bigapplesauce | a pale imitation with the edges sawn off [closed]

God, it's like a horrible reversal of how it happened last. Jay tugs at him gamely, desperately, uselessly, but he can't run anymore, his lungs feeling deflated and collapsed and juddering, his feet dragging even as Jay tries to haul both of them down dark strip of alleyway.

As if that would ever save them.

He goes down with a sharp lateral jerk that sends him skidding to his knees. Something wraps around him, something solid but not, slippery like smoke or liquid or something in-between, its grip impossibly strong as it tows hims rapidly, inexorably, for the shapeless dark mass that composes its center.

He looks at it, heart dropping, throat closing, the edgeless thing that has a grip like iron around his leg, scraping his knees against the concrete as it heaves him back. It has too many arms, too many protrusions he can't put a name to. They reach for him, grasping, with fingers that don't seem real.

Nothing should have that many fingers. Nothing should look like something that isn't anything.

Jay catches him, digs in his heels, pulls, trapping Tim in the middle like it's some absurd game of tug-of-war.

The thing's bright gaze snaps to Jay. It makes no sound as it oozes for him, leaving Tim gasping and shuddering on the ground, wreathing Jay with its murky, indescribable dark.

"Jay," says Tim, his voice raw and breathless. Fuck. No. What is he doing.

He claws at the thing's exposed back - does it even have a back? oh god - frantically, but his hands pass through it harmlessly as if through fog. What is this - what is it -

A hard lump of nausea swells in his throat as he snarls at it, "get off."

Jay knows his way around cliched writing. He was Alex's script supervisor, after all. He'd always thought 'blood turning to ice' was kind of a weird metaphor. Who ever feels that in real life? Well, he has. Several times, actually, he feels that plunge of cold gripping his heart, sinking through his bones.

When this thing looks at him, he swears it's worse than ever.

He swears he's actually frozen.

He doesn't even realize he's let go of Tim's hand.

It swarms around him, all thick, oozing darkness, wrapping him up. It feels like nothing, like a suggestion, like his body is just betraying him, but he feels it, too, pressing on him. He can't move. He can't move.

"T-Tim," he whispers, and it stutters out again in a scream: "Tim!"

It flares out, knocking Tim roughly aside, shoving him against the wall. Jay's eyes track him only for a moment before the thing overtakes him, silencing him with shadows extended up around his throat, his mouth.

It's going to eat him alive.

He tries to call Tim's name again, hopelessly muffled, his view still obstructed by the creature that looms over him, holding him tightly - it's killing him, he doesn't know how, but he knows it.

It rolls at him like waves of smoke, coiling around Jay's arms and over his mouth, sinuous and streamlined. It's not tangible but it's not not - it's some bastardization of the state that exists between the two. It's huge, hulking over the both of them as it pins Jay against the wall and swarms over and around him, practically engulfing him, but grasping for some kind of solid body part to grip and pull at just sends Tim's fingers cresting through formless dark mist even as it thrusts him back.

"Let him go," he says, pleading now. His voice hardens, his jaw locking. "Let him go."

Not a plea.

Not a request.

It flows easily over Jay's face and doesn't answer.

He braces one elbow against the wall and rises slowly, deliberately to his feet, eyes trained on the thing's unblinking flat gaze, the pale blur of its eyes buried in its amorphous, shifting shadow.

It doesn't look right.

He's looked worse things in the face.

He gets fingers around one of the appendages wound around Jay's wrist, digs his fingernails into the not-flesh and pulls.

With no available actions, Jay squirms. He's been here before, hasn't he? Too many times. Drowning fish. Webbed fly. Twitching and writhing on the ground, struggling against static in his head while Tim stalked up to the thing and told it to leave them alone, none of it anything more than a frightening, distorted video he watched later. It was hard to look at. He remembers his focus falling to Tim's arm, hand pulled into a tight fist, limb taut, splaying out sharply as if pulling against a gravitational force.

Tim fought for him and Jay gave him nothing for it.

And now it's happening again.

He wants to tell Tim to go, run, get the fuck out of here but he can't make a sound. It's coiled so tight around him he feels like he can't breathe. He's so scared. He's so fucking scared. He's going to die. He's going to die. Again. Finally. For real.

He feels Tim fighting it and looks for him, tries to meet his eyes, get out, don't do this, go

The creature makes some kind of inhuman snarling shriek at Tim and shudders before launching at him - it keeps Jay where he is, but that doesn't stop it from slamming Tim into the adjacent wall, then to the ground, where it pools over him like it wants to weigh him down, drown him against the concrete.

His head thuds against the ground with a sharp, sickening crack as it locks tight around him, an impossibly heavy, unshakable weight yoked over his chest. He jerks beneath the thing pressing against him as its tendrils snake for his face - to cover his mouth, his eyes, his ears, his nose, smothering him with its own mass.

He strains beneath it, the blood pounding in his ears and in his throat. Its grip simply tightens. It's going to suffocate him. It's going to squeeze the breath from his lungs. He can almost feel his bones creak.

It's growing larger, seething upward in a great black tide, billowing out into the night as it blots out the stars. It drags him to his knees with the loops of itself wound tight around him. One thin coil hooks beneath his chin to tilt his head back.

It's staring at him with those horrible empty white holes for eyes.

Oh, good. He's intriguing to it, is he. Go figure. It can join the fucking club. All the terrifyingly incomprehensible entities are intrigued by him these days. It peers at him, almost - almost businesslike in its interest. Tim shudders.

His fingers have gone numb. A hot prickle of tension shivers down his spine.

Oh god.

God, no.

Not now. Now now. Please. Please.

He convulses once, feebly, barely able to shift within its grip.

No. Please, no.

Please.

He gives up the mostly instinctive drive to preserve the sanctity of his throat. Jay screams and screams.

The sound isn't enough to reach anyone, so drowned in the inky tendrils flattened unforgivingly against his mouth, but it doesn't matter. Reason escapes him. It has Tim and Tim is convulsing and that means one of two things. Jay's scared, the fear is eating him alive, thoughts now little more than frantically firing synapses - he doesn't want to die. He doesn't want Tim to die. He doesn't want to die.

He screams until he's raw and hollowed out. It presses in against him, squeezing so tight he feels certain he's going to snap, he can still breathe but it's only a technicality because the fear is fucking suffocating him.

He can still see Tim, straining and twitching, it's a seizure, he knows too well what it looks like, what it feels like, and please, god, no, not now, not like this, let him go, let us go

why won't it cover his eyes

why does he still have to see

He quivers beneath it, his chest aching. He can't breathe, oh god. Already he can feel his consciousness ceding to the thing that rages desperately against the walls of his skull, thrashing to be let out. Let them out, let them out.

He closes his eyes, terror constricting into a hard knot of outrage in the core of his chest. The urge to do something is unbearable, but he's optionless, helpless like this, an insect caught in flypaper.

He can't do anything like this.

But he knows someone who can.

Tim's eyes snap open. The howling in his head goes still and deathly calm.

All right, then.

All right.

It wants a freak?

Oh, but he'll give it one.

His body goes limp. Tim pulls away, his awareness receding. He's not sure which hateful entity he directs his last conscious thought to:

All yours, buddy.

He's just about gone when he feels it quiver.

Its grip loosens.

Tim is up now. Tim is up.

Tim is not Tim. Tim is gone.

Jay knows that absence, that dark blank face, even without the mask to mark it.

The creature loosens more until it unravels completely, drops him, leaves him kneeling and shaking on the ground. He feels sick. Every bone in his body hurts like hell. He wants to curl up and never move again.

Something is happening. The creature has decided the whole of its focus is needed elsewhere.

Jay has to look. It's what he does. He doesn't know what to do. His hands are empty. He reaches out, groping for anything, anything at all, and his fingers find a balled up piece of paper, some insignificant piece of trash that missed the dumpster.

It'll serve.

Jay lifts his newly made camera, shaking, and turns it on.

This has never happened before.

They have never received this body willingly.

They have been trapped in some inescapable vice when it happens, but when their eyes slide open the thing holding them to the ground retreats, releasing them. They rise.

It shrinks.

It does not know them.

Nothing knows them. They do not know them.

They lack a Face and they lack their Friend, but the small hunched form in the corner of their vision is bitterly familiar. They know him. He is weak and scared and trembling, and he is the only thing they recognize.

All yours, buddy.

They were given this body not out of a sense of fear, as they have come to know and expect, but of cooperation.

They will act accordingly.

They turn to face the thing towering over them. It retracts into itself, no longer overflowing into the street with its swelling mass.

They step forward, and it retreats again. Moving back. Moving away.

If they knew how to smile, they would be.

This will do.

He's just about gone when he feels it quiver.

Its grip loosens.

Tim is up now. Tim is up.

Tim is not Tim. Tim is gone.

Jay knows that absence, that dark blank face, even without the mask to mark it.

The creature loosens more until it unravels completely, drops him, leaves him kneeling and shaking on the ground. He feels sick. Every bone in his body hurts like hell. He wants to curl up and never move again.

Something is happening. The creature has decided the whole of its focus is needed elsewhere.

Jay has to look. It's what he does. He doesn't know what to do. His hands are empty. He reaches out, groping for anything, anything at all, and his fingers find a balled up piece of paper, some insignificant piece of trash that missed the dumpster.

It'll serve.

Jay lifts his newly made camera, shaking, and turns it on.

It cannot face them. It can barely look at them. Perhaps it regrets its choice in attempting to lure them into the open.

Good. It should.

They limp forward steadily and it continues to draw back, pulling into itself, becoming ever more small and unobtrusive and backing itself into one of the walls.

They pounce. They reach for its eyes, those great glowing things filled with unspeakable trepidation and terror, and sink borrowed fingers into the flesh-that-is-not-flesh as they begin to tear away.

Finally, slowly, Jay stands up, legs shaky and weak. He wants to get closer. He has to get closer. Tim is fending it off, actually fighting it effectively, and he doesn't know what to make of this, there's nothing to see, really, just shrinking shadows and Tim's body lurching and swiping and digging into it-

The creature shrieks horribly as Tim's hands sink into it, rip and sever, pull it apart.

Jay shivers and trips back until his shoulder blades knock against the wall. What is he looking at. What is he filming.

He doesn't know how to stop, and he never did.

It dissipates easily beneath their stolen hands, dark flesh caving into snatches of fog and shadow. Tatters of it go wafting into the air as it separates into insubstantial puffs of vague smoke.

It flutters and folds.

They twist, tear, rip, rend, leaving nothing but a darkened smear upon the ground.

What it is that thought to confront them, it has long since faded into the nothing it is.

They rise to their feet and turn to face the man they remember.

Edited 2015-09-23 04:09 (UTC)

Jay stares at the LED screen as the creature fades into nothing, just like that.

Then Tim's unseeing eyes are on him, and he jerks back, flipping the little screen shut, looking up.

Now fucking what?

Is he next? Why wouldn't he be?

"Tim," he says, though he knows it's meaningless, pointless to even try. He takes a faltering step back, holding his free hand up defensively. "Wait."

They tilt their head and stay their hand. Now that the threat has waned, the purpose for their control of this body has been left - vague. The body in which they reside has never given itself to them freely, with absolute cooperation.

They do not owe it, surely.

But they do not have anything else - anyone else. The small quailing thing in front of them is their only familiar constant, and there is a nagging insistence in the corner of their brain where they usually sleep.

They pause, and wait.

Slowly, cautiously, deliberately - they raise a hand to mirror his.

He flinches a little at the motion, but there's not much to it, it's like he's just saying hi or something. What the hell. What is he supposed to do now?

"What do you want?" he asks, defensive and cautious and jittery and he just wants to go home. "Can - can you let Tim back out?"

He knows they won't answer, and he's not even sure they understand, but he doesn't know what else to do. He's not moving toward Tim, not when he's like this.

They do not wholly understand him, fragile little quailing thing that he is. They can read into the taut worry in his stance, poised to bolt should they demonstrate any hostility. They understand his trepidation and his anxiety and his fear.

They can feel him itching at them, desperate to be let free. But he gave himself to them, and they will hold him to it. He surrenders wearily. His intent is powerful, and it lingers.

Home home home home

The fervent litany is confusing. They have never had a home. Neither of them have. They have always been in bitter agreement at that.

They twitch into motion, peer out from the dark seclusion of the alley. There is nothing about them. They look back.

He is still waiting.

They incline their head. Out. Out.

Was... was that a nod? Jay stares at Tim for along moment but Tim still doesn't seem to be home right now. So, what then?

He's exhausted, almost too tired to be scared, but there's still a little tremor of fear running through him. This thing could kill him, finally, here all by himself with no Daine to protect him. They don't seem hostile yet, but it could be just a matter of time.

And if they decide to take Tim's body on a magical journey through Manhattan instead, Jay knows he'll try to follow. He's not letting Tim wake up alone again. And if he follows, then that could mean his death just as easily.

Will they follow him?

He takes a cautious step toward them, feeling so weak and shaky he might just fall over. He forces himself to keep moving, giving them a wide berth, keeping his eyes on them, waiting to see what they'll do.

They retreat as he comes closer, matching his stride step for step.

They watch, and they wait. They have nowhere else to go. No Friend to tell them what to do or who to chase and catch. No it haunting them, no panic tearing at them.

They are alone, but they are never alone.

They miss their Face. This one is blank and empty but it is not theirs, not truly.

Again, they tilt their head. Go on. They will not stop him. There is nothing left to stop.

Jay's inborn fear is starting to resolve into curiosity. There is something very different here. This is not how this works.

"You..." He hesitates, staring at Tim's dead-eyed face. "You came out to save us."

Holy shit. Did Tim let it out on purpose? Is that something he can do?

He takes another hesitant step back toward the main street they'd been on, the path home. "Are you coming?" he asks, a bit expectantly.

Then comes a thing that they do not expect. He obliges. He looks to them, he offers. They recognize that - curiosity, the exclusion of fear. It seems unnatural on him. It smells different from his typical adrenaline-soaked panic.

Does he know, then, that they have nowhere else to go? No one left to go to?

He is the sole spot of familiarity. They have nothing left to follow.

And so they follow him.

Okay. Okay. They're following him, sort of loping gently along, not like angling to tackle him down. Jay feels oddly comforted, tries not to think too carefully about that, feeling like if he analyzes it for a second he'll just psych himself out. Fortunately he only has enough wherewithal to focus on what is immediately happening. Tim - Tim's proverbial roommate - is following him. They are communicating. Sort of.

This is progress.

Jay doesn't quite manage to turn his back, still, so he ends up sort of strafing along awkwardly, trying to lead them on the path to their building. Not too far away, thank fuck. He ends up almost tripping over the dropped Troll 2 DVD and lets out a hollow laugh. Well hey. It was all worth it.

He picks it up and keeps moving, keeping his eyes on Tim, feeling uncomfortably like he's using himself as bait.

Just a couple blocks of this.

Then they can get home.

And then... something.

a pale imitation with the edges sawn off [closed]

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tw: suffocation and seizures

more of that, also intense fear and emotional surrender

continued re: above with bonus dissociation gosh this thread is cheerful

:D :D :D

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

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