[OPEN] forgot what i was losing my mind about

[deadshapes]

Who: Mae and YOU
Where: Around the Mansion and grounds
When: 2/9-2/11
Rating: PG-13 for potential violence and mental health issues
Summary: Mae is about fifteen, fresh off The Incident, where she attacked and almost killed a fellow student. Now she's stuck in a world with strange looking people and dinosaurs. She's pretty sure she's gone insane.
The Story:


A: (kitchen) woke up on the wrong side of reality

It's official, then. Everyone was right. Mae Borowski is insane.

She's in an enormous house she's never been to before, and everyone around her doesn't look--normal. The people she's seen are all tall, hairless creatures. She's pretty sure they're still people, since they're wearing clothes and talking, but they're not normal. Maybe aliens. They're not actual aliens, she's sure. It's just her mind making them look that way. So she tries not to look at them too much, because if she stares then people will start asking what's wrong.

There's also dinosaurs outside. She knows plenty about dinosaurs. She had like a thousand plastic dinosaurs as a kid.

So this is what insanity is like. It's weird. She doesn't really feel crazy. She just kind of feels lost and numb, and like she's about three inches to the left of her own body. Everything's just...sort of floaty.

She hides out in her room for most of the first day, but eventually she gets up the courage to go exploring. Might as well explore this insane asylum or whatever it is. Where are all the doctors?

She ends up in the kitchen, where she finds a box of off-brand Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Then she tucks herself into a corner of the kitchen and just starts eating out of the box, staring into space and trying not to think too hard about what's happening. She's got a journal and pen with her and occasionally jots something down.


B: (roof) there's a madness that's just coursing right through me

Later on, she starts getting the hang for how this crazy fever dream of hers is going to work. It's all magic-based or whatever, and the closets have infinite resources. Junk food, blankets, baseball bats, you name it. She started to get a bat out of the closet, then thought against it. No weapons. Bad idea. She might hurt someone again.

Instead, she starts gathering a whole bunch of small drinking glasses and carries them up to the roof. The roof is a bit dangerous, considering there's like...pteradactyls and shit. They leave her alone once they realize what she's doing, though. Mae just sort of starts tossing the glasses and letting them smash onto the roof. Once she's done with one batch, she sweeps up the broken glass--she doesn't want to be that guy who leaves broken glass everywhere--and then starts it all over again.

It's cathartic. It's helping.

Comments

[postictal]

You're human.

He looks down at one small, trembling hand, flexing the fingers into a fist and out again, counting them, one by one. People don't ask him things like that. That goes unspoken, unsaid. He's human in the same way that everyone else is, isn't he? A strange human, an abnormal human, one that needs constant supervision, but...human.

"I haven't seen anyone else who acts like me," he ventures, at last. "So, um. I guess we can both be freaks."

[deadshapes]

There's a silence again, like he's not actually sure how to answer. Maybe people don't ask that question. Probably not when you're used to everyone being human. Hell, maybe it's offensive.

But then he does answer, and it's not the one she's expecting. She looks over at him again. Freak? He doesn't seem like one. But then again, she supposes she didn't seem like a freak herself until she almost killed someone. A weird, bratty kid, maybe, but that was about it.

She's quiet for a bit.

"D'you wanna throw one of these? I've got a bunch left."

[postictal]

"They said I shouldn't have sharp things," says Tim, dubiously, but he's shifting forward one step, slow and careful and tentative. It's not a confirmation. Not yet. But he is, inarguably, tempted.

"They...they said it's dangerous. Broken glass can cut you. You can get it all buried in your hands and knees and stuff."

Not that he would know the specifics, of how agonizing that can get. He's just been cautioned against it a dozen times. Which is pretty stupid, as far as he's concerned; he's not about to jump out of any windows, is he?

Of course not.

[deadshapes]

"It's okay. That's why I'm throwing them. They make a cool sound, and then I go sweep them up. So all you have to do is throw it, you don't have to be near the sharp stuff."

They, he says. Like maybe she was right all along, and this place really is just...

It also means that he really is like her.

"You know those like, glass cases where they keep fire extinguishers or fire hoses or whatever? One time I punched one of those and got glass in my hand. The thing said 'In Case of Emergency, Break Glass' and there was a bee in the hallway."

She chuckles a little.

"I think I was like eight? I dunno. Mrs. Johanssen got so mad. I think that kind of glass is like, special though, because it didn't cut me all that much. Like safety glass or something? I dunno."

She holds out a glass to him.

"Anyway, I'll sweep up the broken stuff, like I said. I don't want pteranodons landing on it and getting hurt, either."

[postictal]

With notable trepidation, he picks up one of the drinking glasses, turns it over and over between his fingers. He doesn't throw it just yet, but he - he has it. That's step one. Maybe he can take it slow.

"Why'd you break it?" he asks at last. "The...the emergency glass. Was it an emergency?"

He'd have to assume it was. But someone got mad at her? He's not certain he follows the train of thought there, but then again - he's not really the smartest person, he knows. He's a liability. Missed too many days from school. Has to be held back.

[deadshapes]

She stays still and calm as he comes over and picks up a glass. It's a little weird, having someone be close to her. Especially a little kid. Like maybe she shouldn't be trusted around people, not when she has breakables. She remembers the parents in the bleachers, hugging the littler kids closer to them once her vision had cleared enough to see what was going on. Like she was just gonna start clambering over bleachers to get at people.

Andy Cullen just...happened to be right there, she thinks. He was just unlucky. It wasn't his fault. It's not like she didn't like him or was angry at him. He was just...shapes, and she needed it to stop.

"I mean, not really. There was a bee in the hall, and everyone was freaking out and overreacting cause oh my Goddddd, it's a bee! And I think I must have thought, 'it's an emergency! I'll save everyone by spraying it with the fire extinguisher!' I was also just a weird kid. I mean, I guess I still am."

She winds back and throws the glass across the roof, watching it arc down and shatter a few yards away.

[postictal]

He runs his thumb up and down the contours of the glass. It seems wrong to have it just to break it. It's dangerous, having broken glass around children. But she's a child too, isn't she? She's...she's older than him, but she seems like she might not be a grown-up, just yet. He'd like to think he can tell.

But then, she's not exactly human, either.

"They keep saying I'm weird, too," Tim mumbles. "Or...'abnormal,' I think. They say stuff sometimes, when they think I can't hear. Stuff like, um - like..." He has to screw his eyes shut to concentrate on recalling the words properly, but can relay them, eventually. "'Violent episodes' and, um, 'delusions.'"

Whatever that means.

He hurls the glass abruptly, and watches it shatter across the ground in a sparkling stream of fragmenting glass. Balls his fists up at his side and lets his shoulders slump downward.

Maybe it did help him feel a little better.

"So I, I guess I am."

[deadshapes]

She tilts her head and blinks at him.

"Really? Me too."

So maybe this is all an extended hallucination and she was right all along. Maybe they are all trapped in a hospital. One with a weird shortage of doctors.

Maybe this is just where they dump all the crazies.

And he's just a little kid. Who locks up a little kid? Kids are supposed to be kinda weird by definition.

She watches him throw, ears pricking when she hears it shatter.

"Nice throw. Pretty good, right?"

She's quiet for a bit, bending down to get another glass out of her bag.

"I think this kind of weird is okay. This isn't hurting anyone."

[postictal]

"They wouldn't like it," he says dully, hating that he just - he just knows they wouldn't like it, the doctors, and pretty much everyone else he's ever talked to. Mom wouldn't like it. The nurses wouldn't like it. Everyone would say that's too violent, Timothy, and you shouldn't act out.

But it still feels good. To break something, without anything bleeding afterwards.

He snatches another glass up, and another, and another, and starts pitching them with an increasing fierceness, watching them spray out across the ground in a sparkling inflorescence.

"They'd say it's stupid." Smash. "That I should just think better thoughts." Crash. "And monsters aren't real, anyway, so why don't I just stop it?"

He punctuates the last tirade with the tinkle and hiss of splintering glass.

Breathing. Breathing hard.

"...none of them get it."

[deadshapes]

She nods, though he doesn't think she's looking at him.

"Adults are like that."

Her parents are champs, she thinks. It's weird to think that, maybe. It's not like they get along all the time--it's one of those stereotypical things, teenagers and their parents. But Mae loves them. They don't hate her because of what she did. They're not gonna just kick her to the curb because of it. They've been trying this past week, she knows.

They just don't get it. Dr. Hank doesn't get it either, with his placid smile and half-hearted attempts to get her to talk about her feelings.

The kid picks up more glasses and starts throwing them. Mae watches in silence, letting him go. The glass is still all ending up far away from them, so it's fine. She's not gonna let him hurt himself.

She waits until he's done.

"I don't think anyone gets it."

Not unless you've lived it, maybe. People keep asking her why she did it, like they expect her to actually know. And that's the real reason why she's crazy, right? Because she doesn't know.

"Do you think...everyone was just wrong about monsters? Like...there's monsters, but they don't...look like monsters. They're not werewolves and stuff. They're not even people, like serial killers or whatever. Like, maybe monsters are like...thoughts. Feelings we can't explain. Or, like. Stuff in your head? Like it's already in there, and sometimes it just comes out. Like maybe it's not even really you. It's this other thing made of thoughts that's just living in there."

[postictal]

Monsters are real.

Monsters are real, no matter what the doctors say, and he knows they're real because he's seen them, he's seen them and felt them and there's a tall man in the back of his head, maybe watching him right now, maybe watching without a face or eyes or anything that would conceivably watch him but he can still feel it, like an incredible pressure he can't shake.

They're thoughts. The things you can't explain. The things that make you feel watched, even when the doctors say that there's no one else here.

"Like the feeling that something's watching." A shiver rides up his spine, prickling the hairs on the back of his neck until they stand on end. "Something that they say isn't there."

[deadshapes]

"Yeah. Or it's not watching you, but it's there. Something that's sitting there, and people think it's normal, or it's just out of sight, or people forgot it was ever there."

She thinks a lot about sinkholes. The mines threading beneath the town, and you can't see them, but parts of them collapse sometimes. And sometimes they bring parts of the surface down with them.

That feeling, like sinking.

"Or it's there, but it's...too big. It's so big that people can't see it. Because it's taking up everything. It's filling every space."

She'd felt close to something then, when everything had broken apart. Like some last remaining logical part of her was seeing through it all, was seeing some kind of great understanding of the universe, but that understanding wasn't something she ever wanted to have to know. Like something was looking back at her. Like she was drawn to...something.

Like a massive hole in the ground that goes down forever.

She shakes her head a little.

"What's your name?"

[postictal]

Because it's everywhere, and it's like a tone in a room that's been going on for as long as you've been alive. It's so ordinary, so acceptable, that no one else is bothered. It's just a quiet little hum of noise, or a shape in the corner of your eye, and it's easy to ignore because it's always been there.

Until one day you open your eyes, and realize that not only has it always been there, but it's always been something to be afraid of.

It's always been there. Waiting. Waiting for someone to see it for what it truly is. And then - then it will make itself known.

A chill races up his spine. He sets the last drinking glass down with a quiet clink, arms tightening around the center of his chest instead.

"Tim."

[deadshapes]

The space between things, and she's not even sure why she thinks of it that way. The seams where things crack when they go to pieces. To shapes.

It was like she could see something in there when it happened. Something in between.

He sets the glass he's holding down and hugs himself. She resists the urge to go put a hand on his shoulder or something, but she does step a little closer.

"I'm Mae." She pauses. "You're kind of a neat kid."

[postictal]

The response is so unexpected, so new, that his head jerks up sharply, his eyes widening, and one side of his mouth even creeps upward into a startled tug of a smile.

"...no one's, um." That's a stupid thing to say. He shakes the sentence away and straightens. She thinks he's kind of neat. She thinks he's kind of neat. No one ever says stuff like that to him. Not to him.

"I think you are, too."

[deadshapes]

She smiles faintly. The poor kid smiles like he's not too sure how it works. It's like he's never heard anyone pay him any kind of compliment before. But it sounds like he's had it a lot harder than Mae has. Mae has felt plenty crazy in the past, but it was never fully driven home until last week with Andy Cullen. This kid's less than half her age, and he's already...

It's a little depressing, but she can't help but also feel a bit hopeful. It's nice to not feel quite so alone.

"Heh, thanks. Uh, do you wanna throw some more glasses?"

[postictal]

"...okay. Yeah." That's simple and fun, right? It's not dangerous, as long as they sweep the glass up afterwards. The doctors were wrong about that, and she seems self-assured enough to know what she's talking about.

He thinks maybe he likes her better than he likes the doctors. No, actually - he definitely does. He doesn't even need to think about it.

Mae even gets a smile. An actual, real, genuine smile.