entrancelogs | blue canary in the outlet by the light switch

Entry tags:

blue canary in the outlet by the light switch

Who: (Blue) Jay Merrick + You
Where: Media club + the woods behind the gym
When: August 3rd to 6th
Rating: PG (May change)
Summary: This half-plucked blue jay may not be the greatest student, but he's got interests beyond the classroom.
The Story:

Media Club:

Wherever he ends up getting into college, Jay's going to major in film. That's basically a given, though it's not because because he's a brilliant filmmaker. He likes movies, sure, and he likes learning the minutiae that go into making them. It's not exactly a passion, but it's something, and it's adjacent to his other interests.

There isn't a major in paranormal research, though--he checked--so his best chance at college prep is within the school's media club.

They're showing off their personal projects this week. Jay's got a sharpie-marked DVD under his wing. Anybody like amateur documentaries?

The Woods:

The game's already over, and the lights on the athletic field have been turned off. Nobody in their right mind would still be here this late on a school night, no matter how many questions they had for their AP physics teacher.

Jay's heard rumors, though, stories about people in the classrooms adjacent the woods seeing a too-tall silhouette between the trees. Some people say it's just a malformed tree trunk. Others say it's a human. Still others say it looks more like a water-bird, like some kind of crane, though it's taller than any crane they've ever met. Paler, too, with bleach-white feathers standing out against the leaves.

Whatever it is, Jay intends to get it on film.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Why do you care? Shouldn't you be off hunting ghosts?"

Yes, he thinks, desperately. Please. Please go off and hunt ghosts and leave me the hell alone so I can forget this ever happened. Only that's never how it works. He never forgets the things he bitterly wishes he could. No; this encounter will probably be seared into his brain for the rest of his life.

Just his fucking luck.

Jay rocks his head back.

"What, and have you just..." Jay stutters, fumbling on the next word. "...die out here or something?"

Look, maybe Jay's not the easiest person to get along with. Maybe he misses things. Maybe his priorities are a little askew. But even he's pretty sure you're not supposed to just leave a guy with a severe injury in the middle of the woods.

"Do you even know the way out?"

If he fell, then Jay's guessing he won't recognize the way out on foot. And if he does know how to get out, then that just raises even more questions.

"Thanks for the ringing endorsement," Tim snaps. "Shouldn't matter to you if I'm, I guess, too stupid to find my way around campus."

Can he blame him, really, for thinking he's that dumb? No, because it's Tim. Because Tim wakes forcefully with aching wings and no memory of how he got here. Because Tim is behind in nearly every class, has a patchwork history of absences so glaring that he's undoubtedly going to be held back a year, and he knows, okay? He knows he's stupid.

He just didn't think it was that obvious.

"Well, in case you forgot, you're not the only one in stupid-physics," Jay snipes back, "and we're both here, in the middle of the woods, at night, so...so I wouldn't exactly call it an endorsement for either of us."

Jay looks around, squinting into the dim light breaking through the canopy. Looks like some clouds might be rolling in, but it's fine. He can find his way out. Worst case scenario, he's got the flashlight.

(Feels like there's a bit of a cold front coming in, too. Huh. Early for that kind of thing.)

Except Tim woke up here, unintentionally, while this asshole is apparently the one who's chosen to wander in apropos of nothing - but he's not about to admit that. He doesn't need any fuel to the "Tim is a fucking unstable mental case who shouldn't be wandering around speaking to normal people" fire.

"You're looking for cryptids at night," says Tim, huffily. "I'm just trying to get home. There's a difference."

Just don't ask why Tim is out here or how he got here.

Tim knows enough to call them "cryptids", so he's obviously not as dumb as he says he is. He knows more than he's letting on. Jay's less sure whether or not he knows anything relevant, but that's the next step.

Tim didn't outright deny he got lost after his so-called "fall". It's risky, but Jay decides it might be worth trying to call his bluff.

"Yeah?" He jerks his head back toward the trail. "At least I know the way out."

"I know the way out," snaps Tim, hoping to god that he sounds confident enough to compensate for the fact that he is not, in fact, one hundred percent sure that he does. "Where do you think I was heading when you interrupted me?"

This is getting them nowhere.

"You know there's nothing out here, right?" Change the subject. Swing things back around to the other party. "You're gonna end up pointing that thing at weird shadows, and people aren't gonna take it seriously."

The and they shouldn't hangs heavy, unspoken, a derisive cloud tailing behind.

"People aren't--?" Jay snaps, incredulous. (But that's not really genuine, is it? The surprise, the offense at the idea that people won't take you seriously.) "If there's nothing out there, then how do you explain the--the other people? All the stories, they--they line up, Tim. It's not--"

Something catches his eye, and he halts, leaves rustling underfoot as he turns to face it.

It's...

He squints into the darkness, waiting for motion.

There's something. He saw something.

Right?

Nothing moves. Nothing changes.

He's just not ready to look away yet.

"What? What?" Swear to god, it's like talking to a cat, abruptly breaking off to stare into the distance at things that aren't there, but something prickles down his spine, a chill tickling the backs of his feathers, at that exact moment.

"I'm - I'm going home," says Tim, louder - trying to assert some relative normalcy over this, whatever this is, whatever's threatening to tip things abruptly into a world where no one else ever -

No one's supposed to be there, is the thing. Tim loses it, Tim sees things, but no one else is there alongside him when it happens.

(So why doesn't he want to look behind him?)

He's not looking at anything. There's nothing to see. Still, there's a pressure against his chest, pins and needles across his shoulders, trailing down the wings that he didn't realize he'd tucked so tightly against his sides. He's not sure what to call it, but the first word that comes to mind is, inexplicably, guilt.

"Y--yeah," he mumbles, feeling like his head's trailing six feet behind the rest of him. "Me too."

He brought his camera. He brought his bag. He brought his flashlight, even if he's not using it. He told his parents he'd be at a friend's house after the game, and that he wouldn't be long, really. He made time. He may not get another chance for a while.

But he's not supposed to be here.

It's too cold.

Except he sure as hell doesn't look like he's about to go home.

"You're not moving," says Tim testily, and oh my god, why does he care? Why does he care what this idiot does, wandering around here after dark, trying to catch glimpses of things that don't exist, except in nightmares? Tim's nightmares. Tim's empty, stupid, pointless, imaginary nightmares.

"What are you looking at?"

But Tim - he doesn't turn around to look.

Of course he doesn't look.

The darkness between the trees stretches back. A breeze twists through the underbrush, and the shapes around it move and lean and rustle and reform, but the darkness doesn't. It doesn't do anything.

It's nothing.

And then Jay blinks, and the nothing is much closer.

"No, no, no--" He's babbling. It's just noise, like the creaking-door sounds of his ancestors, played back on old human film reels, digitized and reprojected in the classroom.

He beats his wings, jerky and uncontrolled and panicked, the tips of his ratty, unpreened flight feathers bending against the leaf litter.

It's useless.

~~Besides, you can't leave him again.~~

"Come on!" It's high, piercing. An alarm call.

Edited 2018-08-18 06:58 (UTC)

At some point, things took a haphazard shift from weird to unnervingly familiar. He can't fly. He can't fly, with one wing trailing the way it is, bent and bruised, and trying to power through it only elicits a harsh caark of agony rinsed in regret.

He doesn't look behind him. He doesn't look behind him. He just tries to scramble through the leaves underfoot, but being unable to fly is hampering his ability to make much ground.

"No," he mutters under his breath. "Not real, it's not real, It's not real - "

He hears Tim scream behind him, and he trips, pauses just for a second. Tim's wing trails at his side, beak gaping open with agony, but he's not stopping. Good.

His legs aren't built to run. His body's not built to carry the weight of a camera strapped across his chest and a full backpack, but stopping to let the bag drop feels like more of a death sentence than keeping to the ground, clumsily skip-hopping through the dead leaves and roots twisting beneath them. He doesn't know what will happen if it catches them.

This isn't the way he wants to find out.

But god, it's real.

He can't possibly deny anything now. What if he just - the thought seizes him, worked up like tangles of vines around his fragile throat - what if he just fell behind, and let It catch him? Let It do whatever It wanted? Just let it all happen? He wouldn't have to explain a thing! He wouldn't -

He glances behind him, and the sheer emptiness that yawns back at him is enough to send his heart rabbiting against his ribs, and for Tim to decide that awkward questions are infinitely preferable.

"I can't fly," he says, hating the way the words crack like a whimper. "I can't fly."

There's a sound behind him, not the sound of cracking branches or the low hum like he's got his foot wrapped around the tip of an aux cable or the horrible, blank nothing beneath it all.

(He read something once about sensory deprivation. He forgot a lot of it, but one thing stuck with him: How your brain doesn't know how to process it. How your brain makes things up to fill in the gaps.)

But this sound is a voice, and the voice is real, and it's confirming Jay's suspicion: Tim can't fly.

Jay can, he thinks. If he just drops the backpack, it might be enough. He'd be able to get out, and there'd be echoes and the sounds of trees and voices and all the things that his brain's wired up to expect. He'd be able to go home.

His throat constricts, blood rushing in his ears, and he skids to a stop. Just need a second. Just need to lose the bag and--

What the hell is he doing?

Just need to lose the bag, and he's got the option to take off. He doesn't have to right now. It's just if he has to. He won't have to take off the camera. It'll be enough.

(Tim must be past him by now. He'll have to fly to catch up, won't he?)

Jay can still see him. He can still catch up on foot. He just needs to get the strap over his wing, and he'll be able to run again. He'll catch up. He's not leaving Tim behind. He's not--

A bolt of agony splits through his skull, and his legs give way, the unbalanced weight of the bag sending him tumbling into the leaf litter. He doesn't hear himself scream. Maybe he doesn't scream. Maybe he just falls silent.

For a minute, he thinks - he thinks he's gone. Left him. Would make sense, wouldn't it? Who is he to this guy, anyway? Just some asshole, snapping at him in the woods. Just some idiot, who's too cagey to yield answers and too cold to be of much use, too evasive to be good company. Some guy who woke up in the woods with a bruised wing, who's hampering progress and dragging him back.

So he's going to fly ahead, and leave him. Well, good. He should. He should. What's Tim ever done for anyone in his life? What's he ever done but get in the way, drag people down, anchor them into places they should have left?

Then he goes down in a flutter of wings and a harsh cry.

"Hey. Hey!" He's not sure what instinct steers him to the bird that's ended up on the ground. He doesn't even know the poor idiot's name.

But it's not like Tim is going to get out of this any quicker on his own.

"Get up. Get up, come on!"

His neck is twisted back, his eyes wide and glassy and staring at a point between the trees. His beak gapes open, and his chest heaves and stutters. One wing beats uselessly against the ground, the other pinned beneath the weight of the bag still wound around it.

There's something in his head. There's something beneath his skull, rooting around, cracking him open to taste the meat inside.

Get up.

He can't.

Get up, come on!

He...he can't see, but he reaches out with one shaking foot, the other curled into the wet dirt beneath him.

They're gonna die out here, he thinks. They're gonna die out here because the nothing that's crawling at them from the trees is going to swallow them whole. It's nothing that's needling in his hollow bird bones and tensing like a coiled snake in his beak, and it's what's reduced the jay's eyes to a glossed-over, beetle-shell shine.

"Get up. Get up, get up get up get up you dumb shit - " He's just making sounds at this point, an unceasing slew of noise, of no no no no no no without any rhyme or reason to it, until he can get his good wing out underneath the other bird's body and use it to try and prop him upright.

"We have to go. We have to go!"

He feels a pressure at his side, barely noticeable over the pins and needles under his skin, the spikes of pain at the base of each feather. Then, all at once, gravity's coming at him from a different angle, and he's stumbling to get his feet under him.

There's another weight still pulling at his wing, twisting it at an odd angle, but then he feels the strap of his bag unhook from his elbow, slide down the rest of his wing, and the pressure stops.

He blinks through the headache, but the film across his eyes just swims in place. His breath hitches, heartrate spikes with one sudden, full, coherent thought: What if it's permanent?

It's followed by a second thought: Tim's still here.

Another spike of agony drills into the space between his eyes, and he stumbles again, leaning hard against the shape holding him upright.

We have to go.

It hurts. But they have to go. He stumbles forward, one foot still curled unnaturally under his weight.

They're both in bad shape. Tim is down one wing, and the only company he has is moving awkwardly through the carpet of dead leaves. One of his legs is all but useless. Between them, they might make one full, functional avian being.

The bag ends up on the ground. Tim disregards it.

"We're getting out of here. Come on." He has to move at an awkward angle, propping the other bird up and trying to keep the pressure off his bad wing all at the same time. It's not idea. Their progress is slow and staggering.

He doesn't care.

The pressure behind his eyes is unbearable.

"Just - keep moving. Come on."

"Jus' keep moving," Jay slurs, his tongue heavy and sluggish. Movement helps; even as his head's swimming, even as the pain burrows into his skull, he can feel it start to ease off the more they move.

They're getting away.

They have to get away. The realization jolts him, fear trickling through the cracks in the pain. He blinks once, twice, and the shadows start to coalesce into familiar shapes. He can make out the individual trees now, follow the outline of the dark silhouette holding him upright. Jay can't quite make out his expression, but he sounds shaken.

"Where...?" His mind might be working faster, but it feels like his beak hasn't quite caught up. "You know where's the..." He heaves, breath catching in his throat. "...the way out?"

"No," says Tim, because he doesn't. He has no idea where they're headed. His only plan here is: get out. Get away from - the thing that doesn't exist, because It's only ever been a memory, a thought, a bad dream. A shape in the corner of his eyes. A flicker of something that never moves.

"We're getting..." A strain of breath squeezing out from his overtaxed lungs - not broken with a smoker's cough, in this universe, but still far from in peak condition. "...getting out of here. I don't care where we end up."

He used to play a game. Anywhere but here.

It won't save anyone now.

Jay wouldn't call that reassuring. He's seen old human movies, where they're stuck on foot and can't get above the treetops to find their way out. Sometimes they starve. Sometimes there's the risk of starving, but everything's okay. Sometimes they wander into an abandoned building and scream and drop their camera and the credits roll without explaining what happened.

Tim doesn't know the way out, but Jay does. He said he did. He doesn't now.

"Find th' trail." He winces at the sound of his own voice. On the next sentence, he speaks more slowly, over-enunciating to make up for the fact that his tongue still feels like it's been coated with cotton balls. "If we get to the trail, I know..." Again, he winces, hearing the way the vowel warps in his mouth. "I know which way's out."

He steps forward with more purpose this time, his injured foot curled and dragging through the dirt behind him.

He sounds like he's on the verge of passing the hell out, which is really not what either of them need right now. Tim can only barely keep the other bird upright with a damaged fucking wing; if he drops off in earnest, they're both screwed.

"Okay," he says. How the hell he's going to dodge the million and one questions around this, he has no idea. That's not the issue right now. The priority is getting out while he still can. "You gotta stay awake, okay? No passing out on me. I can't carry you with one wing, okay?"

It hasn't occurred to him that there's no real reason he should care. There's nothing stopping him from dropping him and just - running for his life.

The thought simply hasn't crossed his mind.

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jay..........

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