Entry #88

[postictal]

[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.]

Comments

[video]

[normandysbest]

[Huh. He's not the first to talk about suddenly getting more access. She can't help but wonder if it's a correlation.]

Were you around during the influx of people? Seems like most of 'em left, but there's been a couple saying they're still around. Seems like you might be a regular resident like the rest of us.

[video]

[postictal]

[Ah. So he...was, apparently, broadcasting to that network. Live.

He hasn't ever done that before. Whenever he edited the entries, he had the privilege of that - of editing. Of chopping out whatever he didn't want the world to see, and leaving it on the cutting room floor.

Getting his personal business bared to a public network is nothing new, at least.]

Yeah, I think so. Showed up last week? I got the whole "welcome to Wonderland" spiel from a talking skeleton but, uh...it was kinda more summer when that happened.

I get seasons changing, happens all the time, but this is just more - abrupt than I'm used to? [And he lives in Alabama.]

video;

[mypartnerincrime]

[Chloe's in her room (where else would she be duh) when she sees this dude's video on the network. The feed cuts off, even before he can finish talking. She hasn't seen him around Wonderland (at least in the few times that she's been out of her room) so Chloe is assuming he's new and is still probably unfamiliar with how to use the device.

She turns on her own video. Chloe points the camera at herself and grins.]

You know, you might wanna turn off the video after you finish talking, not before.

video;

[postictal]

Yeah, thanks, I got that, actually.

[Is his tone sufficiently dry? Maybe too dry. Tim's breath puffs out in faint white clouds as he trudges through the leaf-strewn woodland.]

Mostly I just don't know what changed to suddenly give me posting privileges.

[mypartnerincrime]

[Chloe laughs at his reply. Not an in-your-face laugh. More like an amused laugh. Then she shrugs.]

I wouldn't know. I'm probably the worst person to ask about Wonderland and all its weirdness. I barely keep track of all the shit that's happening in this place.

[She notices the white puffs.]

Why are you even outside?

[postictal]

Funny story, it wasn't this cold yesterday. Or before that. Or any of the days I was here. It's like the place realized it was technically fall and just threw everything into overdrive.

[That doesn't answer her question, really, but that's mostly because he doesn't have a decent answer. It felt right? It felt better than being cooped up in a room, climbing the walls, pretending he doesn't feel like absolute shit?

Yeah, that's sure to go over well.]

[mypartnerincrime]

[Chloe doesn't miss the fact that he didn't answer her question. And being the insufferable person that she is, she doesn't let it go.]

Well, now it's obviously hella cold out there. So why not come back in?

[postictal]

[He shoots her a quizzical look, again electing to ignore her question in favor of not.]

"Hella." Who unironically says "hella" anymore?

[mypartnerincrime]

I do.

[Chloe answers unabashedly.]

So does my best friend... whenever she hangs out too much with me.

[She raises an eyebrow.]

Problem...?

[She pauses then frowns a bit.]

Who are you anyway?

Voice

[mypartnerintime]

[Was that... static?

No way.

Max's voice is light and joking.]

That was the wrong question.

[postictal]

Nah, I just...haven't heard that in a while.

[It's a little bit bizarre, a little bit endearing, and mostly just a weird verbal tic he's gonna pretend doesn't tickle him. Most people in Alabama don't say that kind of thing, but most people in Alabama are also rifle-toting guys in pick-up trucks. Sometimes it turns out the stereotypes are true.]

Tim. [The only name he needs to give, as far as he's concerned.] Who're you?

Voice

[postictal]

Hey, you can reserve the right to say whatever you want. I'm just reserving the right to judge you for it.

[His tone's equally light as he says it, even if it doesn't sound much like he's smiling. Then again, he never really smiles. Smiling is difficult, for him.]

[mypartnerincrime]

Chloe.

[She half-expected him-- Tim-- to sort of rise and get all upset and annoyed over being asked what his problem was. People in Wonderland tend to do that. But he didn't. So that's well, cool. Maybe he's not as crazy as the other folks here?]

So Tim, where'd you come from?

[postictal]

Alabama.

[There's more than a wisp of a sigh to his tone as he says it. Yeah, it doesn't take a lot of stretching of the imagination to find a place better than that state, that state whose lines he hadn't even crossed until like a week ago. And then, while he was at it, he went ahead and crossed world and dimension lines too, just to go the whole hog since you might as well not do these sorts of things halfway.]

Don't visit. Place kinda sucks.

[voice]

[punful]

[In true Sans fashion, he doesn't notice this until like two days later. At least he kind of has an excuse for it.]

[He sounds more subdued than the last time they spoke.]

hey, you're the smoking guy from the roof, right? ended up sticking around, huh?

[voice]

[postictal]

Yep. That's me.

[His powers of deduction must be sharp, he thinks wryly, because he's pretty sure this is the talking skeleton. Something about the drone of his voice is familiar.]

Guess so, yeah. And I guess this is pretty common, if what you said before means anything.

[voice]

[punful]

honestly, i kinda figured this was all just an event and everyone would go home after.

[Most of them must be. The doubles. Gaster. And the Mirrors are back where they belong. So. That's good.]

but, hey. guess you know this isn't a hallucination now, huh?

[voice]

[postictal]

If it is, it's the worst trip I've ever had.

[Hah, yeah, let's call it a "trip" and not "sustained neurological damage brought about by psychological trauma." It's easier. Raises fewer questions.]

Guess all those pamphlets really do come in handy, though, huh?

[mypartnerincrime]

Wasn't planning to.

[Chloe gestures to her room.]

It's not like there's a door in this place with a huge EXIT sign. I don't even know how I fucking got here in the first place.

[She remembers the night she arrived, when there were stars falling from the sky and crashing into the mansion. For one mad second, she thought she had finally died and ended up where she deserved to be-- heaven, hell, wherever. She thought Max had finally gone back in time and let Nathan pull the trigger.

But then Chloe found out that she wasn't dead and that she was in the best possible place to be in. True, Wonderland is pretty messed up, with all its Mirrors and potentially life-ending events. But amidst all of that, she was reunited with Max.

For a while, Chloe is quiet. She wonders if Wonderland did have Exit door, would she take it? And if she did, where would she go? There's nothing really left for her in Arcadia Bay. The one person who truly mattered to her was already here in Wonderland with her anyway.]

[postictal]

So I hear.

[Honestly, thank god. It's not like home is a place he's gonna miss. It's just him inflicting himself on the people here instead, and their motley hodgepodge of...whatever the hell. Talking skeletons, ladies with blue hair. What will this wild place think of next?

He draws to a halt, the camera swinging away from his face again to pan clumsily at the surrounding area in a rapid arc that's more reflexive than anything else.]

Everyone just kinda wakes up here. Figures.

[The last word is quiet, a grumbled afterthought, apparently not meant to be audible.]

[voice]

[punful]

heh. right? someone put some real effort into them.

[voice]

[postictal]

"Someone"? Any idea who?

[Some of the wording in the second one implied it was someone who was...maybe not the most familiar with technology as a concept. Or someone who was real good at writing from that perspective.]

Not that I can suggest revisions.

[voice]

[punful]

think the second one was made by evelyn. she's the librarian here.

[voice]

[postictal]

Evelyn. Got it.

[Might pay to ask her. If he can find her.]

So, uh, you never told me your name. And I figured I should probably ask. I mean, I could keep calling you "talking skeleton," but that seems pretty...y'know, pretty rude.

[voice]

[punful]

oh, wow. where are my manners? i'm sans.

i appreciate you not wanting to call me "talking skeleton." though i guess then people would start confusing me with my brother, and that's a pretty hilarious idea.