+ Let's go for a dreamwalk! + [OPEN PLOT CATCH-ALL]

[mviw]

Who: Everyone who wants to participate!
Where: The Mindscape (and elsewhere in reality, if specified)
When: September 6th through September 8th
Rating: PG-13 to R for potentially disturbing, violent, or dark subjects.
Summary: Thanks to an explosion on the third floor, every time a person falls asleep, they enter the Mindscape...

The Story:
Plot information is here!

Comments

[uncaging]

Elizabeth screams as she sees the man in the hood, and is shocked when Tim runs after him. She follows a little way behind, calling his name, scared he's going to get hurt or worse, and then freezes as she sees him charge at the other man. There's the unmistakable, dull thud of his body hitting the ground far below and Elizabeth feels sick to her stomach. Her image of Tim is that he's usually so quiet, so tentative, and she's saddened to think that this could be the reason why.

"Tim, you have to stop this. We need to get out of here."

[postictal]

He staggers back with his face in his hands. He didn't mean to. He didn't mean to. No, god, please -

Her words are lost in a fountain of static, splitting across the world at the seams. Overridden by the cold pronouncement of one Alex Kralie, his glare lost in the shadow of the brim of his hat until it abruptly blazes out like a beacon, his expression cold.

"I know exactly what happened to Brian." He kneels down, just beside the hooded figure that lies prone, propped up against the wall. Only he's no longer hooded or masked. He doesn't move an inch. "You killed him."

He reaches, seizing the back of Brian's hair and jerking his head upright. It lolls lifelessly on a neck floppy and boneless.

"And he died here slowly because of you."

Tim can't look away. There's something hot beading up at the corners of his vision as he lies there, trembling. Each breath rasps. The camera in his hand trembles. Alex delivers a forceful shove that sends Brian slumping sideways like a ragdoll, like a puppet whose strings have been cut.

Alex's words bristle with distortion, laced with gasoline.

"How does it feel to know one of your friends is dead?"




And Tim
screams.

[uncaging]

"Stop it!" Elizabeth screams, jumping in front of Tim to shield him, though she knows it's probably a futile attempt. She's so scared she's shaking, but she can't leave him to the seething vitriol coming from Alex. "Leave him alone!"

[postictal]

She passes through the pair of them like mist. The conflict transpiring won't accommodate that level of intervention, and Tim starts to cough, raggedly. The next thing he knows, Alex has clamped his hands around Tim's neck, slamming him back against the wall of an abandoned, empty school, pressing tighter, ever tighter.

Alex's expression has contorted into one of absolute rage. He's so close to the end. He's so close to the end. Everything that once defined him - that good humor, that sarcasm mired in disdain, that spark that urged him to create, that desire to be something that would inspire people - has been scraped away and left nothing, nothing, nothing.

And Tim can't fucking breathe, sputtering as he strains to draw breath.

But he can still speak.

"You weren't containing it," he manages, his throat constricting. "You were just feeding it."

"Shut up," growls Alex.

He's so close. He's so close.

"When you killed Amy," hisses Tim, "did it feel like you were in control then?"

The lines of Alex's outrage soften, just for a moment, outlining his expression in one of almost hurt shock. Then he goes livid, drawing back to send a fist crashing into Tim's jaw.

It gives him the window he needs.

Tim's hand snaps upward, and he slams the thin slip of a flip-knife into Alex's neck.

[uncaging]

Elizabeth turns away when she sees the spray of blood that comes from Alex's neck as the knife dives into it. She feels sick. She wants to run away, but she doesn't think there's anywhere to go.

She'd known there was darkness in Tim's past, but she'd always thought he was a good person. Now she doesn't know what to think.

[postictal]

Tim's breath is ragged, his shoulders heaving.

"You missed someone," he manages to drag out between clenched teeth.

And from the corners of his vision, that thing flares - that thing that Elizabeth will doubtless remember, stark and black with a gleaming white canvas of a face. The full force of its stare skewers Tim through. He buckles beneath that invisible pressure, that great fucking weight caving sickeningly over him, while on the floor, Alex thrashes with his back arched and one hand pressed up to the terrible wound bleeding him out through his throat.