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

[burntvideocassette]

What's worse, dying or forgetting?

Jay kneads at his forehead. This is...their lives now. This is what their lives have been since 2006, what Tim's has been since he was a kid.

How did they get here from trying to play the ukulele?

"D'you think there's a way to...get out without...?" Without going back there, he's thinking, but he's not sure if it's clear enough.

[postictal]

Tim can only shake his head wearily.

"I dunno. If there is, no one's found it yet." And some people have been here for years, so what chance does one painfully average guy from Alabama have? And Tim - well, he never really bothered to start looking in the first place. If this is his hell, his purgatory, whatever, it's about as much as he deserves.

"I don't think we...I mean, it's a pretty big what if."

[burntvideocassette]

"Yeah," Jay concedes. "Guess it's best to just...deal with what we have now, for now."

It doesn't mean he won't be thinking about it, but maybe he won't expend quite as much thought as he would've otherwise.

"Which I guess brings us back to, uh." Back to ukuleles and the overwhelming desire to block out certain intrusive thoughts.

"Look, if I were...wanting to learn how to..." This is a terrible idea. "If I wanted to start reading sheet music, where do you even--even start with that?"

Great coping mechanism. Try to distract yourself with something so boring that you just go back to reviewing footage anyway.

[postictal]

Not content with one awkward exchange for the day, Jay elects to swing right back around to their jumping-off point (poor choice of words, Tim), just to dig the stupidity of that initial idea in a little deeper.

"I mean, there's...probably people who can teach you." He's assuming there are, seeing as there's - there seems to be a high proportion of people who know how to read music.

He should probably learn himself, if he plans on making it anything more than a passive hobby. But learning would require more effort than he feels capable of exerting.

[burntvideocassette]

Asking requires finding someone who can teach him, which requires going on the network and announcing to the world that he needs lessons, which requires a lot more self-confidence than Jay's got at the moment.

The library should have some decent reference material.

He gestures to the ukulele. "Least if I ever wanna learn that, I've got you."

It takes Jay a moment to realize what he's just said. From there, it takes a microsecond to regret it completely.

1/2

[postictal]

[postictal]

He, uh.

He's not entirely sure what it is he should be saying to that. It sounds fucking cheesy, and he could make a joke about Alex Kralie there, but that's definitely a too soon kind of thing.

The most Tim can do is clear his throat, pretend like the awkward weight of what Jay's just said isn't choking him like a goddamn noose, and nod, straight-faced.

"Can't promise I'd be..." Fuck. No. Why'd he go there? "Probably be better off learning from someone who can actually play."

[burntvideocassette]

Oh god, he actually considered it for a second, didn't he? Great. Nice job, Jay. Nice job even putting the idea in his head.

He shrugs, trying to play it off. "Good thing we've got such a...great selection of music teachers here." He rolls his eyes. "Might check the library. They're...supposed to have everything, if the pamphlet I looked at was right."

This assumes he's even going to make an attempt at learning bass again, which is a pretty big leap for someone who hasn't even pulled one out of the closet yet.

But it's better than being alone with his thoughts again. It's being alone with his thoughts and a useless instrument he's never going to actually play. Definitely a step up.

[postictal]

"Could always ask around." But after Tim ragged on him so violently for daring to voice a handful of names to a public network, can he really blame Jay for wanting to steer clear from that in an interactive sense for a spell? Not exactly, no.

"But...yeah. I guess library would be the - that'd be the place to start." Assuming he finds books that are written in a language he can understand. "Just make sure no one's torching the place when you go there."

...isn't there a story and a half behind that little comment.

[burntvideocassette]

Just make sure--what?

Jay picks his words slowly and carefully. "Do people...burn...books here?"

If he's just stepped into a copy of Fahrenheit 451, then that means there are people here who want to destroy information. That doesn't sit well with Jay at all.

[postictal]

"Just the one time," says Tim, maybe a shade too casually. "New arrival was pretty skittish, and thought he was someplace else. Molotoved the place." And brained Tim with a shotgun, which was a fun thing to happen.

Also apparently killed a man. He's...not really sure how he's meant to process Joel, even now. Whatever the hell their relationship is, it's still uneasy, even if he doesn't hold the whole near death experience thing against him.

[burntvideocassette]

Someone set the library on fire with a molotov cocktail, and Tim's talking about it like it's nothing. Granted, Tim's always had a decent deadpan, so that's not indicative that this is normal, exactly, but it's still not something Jay wants to hear.

(One of his first acts upon arrival was to tackle Tim, rip open his chest wound, and try to get his hands around his throat, so he can't exactly judge. Or he can, but it won't sit right. He was justified, in a way, but maybe this guy was, too.)

"Is he...doing any better now?"

[postictal]

"He's fine." He's talked with Joel semi-regularly enough to know the guy's paranoid for a reason, even if it's been months since he first showed up in Wonderland in possibly the most tumultuous entrance in the library's history.

"He just didn't realize he wasn't home anymore." Tim shrugs tiredly. "Just...letting you know, I guess. Library isn't always quiet."

[burntvideocassette]

"Sounds like 'home' was rough." Another one who's better off here, maybe. Jay hopes it's a little more clear-cut for this guy than it is for the two of them.

"And...thanks for the warning. I'll keep an eye out." He glances back at the mansion. "You want me to...pick you up anything while I'm there?"

He's not sure what Tim would want. Is Tim a reader? Would Jay have known if he was?

[postictal]

Just for a second, he's back in Alabama. He's smoking at one of the many anonymous gas stations that pepper the roads and highways, and he's leaned up against the car with the smell of gasoline in his nostrils, listening to the clink of beer cans as the only other person in the vicinity swings a six-pack into the back of his truck and sputters the thing to life.

And Jay exits the station with a water bottle and a handful of cheap snacks with packaging that crackle beneath his fingertips, and he asks, you sure you don't want anything?

Tim shakes his head, in the dream. He shakes his head now.

"I'm good," he says, in two unfolding versions of the same tableau, one at a ratty, nondescript gas station in Tuscaloosa and one by a bench in a garden in Wonderland, and Tim crams his hands into his pockets and lets the memory wick out of his thoughts.

But he adds in the latter what he never said in the former, even if it's mumbled, even if it's with a shrug and telegraphed uncertainty: "Thanks."

aww, tim

[burntvideocassette]

Tim thanked him. Tim thanked him, so it must've been good that he asked.

Jay lets out a quiet sigh of relief.

"Alright." He backs away, one hand holding the camera and the other one fidgeting at his side. "See you around. And, uh, lemme know if you think of anything."

---

When Tim comes back to his room this evening, if he looks down, he might spot a piece of thick, laminated paper that had been shoved through the crack under his door. It has a sticky note on it.

"Hope this isn't useless. -J. (6/19)"

It's a ukulele fingering chart.

(Jay didn't notice the date until he'd gotten to the library, and he didn't remember the significance of the date until a few hours later. Tim had been out in the gardens, playing the ukulele, and Jay had never seen him play outside the tapes, so it must have been related.

The concept of wishing Tim a 'Happy Birthday' seems wrong, and without the medical records in front of him, he knows he might be remembering the date incorrectly.

So this is safest. Just something he picked up that might be useful. He tries to shove down the worry that Tim will take it as a insult toward his playing.

It's a tool. It's a reference. Maybe he can use it.)