Chapter Text
Tim wakes up in a bed.
This is weird specifically because it has been two years since he last woke up, if the calendar on his wall is correct. The idea of a calendar hanging on a wall is also strange enough that Tim want to puke. His back aches. It’s Sunday. His watch says it’s 1pm. He swallows back the bile because years of this have taught him to keep it together until he’s away from the situation and everything is fine, fine, fine.
On the floor, besides his bed is a note, addressed to ‘Tim.’ It’s written in his own handwriting. . He nearly drops the letter, when he sees the sender, because it’s sent from ‘The Masked Man’ but Tim threw that mask away. He’s destroyed the tapes and if he’s woken up in a bed in a messy room, it’s because he escaped. He had to have escaped. He got McDonald’s before grocery shopping just three months before now.
There’s a knock at the door. Tim isn’t stupid enough to hope it’s someone normal like a girlfriend. It’s a pleasant surprise when it’s a boy just old enough to be a roommate. He has stitches in half of his face, like a mockery of a wide smile, and scars around the stitches. His lip bleed slightly and he wears long sleeves in the middle of Summer. Tim is under no illusion that there aren’t more scars under the clothes. Shame niggles in his gut the longer they stare at each other. The boy’s neck twitches and he scowls at the motion. Tim doesn’t know what to say.
The boy speaks first, “I’m To-Toby.” He clicks his tongue midway through speaking his name. Tim winces, then curses himself because they both probably had slim pickings at who’d be willing to share a flat. “Uh…” The boy says, “Have you read the letter yet.”
Tim looks down. The paper is stretched in his harsh grip. “No.”
The letter contains basic information:
Tim is new to the neighbourhood. He has a job at the local chain coffee shop, he works Mondays to Saturdays, 4am to 1pm. Toby is his flatmate but Tim acts as his parent because the kid is seventeen and alone right now. Masky leaves one piece of advice to being an impromptu parent/ - brother figure: Hitting Toby is ineffective. Masky laments about Toby being a piece of no good shit and how it’s his entire fault Tim’s in this situation in the first place for half the message. He looks up as the boy hits his head against the door. Tim winces in sympathy.
“You read it now?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.”
“How much do you know?”
“I know that you know jackshit.”
Tim hums, “Want to go get take-out? Tell me what you know?”
Toby clicks his tongue again, “Not Indian.” he says. And that’s that.
The kitchen is dusty and filled exclusively with paper plates. Tim adds ‘buy reusable plates’ to the list of things to do. They sit on the floor because the table hasn’t been built yet. One of the table legs pokes out of the opened box. They’ll have to build that later, after they’ve eaten, when Tim knows what’s going on.
They ended up buying two pizzas, one pepperoni and one spicy chicken. Toby eats half of his in the same time it gets Tim to get down two slices. Toby is half-way through the crust when he starts to speak. “So“ crumbs spray everywhere.
Tim grimaces, “Did anyone ever teach you manners?”
Toby rolls his eyes. He purposely continues to shovel pizza in his mouth as he speaks, “We pissed off the big boss guy. Well, technically, you didn’t piss off the boss. Your alter did that. But Masky’s decided to fuck off so, here we are.”
The amount of crumbs on the floor makes Tim clench his fist. He opens his mouth to ask how Toby knows Masky. He tries desperately not to imagine The Operator when Toby says ‘Boss’ but he holds it in a similar reverence that Jay talked about it. The difference is that Toby speaks with admiration. That is enough to make Tim’s fingers twitch for a camera. He looks out the window but it’s still the perfect suburbia. There’s not even a looming shadow.
Toby continued through Tim’s panic, “Anyways, like, basically, you were sloppy and I was with you and between the two of us we could have killed that bitch. And it wasn’t my fault she was secretly a track star, we weren’t told that shit. Maybe if we were allowed to run about the woods but no because you and Hoo- because you just had to try and escape and nearly get mauled by a fucking dog!” He throws his hands in the air. Pepperoni slides off the pizza in his hand and falls to the floor with a ‘splat!’ Toby stops talking. He looks down at the pepperoni and whisphers, “Shit.”
He stands up, leaving the pizza and the pepperoni on the floor and hurries upstairs. Tim doesn’t hesitate to jump up. He grabs Toby by the back of his shirt and pulls the scrawny kid close. When Toby turns around and looks at Tim, he and shouts, “Let me the FUCK go.”
“No. You don’t get to pick and choose what you tell me. What the fuck is going on? What are you not telling me?”
He’s done this before. He did this with Jay before he joined him in that mad quest to find out what was going on. Jay was different. Jay apologized and worked with Tim because they shared everything at the end. The kid fighting to get out of Tim’s grip, twitching as he does so, has no intention of sharing whatever advantage he holds over him.
“My shit is none of your fucking business.”
“It is when it concerns me!” Tim screams.
Toby flinches but Tim can’t be certain between all his twitching. “You don’t get to know that kinda shit anymore.”
Tim hits him with his free hand. Toby immediately knees Tim in his groin, hard. Then, for good measure, he punches Tim down to the floor. Toby walks away, still twitching. Tim picks himself up to the sound of a door slamming. He winches as he stands up and walks back to the floor with the pizza. It’s easy to eat alone, normal, although grief for Jay sits on the second front row seat of his mind.
Half an hour later, there’s a knock on the door. The sun’s gone down, and the cold streets of the neighbourhood didn’t strike Tim as attracting a crowd who were active at night. He opened the door enough to peek but he’d be able to slam it shut on anyone or anything dangerous. Two men dressed in blue police uniforms stood at the door. Their guns weren’t draw but bulged on their belts. Tim slammed the door shut.
There’s another knock on the door. Letting them in would help them find anything that could lock Tim or Toby away. He doesn’t know every crevice of the house, can only assume that Toby and the Masked Man have hidden something for self defence or done something to draw attention to them and he doesn’t have the patience to ask either of them. The next knock is harder. “Open up!” The officers call, “We’ve had a call about a domestic disturbance at this address.”
Tim opens the door again, “There’s been a misunderstanding.”
“Do you mind if we come in to make sure.”
One of the officers steps in as he speaks. His foot half way in the house. Tim presses the door shut further. He narrows his eyes, trying to remember anything that could stop the police entering. His mind goes blank.
“We just moved in.” he says, stepping just out of the way. As they look around, Tim stays put, watching them. They poke around in every corner. The one who forced his way in scrunches his nose up at the discarded pizza boxes. They don’t question him about it. They ask where the second person, Toby, is. Tim grunts that he’s in his room. The politer officer goes up the stairs, leaving a trail of mud on the clean carpets to question Toby.
Toby’s door locked. (Tim explains that Toby chose the room before he could even look at it and he didn’t see what the point was in putting up a fight. His voice must not tremble because he isn’t called out on the lie.) The police officer was forced to have the entire conversation through the door. Toby screams the whole time. As a result, the entire conversation can be heard from downstairs.
Toby insists that he’s fine. The officer tries to talk to Toby in person so he doesn’t need to lie. Toby responds by cursing him out. “I’m not fucking bruised like some abused bitch! You think Tim could beat the shit outta me?” is yelled, followed by Toby’s laughter after a quiet conversation. He doubles down on staying shut in his room because “I don’t wanna see your ugly ass face.” Tim winces as the others Officer focuses on him again, sizing him up. Tim focuses on the stains he will be cleaning because if he focuses on the eyes all over him, he’ll punch the officer
Five minutes later, they leave. The police officer who spoke to Toby winces in sympathy. They make Tim promise not too shout too loud and to control Toby, in case the neighbours call again. They close the door gently. Tim runs upstairs. He grabs the orange pill bottle at the bottom of his bag. The expiry date is a year passed and the bottle is nearly empty. Now the police are gone, the eyeless gaze is on him again. He struggles to open the white plastic child proof cap because his hands keep shaking. Three pills fall into the palm of his hand. He swallows them dry.
Monday morning, the alarm clock wakes Tim up. He gets up, puts on the work clothes that he found the night before and leaves without waking Toby up. He figures a little more rest can’t make the kid worse. The walk to work leaves him high strung. God – it must have been years since Jay and Marble Hornets but he can’t get rid of the sense of being watched. He checks behind himself every two minutes. He checks every time something makes a noise.
Tim arrives at work two minutes late – despite leaving with enough time to arrive five minutes early. He can only nod his head when a petite woman curses him out and warns him if he’s late again, the job won’t be his much longer. Typically, Tim would argue back but he can only assume his past job paid the rent and now this job has too.
Over the course of two hours, before the early morning rush, Tim learns how to use a coffee machine. It takes a lot of trial and error, and a lot of customers threatening to complain about their order being wrong or taking too long. He learns.
The girl who threatens him, introduces herself at ten am. “I’m Minnie.” she says. “Sorry about being rude earlier but opening alone is hard. I won’t actually get you fired if you’re late occasionally” She sticks her hand out in a peace offering.
Tim takes it. “I’m Tim.”
“I know. I read your application before you arrived.”
Her hair, in a low ponytail was coming undone. Tim checked the queue was empty before he pointed it out. “You can go and fix that if you want.”
She feels it before nodding and ducking into the break room. One customer comes in and requests a latte with oat milk. Tim manages it in a timely manner. They even leave a tip for the good service.
By the time 1pm comes around, exhaustion tugs at Tim. His feet hurt and the lack of sleep from the night before hits him like a wave. Minnie leaves alongside him. She walks with a spring in her step and advises him to start going to bed earlier. “I could hold my shopping under your eyes!” She teases, jabbing an elbow into his ribs, which must hit a bruise because it hurts. Tim winces but forces himself to laugh.
“Is that all the guidance I’m going to be getting at this job?”
Minnie stares at him, “Dude. You’re more qualified than me. I’m only your boss because I’ve just been working at that branch longer.”
Before Tim can question her, she reaches her bus stop and waves goodbye to him.
When he arrives home, it’s a mess. There’s a paper plate by the door. There are several paper plates scattered around the house. At least one plastic cup has been broken and Tim barely manages to duck in time before another cup is thrown at his face. It came from the kitchen. He peeked inside and lo and behold, Toby, tearing into the cutlery, only stopping to twitch.
Tim grabbed Toby’s arm. The boy’s twitching worsened as soon as he noticed, his head jerking side to side and his feet jolting, not so coincidentally landing on Tim’s feet a few times.
“You’re meant to be at school?” He asks. Toby bares his teeth in response, pulling at the stitches in his mouth. They look like their about to pop. Tim grimaced and tried to force Toby to close his mouth – an effort which nearly ended with Toby biting his finger off. The stitches are still in tact after the entire ordeal though. Tim takes that as a small win.
“It’s Monday. You have school.” Toby tries to pull away but Tim tightened his grip. He never went to school. He has no fucking clue why anyone would not want to go besides basic guesses but based off Toby’s pattern of behaviour, he’s more likely to be the bully rather than bullied.
“I didn’t want too.”
God, Tim’s become a single parent at twenty five. “That’s really helpful.” The sarcasm drips from his voice.
“Yeah. And you don’t tell me what to do.”
Toby doesn’t twitch so much as he throws his arm with such force that Tim is shocked out of his grip. Toby promptly hits himself square in the face. That doesn’t stop him from turning tails and storming back to his room.
Last night, when the police showed up, Tim accepted this. But in twenty four hours, they have managed one barely amicable conversation. So he goes upstairs, knocks on Toby’s door. No reply? He knocks harder and starts shouting, Still no reply? He threatens to knock the door down. The anger starts to bubble underneath his skin when Toby still doesn’t reply. So Tim takes deep breaths, the only helpful thing he learnt in therapy, and leaves.
In his room, no longer dead on his feet, Tim realises the small gift he might have. He takes the opportunity to riffle through The Masked Man’s stuff. He places the note on the bed, away from everything else.
Then he turns his attention to the shoe box at the foot of his bed. At the top is a spare mask, with the same blackened lips and rings around the eyes. It fits perfectly on his face, in a way the old masks from a party shop never did and it feels like porcelain rather than plastic. It’s face is still perfectly round though, obscuring his every facial feature. Underneath is a gun. It’s heavy in Tim’s hand. Despite his lack of memories, it’s familiar in his hands. Tim throws it to the side immediately.
The rest of the shoebox is filled with mementos. Receipts for gas – a lot of them, from several different stations for petrol, diesel and both. A couple of pebbles and a singular stone that is shaped roughly like a heart if he squints are also in the bag. They had to come from the beach because the series of upside down polaroids at the bottom of the shoebox are dusted in sand. Tim grabs them and flicks through them. A few are of The Masked Man, Toby and a Masked Girl in a bloodied hoodie. Sometimes it’s all three of them, sometimes only two of them. It’s never them on their own. He’s on the final few photos when he sees the Hoodied Man again. His arm is wrapped around the Masked Man’s and they look so relaxed it almost passes as normal. The Hoodied Man is alive in the photos but Tim would remember if Toby, or the mysterious girl, were involved in Marble Hornets.
Tim briefly decides to stop his investigation to sit on his firm mattress and figure out what’s going on. He does this for a whole five minutes before remembering nothing gets done when you try and work things out with half the information. When you act on your misleading findings, people end up dead and Tim has very little left to loose – which means his little has become increasingly precious to him.
His attention is next drawn to the wardrobe. He finds all his own clothes, unpacked and hung up. The only thing that belongs to the Masked Man is a bloodied jacket. There aren’t any wounds on Tim. That isn’t his blood.
He shuts the closet door and decides he has time.
There’s a knock on the front door. Tim meets Toby at the door. Neither of them have a clue who it is, so Toby comes up with some creative threats and his eyes gleam with excitement about the possibility of carrying them out. Tim opens the door and blocks Toby from seeing who it is. If it’s a policeman he might let Toby bite them until all that’s left is a stump of an arm he’s forced to amputate. He’s too tired to deal with them.
It’s a postman. His hand shakes as he passes the envelope to Tim. He stammers out some explanation that doesn’t actually make sense before half running, half stumbling out of their neighbourhood. Toby shrugs his shoulders as soon as Tim shuts the door. Tim wasn’t going to blame the boy but now he’s less sure. He weighs up asking but decides it’s not worth the fight. Tim doesn’t have the energy for anything now days.
Inside the letter is a folded piece of paper but it makes Toby stiffen and his face goes a pale white. He restrains his tics as much as possible, only his neck twitches. Tim traces his finger across the edges, a sharp shock and blood wells around the paper. Tim pulls his hand away from the letter, it’s a paper cut but the blood wells fast, into a fat blob. Toby snatches the letter from him, holds it far away from his face and opens it.
There’s no return address. A date, 5 weeks away, is scribbled in black marker. There’s a crude drawing of a police car and a failing report card on it. A different hand-writing writes ‘I don’t know what else to expect.’ with a sad face underneath it.
“For fuck sake.” Toby shouted. Tim could hear him over the ringing that was growing louder in his ears. He grabbed the wall and used it to steady himself as the floor tilted. Bile burnt his throat and kept rising until it was nearly on his tongue.
Toby tore the paper into tiny pieces and then Tim threw up on it.