one, he hadn't really questioned it. He hadn't wondered any. Why would he?]

[Never had friends before. Figured this was just how it happened. They'd disappear, and he'd be left with the memory of a time when he almost passed for normal - until those memories would shiver away, eventually.]

[The fucked up thing is that he gave up on being bothered by infrequent spots in his memories long before it started happening as often as it did.]

[Never asked why. Just assumed everything was alright, that if they wanted to talk to you, they'd get in touch. That if they don't get in touch, then it means they don't want to talk to you.]

took me three years to get to wondering about alex
i mean he told me to burn the tapes
just assumed he was being dramatic

[If they'd have been faster, if they'd realized something was wrong, would things have turned out differently?]

[Would Jessica have even gotten involved? Would Amy? Would Brian and Tim have been alright--well, as alright as Tim's ever going to be? Would Seth and Sarah still be around?]

[Would they have been able to help Alex, or would he just have tried to kill them sooner?]

wouldn't have been out of character for him
he wanted me on a tractor and refused to say why until after we'd gotten the shot

[We can be real here: Alex Kralie was a messy bitch who loved drama.]

[At least, he was. He could be insufferable, pretentious as all hell, and his taste in movies was probably god-awful if his script was anything to go off of. Despite allegedly working on the thing for years, he hadn't come up with names for several of the main characters. The story meandered, the dialogue was little more than a handful of clichés packed in between reflective shots of Alabama landscapes, the characters were indistinct cardboard cutouts, and the production was a mess even before it started to get stalked by a supernatural entity.]

[It was the kind of stupid student film he should have been allowed to make. The kind of dumb, early blunder that everyone should make, an old shame in a lengthy career.]

[Whose fault is that, that he didn't get even that?]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

jay...

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject