postictal | ic inbox; entranceway

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

[Look where that got him. Living in the woods, speaking in riddles, breaking into people's houses to steal their medication. Sending threats. Pointing a gun at another man's head.]

[Seemed like an okay guy, before. Nice, even, back when he and Tim hung out.]

not like you told him to start running around with a mask on

[He knows what Tim means. But he can't assume this is all Tim's fault without some solid evidence. There's a correlation, sure, but things are never that simple.]

[Occam's razor doesn't work for the things they've seen.]

don't remember much either
just what alex got on tape

i didn't have to tell anyone to do anything

[Proximity turned out to be enough, didn't it? You think you're all better, think you can function like a normal human being. Act like you're okay. Like you can have friends and fit in and act like you belong. You murdered them. Every single one of them.]

[You burned them alive.]

i guess losing time stopped being scary a while ago

[Guess he just stopped worrying about what he was forgetting.]

still not used to it

[He looks back at the tripod behind him. Even now that the rules have changed, he hasn't stopped. Sure, it's one word at a time, except for the times when it isn't.]

[He can't let himself get complacent. Maybe Tim's fine with complacent, but at least one of them has to keep a record, for both their sake.]

and yeah
i mean

[Jay very nearly types, "i turned out okay," but he knows that's a joke, even if Tim's not exactly the laughing type.]

it wasn't you

[Again, he stops. It wasn't you people were scared of. It wasn't you, showing up uninvited, fouling up the footage. Doesn't work, does it?]

[There's no good way to put it, so he just repeats himself:]

guess you could say IT wasn't you

[Part of him almost wants to laugh at that. You're a liar was spat out at him from beneath the brim of a hat, shading his eyes in the same furious tint that burned through the static of what used to be Alex Kralie. There was a time when he wouldn't have said something like that, he's sure.]

[Nice of him to say it. Even if, knowing what he does, he probably shouldn't believe it.]

cause i'm not pointing a gun at you right

[You're not like him. The closest thing Jay came to a compliment, when they tramped through the kudzu and detritus of a life he strained to forget. You're not like the guy who tried to murder him, several times over.]

[Can't really say that anymore. Not after the Reapers.]

cause you're not ten feet tall and screwing up my footage, but sure

[He's talked about it directly before. Mostly before, though, before he saw what it could do to a person. Before he wound back through his own tapes and saw a blank nothing leering into the lens.]

[Not the lens. It wasn't frozen like the rest of it, wasn't preserved. It was looking at him.]

[His heart's caught in his throat, face flushed.]

[Tim's Mirror told him to talk about it, to name it. They both saw how well that turned out.]

[Still, he's got a point to make. He can't ignore it forever, can't displace it onto Alex Kralie forever, because Alex Kralie isn't here. Brian Thomas isn't here. Tim Wright's awake and typing, not stumbling between the trees wearing a mask, and Jay's...he's fine.]

still capable of doing that last bit you know

[In case either of them forgot. He leaches static into everyone's lives, same as Alex or Jay have. Same as It did.]

[You can never go back. You can only do your best to recreate. Turn over a new leaf? Fuck it - turn over the whole tree. Stop trying to turn over the page. Rip it out, rip it straight out, because no matter how far you get from who you were you can't do a thing to fight against what made you.]

[He remembers the video Tim posted, "Entry #77," like he'd taken full control of the narrative, like the owner of that channel wasn't right there, bound with zip-ties on his goddamn floor--]

[Breathe. Fucking...calm down.]

[He remembers how it felt, plastic biting into his wrists and ankles, muscles straining to pull himself upright, the sheer fury, the complete and utter confidence that Tim had gone out of his goddamn mind, that he was dangerous and Jay was right.]

[He remembers cutting himself free, the feeling like he couldn't pull enough oxygen into his lungs, that he was choking, but that if he could just get into Tim's medicine cabinet he could--]

[He remembers the spray of static across the screen, watching himself in third-person when he finally got access to a computer. Could have meant a lot of things, but he could see what was in focus when frames dropped and the audio cracked.]

not the only one

[He doesn't know the rules. Doesn't know if this means he's infected, that he's a carrier, like Alex seemed to believe. Doesn't know if this means he's going to spread it, like Tim seems to believe. Doesn't know if this means he's really Jay Merrick anymore, or that the guy he's talking to is still Tim Wright. Maybe they've become something different, something you're not supposed to name.]

[But they haven't caused George to collapse into a coughing fit or Clem to spray static across the screen. He's checked the footage. They're clean, by the only metric he's got. The only times it's changed are when that thing decided to show up.]

[If they're...monsters now, or whatever Tim seems to believe, they're not the same kind.]

we haven't made anybody sick here
not directly
not when it's just us

might count for something

don't be so sure

[Remember Sans. Remember Seth. Remember Max. Remember George.]

[Remember the tiny things they've glimpsed. It stacks up, over time. Eventually, it will cross your mind.]

[You can't know for sure. You can never know. Because it doesn't manifest right away. It's never an immediate thing. It takes years, sometimes. Years for it to spiral up and crack to the surface like a drowning man gasping for air - ]

[And that's when the nightmares begin.]

it took you years to get sick

[He's right. He'd been losing time, filling in the gaps wrong, ever since the beginning, but he hadn't really gotten sick until later. Until 2013 or so, when he was traveling with Tim.]

[When he was traveling with Tim.]

[Liar. That was just the first time he'd had somebody around to notice.]

[No, he hadn't been seeing things until the end. He hadn't been sick like Tim (god, that was hard to even think) until the end.]

[He'd been blacking out and wandering off before that. He'd been wearing the mask before that; even totheark knew.]

nice if something could be straightforward for once

[He got sick, but he can't remember when the symptoms started. Can't figure out what started them, what made them worse. The pills help, but he can't tell how much. Can't tell if he's acting different, because it's not like he had much of a personality to begin with. He's got Tim to keep an eye on him, but Tim's not exactly the most reliable witness.]

for us?
when has that ever been on the table

[It's not. It never is. "Answers" require significant labor to obtain, and even when they do come through, they come at the cost far more questions than is worth the effort of attaining the answer in the first place.]

[He didn't necessarily need answers. He didn't necessarily need anything other than for it to be over.]

[In a painful, frustrating way, so did Alex. Just...with different methods.]

[Never. Not even before, when he was between jobs, sleeping until two in the afternoon, dead-eyed and sprawled across the sheets he hadn't washed in over six months. Not when the kitchen sink became fully unusable, not when his head had only two settings--complete disconnection and all-consuming focus--and neither was any good at scraping the encrusted ravioli residue off his dishes.]

[Not before, when he was supposed to be revising Alex's script.]

[Not before, when people asked him why he was majoring in film if he didn't even seem to care about it that much.]

[Not before, when his teacher-mother-father-uncle-grandmother asked him why he wouldn't just pay attention when they're speaking to him.]

[Not after over four years in motels with smoke stains on the ceiling, scraping by on sticks of beef jerky and bitter hotel coffee, not when he was finally face to face with the only person who might actually know what was going on, and the man didn't say a word.]

it hasn't

[Tim lies back on his bed - a shitty, dorm-esque place with cramped walls and a ceiling that's too low and the place retains the smell of his belongings, cigarettes and cheap aftershave, in a way that suggests a sense of permanence he knows, logically, doesn't really exist.]

[He takes another drag from the cigarette he doesn't remember lighting. So much for quitting.]

[So that's how their lives are. Vague. Ill-defined. Impossible to conceptualize. Dictated by creatures beyond the realm of their understanding.]

max say anything else yet

[Jay slumps in the worn, crooked office chair, the edge of the desk biting into his arm. Like Tim's, his room is dorm-like, with barren, concrete-block walls. The comforter has a familiar pattern, some bland amalgamation of hotel bedcoverings circa 1989-1995, a spatter of brown, pink, and teal. What the room lacks in decoration, it makes up for in clutter; stacks of hard drives are stacked and scattered across the floor, each one labeled with a date and a few keywords, a tangle of wires criss-crosses the desk and the space behind it, used notebooks peek out from under the bed. There's a pair of plastic dishes up against the wall, one still encrusted with wet cat food, and a couple of battered toys (balls with jingle bells inside, mice constructed out of rabbit fur, a feather attached to a long string) dot the space between the bed and the door. (He's got to remember to look down next time; he's still nursing a bruise from the last time he didn't.) Clothes lie in loosely arranged piles: worn, wearable, clean. There's a stack of books on his bedside table, all borrowed from the library long enough ago that he can't quite remember how overdue they are. From his desk, he can see a couple textbooks, a biography of some godawful director with a fascinating story, and a dog-eared copy of the manual for his current handheld.]

[Jay stares at the communicator.]

[Archie rubs his chin against Jay's leg, before sauntering off to find something else to do.]

[Jay picks the communicator back up.]

not really

[She's not the most evasive person he's ever met, but that's only because the competition's so steep.]

[And because he's got Tim on the line, because this is a private message, because this isn't Twitter, he types the next words:]

you think we can do anything for her?

i couldn't do anything for myself

[Whose fault is that. Who do you have to blame for all of this, Tim? Who do you think is responsible? Why didn't you fix it, fix it, fix it the way Alex all but begged you to? Do the right thing, and burn to death. That wouldn't have fixed anything here, but back home, that would have spared whoever else you might have come into contact with.]

[You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch. Look at what you've done.]

[Look at what you're doing to them. All of them. Thought you could scrape out a life like this. Thought this could be a fresh start. And, oh, you told yourself it wasn't, but everything from your actions to your words suggested that you couldn't help but wonder, couldn't help but hope, as if that would mean anything.]

[You stupid, stupid son of a bitch.]

[Jay reads the message. Rereads it. Tries to suffocate the pang of guilt in his chest.]

you figured out the meds were actually doing something.

kept yourself alive long enough to wind up here.

[Jay didn't fix anything, just pointed his camera at every little thing that happened. That's worth something, though. The more he knew, the safer he was. It was just getting the information that was risky, and the only ones really at risk were the ones behind the camera. Once the information was out there, anyone who needed it could benefit. Pissed off as he was, Tim could watch the entire backlog, get access to everything Jay figured out, without leaving his desk.]

[Jay doesn't think about what Alex's theory, transmitted via Tim. He doesn't think about how it spreads.]

if she's already like us
at least maybe she won't have to figure it all out herself.

ic inbox; entranceway

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cw: internalized ableism

cw: yep

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cw: internalized ableism, jay being dramatic

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