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“Give me the knife,” Alex demanded, looming over Tim who was still restrained on the ground.
“No, I’m not giving you the knife!” Jay said furrowing his eyebrows. He knew Alex had grown more angry and violent as of late but he had never seen his friend like this.
Jay watched as Alex stepped a few feet away to pick up an iron pipe that had been laying among other debris on the ground.
“Turn off the camera.”
“What? No. Woah, Hey, what are you doing!?” Jay asked growing more concerned as Alex raised the pipe above his shoulder.
Without a response, Alex swung the pipe down onto Tim’s leg as hard as he could before raising his arms up to do it again. The blood curdling scream that came from Tim would likely haunt Jay’s nightmares for a while.
“Jesus! What’s wrong with you?” Jay exclaimed, tossing his camera to the side for the time being, grabbing at Alex’s arms to stop him from swinging again. Alex turned his head slightly to look at Jay, still not lowering his arms. He looked like an animal in that moment, ready to attack his prey before his gaze softened and he dropped the pipe to the floor abruptly. He ripped his arms out of Jay’s grasp and backed up, his face angry again.
“Come on, we’re leaving,” Alex said, turning to walk out of the crumbling building without even waiting to see if Jay was following.
Jay hesitated for a second, genuinely considering following Alex and pretending this didn’t happen before he saw Tim scramble to get his mask in his peripheral vision. Jay turned to watch as he put it on and then scooted back into the far corner of the room, sitting in silence. He curled in on himself and cradled his leg, trying to get as far away from Jay and the entrance to the building as possible. Jay glanced once more at Alex walking away before he turned fully to face Tim and knelt in front of him.
He knew he couldn’t in his right mind just leave the man here to fend for himself with a likely very injured leg but he didn’t exactly know where to go from here.
“Tim?” Jay asked, hoping to spark any kind of response.
Tim just shook his head at him.
“No? What do you mean, no?” Jay asked again, slowly approaching his limit for insane situations for the day.
Tim reached up the hand that wasn’t basically cradling his leg and pointed to his masked face.
Jay thought for a moment before responding, “No you’re not Tim?”
The masked man who apparently did not identify as Tim despite clearly having Tim’s face nodded.
“Okay,” Jay sighed, drawing out the last syllable. “And you don’t talk either I take it?”
The man nodded again. Great. Just his luck.
Jay scooted closer to the man but as he did so, he shrunk into himself even more, evidently uncomfortable with Jay approaching.
“Can you let me come closer please? I just want to check on your leg that’s it,” Jay stated, holding both his hands up placatingly.
The man seemed to debate this for a moment before sitting up a little straighter and moving ever so slightly closer to Jay. That was all the answer Jay needed to shuffle his way over to the man’s slightly outstretched leg.
“Okay, I’m gonna lift up your pant leg alright? I need to see how bad it is since I can’t afford to bring you to the hospital and I have a sneaking suspicion you wouldn’t want to go anyway. At least not like this.”
The man in the corner glared at Jay for a minute but made no effort to move away or fight back. Jay hovered his hands over the bottom of his pant leg before rolling it up as gently as he could. Jay sucked in a breath through his teeth when he saw that the man’s leg was definitely broken. His skin was starting to discolor and he saw the bone protruding under the surface of the skin, raising it up slightly.
“Oh this is so beyond me,” Jay muttered mostly to himself, “I’m gonna have to make you a splint and it’s likely going to hurt so please don’t attack me.”
The man shrugged slightly and Jay sighed in response. He almost wished he just followed Alex out. He didn’t even have time to internally unpack the situation of Tim wearing a mask and claiming he himself wasn’t Tim. Considering he chased after Alex with a knife, Jay didn’t really know why he was helping the man in the first place. Part of Jay thought maybe it was just because Tim was a familiar face and even though he didn’t really remember the filming of Marble Hornets, they must have been at least sort of friends since they were both involved. Right?
Jay got up slowly and walked around the small room, looking for two boards long enough but also thin enough to use as for splints. He was able to find six different boards that might work well enough, but he was going to need to test them through trial and error.
Setting the boards down, Jay sat in front of the masked man again, mentally preparing himself for this process.
“Can you stretch out your leg for me, please?” The man did so, though he was clearly less than thrilled about it.
“Can I have your jacket? I’m going to need to use it to stabilize the splints because I think it’s the only thing we have.”
Jay heard what he thought was a scoff as the other man took his jacket off, tossing it over to Jay.
“Don’t worry, I’ve done this before,” Jay said, looking at the other man to see his reaction. He leveled his gaze at Jay and his eyes said he didn’t buy that for a second.
“Yeah, okay, you’re right, no I haven’t…”
Jay did his best to gently life the man’s leg up and slide the jacket flat underneath it, but he must’ve jostled something because he heard what almost sounded like a whimper.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” Jay said, biting his lip slightly as he set the man’s leg back down onto the jacket.
Jay then cycled through the boards he grabbed, eventually settling on two that were rough the same size and roughly the length and thickness he needed. Without jostling the wound, Jay set the boards parallel to each other on either side of the other man’s leg and pressed them as close together as he could.
“This should be the last thing, could you just hold those to boards steady while I wrap your leg up?” looking up at the man again. His eyes had softened now and he was no longer glaring as he held the boards steady for Jay.
Jay carefully wrapped up the leg, the masked man moving his hands out of the way when necessary. It wasn’t the most sophisticated splint or even a semi-decent one, but it should help prevent more damage until Tim himself could take care of it.
“Okay that’s it. Thank you for cooperating. Not sure why you even attacked Alex in the first place, but that gave him no right to do what he did after you were already down,” Jay said scratching the back of his neck.
“Do you want to stay here?” Jay asked before he really knew what he was saying. Thankfully, the other man nodded so Jay didn’t have to figure out how he was going to transport him anywhere else.
Jay got up and walked over to where he had abandoned his camera, only noticing now that it had landed in such a way that most of what just transpired was in frame. He likely wouldn’t post this part to the channel, if only because he was worried about what would happen if Alex found out exactly how he had helped.
Before walking out of the building, Jay looked over his shoulder one more time. “Are you sure you’ll be alright here by yourself?”
The man nodded and gave Jay a small thumbs up. Despite himself, Jay snorted a bit, caught off guard by the casualness of the action.
Jay nodded, mostly to himself, and set off in the direction of his car. As far as Jay was concerned, he just made right a wrong regardless of what caused that situation in the first place. He was eager to get back to where he was staying and forget this whole event even happened in the first place.