Chapter Text
Tim Wright, February 2006
I’m hoping I can keep track of my memory more efficiently this way. I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.
Last night, I woke up in the backseat of my car, about three miles from my apartment complex. I have little to no memory of what led to that, all I can recall is filming a scene from Alex’s movie at the park, and then going to his house. After that, it’s all a blur. I have no idea when I decided to, apparently, drive to the furthest gas station I could find, park around the back, and sleep there for the night–but I’d imagine it made sense at the time. Like I was hiding from something. I don’t know.
I went and got this diary just a few hours ago, directly after I woke up. I’d finally had enough of all this amnesiac nonsense, and hoped I could record my experiences and memories somewhere I could go over them again if I ever needed to. Right now, all I know is this:
- The opening sequence to Marble Hornets was shot yesterday.
- I’m supposed to go over and meet the rest of the cast & crew later today.
- I haven’t been to work in two days.
- I need to get gas.
Apart from that, the only things I really know to focus on are morning lectures. I’ll have to break off from classes early just to make up for the time I lost at work. Trying not to flunk out and lose my job at the same time has been enough stress and mental taxation to kill a small animal. I’m so glad I let Brian talk me into throwing another responsibility somewhere in there.
Maybe it’ll all even out. I always land on my feet, or so I’ve been told. I don’t know, I’m exhausted.
The leather-bound diary is shoved into a mess of pillows and blankets making up his bed, while the pen is placed neatly on the open surface of his nightstand. He stretches, delaying getting up–feels his spine pop into place. Lifting his shirt from the previous night over his head, he catches the residual scent of pinewood clinging to the cotton. Remembers it filling his car. Remembers the flash of headlights over dead grass as they cross his memory. The context has been removed from him, and he knows with an irritating certainty that he’ll get nothing from Brian, or the other two. He recalls Alex, of course, but hardly remembers the other guy. Oh, well.
He slips into a red, velvety sweater, crosses the bedroom in only a few steps, stumbles onto tile and looks himself over in his bathroom mirror. Stubbly, with light eye bags—he’d prefer if he didn’t show up to class looking half-dead, but he couldn’t spare the time. The drive back to town ate up enough time as it had been, and he overslept during what few hours were left before the sun rose. To reiterate: oh, well.
Previously discarded slacks, left by the door in lazy haste, were pulled on once again; a pack of Marlboro Reds still tucked into the front pocket. Brushing his teeth never cleansed the awful smell of tobacco from his breath, nor did it do the pale yellow tint he’d been accumulating any good — but at least he tried. I’ll just have to smile with fewer teeth, he thinks.
He kept coffee in a thermos sitting on his desk, right near the door, easy to swipe away in his rush to leave. A glance at the clock told him he still had 45 minutes—now 44–to be on campus and headed toward the building his classes tended to be held. He’ll make it, he’s sure. He always does. In fact, this time, he’s been given more grace than the last.
He shrugs away the film of cold sweat paving over his upper-back, runs a hand through his hair and feels it fall loosely over his eyebrow.
Wrestling a black wristband over his closed fist, he forgets the coffee on the desk and leaves with a double-take to snatch his keys. And then remembers the coffee. “Oh, whoops.”
The door of his car shuts with a mechanical clunk, Tim making the most of the cigarette he’s only a short walk away from wasting into the concrete. He hopes that the cologne he lazily spritzed his clothes and neck with does its job to mask the smell of grass and car-seat leather—knowing the odor of tobacco is imperishable.
Ribbons of smoke follow him to the front door, where he discards the cigarette with a shallow sigh. The bag slung loosely over his shoulder is already giving him aches—not quite to the point of wanting to carry it by hand, or God forbid, wear it on both shoulders—but to the extent that he’s sure will pose quite the issue for him once he’s back at work. If they let him go back. They should. They might. It’s only been two days, hasn’t it?
He nearly forgets which hallways lead where, what signs he should look for and ignore, eventually settling on room 2-B. It sounded about right in his head, which, during the long and inconsistent trip from the front door of the building to, somehow, the back, had been shambling away like the Alexandria Library in search of a recollection of the school’s floorplan.
Something must have clicked, because he happened to stroll right into his first class just five minutes before the lecture commenced. His usual seat, row five-column nine, had been occupied (his own problem for having arrived later than usual), and so he took to a spot closer to the blackboard. Easier to read and copy down information—on what seems to be related to modern technology, easier to hear the professor, easier to shuck the profound annoyance that was not being able to take his routine-fucking-seat. It’s minor, it doesn’t matter. He’s in a good mood today. Last night didn’t happen.
He’s not worried about it.
Brian stops him on the way out, of course he does, and asks him if he got home okay the other night. Of course he did. Tim can handle himself. In fact, save for the slightest, subtlest wrinkle in his routine just an hour ago, he’d argue that everything has been going perfectly fine, all things considered.
“Yeah, thanks for asking. How ‘bout you?”
It’s now that Tim recognizes the unfamiliar shape of crestfallen features on Brian’s face, which did not suit him, mind you. He’s just about to question him, or perhaps make some sort of playful jab if only to watch Brian’s face lighten into his warm, typical arrangement of a gap-toothed grin and arrow-sharp eyes. He does neither. Instead, Brian opens his response with a deep and controlled sigh, shoving his hands into the pocket of his coat.
“Well, I got home fine, but,” one hand leaves the pocket to comb through Brian’s hair, “I haven’t seen or heard from Seth at all since last night. I watched him get in his car and drive off, but then… That was it.”
That was it. Tim’s eyebrows knit tightly with concern, and he clutches the half-empty thermos close to his hip. “Like, not at all? He’s not even at school?” He shifts his weight, looking over Brian’s shoulder at the hallway leading to Seth’s linguistics class. He shouldn’t know exactly where to look, but Seth was a talker. So much that he could vaguely recall when Seth had brought up just how late, exactly, he likes to arrive to class, if only to stave off being in the presence of his allegedly nefarious professor for as long as possible. With that in mind, Tim had no memory of catching Seth making his way down the corridor.
He wants to believe that there’d been a simple change in schedule, but…
Brian offers a weak shake of his head, “I even tried asking Alex, but he hasn’t seen him either. I’m a little freaked out. I mean, I don’t know the dude that well, but he doesn’t seem like the type to just… Vanish like that.”
Tim nods, half-heartedly, and takes an anxious sip of the stale coffee white-knuckled in his hand. “I’m sure he’ll turn up. Maybe he just… overslept like crazy, or something. We were up pretty late last night.”
Brian’s face doesn’t loosen from where it coils with worry. “Yeah—yeah, you’re probably right. I’ll try calling him when I get home. Thanks, man.”
They send one another off with a stale lift of the hand, Tim turning his head for the second time to study the hallway just ahead as he made his way to second period.
As difficult as it proved to be, Tim wrestled down the paranoia holding its viperous bite on his shoulder. Maybe there really had been two open sores where a shovel-headed snake had latched on with pincers along its gums, driving river wakes of pain and panic through every tangible vein and muscle that made up Tim’s body. Or maybe it was the bookbag slung over his tired arm. Maybe he was having a heart attack. If he were to die, he’d prefer it to not be in the middle of class; though he had no say in the matter.
For what it’s worth, at least a good thirty minutes of the lecture had been legible to him. On the board, the professor had instructed each of her students to look down at the hefty book placed flat against their desk, then to open it to page one-hundred-forty-nine. She emphasized this with great clarity, repeating herself three times exactly before opening her own copy. Already, Tim had gathered that this was a literature seminar, and visibly slumped in his seat with newfound relief. The very last thing he needed was to wrack his brain for any stroke of creativity necessary to compose a poem.
On page one-forty-nine of what Tim had realized was a Shakespeare Compendium, was the opening chapter of King Lear. Tim’s professor began to recite lines from the page as they read along silently. As the story went, and it was a story, far too many pages to be just one of the many poems Tim has ever written or read in his life, King Lear had grown weary of his age and his duties among the government, abandoned his state affairs to the youth in order to save time in anticipation of his own death. His solutions had stood in front of him: his three grown daughters and their suitors. Only one of which, Cordelia, loveless and true, had spoken genuinely when asked just how much she loves her father, in a measure of how deserving she would be of one third of the kingdom.
Lying their way into King Lear’s heart, her two sisters, Gonerill and Regan, earned themselves two-thirds the share of the king’s rule, while Cordelia enraged her father with her honesty. His loyal servant, known now as Caius, had been banished in his attempt to defend her honor to his majesty. Though, a suitor of Cordelia’s, being the king of France, took her hand and claimed her as queen of his country when the duke of Burgundy declined the match.
Now alone with two daughters unfit to rule and selfish, the king summoned Caius to his side to continue serving him to his grave under a fresh identity, a court jester. Caius did this without question, viewing King Lear as a master, a father. Though, no amount of love could the jester hold for his King that could keep him from taunting Lear with his gravest mistake. To the king, Caius recited a broken poem,
“For sudden joy did weep,
And he for sorrow sung,
That such a king should play bo-peep,
And go the fools among.”
Between pages, the professor would turn her back to the class, etching names, roles, and relationships of the various characters onto the blackboard in white chalk. Anything she put up, Tim would put down into the notebook laid open at his side. The lead of a pencil wasn’t nearly as forgiving as the smooth curvature of chalk, not as he short-hands a poor mimicry of his professor’s work while also going back over the previous text once again.
Tim won’t pretend to anybody that he can understand Shakespearean language, regardless of how it is explained to him. Since first reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream in eleventh grade, he has decidedly put his foot down on the fact that Shakespeare’s way of speaking is an art lost to time, and should very well be, as it provides a sense of antiquity and mystery that gives it the allure many find it to have.
And poor Cordelia, he thinks, but her honesty saved her life.
His professor explains that the books are to be kept overnight in order for students to finish in their own time, and they must be treated with incredible care. Tim watches with a sort of pretentious disdain as his peers carelessly toss their copies into the bottom of their bags, cringing at the sound of an old cover bending extraneously over itself, along with the clatter of aged pages, shucked together in canvas.
This is when his professor speaks up, clarifying that all damaged copies will result in a decent fee from the responsible student. He watches in amusement as his peers scramble to straighten out the books where they lay.
The overhead clock ticks officially to the 1:00p.m. mark, and Tim joins the others in fighting their way out the door. This time, Brian is not there to meet him.
The process to safely leave school premises without taking a hit to your GPA is absurd, in Tim’s opinion. Having sat near his next class in wait for his professor, Tim caught him as soon as he saw him come down from the stairs. He explained that he had to leave early in order to catch up on work, not that he was sure any of it was reaching the other man’s empty stare, and that he would happily take any makeup work necessary.
He was redirected to the main office without another word.
The department coordinator was just about his worst enemy that day. All of this “well, you should have called,” and “everyone needs to follow a protocol, that’s out of my control.” Talking to him like he was a ten-year-old. If her job was to pressure him into giving up and taking the tardy that would surely move his grades down more than he was comfortable with, then she was doing a fantastic job.
“Look, can I just… go? I’m already super late.”
“Well, you should have planned ahead.”
Oh my god.
He left with a pink slip of paper folded up in his right hand, emptied thermos in the other. He pocketed the slip, digging out a pack of cigarettes and sparking one up with a cherry-red lighter as he crossed the black top and made his way to his car. The door to the passenger’s side was swung open, and on the floor, his bookbag was crudely discarded. The thermos was placed crookedly in the cupholder. He made sure to extract his cellphone from one of the dozens of pockets making up the bag before shutting the door and crossing to the driver’s seat, pulling up his manager’s number as the door threatened to catch his foot as it fell shut. The sunlight stung his eyes, his hand forcing the visor down with a grumble.
The line connected, so quickly that Tim threatened to lose his train of thought, and therefore the tense apology and excuse he had organized in his head that he could only hope would save his job. “Tim?” A smooth voice came over a faint bout of electronic noise, and he rose up in his seat, one hand gripped tightly on the wheel, forcing down the catch in his throat that threatened him to cough into the speaker.
“Hey– hey, Jamie!” He allowed himself to lightly lean back, letting go of the sharp breath he wasn’t aware he’d been holding. “Uh, listen, I’m so sorry about the last two days. I’ve been super overwhelmed with school, but I’m not gonna let it happen again, alright? I’m actually headed there right now–”
Jamie spoke over him with a tired edge to his tone, a stark shift in how he’d been greeted. “No, look, Tim–” He paused for a sigh, and Tim felt his heart drop. “Look, you’re a good kid, and one of the only assistants I’ve ever hired who actually knows what the Hell they’re doing.” In the background, Tim hears unintelligible chatter, heavy machinery, and the shifting of paper. “So I’m not ready to let you go just yet. But listen,”
Tim slumps over in relief, the tension in his shoulders never quite leaving. “This is your last chance. Show up to work on time, or you lose the job. You got that?”
Tim nods frantically, “Yes, yes-sir. Won’t happen again.”
The line goes dead with a click. At a stop sign, Tim runs a weary hand through his hair.
He wants to rake the skin off of his face when his phone trills back to life with an incoming call from Brian. A poignant layer of stress, remembering the conversation from earlier, takes him over as he reaches his jobsite. He’s not sure he’s ever answered the phone so fast in his entire life. There’s no time to greet or even acknowledge Brian as the line connects, as his friend’s exasperated voice follows him out of the car and to the front gate.
“Tim, hey…” he can practically hear Brian lean himself over a railing in thought, a habit of his during any of their deeper talks. “You got a minute?”
“Uh,” Tim ducks into a trailer, scribbles his name and the time into the shared binder he and his coworkers used to clock in, and eyes an unloaded truck from the window. He knows better than to take a friend’s call at work, especially after the talk he had with his manager, but there was a twinge to Brian’s voice, something heartbroken, something fearful, so uncharacteristic and worrisome.
Tim sighs. “Yeah, man, of course.” He clicks a toolbelt together, fastening it around his hips, and clumsily shoves on a pair of framer gloves, cellphone held pressed his ear and shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
The receiver goes quiet. Tim straightens, adjusting the phone.
“...Brian?”
“Seth’s missing.”
Tim halts on his way out of the trailer, hand still firmly latched onto the handle of the door. “What? Are you serious?”
It’s Brian’s turn to sigh into the phone. “Alex just let me know. Apparently his folks called around for him, even got the police involved, but no one knows where he went. Apparently, no one’s seen him since he ‘drove home’ last night.”
Tim leaned against the doorframe. “Shit, dude. That’s…” his eyes meet the red, dead dirt of the construction site, thinking of Mars, “That’s awful. He’s got'ta come back soon.”
Brian hardly lets go of the breath he draws in, “What if he doesn’t? What if something… Happened to him? Everyone wants to assume he just ran away, but I mean…”
Tim nods. “I know. It’ll be okay, dude. I know you’re worried, but Seth seems like a pretty independent guy, y’know? I’m sure that, wherever he is, he’s just fine.” He finally turns to march down the steps of the trailer, headed directly towards the box truck as he unclips a pair of chain cutters from his belt. The loose pebbles and gravel crunch beneath his boots, which leave deep prints trailing behind him with each step. He hopes the noise pollution around him, mainly shouting men and whirring machines, don’t overwhelm Brian over the phone.
His friend’s voice, like honey in a wound, returns with a soft chuckle. “God, yeah, I know. It’s stupid, I barely know him, but he’s a friend of Alex’s, so he’s a friend of mine, and I mean–” Tim can make out the sound of Brian’s hand hopelessly falling to his waist. “If someone I know could be in trouble, I want to help. And, Tim,”
Tim forces the chains holding the truck shutter closed into jetsam on the ground with the clasp of his cutters. He hums into the phone in question.
“You know, we were the last people to even see Seth. The police are gonna have questions.”
Tim hoists the liftgate up and over, and it crashes into the ceiling of the truck at a volume that makes him wince. “Well, yeah, but that’s fine. I mean, we didn’t have anything to do with it. We don’t know anything.” He steps into the van body and, haphazardly, takes hold of a wooden box with the phone still pressed into his shoulder. “You think they’re gonna, like, arrest one of us or something?” He realizes with critical delay that the lighthearted laugh he offers in an attempt to comfort his friend is crudely inappropriate.
Brian groans, “I don’t know, man. I’m just really freaked out about this. I don’t want people to start disappearing like this. Like, what if what happened to Seth happens to you?”
Tim places the box on the ground, remaining in a crouch as a gloved hand swipes away at the dark hair framing his neck. “Brian, don’t be stupid.” He doesn’t mean to sound as abrasive as he may, what must have sounded like harsh scolding came from a place of genuine concern. “I can handle myself. Nothing’s gonna happen to me. Not to you,” he stands, heads back into the van, “not to Alex, and I’m sure nothing happened to Seth.”
Brian is silent after that. Tim swallows away the threat of guilt as it barbs his throat. “Look,” he hoists a wooden beam over his free shoulder, and he cautiously backs out of the van and onto the ground. “You’re worried. I know.” He softens his voice to the best of his ability, tries to stifle the background noise with a hand guarding the speaker. “This is scary. But, hey, I’m confident everything’s gonna work out. And I’m supposed to be the negative one, remember?”
Brian’s laugh comes through the receiver and Tim feels himself relax, grinning as he collects the second beam. “We’ll be alright, Brian. I’ll see you at Alex’s house later, yeah?”
“Yeah! Uh,” Brian coughs into his shoulder, “Yep, I’ll be there.”
The call ends with brief goodbyes exchanged after Brian is struck with being reminded of his own job, with almost twenty minutes before his shift. Tim pockets the phone with a huff, and hardly gives himself any time to process what he’s been told before forcing his mind back on track.
There are things that need attention now. He’ll have time to think things over once he’s home again.