postictal | ic inbox; entranceway

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?]

[Sometimes, he thinks too hard about it.]

[Sometimes, back home, the guilt would lance through his chest, and he would wind the tapes back. Listen to Alex's voice, flat and harsh. Watch himself being shoved up against a car, being threatened, watch the gun point toward the lens, wavering as Alex's voice spikes and hitches.]

[~~It didn't shake, the last time. He didn't speak, the last time.~~]

[Sometimes he would gather up what he transferred to an external drive of his own, pull up the old video files, labeled only with the date he watched them. XX-XX-09 (X), XX-XX-10 (X). Sometimes he'd listen to them talk. Sometimes he'd listen to Alex talk, his voice still even, but without the harshness. Sometimes the pitch would quirk up, and Jay could tell he was grinning behind the camera.]

[Sometimes, he'd dig through his bags to find the old tapes themselves, run his hands across the edges, scrape the dust out of the cracks.]

he was supposed to be a
alex called him a "real blue collar thinking man"
god
it was in one of the early drafts but it got cut
kept the tractor though

[Before he can stop himself, he keeps typing.]

one time we were working on revisions
and i dunno i think i mustve missed a couple meals cause i was just pissed off at everything
but i went to 711 to get something
and alex told me to get him an iced coffee

so i walk all the way out there
and it's like may so i'm sweating my ass off
and i get all the way back with whatever i got plus alex's coffee
and i get back in the house
and alex doesn't even LOOK UP
like he just HOLDS HIS HAND OUT for the coffee

and i say something
i don't remember but it was probably something stupid
and alex just jolts
like he didn't even notice i was there

which means
like
his SUBCONSCIOUS or whatever decided i was his gofer
like i was the hollywood catering company or whatever

i dunno
kept thinking about it though

asshole

[It's rude to speak ill of the dead. Is it worse for the dead in question to simply be forgotten? To have their memories swarmed out with the hollow thing that left them behind? His memories of Alex Kralie are too loose, too spotty, to know if he can really reconcile the man he was with the person he was eventually turned into.]

[But if it was anything like what happened to Jay, he'd say they weren't really the same people at all. Not at that point.]

maybe he knew you couldn't save his godawful script
decided to take it out on you personally

wasn't all bad
it had some good ideas

[asshole, Tim said. Just that easy.]

just kinda hard to dig them out of the rest of it

[It's a weight off his shoulders, after years of careful impartiality. Weirdly cathartic.]

didn't know brian too well
had him in maybe two classes
he seemed okay

also seemed like the kind of guy who would go quiet
come online six months later cause he'd been cross country backpacking or whatever

what good ideas

[He remembers nothing of the story or the characters. Just that most of the film seemed to be comprised of Brian looking reflective and staring into the middle distance, which would have been more believable as a character choice if Brian weren't generally the sort of person who didn't often succumb to solitary reflection, just as a rule.]

[Would that be normal, for Brian? To just...ghost?]

[Did he know him that well at all, really? Can he remember - he must have known him at some point. They must have been friends. Brian wouldn't have given him the time of day otherwise, except that Brian gave everyone the time of day, because he was just so fucking innately likable and personable and latched on to weird kids like Alex, like Tim, the freaks and loners and dumbasses who shouldn't have friends. Maybe that's why he liked them. Gravitated toward things that were broken, because he could help them feel a little less so.]

[It's funny, the way that works out. The way Tim can't know how well he knew Brian, because most of those memories have been funneled away. Who knows how close they were? Snatches of memory and glimpses played out on tape. A day on the set. A student film audition. A thrown towel and a cocky grin.]

i just figured he moved away or something

[Just...got sick of him. Sick of being dragged down constantly, and took matters into his own hands.]

[And Tim just never questioned it.]

the cheese rolls were good

[The scene had character! It was charming! And seeing Tim Wright act like he's got the authority to give anybody advice was entertaining in its own way, albeit more in retrospect than anything.]

that whole dream sequence thing with the cavalry soldier was worth something
on paper at least

[So Brian just moved away. Transferred to another school. Haven't seen him since.]

[Alex told him. Alex told Jay he was moving, and from the sound of things, Brian just up and disappeared. Tim had to guess where he went.]

i think he would've told you if he did
or SHOULD have
(i guess it's a moot point because we know what happened)
(or part of it at least)
not saying he would have told everybody but makes sense to have told you
i mean you're a better judge than i am
you're the one who actually hung out with him on a regular basis

[Stop. Just stop while your foot's only halfway down your throat.]

all i've really got is the tapes but like

[Stop.]

you two looked like friends

i guess we were
i don't remember a lot from back then

[Maybe he should feel...upset, about that. That the best years of his life are in scraps and threads, mnemonic flashes burning like cigarettes. It is the nature of an injury like that to have no insight into itself. You can't hurt over something you can't even perceive. You can't miss something you don't remember having. And he can look at it, but it doesn't feel like you.]

[Maybe you can mourn the ability to care about that kind of thing, if anything. That's the only loss that you've really weathered that feels like it counts, because it's one you can at least trace.]

look where that got him huh

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jay...

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