Chapter Text
Jess was doing fine.
She was getting better.
It had taken months. Years. She had begun to keep track of time, and with no new blank spots in her memory to speak of, that became easy to do.
The medication was mostly to thank for her slow recovery. Coupled with strong sleeping pills, she was functional enough to have a routine. A routine that alloted time to work, and that enabled her to pay for the therapy sessions she was coming to need less and less.
Jess was doing fine. Getting better.
The numbness was what made that difficult.
Tim had mentioned side effects of the medication, but this hadn’t been one of them. The sleeping pills were not to blame either- not that she’d be able to go back to sleeping without them if that were the case. Jess’s waking world was one of muted colors and dampened emotions. Her therapist had diagnosed her with chronic depression.
It was easier to sleep away her free time anyways. She had no interest in her former hobbies. The only thing close to friends she had were the coworkers she managed idle chit chat with.
Jess had real friends once.
Their names were only known to her because of the untouched contacts in her phone. Pictures of them were stored away in her gallery; precious remnants of a brighter time. Their faces were clear, so much unlike the blurry blobs scattered through what memories she did have of the far-gone past. Although she could not place names to faces, it was something to hold onto.
Aside from her parents, the only person she talked to outside of work was Tim. Even then, Jess only called when she absolutely needed to, believing it best to leave him be. Although, they had known each other before these numb years, hadn’t they? Had they been friends?
For months now, something had been building up inside of her. She had been too reluctant to risk breaking the hazy peace her life provided. Years ago, Jess would have marched down to the gates of hell and demanded to speak with the king himself before becoming contempt with blissful ignorance. Now she barely had the energy to sit through a single episode of trashy reality television.
The day enough of that something had built up underneath her skin, pins and needles buzzed throughout her body. She was staring at her ceiling after finishing a phone call with her father. The static behind her eyelids swam across her ceiling in the darkness.
Maybe she could find her old friends…
Jess had tried. Sorting through missing poster after missing poster of names that teased the tip of her tongue had yielded no results. She had long since lost the motivation to continue sifting through the little she could find. Unremarkable cold cases from almost a decade in the past turned up little to sift through. A few MySpace accounts that did not match the faces in her phone, if anything.
Now she could remember one new name. One she hadn’t bothered to write into her phone- but he had been over so much. To see Amy. Amy.
Jess sat up in her bed. Alex Kraelie. Amy’s boyfriend. He was filming something when her memories first became spotty. There had been a gun involved, hadn’t there? And a man named Jay.
Perhaps…. Perhaps it would be best to start at the beginning? During that bright, happy time teasing from the back of her tepid fever brain?
Blinking heavily, Jess unlocked her phone. Google came next.
Alex Kralie|
The first result dispelled the nameless energy keeping her awake. Nervous eyes flicked from the blinking cursor to the autofill suggestion.
Alex Kralie Marble Hornets.
Jess pressed search.