entranceway | Entry #88

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Entry #88

[The video feed clicks on to feature an unassuming shot of the crisp gray sky, accompanied by the restless crunching of footsteps drawing closer. Abruptly, someone picks up the thing and spins it around with a faint flare of static that's gone as quickly as it flickered up.

There is, briefly, a face visible on the screen, dark hair and dark eyes and brows knit together in an expression puzzlement and concern. Then the feed flips around again and starts panning around the area in a slow sweep, handled in the same way someone might a handheld camera. It's both too familiar and too surreal, and he fumbles at the last second, dropping the angle so the network instead gets a lovely view of scuffed sneakers crunching through a patina of fallen leaves.]

So seasonal change sure is a thing. Like, really a thing. Place doesn't mess around.

[His tone is dry, the words drawn out with a slow, weary indolence. He doesn't seem to realize he's actively broadcasting at the moment. He's just taking video in the same way - how Jay would, and even now the memory is painful and sends a pang of regret thrumming all the way to his bones. It's just such an easy, obvious reflex. Practically instinctive.

The crunching of his footsteps halts abruptly as something seems to occur to him.]

So I can post now instead of reply, is that it? Wait, why now? What makes this so -

[The feed snaps out, evidently by mistake.]

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You have a brother?

[That just summons fresh myriad questions, questions like - "does that mean you have parents," or, "so how were you born," and things that have probably been asked a million times before. Things that aren't likely to get any less bizarre or difficult to comprehend even after a clarifying explanation.

So he doesn't bother.]

...why's that funny?

sure do. crazy, right?

[One of these days he's going to have to start making up methods for how skeletons are made, because he's going to keep getting questions like this, and he might as well have fun with it. Can't think of a good one right now, though.]

cause no one back home would ever mistake us for each other. we look nothing alike. he's taller and way cooler.

[Though it's very hard to be cool when you've been sitting around with your brother's dust in your room for twenty-four goddamn hours.]

A taller, cooler skeleton.

[His tone is acceptably dry as he says it. Taller is - fine, you know what, that's fine, Sans was roughly the size of a small child anyway. It works. It's fine.]

I'd ask if this is what life is just like around here but you know what? I think I already got my answer.

that's him. i'm sure you'll see him around before too long. he's amazing.

[He chuckles a little at that last part.]

heh, i mean, on the bright side? we're the only two skeletons here. there's a handful of other monsters, but they're not skeletons. plus aliens. and gemstone aliens.

welcome to wonderland.

Gemstone aliens, monsters, and skeletons. You guys should have your own sitcom. I'd watch it.

[Amusement almost touches on his tone. Almost. But it veers away before he can approach that asymptote in any significant way.

He resumes crunching through the leaves, crisp and crackling through the feed.]

Do you guys even have entertainment here besides...I dunno, watching each other go at it, Battle Royale style?

Yep.

[Is all Chloe can think of saying.

A pause.

The she notices the movement in Tim's camera and realizes that he's still in the woods. She raises an eyebrow.]

Seriously dude, why the fuck are you still outside? Haven't you chosen a room yet?

Not really. I mean, guess I should. Just kinda...

[Okay, so it turns out there's no real easy way to complete that sentence without dredging up a mess of psychological trauma and a story so long and so potentially dangerous that the risks would not be, in any way, worth the rewards.]

Adjusting. That's all.

[For a while, Chloe doesn't say anything. She simply looks at Tim, quite unsure how to go about this.]

Well... Don't you know anyone in this place? Like your old friends or something. Aren't they here?

[He almost laughs. He would, but that'd be straining the limits of what he's capable of. He's not sure he actually remembers how. Friends, boy, that's funny. It's hilarious. Friends.

What a concept.]

I think you're a little optimistic about how many people I knew back home.

[It's better than saying, "I killed my only friend and didn't even know it was him."]

[She shrugs.]

Hey, I wasn't exactly the friendliest person back home either. But I always had my best friend.

[It doesn't matter who she's talking about-- Max or Rachel. Anyway, they both had been there for her when she needed them most.]

Oh. Yeah, the seasons here are mostly just simulated. Guess Wonderland decided it wasn't gonna try to be subtle about it.

[She arrived right at the beginning of the summer, so... it's a little jarring for her, too.]

I hate to say it, but short skeleton or tall skeleton? There's two. They're brothers.

Sounds nice.

[Best friend, even. Boy, that's a qualifier he's never gotten to tack in front of anyone. Brian, maybe - but Brian was friends with anyone. It's just that he hadn't bothered to make Tim the exception.]

Living in the middle of nowhere didn't exactly do wonders for my social life.

[That's a lie. At the best, it's a subtle twist on the truth. But it doesn't matter, really. The end result is the same.]

So I, uh. So I heard.

[He sounds like he'd be amused, if it weren't for some kind of emotional barrier that prevents him from really achieving that end result. Still, there was an attempt. That's more than he usually puts forth.]

Short one. Sans, I think? Kinda gave me the rundown a few days ago, but I didn't think I'd be actually...y'know, sticking around.

heh, right? it'd be a smash hit. "weirdos of wonderland." something like that.

[That's a very specific reference. Makes sense. Tim shows up in the middle of the most chaotic event Sans has ever seen, and something like...what, ten people died? Including Sans himself. Yeah, that doesn't exactly sell Wonderland as attractive real estate.]

not really, no. might be why that sorta thing happens around here sometimes. people with a weird idea of what entertainment is trying to make their own. as for me, selling hotdogs and hiding whoopee cushions is about as exciting as i can manage.

...we did have a robot fight one time. these two idiots built giant robots and fought with them. no one even died. it was fun.

Robot fight.

[He doesn't even sound surprised, just sort of wearily accepting that, yep, this sure is his life now. He spent his entire life running from nightmarish things that everyone told him weren't real, only to learn that, whoops, they were. Why draw the line there?

Wonderland. Talking skeletons. Robots. Might as well be happening, right?]

Sounds better than people offing each other for fun. I'm guessing that's not really normal here, then.

[Tim, I am so sorry for your life.]

[Sans is also feeling a little sympathetic, like maybe he shouldn't have dumped all that on the guy right away.]

no, uh...usually when people, yanno. die around here, it's just an effect of an event. we'll get a dangerous event and a couple people will die. the folks around here don't usually...

[He trails off and kind of stares off camera for a moment, expression unreadable.]

people don't make a habit of it, at least. but you throw the mirrors in the mix and, uh, anything can happen.

Well, good to know we're all nice and reasonable people here.

[The sarcasm rings through loud and clear in the drawing out of the words past their termination, the too-light timbre of his tone.]

And people just come back afterwards, yeah? That's what I keep hearing, anyway.

heh. right?

[Sarcasm isn't funny, but that's the point.]

yeah, we--we're, uh, supposed to anyway. we get, heh, five free deaths before the real consequences set in, apparently. they tell us that people always come back, but, uh. i heard that alex didn't. so i guess there are exceptions.

[He audibly shrugs. Wouldn't be Wonderland without that little twist of the knife, right? That little reminder that nothing is really certain.]

Alex?

[There's a minute quaver in his voice, and he clears his throat. Probably just a hiccup, right? Probably just a -

God but the way the other man's throat had caved in beneath the blade had been so easy and his hands had been so slippery with red and it had streaked the floors as he struggled, gasping, screaming for a life that had been unfair to him since the start and he can't think about that right now, he can't.

There's lots of Alexes in the world. Lots of Alexes here. "Alex" is a very common name, probably. He didn't know any other Alexes, but it must be a common name. It must be.]

[...Huh.]

[Sans has no idea if Alex is a common human name or not.]

yeah, uh, alex. a human--he had a last name, but i forget. he was, heh, kinda a...real piece of work. i guess some messed up stuff was happening in his world.

[Since there isn't much else to explain why someone would collapse on a floor, claw their own arms open and then shoot a gun at the first pale thing that walked through the door.]

[He had some kind of problem with pale things. And static.]

he must have gone home. hope things got better for him. [They probably didn't.] but, uh, that's the first time i've heard of something like that happening. no one else has ever died and then...disappeared like that.

[Right. Okay. Could've -

Alex. Personal problems. Human. Real piece of work. That could be describing anyone. Really, really it could be. There's no reason to believe that it isn't. No reason to believe that there's any kind of correlation there.

For a long, long moment, Tim is silent. Says nothing, can't think of a single thing to say that would close up the avenues he doesn't want to open.]

Maybe it was a coincidence. Disappeared with everyone else, and just happened to die on top of it.

[Maybe it was a coincidence, he tells himself, low and urgent.

He's gonna have to do some research on people named Alex who've stayed here. Just to be sure. Just to be sure.

God, but if he died here on top of everything...

No. Can't go down that road. Going down that road just makes things hurt. For everyone.]

[So, obviously, Tim knew an Alex, and obviously the relationship was...complicated. In some way. The silence is drawn out and awkward, and when the guy speaks, his voice is tense. Though he's trying to hide it. Being casual.]

[Sans doesn't know a thing about human naming conventions. Maybe there are a billion Alex-es. There were two Max-es here, and Max is kind of close to Alex. There's, what, six or seven billion humans on Earth, and that's just back home on the Surface. He's not sure if that can count as an average, but Sans somehow doubts that there are six or seven billion individual names. There's probably plenty of repetition.]

[Hell, there's dozens of Woshuas and Aarons and Vulkins in the Underground, after all, and unless they're going by a nickname, they all go by the same thing.]

yeah, maybe. kind of a real crappy coincidence. you get used to certain set rules, and then something goes and changes them.

[People come back when they die, except for when they don't.]

[What if he had gone home? What if he had taken that hit for Papyrus and died and then actually woken up back in Snowdin, no memory of this place?]

[What would have happened to Papyrus?]

...anyway, heh, he tried to shoot me one time, so. guess i can't really complain if he went home.

[There's a short, sharp intake of breath, the staggered noise of a statement aborted before its inception. He tried to shoot him. A trigger-happy Alex with a lot of problems back home.

This place is full of hundreds of people. Hundreds of people, and they've probably all got shitty sob-stories. Probably, right?

He should ask him. He should grill him, say something like, tell me what he looked like, or what was his problem? or something, anything, that might narrow things down, that might offset the worries centering around something he doesn't want to look at.]

Sounds like a real asshole.

[There. That's a conversationally acceptable, neutral thing to say. Sympathetic, passing judgment, but not passing any new judgment that hasn't already been passed, if non-verbally.]

No wonder people were dying left and right.

Aah. Yeah, he seems like he gets around.

[Nice enough guy. Certainly not the weirdest thing about this place.]

Seems like a couple people stayed after the last event. It's pretty normal to get a couple new people a week, so I guess you're part of the lucky few. Welcome to Wonderland, or something. I'm Shepard.

Tim. And, uh, thanks.

[He draws the words out dryly, but he's not ungrateful. She's giving him the same kind of straightforward no-bullshit spiel that Sans did, which makes it easier. Easier to adjust. Easier if people just give it to him straight instead of stepping around the point.]

You been here long?

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Entry #88

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