entranceway | Entry #2

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Entry #2

[This gets posted at around 4 A.M. and it's a video feed, which, if anyone's been contacted by Alex recently, is a little unusual. It's a clear visual on the inside of Alex's room - scandalous - which isn't terribly different from your typical college dorm room, with one notable exception.

It is liberally covered in weird, hastily-scribbled, ink-and-charcoal drawings. The long shot of one of the walls might give people enough time to read the most visible ones:

SEES ME

~~LEAVE ME ALONE~~

OPERATOR

Accompanied by several rough illustrations of pine trees and frequently punctuated with an odd symbol: a circle with an X slashed through it.

Ⓧ

Distortion abruptly ripples across the screen, and the angle changes. Now the network will be treated to a clear shot of the floor of Alex's room, which is similarly carpeted in page after scrawled page of cryptic warnings and oblique messages, along with what looks to be a laundry list of crossed-out names - names like BRIAN and SARAH, JAY and TIM and SETH, any of which might be visible to the eagle-eyed.

With a flutter of static and an unpleasant, high-pitched screeching sound, the picture shifts one last time. Now someone's hands are in view, streaked with ink as they carve out yet another circle-and-x symbol into another sheet of paper with single-minded resolve. Then the feed buzzes, frames flickering, and switches off.]

((ooc: Alex won't respond until next morning since he's not doing any of this consciously - he's currently asleep. Feel free to respond with an action post, though you might have to wake him up first.))

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[It does serve as that for now, but Max is also determined to find out as much as she can. Here's someone she can help, and she wants to prove that she can help, that she does.]

There must be something that caused it. Do you remember anything? [Although she has no idea what, exactly, would cause something like that. She does have a feeling that it might be supernatural. That reminds her that she has no idea what supernatural things gave her the rewind power, and the thought is discouraging.]

[He remembers a lot of things, though he's not really sure what the ratio is, of things he remembers to those that he doesn't. He's not sure he wants to know. Nor is he sure of what he can say. He stalls by draining his coffee and setting the cup down with a hard click of aligning edges.]

I remember a really shitty film shoot.

[That's...all he can safely say without incriminating himself, or saying something worse.]

Was, um. August? 2009. Nothing weird I can remember.

[Liiiiiiiiiiies.]

And your camera just went fuzzy? [Wow, if that really is the whole truth, then there are literally zero things to look into. As far as 'supernatural origin stories' go, that was pretty lame.]

[But that's pretty suspicious too, because it's not nearly enough reason to go all crazy with drawings like Alex did.] How does that connect to your video last night?

It just kinda started happening one day. So, you know, I stopped.

[That part is KIND OF true. Kiiiind of.

The next part is harder to bullshit. Uhhh what he can he say that sounds plausible.]

So. Sometimes I kind of, uh. [Wince.] Sleepwalk. Sleeping problems, you know. Started just after.

[So it's not just the camera thing, then. Hmm, hmm. It's hard to make something out of that new information, but it does also convince her that there's some psychological problem, too. All the more reason he should see a therapist.] Do you always end up drawing that stuff? Any idea what they mean?

[Then again, he's not the first sleepwalker she's met in Wonderland.]

Sometimes.

[Maybe it is too early to go looking for something alcoholic to numb his nerves. But goddamnit he doesn't want to think about this shit. Not now. Not ever again. But his brain's just really damn interested in digging this up for him, isn't it?

He scowls. Another lie. And another.]

No idea. Maybe I just really hated phones in a past life.

[HA HA OPERATOR god he's getting bad at this.]

Ha ha. [She's not actually laughing, just dryly adding a 'ha ha' because that wasn't really funny at all.]

[Then again, there is literal resurrection in Wonderland, so maybe reincarnation isn't so far-fetched. She brushes he fingers across her cheek, thinking.]

Did you read them? There were some names that you wrote. And crossed out.

Yeah, I read them.

[He hasn't...told anyone about the film shoot, not in any kind of detail. No one knows about the people he met and talked to and ~~killed~~ selectively led to be quietly taken care of. With the exclusion of Dr. Phil, of course. With any luck he'll be clever enough to keep his stupidly smart mouth shut.]

Think I went to school with a few of 'em, but I guess we kinda lost touch after a while. I don't remember.

[Close enough to the truth for him to remember, but not close enough to incriminate him. Hopefully.]

[It sounds like he has some subconscious obsession with them. More than that, it sounds like he's holding back information. She likes to think that he's just embarrassed or freaked out, but maybe there's more to it than that. She raises an eyebrow at him.]

I'd bet they have something to do with all of this. [She softens her voice, trying to be encouraging.] You can tell me, you know. And that therapist too. [She's pretty sure that she's unequipped to handle deep-seated issues like that.]

And... I'm glad you've opened up about your... supernatural side. [She smiles and tries to make that sound like a joke, to lighten up the mood.]

They're gone. And they're not here anyway, so what's it matter?

[He eyes her warily. He likes Max, sure, he can appreciate an art-type person and someone who's got a good eye for neat cameras. But is he willing to admit to being a murderer by association? Not even Philip knows about that. He thinks.]

Sound like you've got some experience in this kinda thing.

[Is that Alex not-so-subtly trying to turn the subject around to her? You bet it is.]

[Gone? Is that just supposed to mean that he lost touch with them or... something more?] What-?

[However she loses her train of thought when he mentions her having 'experience.' Really, Alex? We're talking about you remember? is what she wants to say, but that in itself would be a pretty obvious diversion. Her tone is disbelieving.] Really?

[A long pause follows that as she fiddles with her journal.] I'm just some geek girl, Alex. Not even from an interesting town. We're all pretty nuts to even be here.

[Rats. He must be off his game. He's willing to blame that on the fact that she probably had a better night's sleep than he did. And also the fact that, uh, is she the one with years of mental baggage and neural fuckery rattling around in her skull? Probably not.

Hopefully not.

Seriously.]

Can you trust that it's the same deal with me, then? 'Cause, uh, this place? Way more fucked up than anything I dealt with back home. Maybe it's messing with us.

[And there it is. The biggest goddamn lie of them all.]

[Max knows, subconsciously, that he's not telling her everything. She feels it in her gut, the same way she feels that there's a common bond between them: not admitting that there's something wrong. In his case it's probably some deep-seated obsession, with the names and the symbol, something that drives him out of bed at night to write, unconsciously, over and over - and he's just as driven to burn it all in the morning. A mental disconnect.]

[And Max, though she doesn't admit it even to herself, has a problem too; but in her case, it's damage. Trauma that resurfaces as nightmares and distant thoughts, always pushing her toward a state of lethargic wakefulness, a stupid contradiction that gnaws at her constantly, though she barely felt it at first.]

[And she also knows all about secrets. After the events in Arcadia Bay, she'd done her best to make peace. But it was hard because of the secret she carried: there was a hero that died to save that damn town, and no one could ever know. No one would ever even believe that they had been in danger, that they even needed that punk girl they all shunned.]

[The irony is that people would believe her in Wonderland. But, next to the people who have spaceships and hunt demons, getting shot seems less important. So in one world people would scoff at her, and in another they might accidentally belittle that sacrifice - especially once they knew who was at fault. She'd rather keep it all private, where she's sure the memory will be treasured.]

[So yes, she understands secrets. And she knows that Wonderland can really fucking mess with you.]

[She can't keep the distressing thoughts out of her expression as she starts to pack up her things. It takes her quite a bit to reply.] I'm trying to trust that. I swear.

[Now she ditches the whole pretense of not having secrets, because Wonderland is the first place she's been to where she can maybe someday talk about it all. If only it would seem important to them.] I- I don't think either of us is ready to talk about... back home.

Edited 2016-01-23 15:53 (UTC)

[Oh. Shit.

Alex might not be a social genius by any stretch of the imagination, and he's bitten off a few more proverbial heads than he can count, but he can tell when he's made a misstep and fucked something up to the point of no return, because Max is looking an awful lot like she's had enough.

He willingly set fire to every relationship he'd ever had with the exception of one, and that didn't matter because he was dragged to this hellhole and dumped here instead. Does he just not remember how to make friends without putting his foot in it?]

Fuck. Um - sorry, I didn't mean, like -

[There's no backpedaling from this. Goddamnit.]

It's just - it's heavy.

[And...it's bad. He doesn't know if he can talk about it. If saying anything will bring that thing from his fucking nightmares straight to their doorstep so it can tear into everyone's heads and drive them insane.]

[God what's wrong with you, Max? She knows she's been weird these past few days: cutting conversations with people short, turning down chances to make actual friends, generally being moody. As if she wasn't enough of a loner as it is. It's like her terrible memories and thoughts are constantly waiting just under the surface, so easy to pull up and throw around, even among acquaintances. And on top of that, even when it's all out there, she has no idea how to talk about it.]

[She tries to level out her voice, to make things seem better than they feel. It hardly works.] I'm just being dumb. [Her journal and other things are stuffed into her sling bag pretty quickly. For a moment she wants to say more, but the right words don't come to mind.] I should go.

[He's just so not equipped to deal with this, is the thing. He's not for listening to people's problems and making them feel better and giving their souls little approving pats on the head. He's for going off on long, complicated diatribes about the specific interpretation of this or that movie, or stressing the importance of diegetic sound, or making a smartass remark about someone's too-weird-to-believe life while neglecting to mention the fucked-up-ness of his own.

He doesn't know what to do when it comes to actually behaving like a person, and he doesn't know how to make any of what was said or done better.

So he doesn't.]

All right. Well, uh. See ya around, I guess.

[The truth is, Max isn't equipped to deal with it either. Which is why she can't get past this hurdle of just walking away all the time.]

[But if she was better? They could probably go on for a long time discussing old B-movies and filming technique. Funny how that's all turned out.]

[She's about to leave when she remembers something.] Don't forget about the therapist, okay?

Sure thing, champ.

[He'll probably conveniently forget to follow up on that. But he toasts her dryly with his mostly-empty coffee mug, so for what it's worth, the sentiment is sincere.]

[She gives an attempt at a smile, but it comes out sort of vague.] Cool. [And with that she's out the door, off to beat a hasty retreat to her room.]

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Entry #2

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sorry for the tldr!!

totally cool i live for this kinda stuff o.o

XD

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