you can call me a liar and that would be true [open]

[postictal]

Who: Tim, and also you, if you so choose
Where: Around Wonderland
When: 6/19
Rating: PG-13 for suicide ideation, allusions self-harm, recollections of past trauma
Summary: It's June 19th - Tim's birthday. The day before he posted the final entry.
The Story:

gardens; does the blank stare scare you more than the frown?

He wakes with the muted realization as to the day. It's June 19th. He knows full well what the day is, even if the day following this one strikes him as subtly more important, unbeknownst to anyone else here. Jay would have no clue. None whatsoever. Tim's throat contracts in a hard swallow as his eyes drift across the contours of the room. Does Jay remember the significance of the day, back from those pilfered medical records?

He never mentioned the day. Never brought any undue attention to it. What reason would there be for it, and what cause for celebration would there be? It's hard to be grateful for the day of your birth when you've spent every other day bitterly wishing it simply never occurred.

The morning's routine plays out by tired rote. Coffee and a cigarette to rouse himself a little more completely, a weary surveying of the pieces of himself that have made it this far. Considering the merits of shaving before deciding that he doesn't very well trust himself with a razor today. The rough partial beard darkening the lines of his jaw will simply have to persist until he's feeling a little less likely to peel the skin from himself like an orange. Give way to the fleshy insides that were opened crossways, diagonally, a long, carving slash. He can move a little easier now, as the days have crawled by.

By noon, the clamor in his head has refused to cease, clanging sickeningly around his skull in a desperate plea he can no longer ignore. Again the urge bristles at his fingers, a frustrated inability of knowing what to do with his hands. He sinks to the only impulse he can think of to stay his own hand. Concentrating on his closet with a furrowed brow until finally he opens it, and his hand closes around the bridge of a ukulele.

With Tim attachment, drifts a half-remembered voice across the ridges of poorly suppressed memory. There's a scant handful of songs he can still recall, but muscle memory turns out to be far more adept than anything else.

The sun rises high as Tim folds himself onto a bench in the gardens. It's easier than the wooded areas surrounding. His fingers dance across the strings in aimless tones, noodling a tune out idly with as little direction as the man who plays.

It's not much at all. It doesn't count for a celebration. It's just music.

But it's been months, years even, since he's allowed to think about something as mundane as a song.

kitchen; watch my actions, or lack thereof, negate the person i said i was

[There's a candle stuck in a pint of vanilla ice cream. It's unlit, at the moment, largely because the man who put it there is finishing off a pack of cigarettes, hissing smoke out between his teeth, regardless of who might want or not want the smell of nicotine clouding the vicinity. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter much at all, the memory of a hospital in which a nurse would give him ice cream after the third week in a row that his mother said she would be visiting, she promised she would, and then had simply never showed. It was like a consolation present. As if that would make it better, or numb it entirely.

A fitting celebration, then, to acknowledge the turning of an invisible clock that doesn't hold any damn weight here. Can't you try a little harder, Timothy? Try for me, okay? You must not want to get better at all, if this is still weighing you down.

Tim snorts to himself. Watches the ice cream soften in its cheap cardboard cylinder, watching it sweat onto the table. Stares at the candle that perches at the top of that stupid mound of white, quietly mocking him.

His shoulders hunch. What a stupid idea.]

woods; you can call me a coward and you'd be correct

What a stupid idea.

It's late, now. The last of the sunset has died on the horizon, threads of milk-white fading with the last fingertips of sunlight, giving way to the purpling of dusk. The imprint of the trees is still stark and black against the fading blue, and through the woods he stumps, as if that will mean anything.

There's nowhere else for any of it to go, is the thing. It boils out in rising and falling pieces, in the ragged quality of his breath, in the tautness in his lungs. Prickling at his fingertips. Stiffening his shoulders. Clinging to the back of his throat, slick and hot as bile. He shouldn't be out here, particularly after the last conversation he and Jay had, but what, then, is the point? If It's here, then It's here, and It should damn well have Its way with him. Get rid of him for fucking good. Just fucking finish it. It should have been him. It should have been, and it was simply the cruelest fucking twist of fate possible that it wasn't.

His breath rasps out like a snarl as he halts in the middle of the tangle of black trunks, turning on the spot in a slow, continuous revolution. Sweeping frantically about for any sight of the thing, the blot of faceless white that will surely rise, leering at him. There's nothing shielding him now; no synthetic safety in his pocket, no lens of a camera in his hand or strapped to his chest.

Tim's head jerks back as he glowers into the uniform dark.

"Come on!" he bellows. Waits for an answering stab of pain to his temples, but none comes. "What are you waiting for?"

If It wants him so bad, maybe now, at long last, It can fucking well take him.

wildcard; distant but rational, bringer of rage to get to a level where i will engage

[Want a specific starter? PM me or hit me over at arrpee! It's going to be a Day for old Timothy here. I will match prose or brackets!]

Comments

[tattooedredheads]

[Curious, but not something Kay's going to ask about. He sticks the ice cream in the fridge for later after blowing the candle out.]

You want Beef Wellington instead? After I've cooked it.

[postictal]

What's...

[He trails off, eyes flicking shut. Breathe. Breathe. Act like a normal human being, Tim, even if you aren't one. Not by any stretches of the overly optimistic imagination.]

What's Beef Wellington?

[tattooedredheads]

Basically, beef rolled up in a pastry and baked. The recipes comes from England.

[postictal]

You're...from England?

[It doesn't sound familiar. But it's something else to think about, something besides the pace of his heart and the tension in his lungs.]

[tattooedredheads]

Nope. I'm from Sakia. You wouldn't have heard of it unless you live there yourself.

[postictal]

You're right. I haven't.

[Not that he's surprised. A lot of worlds are different from those he knows.]

Its own country or something?

[tattooedredheads]

Just a city. Central Government does let Sakia govern itself, though. It's part of the Citizen's Autonomy Law.

[postictal]

Never heard of it.

[Though he's not surprised. There's plenty of other worlds out there that deviate drastically from his own, even if he can't properly visualize many of them.]

[tattooedredheads]

It only really matters to those of us from Sakia and the city was only built at the turn of the 22nd century. Basically, Central Government allows us to govern ourselves. In exchange, the migrants that arrive twice a month on the train become citizens of Sakia and those of us who live there, whether we came as migrants or were born in Sakia, aren't allowed to leave the city.

[postictal]

So you're quarantined.

[Sounds familiar, except Wonderland doesn't allow anyone to escape by rules of - physics or something.]

Guess Wonderland wasn't that much of an adjustment.

[tattooedredheads]

Less than for most. The events still took some getting used to.

[He sticks the beef in a pan before putting it in the oven.]

[postictal]

How long have you been here?

[That seems to be the default question you end up asking when all other conversational avenues have been exhausted, but it also seemed like the next logical step when they're both talking about adjustment here.]

[tattooedredheads]

A year and a month. What about you?

[postictal]

Since September.

[So...about ten months? Something like that.]

Guess I just got used to it pretty quick.

[tattooedredheads]

So, where and when are you from? 21st century?

[postictal]

I guess, yeah. 2014.

[Which doesn't really count as "present day," given that Wonderland seems to exist in a largely anachronistic space independent of everything else.]

[tattooedredheads]

[Even so, the 21st century seems unreasonably popular.]

About a hundred years before my time, then.

[postictal]

Jesus, really? [He supposes that shouldn't be surprising - really, it's more of a dull realization than anything else. He doesn't feel capable of much else.]

How much has changed since then? Do you know?

[tattooedredheads]

It's pretty similar, but with more focus on bio-technology. Sakia's behind the curve so we don't see it often. I doubt you'd be able to tell much difference between Sakia's technology and what you're used to seeing.

[postictal]

Guess not.

[And hey, now he remembers this guy. The lightsaber man.]

You're the guy who made that beam...light sword thing. Right?

[tattooedredheads]

Mm-hm. Ending up sticking with the name "lightsaber" for it.

[postictal]

Does it still work?

[Mostly outta curiosity; he's not in any position to try it out himself, especially today of all days. That's a recipe for something he doesn't feel like thinking about.]