Entry #89

[postictal]

[The world is dark, and it's quiet. Suffocation's an unpleasant way to go, and everyone knows it. The heat and the pressure crawls up into the back of your throat and your eyes feel like they'll burst, your .hea'ds poudning., your breath high and tight and ragged in your lungs that scream for deeper breaths, for air, and that's when everything else begins to pulse in an unfurling of phosphenes and scalding colors across the backs of your eyelids.

You get dizzy. The panic, assuming it hasn't set in by then, claws its way up your esophagus as your jaw parts, throat straining to take in air that doesn't exist with a high-pitched, dragging wheeze.

Unfortunately for Tim, it seems the panic settled in early; cloying and unbearable and tearing away at what little composure he still had. He'd switched on his device at some point, though his oxygen-starved brain can't possibly latch onto what that reasoning might have been, not now. Possibly a cry for help, hastily stifled. Have you seen this video before? It's possible that you have. It's possible that it's gone up already, only for the hitching slide of time to roll things back. Déjà vu. It's a hell of a thing.

When you've begun to suffocate, perception of reality - already muddled to a gross fault and exceptionally poor to begin with, for one unfortunate Mr. Wright - tends to be one of the first things to go.

The subject of the video is pressed somewhere in the corner of the room, practically wedged there, curled around himself with his hands sunk into the fabric of his shirt. Words stream from him in a perpetual rise and fall, a breathless litany, high and sharp with a cresting panic:]

Not coming for me and if it does I'm dying anyway. 'S not coming for me and if it does I'm dying anyway, it's not coming for me and if it does I'm dying anyway it's not coming for me and if it does I'm dying anyway -

[His voice breaks. He buries his face in his hands.

He's seeing something in the corner of his eye that's not there, regressed to the state he always regresses to when that thing creeps into his memory, nothing more than a scared and trembling little boy huddled in a windowless hospital room, and it's keeping him pinned until his air runs out. And that's looking to be - soon.

Very soon.]

Comments

[postictal]

[A sunset. He's - yeah, sunsets are...ordinary, right? Someone's smile. A secret between friends. A person. His mind picks over at old memories of things like lifting scabs: Brian flashing a grin in his direction, a quiet mutter of words into a receiver in response to Don't go anywhere: Jay's murmur of I won't.

All of it, every fragment, now corrupted with Tim's influence; Brian polluted into someone hooded and masked, Jay reduced to howling in outrage, bound on the floor, and Jessica -

Jessica.

Did she make it? Will she?

She has a chance. That's...enough, right? He did something for her, didn't he? He made sure she got out. Made sure she ended up where Jay wouldn't be able to find her and strip away the fragile bubble of safety an amnestic existence allowed her. Got her help. Got her safe.

One good thing. One good thing he did.

Think of a person.]

Person.

[Pause. Swallow. Screw his eyes shut.]

Th-thanks.

[duckies]

( sucre smiles then, because there's always beauty in someone's life, even if they don't exactly realise it until they're prodded. it's comforting to know that even this panicking boy can think of something, and that it might help him calm down from whatever has him so worked up - and she's seen the elsen like this before, worried for them, but it's different when it's someone you don't know in a completely different world. )

Will you be okay?

( she isn't sure what else she can do, but there might be something - even if it's just providing company, or words to fill the silence. anything he might need. )

[postictal]

[She smiles at him. It's a little weird, being so outta the world, being so disjointed from all of it that a smile's the nicest thing he's seen all goddamned day.

The fact she knew how to talk him down, though. That helped.]

I dunno. [He's a liar, but not to that extent. Not right now. He passes a hand through his hair, and his hand comes away damp with sweat.] Maybe - soon.

[And then - nice fucking going, Tim, putting all the weight on her shoulders, like she hasn't probably got enough on her plate. He peers at her, blearily, vague and unfocused.]

Will, uh...are you?

[duckies]

I hope so.

( the worried tilt to her smile doesn't go away, but she softens slightly - as though his reassurance is all she needed to throw the tenseness away. although sucre hasn't seen much of what wonderland can do to people, this is something that she hopes is the most of it, despite how cruel it sounds. as long as panic attacks are it, perhaps they can all be helped.

but she doubts that. life is never so kind, she's figured out. )

I'm fine. ( just shaken up with nerves of trying to help someone, with worry, with curiosity. it's a myriad of emotions that she isn't quite used to yet. everything had been so simple at home. ) Does that happen a lot?

[postictal]

[The knee-jerk reaction is no, I'm fine, because no one needs to know how fucked his head is, how much he has to bullshit on a day-to-day basis just to pass as something vaguely normal.

His oxygen-starved brain has difficulty latching onto the lie, fingertips skating off the purchase.]

T-too much.