+ 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

[postictal]

The white of one eye appears between the trembling cage of his fingers, staring at Jay in blind terror. For a long moment, he's either shocked into silence to too far buried in his own panic, in the pound of blood into his brain and the wavelengths of his own dismay, to answer.

But answer he does.

"...he says not to tell anyone," he whispers. The words are barely audible. "He'll make it hurt if I do."

[burntvideocassette]

What is he doing? What the hell is he doing?

"Look, I don't...I don't want you to get hurt." And that makes any of this better? Jay digs his nails into the skin of his arm as he continues. "How about if I just...ask a question, and then you nod 'yes' or 'no'. Then you're not telling me anything."

It's kid-logic, and Jay's not sure if it's an actual way around the restriction or just a way to convince a scared child to play along.

[postictal]

He isn't leaving. He isn't fading away, or turning around, or anything. He can't do anything but lie there, prone and too dizzy and faint to get up and try and move, too terrified of the doctors with their clipboards and their murmurs of words that they think he can't hear, that don't make sense because he's not delusional, he's not, he's not.

Maybe if he listens to him, he'll leave. Just like how he listens to the tall man.

If he listens to them and do as they say, they leave. They'll all leave him alone and he can tell the nurse to call his mom and tell her that he's doing better, at long last.

That feeble hope is enough lift his chin, even slightly.

It starts with a nod, or a shake of his head.

Just do what the strange man asks.

"...okay."

[burntvideocassette]

Okay.

This is happening.

There's still time to call it off. There's still time to leave, but he can't. Not when he's this close.

His arm stings, but he doesn't let go.

"Okay." Jay forces himself to look at Tim. "The 'right one'. Is he...tall? Taller than me?"

[postictal]

He knows.

Breath frozen in his throat, he hardly dares budge. He doesn't blink, and he doesn't look away. He can't. He can't because he knows and the impossibility of him knowing -



He isn't real. You have to remember. Of course he knows, because he's a part of your head, Timothy, just like every other paranoid delusion you've tried to shake loose from your brain. Everyone nesting in the bare crook of your skull, and of course they'd all start sharing.

Slowly, hesitantly - Tim nods.

[burntvideocassette]

Tim freezes, eyes locked open in terror. They have to be thinking of the same thing. Jay doesn't need to ask any more questions, because he wouldn't get a reaction like that from anything else.

Would he?

"And...and the face, is it...?" Jay unhooks his fingers from his other arm, holding his hand up to his face to block his features. "Gone?"

[postictal]

Another nod, this one tighter and more certain. Just answer his questions, and get him out of here. Maybe for good. He looks like, sounds like, he already knows what it is he's asking about. He already knows what it is, that thing that hovers in the corners of the room, in the corners of his sight where no one else can see.

(If he already knows, why's he asking?)

A twinge of an ache in his temples elicits a wince, some of the color draining even further from his already ashen face.

"Please."

Please go.

[burntvideocassette]

It's confirmed. Tim's been seeing that thing ever since he was a kid.

A terrified kid, begging Jay to please just leave him alone.

Jay steps back towards the door, puts his hand on the knob. Then, he hesitates. "Thanks, really. Thank you for...for talking to me."

That's not enough. Jay keeps talking, even though he's not sure what he's saying, only that he's sure he doesn't want the last thing this kid thinks about to be that thing.

"Look, you're...you're gonna be alright. It's gonna be bad--" Jay winces. "I mean, I assume, but, like. You're gonna end up almost as big as me. And you're gonna get out of here, I swear."

[postictal]

What choice did he have?

He wouldn't leave. It's not like he's a ghost with unfinished business, or a specter of an imaginary friend that tells him to do things he doesn't want to do. He's inexplicable, and he doesn't make sense, and he fizzles at the edges of Tim's vision without any reason for it.

It's going to be bad, he says, as if it isn't already. How much worse could it possibly get?

It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that he'd think that he'd ever get out of this place, or that he should plan for some imaginary future where he would.

Or that he'll even live long enough to see that happen.

He risks one more question.

"Please...please go?"

[burntvideocassette]

Jay's head dips sheepishly.

"Yeah, I should...I should go." Understatement of the century. "Sorry, I--"

This isn't time for an explanation. This is time to leave, before he screws Tim up any further.

"Bye."

He twists the knob and lets himself out, forcing himself not to look back.