Chapter Text
She's not afraid of her reflection/But of what she might see behind it - Twenty One Pilots, Redecorate
Here then—the aftermath of meaning. A lifetime finished between the space of two frames. The dark line where the eye persists in seeing something that was never there to begin with. - House of Leaves. Mark Z. Danielewski, Pg. 193-205
Do you believe in God? I don't think I ever asked you that one. Well I do now. But my God isn't your Catholic varietal or your Judaic or Mormon or Baptist or Seventh Day Adventist or whatever/whoever. No burning bush, no angels, no cross. God's a house. Which is not to say that our house is God's house or even a house of God. What I mean to say is that our house is God. ... Pretty crazy you have to admit. I just made God a street address. Forget all that last part. just forget - House of Leaves. Mark Z. Danielewski, Pg. 390
It started with a cat.
More aptly named, it started with Tim’s neighbor, who coincidentally had a cat. The cat meant virtually nothing outside of companionship only a feline could provide in terms of the horrific scenes of events yet to take place, but he was getting ahead of himself.
He’d just gotten home after a harrowing hospital trip. Harboring not just a bulky cast on his lower leg and a renewed wariness of doctors and his own mind alike, but also a lack of a job. The latter, of course, had been on the forefront of his mind ever since he pulled into his driveway.
Tim already had his breakdown in the hospital room they sequestered him away in, two days ago. Agonizing over his lack of memory. Of having woken up in his car, miles away from home, and once again in pain. A blinding sort that only hit him when he tried to put his weight on it to get out and survey his surroundings. Of the dense lining of trees that suffocated him, pinching him between that two lane road. Suffice to say, he suffered the only way he knew how. He came to grips with the near month-long gap in his memory after he’d gone to bed, what felt like, just yesterday night. Buried his shame beneath the lump in his throat as he stomached yet another employer telling him that the lack of attendance forced their hand, and that they should have heeded the last company he worked for’s warning.
Then he drove himself to a hospital.
He forced himself through the petrifying white, sterile halls, and willingly laid down, trapped, in a bed following his surgery while a doctor explained how lucky he was to have only fractured his tibia, and not both of the bones that made up his lower leg’s support. There were questions of how the fracture came about, sure, but when they realized he wasn’t even responding to the comments of before, they left him to it.
Alone again.
In a hospital room.
Only a window to give him access to the outside world.
There was no luck in that.
There was no luck that Tim survived, and that he managed to get by with just this issue. That there wasn’t that much nerve damage, and that he should be good to walk, and put full weight on it, within three to four months.
Luck had nothing to do with that.
If anything, Tim might say that his lack thereof was the culprit of this miasma that seemed to follow him everywhere. It was the reason for the holes in his memory, the haunting visages that followed him relentlessly, and the current predicament he was now facing.
The cat, a longhaired Siamese, that had been growling and glaring back at him from beneath the cushioned sanctity of the hedges lining his backyard fence, for the past five minutes. He’d attempted to coax him out after his initial, ‘ignore it and it’ll go away,’ method didn’t work, but the cat seemed to see right through him. See the true intent, in which he could only politely refer to it as, sticking him in his bathroom until his neighbor finally came knocking. Her car hadn’t been in the driveway when he pulled in earlier, so there was no telling when that would be.
Suffice to say, the cat was no fool, and Tim didn’t quite like the idea of getting his hands ripped to shreds, nor bending down to drag the thing out by the scruff. Not that he could if he wanted to. While it was only one of the bones in his calf, he didn’t want to take his chances in breaking it again. So, he rather liked the idea of just waiting it out. Just to avoid the chances of having to visit a doctor or hospital of some sorts again, should that happen. Tim wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of doctors, unsurprisingly.
So, the two were at an impasse.
If the cat refused to come out, then so too, would Tim refuse to help him. It would rain soon, judging from the nasty clouds hovering overhead, and if the bastard was so keen to be rude and stick it outside, then he could brave the turbulent weather as well. Tim hobbled back to his porch, awkwardly settled himself into one of the chairs scattered about, and finished his cigarette that had been left to wither away its last dregs when he saw the thing dart under the bushes.
He supposed it could be worse. He could have nothing like this to change up his day. To dredge up the cruel monotony that was Tim Wright’s life. To that, he might also say that he deserved it. Given the hectic quality of his childhood, he could relent in admitting that having a regular nine to five job, and boring day-to-days were all just as nice as an exciting life.
But it was nice to have this little blip, right?
As harmless as it was?
To have a weird neighbor, whose cat always seemed to get out and favored his backyard, for some odd reason. To have this happen ten times already since she moved in next door around six months ago. Even if it wasn’t all the time, and even if he questioned the quality of her responsibility, it was … nice, for lack of a better word.
Not that the cat got out, but that he had a reason to talk to somebody. To encourage a conversation starter with someone who was around his age, and seemed to get his humor to a degree. Outside of her cat getting out, Julia Andrews was almost a mirror image of him. She shared the same fascination with music—claimed it calmed her when her mind got too loud—the same crippling addiction to nicotine, and carried a knack for sarcasm. He enjoyed hanging out with her when she chose to shadow his doorstep. Claiming she’d made too much of this or that she just couldn’t finish these last few beers by herself. She was a social drinker as much as she was a smoker, and Tim found himself, sometimes, in the past, left waiting in anticipation for her knocking.
At the end of the day though, it would be better still to relax by himself once she left and brought the cat home. As much as he enjoyed her company, today was too much, too … overwhelming. To wind down from the stresses of past trauma and a hole-ridden mind. If he could get past that spiraling thought, he could amp himself up to admit defeat, go to bed, and return to the effort in finding, and maintaining, a stable job.
Alone as always.
Just how he liked it.
Tim could ignore the wriggling doubt that squirmed away in the back of his brain at the expression. There was nothing better than this. If the people he swore to be friends in the past left him, then he was better off for it. He’d continue making small talk with his neighbor, his co-workers, his doctor, and gas station attendants alike; never too close for comfort. Never letting them get a peek behind the curtains. Just at arms length.
A safe distance.
Enough time to run if need be.
To be ran from, in turn, and to not make it hurt as bad when it did, inevitably, happen.
Tim slipped back inside with little fanfare aside from crushing the end of the cigarette into the ashtray. Onto the next worry of what he’d make for dinner, and how he’d even shower with a cast on and crutches (which was humiliating in its own right). But a knock at Tim’s door interrupted the reverie, and the incessant, seemingly unending, quality of it was enough to drive him to opening it as soon as possible, if only to nip the raucous in the bud. He’d already suffered a headache from crying in his car in the hospital parking lot earlier; he didn’t need this to add onto it.
A haggard expression was worn plainly on Julia’s face when he finally tugged the door open. Slight relief, but mostly an exhausted sort of irritation. She lowered the hand that had been raised to knock and raised her brows as her gaze flitted down to his new predicament.
“Shit, what happened to—”
“Long story,” Tim cut her off. “Your cat’s in the back.”
“Of course,” Julia threw her head back and groaned. “You’d think he didn’t know it was about to downpour.”
“‘S your cat,” Tim pointed out.
“You act like I raised him without a brain,” she glared back at him, but her eyes held none of the heat.
“Is he your biological son?”
“Might as well be,” she muttered.
He followed her around the side of the house to point out her ‘son’s’ hiding spot, to which she mumbled out stray curses and crawled under to entice the cat out. Tim stayed under the awning, deciding that the dark miasma in the sky was far too close for comfort. As if the threatening loom of it would open up at any moment. He really doubted that crutches would hold well on slick grass and mud, and getting the cast wet was just asking for trouble.
“C’mon Beatles, we gotta get goin’ dude,” Julia grunted, extending her arm as far as she could without shrouding herself under the bushes.
“You named your cat, Beatles?” Tim called out.
“Beetlejuice,” she said it like she was clarifying it, but the phrasing just left him more confused than satisfied. “Don’t say it three times or he’ll never leave you alone.”
He furrowed his brows. Right, ok, weird Julia humor aside, the pain under his arms was becoming more and more needy, and the idea of sitting down so he could be rid of those crutches was far too enticing to ignore. “Well, have fun with that. I’m going inside.”
“Cruel, leaving me to do this all by myself,” her voice was low as she spoke, muttering under her breath. He’d thought she meant it more to herself than to him, but the rebuttal came unbidden from his conscious thought.
“I don’t think a cripple can do much of anything right now.”
“Whatever you say, old man,” she quipped right back.
All he could do was roll his eyes and hobble back to the safety of his home. She’d bother him when she got Beetlejuice back inside. For now, he was keen to get an easy meal, likely whatever frozen meal was still in his freezer. The last he remembered he still had a few pot pies, and Hungry-Man meals. He just hoped he wasn’t misremembering because the last time he’d been in his home at all, was around three and a half weeks ago.
Unfortunately for him, his apparent ‘luck’ that kept him alive and suffering, struck again. Most everything (which, granted, wasn’t much) had gone well past its due date.
Thankfully, what remained in his freezer stayed safe. It didn’t take long after he’d finally sat down to eat before the hard patter of rain slammed against his roof, punctuated only by Julia’s yelp. Tim let out a soft huff of air from his nose, and the downturned smile didn't leave his face for a second when he finally caught sight of his drenched neighbor at the front door. Her short brown hair was plastered against her head, and her mascara ran in streams down her cheeks.
“I need a towel,” she grumbled.
Tim peered out toward the house just next door, before glancing back at her, brows raised as if to say, ‘Well? Go get it.’
“Ok smart ass, you know that’s not why I braved the trenches to get back over here,” always one for the dramatics, Julia even pressed her palm over her chest.
“Don’t think it was that bad,” he mused.
“I feel like a drowned rat, and smell the part.”
“Hey, you said it.”
Julia tutted and squinted back at him, but instead of saying anything, she glanced down to grab a lighter, and loose cigarette from her pocket. With little to no concern for whether or not he was ok with it, she plopped herself down on one of the front porch chairs, and lit the end of the crumpled thing.
When he didn’t immediately respond to her actions, having been struck dumb at the sight, Julia twisted her head to look at him; brows arched as she asked plainly, “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“What’s the long story, grandpa?”
Tim sighed through his nose before hobbling back inside to grab a towel to bring to the self-proclaimed, ‘drowned rat.’ She wasted no time in scrubbing it over her hair; cigarette clenched between her teeth as she went over it.
He settled into the chair next to her, overlooking his now sodden front lawn. Overgrown as it was, he was left pleasantly surprised that it hadn’t grown too long in light of his disappearance.
“That’s better,” Julia breathed as she pulled the cigarette from her mouth. She slumped back and brought her legs up to sit crisscross the best as she could, given the arms of the chair that were clearly in the way. It looked to be digging into her knees in a way that made Tim wince. There was no way that was comfortable. “You gonna say what happened or do you want me to guess?” She asked as she glanced over at him.
“Kinda curious what you think happened,” it was a poor way to beat around the bush, he knew it. He just didn’t know what to even start with. Of his startling lack of memory surrounding his own leg getting smashed in.
If he hadn’t already had a breakdown in the hospital, he might have one now, under the pressure of Julia’s prying eyes. The eyes that now looked at him as if she could peer right through him; break his skull open and find the answer directly. The eyes that also made him shudder sometimes, especially when she just stared. She had a problem of dissociating, she’d explained when they first met. A problem, he realized, she was at the fault of relenting to.
A problem he almost wondered if she was suffering under now, if it weren’t for the clarity entering them now.
“I think … “ she hummed, and tapped her chin with her forefinger in faux concentration. “You were kidnapped, got beaten up by your captors … held for ransom, and … escaped?” She observed him for another moment, eyes narrowed. “Yeah, you’d escape. You have that craftiness to you.”
“That’s …”
“Right?” She grinned back at him as the heavy weight of thunder rumbled overhead.
“Sure,” he hummed, averting his gaze to look down at the stray thread poking from his shirt’s hem. There was a part of him desperate for Julia to just move on, but he also knew that he’d already laid in the bed he’d made. Relenting to her questioning of him, instead of just closing the door in her face, was certainly a choice he had made.
And not an entirely good one at that.
But how did someone explain that they didn’t even remember what happened to them in the first place?
“Well, I’m glad you made it out, it was getting boring without having someone to bother all the time,” Julia said. She crumbled the end of her cigarette into the ashtray on the side table between them. “Which—” she snapped, as if the thought had just occurred to her. “—reminds me,” she twisted in the chair to get a better look at him.
“You don’t know what Beetlejuice is!”
“The—your cat?” His expression grew pinched in his confusion. “Of course I know—”
“Not the cat, the reason I named him that in the first place,” she gawked.
But before Tim could even open his mouth to defend himself, (to his own chagrin, because why was he going to apologize? It was an odd name) Julia was continuing on. “Don’t give me that look again,” she softly jabbed the center of his chest, “—you don’t know the movie that inspired his name.”
“A movie,” Tim said incredulously, more as a statement than a question.
“The movie—best one of all time, especially during Halloween?” She clarified. “Beetlejuice is a genuine classic from the eighties. Did you live under a rock?”
“And you want to do what? Watch it now?” He fought the urge to respond to her last question. Pointed as it was, he couldn’t justify that with anything other than, ‘Well, no. I was actually raised in a mental facility, because there’s something wrong with me,’ but that wouldn’t go over well. So, he settled on ignoring it.
“Well … ” she paused, and it seemed, only now, to hit her that she was pushing against someone who just wasn’t interested. At least, at that moment. Maybe she heard the irritation in his voice. He knew that whiny exhaustion was peeking through his tone, but he couldn’t help it. He almost felt bad about it, guilty even, but that was almost. This was now. His leg was aching, and he needed a better cry than the one he’d been forced to cut short, in a permeable car where people could still look in. Even from afar, he’d been embarrassed by the possibility, so he made the drive home. Only hoping he’d make it without seizing or passing out and losing another week.
But for as much as he hated having someone close to lose, he also liked the company Julia kept, and that wriggling desperation for human contact was a cruel thing.
“Look, maybe not tonight, or … or for the rest of this week,” he started. “I just need some time to find a new job.”
“Right,” she nodded hurriedly. “So, like, Monday night?”
“Sure,” Tim had to relent at some point. “At least … I don’t know, for now? If I get a job I might not be up for—”
“Say no more,” Julia held up her hands, palms facing him. “Get your rest, I’ll be haunting your doorstep in time with plenty of snacks.”
“Unless your cat decides to change that,” he eyed her knowingly.
“No idea what you’re talking about,” she shrugged and shook her head, but the grin rising on her face said otherwise. “I’ll let you go to bed and rest your weary, old bones,” she said as she hauled herself to her feet. She plopped the damp towel in his hands. “But you take it easy! I can’t lose the only person that tolerates me.”
And Julia went, practically skipping, to her home.
She was … odd, for sure, but she was funny.
A good blip in his horrible monotony.
Tim got to his feet awkwardly, and nearly stumbled back through his door. But even as he found himself grateful for the peace that followed, he couldn’t help the grin that seemed to rise in light of her coy attitude. It was infectious, and it stuck with him into the late hours of the night, until the gravity of his memory loss and the physical injury that resulted from it sunk in. Then that horrible weight clung to his shoulders, following him like a voracious dog.
Before he knew it, Monday came, and with it, the start of May.
Tim had been expecting the knock prior to its arrival, but only so much because the dread that warned him away from even answering was too much to bear. In the end he hobbled his way over to the front door, forgoing the crutches in light of the soreness in his hands.
“Surprised you didn’t use the cat as an excuse this time,” he couldn’t fight the exhaustion creeping into his tone, but he could show his amusement through his expression instead. Silently begging that Julia wouldn’t mention it.
But his hopes were dashed as soon as they’d arrived, “You look like shit, man.”
“Gee thanks,” he muttered, readjusting his footing as best as he could without sagging into the weak leg.
She had the decency to look ashamed, but plowed on in spite of the slight guilt. “I’m serious, you somehow look worse than when you first came back.”
“Not being able to move very efficiently will do that to a guy,” Tim said, willing her to drop it. He’d woken up, struggled through a shower as best he could, and answered one phone call regretfully informing him that they were not actually hiring at this time. The rest of the day was spent cleaning up the remainder of the mess left behind when he disappeared. At this point, all that was left was his laundry, still left in a pile on his bed, and the numerous dishes still left in the sink.
Suffice to say, as much as he craved the comfort of human contact, he was also left wanting to get this over with now that the potential was here.
“Well, I brought a good movie to relax for longer than an hour to, and snacks,” she held up a CVS bag to display her findings. “I probably should have asked what you even like, but oh well. I have a couple options to be safe.”
It worked for him; he couldn’t say he had a preference.
The movie itself actually wasn’t that bad. It was comical, but only scary in a cartoonish way. Fitting for someone like Julia to be practically in love with. Honestly though, it was funnier to watch her physically restrain herself to keep from pausing it, gushing about how cool the effects were, and how they did them. She almost reminded him of an old friend from back in college, though his name escaped Tim, now. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to, given the distinct memory of his nasty attitude. It left a bad enough taste in his mouth that he was more than happy to forget about in light of Julia’s excitement.
“Well, I’d say that was a success,” Julia was still left beaming after the credits had long rolled by, even as she did the dishes that Tim had fought her not to do. Another thing about that crazed lunatic of a woman was that, for as much as she knew when to drop certain subjects, she sure could be stubborn about crap like this.
“You know, you really don’t have to do all that,” Tim said, interrupted only by the clatter of dishes as she set what she was washing off to the side. “I’m not inept.”
“No, but if I do let you do this, it’ll be done all crappy,” she gave him a pointed look from over the kitchen island. “And that’s not a slight against you, I just know how much that’s gonna hurt if you aggravate that,” she nodded to his cast. “And that leads to getting frustrated and leaving out stuff you can’t maneuver with for later—”
“Still—”
“Still nothing. It would destroy me, as a responsible friend, to leave you feeling worse because I was ignorant and a fool,” she said, slapping one of her wet hands against her face, covering her eyes. “I mean, would you really do that to me? Make me feel so horrible?” She all but wailed, but the dramatics weren’t lost on Tim when he caught her peeking out from between her fingers, and grinning when she met his gaze.
A responsible friend. He guessed that was what they were now. Regular neighbors didn’t just show up like this to have movie nights or have inside jokes and events. Well, maybe they did, but maybe too, Tim wanted this. Craved that camaraderie. Even if it did scare him to get attached again.
“Fine, fine,” he relented as he rolled his eyes.
“Thank you,” she righted herself back to her previous position, as if nothing had happened. The full clack of ceramic on ceramic resumed. “Besides I think it’ll make that leg of yours worse if you keep trying to walk on it without your crutches.”
“I don’t … walk without them?” he faltered.
“Keep telling yourself that, but don’t think I didn’t see you walk to your car yesterday morning without them.”
“They hurt my arms, that’s all.”
“Well I could … ” she paused at that, arms hanging limp as she turned her head sharply to look at the front door.
Now, that was cause for concern. There was no sound audible from it, no knock. But Julia’s whole demeanor seemed to do a complete one-eighty; whatever she saw or heard now, left her with a confused expression.
No, not confused.
Wary.
“Julia?” Tim frowned when she didn’t respond. It was only when he repeated her name, this time louder, “Jules. You ok?”
She shook her head sharply before nodding to the door, “Sorry I … I thought I heard someone yelling outside.” She went to scratch at her jaw before heaving a sigh through her nose and going back to the dishes.
And … that was that.
Julia didn’t ever address what she heard, or thought she heard, and Tim didn’t press it. Because at the end of the day, he knew that that sort of thing might not be the best to pry into. He’d file it away for later, when the timing was better, but for now he’d drop it.
Despite the oddness of the situation, and of Julia as a whole, she carried on as normal. She also ended up frequenting his place more often following that night. Mostly, it just involved watching movies he hadn’t seen (The Fly was only bearable in Julia’s delight and playful jabs at his disgust, but Rocky Horror Picture Show was actually really good, no complaints there) or even wrangling him into showing her his instruments (she’d heard him playing from outside his home, which was a little embarrassing if it weren’t for her glowing review of how nice it sounded).
All the while, he made slow, but decent, progress in walking with his crutches. He tried his best not to jam his weak leg against anything, but he couldn’t be tender with it all the time. He followed doctor’s orders to a near T, but if he also tried to stick a pen between the cast and his leg to scratch the occasional itch, then that was neither here nor there. Eventually, closer to the end of late June, he was able to get the cast removed with orders on what not to do.
He celebrated with a shower, finally washing the stench emanating from all the dry skin and sweat accumulated there.
But while being without the cast was nice, having the limp was not. The doctor had explained that because he was still in his early twenties, he would heal at a fairly good rate. However, given how severe of a fracture it was, he might be stuck with the occasional pain or even limp for a good few months.
For some reason, in the first few days, or rather nights, of his being cast-free, some … odd things were happening. It started with the first night he was home without it, unable to sleep in light of how sensitive the skin on his leg was. He tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable without feeling nearly every fiber of the blanket against his skin. It was around the hour mark of doing this fruitless task, that Tim got out of bed, and shambled into the living room. If he could do anything, he could whittle away the hours until he had to go to work. Even if he was exhausted, there was no sense in following himself to sleep.
He resigned himself to buying melatonin later the next day.
While he was sitting at the rickety dining room table, staring blearily down into his glass, swirling it absent-mindedly, a tapping noise broke him out of his trance. He shifted his eyes to the window across from him, only a foot away. The noise paused for only a beat as soon as he looked at it, before sounding off again.
It was rhythmic, almost like a metronome.
If Tim wasn’t tired before, he was wide awake now, shaken by the dawning, dulled horror that spread through him.
After a few seconds of the rhythmic tapping, there was another pause and then two taps against the glass, followed by a long drawn out scratch, like a fingernail was being dragged across it, and finally another tap.
There was a heavy pause blanketing the air, in which Tim thought his heart might actually beat out of his chest with how hard it slammed against his ribcage.
Then three long scratches dragged out.
Another pause.
A tap, scratch, and two taps to follow.
Pause.
The same sequence before repeated, followed by a heavy silence, and then three agonizing scratches.
Pause.
A tap, and two scratches.
Silence.
Tim just sat there in stunned silence, eyes wide as his brain tried to play catch up with what was happening. The window wasn’t covered by the blinds, even though he remembered, distinctly, shutting them when he’d gotten home from work the day before. He hadn’t touched them since.
Why were they open now?
Before he could register it, his body was moving on its own accord. A dull crash sounded from behind him, but he couldn’t be bothered when some freak was watching him, peering in, and scratching on his window like some kind of feral animal. But, by the time he’d flung open his front door and rounded the perimeter of his house, all he was met with was empty air and trees.
Nothing.
Like no one was even there to begin with.
As on edge as he was, he resigned himself to going back inside. After checking and rechecking the lock on every single door and window in his house, he settled in his bedroom. Eyes trained on the one window he had, now shut as tight as the blinds could possibly go.
He, unsurprisingly, got little to no sleep that night.
The second occurrence was a little more … disturbing.
On the third night of Tim’s being cast-free, he’d taken a melatonin to polish his medication off, putting himself into a, very appreciated, drugged sleep. He checked the locks again before he got settled, and his body wasted no time sending him straight to dreamland.
The problem was, staying asleep.
Tim couldn’t remember what woke him, exactly, only that when he did wake, he was freezing and his heart was racing. The thing is, he didn’t keep the air conditioner on too terribly cold. He was a bit cold natured, having to wear long sleeves from June all throughout August. Normally, though, if he got too hot, and when the threat of a high electric bill loomed over him, he’d drop it to 75 or 74, but nothing major.
Nothing like this.
He was in an addled enough state to ignore it though, in favor of returning to whatever dream he’d been experiencing, even if he couldn’t recall exactly what it had been in the first place. But when he went to tug the blanket back up to his chin, he found there was no blanket to begin with, and that was enough to make Tim finally sit up and survey the situation.
His eyes scanned around the bed to no avail, but when he finally peered down at the floor, on his side of the bed, he found the comforter lying in a heap. Seemingly kicked off in his sleep at some point or another. Judging from his heart rate and the light bead of sweat perched upon his brow, he’d known it was likely from whatever nightmare he’d been subject to. The only time he’d ever moved in his sleep was to fend off whatever agony his mind was reliving.
But ultimately, despite his apparent horror dreamscape, he was just eager to pass out again. The heavy weight of sleep was ready to claim him as soon as he was warm and he was all the more happy to relent.
So, he obliged, and despite the oddness of the situation, reached over the edge of the mattress and grabbed a fistful of the fabric. It was only then that he realized what had truly woken him up. A flash of pale white that slipped into his peripheral as soon as he was hauling the comforter back over his now shivering body.
And Tim froze.
There was a moment just before the impact of a car crash, where one’s body braces for the worst. The heart sinks into a deep pit of one’s stomach, making a home there, and slamming against the intestines in a way that inspires such a violent nausea. Blood vessels open wide, welcoming the adrenaline that paralyzes the fine motor skills necessary to possibly, just maybe, act in a way that might actually help. Though, maybe that moment is wishful thinking on a shell-shocked brain. The lungs squeeze every ounce of oxygen from the body in one foul swoop and, in the last possible second, the floodgates open again, and air is sucked back in. It pushes the chest out as a sort of organic airbag. As if that act alone could defend the soft, inner viscera with everything it had.
The thing about this, though, was that Tim was not in a car accident right now, but his body wasn’t aware of that. Everything inside was running in total darkness, on primal responses from the brain to a genuinely looming threat. Even if it couldn’t immediately recognize that the threat was a woman in pajamas, specifically that of his neighbor Julia, it could still react as if she were some monstrous creature.
A monstrous act in and of itself.
Something like a car crash.
Something that Tim, himself, might also react to by shouting an expletive or two and scrambling back further against his headboard. It was only when he realized that she was asleep that he also realized he’d clutched the blanket against his chest; a childish, makeshift barrier.
Old habits died hard, he supposed.
“Wha—” Tim swallowed around the hoarse ache in his throat, lowering the blanket tentatively. “Julia?”
The woman didn’t answer, eyes shut resolutely as she stood, swaying gently as if moved by a breeze, in the corner of his room.
“Jules,” he repeated, louder this time.
Her expression contorted at that, twisting into a soured sort of thing. “No,” she shook her head sharply once, eyes squeezing tighter as if opening them would hurt her. “No, I— I’m not,” she spit the words out as if they were choking her.
She was asleep. She had to be asleep; she wasn’t making any sense.
Tim tentatively slid his legs over the edge of the mattress to touch ground on the thread-bare carpet below. Crossing the room took no time at all given how short of a distance it was, but something compelled him to glance out his window as he crossed the threshold to meet her. Something that paled when it realized the window was cracked open.
His hands found Julia’s shoulders but he didn’t move to shake her immediately. No, she was actually asleep—sleep-walking. In all the time he’d known her, it never came up. Not that it needed to, but given how oddly eager she was in telling him things about herself to see how he reacted (mostly waiting for him to look weirded out or shocked), it was odd. Sure, the possibility of her forgetting to tell him was an option, but Julia wasn’t exactly shy about her worse qualities. Not that this was worse necessarily, but it sure scared the crap out of him. Especially given the fact that his bedroom window was open, and his blankets had been tugged off. Maybe she’d done it? Probably; that was a fair judgment. No monsters or mystery people clambering in his home, just—
“Two, three, three, eight,” she rambled the numbers off seemingly at random. “Five, three, five, eight, four—”
“—Julia—”
“—Two, three,” she exhaled out from her nose in an almost violent manner. Nostrils flared as if she was an angry bull about to stomp its hooves. “Two, three, three, eight, five, three,” she repeated the first six numbers, and then shook her head sharply again.
Tim had no choice but to just stand there and observe for a beat, let his brain catch up to the oddity of the situation he was faced with. But he didn’t have to wait long for her to do something to further tilt the oddness scale.
“It’s outside the door, be quiet,” Julia hissed sharply.
Tim’s grip on her shoulders tightened, and that familiar, paralyzing fear struck him down to his feet. He couldn’t bring himself to turn around, as if doing so might invite this ‘it’ to show up behind him. As if this was some sort of cheap horror movie.
“Who, uh … whose ‘it’?”
Julia shook her head again rapidly. “No,” she whimpered, her brows turning upward but her eyes remaining shut. “No, no name,” it sounded like she was on the verge of tears, but her expression didn’t match it. It was more … neutral? Empty almost. No signs of visible distress. “Better in numbers,” she breathed. “Many numbers—all of us—together—safe.”
Tim swallowed his fear, and squeezed his eyes shut for a beat before finally willing himself to turn around. No one was there, but that much could be assumed. Nothing except him and Julia. And there was no way in hell he was going to traipse around the house with no weapon to defend himself, let alone by himself. He stilled his nerves as best he could before going to finally do the one thing he was certain might actually be a bad idea.
He woke Julia up.
Predictably, she didn’t react the best. Actually, she woke up with a shout as soon as her eyes opened.
“Get away from me!” She shrieked and collapsed to the floor, scrambling back as far as she could from him and pushing herself further against the wall. “Fuck,” she cursed, eyes darting around wildly as she took in her surroundings. “Where—he was here, where did—what—” the words tumbled from her mouth as if they were thoughts. Unfocused, unmitigated, and intrusive. Her mouth seemed to scramble to keep up.
“You’re ok, it’s just me—”
“No, stop being stupid!” She growled. Her lips were set into a thin-lined frown, and her eyes went wide as they focused on him. “He wanted to speak for—fuck, we’re sitting ducks in still water—” she shook her head rapidly, squeezing her eyes shut and jamming her head between her knees. “Still water breeds death, breeds infection, breeds sickness—other—Two, three, three, eight, five three. Two, three, three—”
She cut herself off like that for a few seconds while Tim stood back, waiting. Well, more like trying not to show his obvious distress.
But it seemed there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
Julia quieted for a beat, then raised her head, eyes slipping back up and focusing, really focusing, on her surroundings. In the bedroom she’d broken into. Finally, when she’d gotten a better look around, her eyes landed on Tim, who’d been tense in the waning seconds it took her to realize she was awake now. She winced, clutched at her head as if it was being split by a terrible headache, and groaned. “The—what the hell, why am I—”
“I don’t know,” Tim interrupted. “You were sleep-walking, though.”
“Sleep-walking?” Her voice cracked
“And talking, if … that changes anything,” he didn’t want to add his own personal fear factor into that, but she could guess by his general wariness.
“I don’t—I mean I, you know, I sleep-talk, but I don’t—” she stuttered, before shaking her head and glancing about again, as if getting a second look might clarify her situation better. “How the hell did I get inside?”
“The window I think, but listen; you were saying something weird … like, you said something was in my house, do you remember why you said that?”
“Insi—no, why would I … ” she leaned her head back and squinted at him. “I mean I was probably having a night terror, man. I don’t know. I’m so sorry, god I’m … I’m sorry I broke in, but I can leave. Fuck, I hope didn’t leave the door open,” she said, made aware of the possibility that Tim hadn’t even realized. Beetlejuice could have gotten out again.
“Ok, look, why don’t we check the house first then, and then I’ll walk you home,” he felt silly for believing she might have actually seen something or known something was in his house. Especially since she was asleep. But he was spooked and he had a second person here to bolster his imagined confidence in the situation. What was a stretch was if Julia, in her state of confusion, agreed to help.
But ever the one to surprise, she nodded her ascent and got to her feet.
Despite her clear disorientation, Julia’s body was wound up into itself, tense in every meaning of the word. Eyes darting out to and from every single shadow in the rooms they checked through, arms half raised to prepare for a fight even if it wasn’t needed.
Which, ultimately, it wasn’t.
No one had broken in aside from her.
“I’m so sorry, I have no idea what caused me to do that,” she’d been rambling and mumbling out apologies since they made their way to her house. Mercifully, the door was apparently unlocked but closed shut. He didn’t know how a person could have that much coherency to do that in their sleep, but he had no room to talk. His blackouts led to broken legs, odd scrapes, and his car being in places he didn't remember driving to.
“It’s … ok,” he sighed. “I mean, it freaked me out, but I don’t think it’s your fault.”
“Still,” she leveled him with a withering stare as she leaned against her front-door frame. “I guess, I’ll just have to tie bells around my feet or something—see if that’ll wake me up. Usually I’m a pretty light sleeper so it’s …” she trailed off as she shifted her gaze toward her feet. Seemingly drawn out of the conversation, making way for the night’s sweet song. Of crickets smoothing out their biological strings, frogs croaking out small territory claims, and the soft bap of suicidal moths against the porch light. Creatures of all shapes and sizes making light of the lack thereof. Stray cats darting through the underbrush in neighbors yards, beneath the heavy canopy of parked cars and the odd patch of trees lining the sidewalks.
Julia remained silent, clearly lost in thought, or spiraling in guilt.
“Could put Legos in front of your doors,” Tim offered.
“Diabolical,” was the first word out of her mouth, but it got her smiling, even if it was a small one. “But would definitely work. Only downside is Beetlejuice. I know that little idiot would try eating them.”
“I thought you loved him too much to call him stupid,” Tim squinted at her. “Are you sure you’re not sick?”
“Beetlejuice can be a little stupid, as a treat. Besides, he’s like, got a toddler brain. He deserves some leniency.”
“Yeah sure, keep telling yourself what you need to to avoid the sad reality of insulting your ‘son.’ Some mom you are,” he joked.
Julia gasped, affronted, and clutched her chest as if she had pearls. “How cruel,” she said. “I think I’m a pretty good mom, aside from … you know, letting him escape by accident.”
“You want help finding him?”
“I think he’s inside somewhere, I doubt he’d leave as soon as I did … whenever that was.”
“Still.”
“I … ” she gave him an odd look at that, and in the light above casting shadows on her face, it almost made her look … angry. He suppressed the shudder that ran down his spine. “If you want, but don’t you want to go back to bed?”
“Couldn’t if I wanted to.” he shrugged. He also didn’t want her to feel too bad, even if he was exhausted. A show of good will by helping her find her demon cat, because he knew her well enough to know how upset she’d get at not being able to find him right away. Beetlejuice was like a security blanket to her. Plus, this would be a chance to get a look at how the eccentric Julia expressed herself in her home. Even if it was a belated home tour at nearly two in the morning.
So, with little fanfare, Julia nodded and stepped aside, half gesturing to welcome him in. Tim limped in—
Black nothingness greeted her when she opened her eyes.
Nothingness that transformed into more black, empty, void, and partially stars, but nothing more than that. If she concentrated she could make sense of the patterns, the …
She grasped for the word in her, mind but it seemed to slip from her bleeding fingers.
Pictures in the stars, she settled for.
Tiny blips of light staring down at her up and up and up. Like holes poked into a box to keep the animal inside from suffocating.
Is that what she was?
She didn’t know or think so.
She was …
There was electricity running through her skin—no, not through.
Below.
In her blood there existed a live wire. Circling in on itself through her patchwork body. An ouroboros snake consuming itself with no outlet to plug itself into.
Holes dotted her skin, emptying into her body like tunnels burrowed there. They reached the bone but there is no pain.
Just the buzz of the undercurrent.
Her head was numb with it, and as she looked up to try and register where she was again, a hand reached from the void and shoved a mass of wires into one of the many holes scattered inside of her. A hand that was pale and carried with it a sickness she can't name. Cracked nails, full of dirt and maggots and bone, red and yellow tissue that create what?
Create …
She is naked.
She is naked and empty, no more ribs to hold her insides, because this thing is—
is—
—and he slipped into bed, tugging the covers back over his freezing body. His brain wasted no time sending him back to sleep, and two hours later, when his eight o’clock alarm went off, he woke with a grumbling start. Feeling altogether like he barely got any sleep at all.
It was in the beginning of July that Julia asked Tim to watch her house when she had to leave out of state for her dad’s funeral. She said she’d be out for a few days, and that, given how iffy Beetlejuice was around strangers, she wanted someone he was at least semi-familiar with to go over and feed him.
“He’s really finicky with how he eats,” she explained over the phone. “Needs me to be in the room with him when he does, otherwise he’ll just let it sit there.”
“Well, he is your son,” Tim jabbed at her half-heartedly.
“I told you that in confidence, you bastard,” she muttered.
“Hey, I’m not saying it’s bad you do it, but you have to admit, it’s weird that you can’t eat around other people because of ‘mouth sounds’—how do you do restaurants?”
“That’s the trick, I don’t.” He could hear the grin in her voice, as if she was proud of that fact. “Also, it’s not that I can’t, but having to hear other people chew around me isn’t exactly the best. I tolerate you, and that’s only because I actually like having you around.”
“But god forbid it was a stranger?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, aside from that, does he have any other issues I should know about?”
“Besides the fact he has a bad attitude, no,” Julia said, and the rough scratch of a zipper sounded through her side of the phone. “Honestly, you shouldn’t have to worry. I’m not trying to stay forever. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“You really can take as long as you need, don’t think I can’t go on for a while just because of my leg.”
“‘S not your leg that worries me. Though, I beg of you to go easy on it, you doofus,” she chastised. “I just don’t really like my family that much. So, I won’t bless them with my presence any longer than I have to.”
Tim frowned at that. “Well, why are you going, then?”
“Mm … “ Julia hummed. “My sister wants me to go. Even if our dad was a massive asshole, I’d uh, be there for Harper. She may be closer to the rest of our shitty family, but we’re … I dunno, the closest? If that makes sense.”
“Yeah,” he murmured.
“Plus, it’ll give me an excuse to spit on the man’s grave, and that is going to be the best part of this.”
And, as jarring as that was, Julia continued on as if it meant nothing. She gave him the spare key to her front door before she drove off upstate, and left with a rather cryptic, “Keep an eye out for me,” and a wink.
To say Julia had an eccentric personality, was an understatement. The woman had eccentric taste in everything. So, when Tim first limped into her house entryway, he almost thought he had to the wrong place. It was full of a regular amount of furniture, with regular colors that didn’t clash as horribly as her clothes did. The walls weren’t entirely bare, but were only dotted with a few, tasteful picture frames. It wasn’t until he registered the sheer amount of knickknacks on the shelves, and the counters and … well, everywhere, that he knew Julia Andrews did, in fact, inhabit the place. It was a miracle none of them had been knocked over by Beetlejuice, given his affinity for irritating people.
A number of throw pillows and blankets cluttered the furniture, almost inhibiting actual sitting space. And on nearly every available surface that wasn’t covered by trinkets, were candles of all sorts of colors and sizes. The smell, while pleasant, was still permeated by the hint of cigarette smoke. And while he thought it was stained, he now only suspected that the wallpaper depicting stylized black trees was actually stained yellow on purpose. It gave the room a cozier sensation, complementing the wooden slats lining the walls.
It was nearly identical, in terms of floor plan, to his own house.
Save for one thing—one staple of the home.
Beetlejuice, in all his glory, who was loafing on the sofa, glaring at Tim as he entered the threshold of the home.
“Hey … bud,” Tim faltered as the cat got to his feet and stretched, languidly slinking to the door to greet him. He chanced to close his most immediate exit door, and limped further into the home. “You gonna be nice?” He reached down to let the cat sniff his hand, but the slow, heavy whiffs he was taking was enough to warn Tim out of trying to pet him.
“Please don’t bite—”
Beetlejuice met Tim’s eyes with a leering glare, and opened his mouth to release an intense hiss that had Tim pulling his hand back rapidly.
“Ok, no physical contact, got it.”
As per Julia’s instructions, he toed around the nightmare cat to get into the kitchen. On the counter, he found the sticky note directing that the plastic bag of kibble he was looking at, was, in fact, Beetlejuice’s food. Along with the cans of wet food stacked behind it.
‘Fourth cup/dry - morning 8-10 am ish
Half a can/wet - afternoon, 5-7pm ish’
And in smaller, hurried penmanship:
‘And you have to ask him if he’s hungry before he eats—he likes being treated like the little man he is :)’
Tim squinted back at the writing incredulously. The last bit almost looked like another person wrote it entirely. Then again, he could chalk it up to Julia either playing a joke on him, or being serious and forgetting to mention it until the last minute.
Both were probable.
He glanced back to look for the cat in question, only to find him perched on the bar stool by the island. He eyed the bag of food, tail twitching from where it draped over the edge. He was more surprised the cat hadn’t tried to chew the plastic open to eat it himself, but the odd phrasing from Julia popped through his head.
He needed someone to be in the room when he ate.
Tim frowned. There was also a big maybe that he wouldn’t stress out now that Julia wasn’t here to do it instead. Wouldn’t eat or refuse it, stick his nose up and haughtily stalk away. Hiss at him again.
Worst case scenarios.
He grabbed Beetlejuice’s bowl from its tray in the living room, and prepared the pâté slop.
“Don’t know how you like this stuff,” he wrinkled his nose at the smell, but with the way Beetlejuice salivated over it, he’d assumed it was tasty in his little, cat brain.
He hobbled into the living room, free hand gripping the kitchen island edge around until he made it to the next landmark of the living room. Grunting, he nearly dropped the dish as he did his best attempt to lower it in the bowl. But as he turned around to get out of the way of the beast prowling closer, he was left dumbfounded at the very creature left sitting, waiting for him to do … something.
Oh.
No way.
“I … you’ve gotta be kidding,” Tim muttered. “Ok,” he cleared his throat, and motioned to the bowl. “Are you hungry?”
“Mrm!” The cat bolted off the chair, the force of it knocking the chair against the counter with a sharp, jarring noise. Beetlejuice was left unfazed as he nearly barreled into his bowl, promptly chowing down with vigor. Growling in between bites that just ended up sounding more comical than threatening in any way.
If he didn’t know any better, he’d think the cat hadn’t been fed a day in his life the way he swallowed whole mouthfuls.
“You’re gonna choke if you don’t slow down.”
But the cat paid him no mind, even when he inevitably plopped down on the couch to rest his leg. It was annoying having such a bad limp, and with that, he was glad he finally nailed a job that didn’t require too much walking.
Unsurprisingly, it was a crappy job, but crappy job’s paid the bills, and he was in no place to argue. Despite his poor resume history, the gas station that hired him a few days ago was desperate. It wasn’t a horrible place to work long term. They didn’t mind his need to be off his feet most of the day, and he had flexible hours. Add the good enough pay, and decent co-workers that weren’t pushy and that left a not so terrible work day for the foreseeable future.
Until the next month-long disappearance.
But he wouldn’t look this gift horse in the mouth right now. Not while he was still trying to get on his unsteady feet.
A text alert from his phone jarred Tim from his thoughts.
‘Dude there’s like zero good treats around this place :(‘
Tim snorted and texted back a short, ‘At the funeral home?’
The response was immediate. ‘YEAH!!!! That should be criminal, their starving me.’
‘they’re*’
‘Fuck off, old man. I’m baring my soul to you. Fortelling mine own death at this dumb wake, which!! 4 hours is insane to be stuck here for, idk why my mom decided to do that :/’
‘You act like you’re being tortured.’
‘I am! You’re laughing. This place is trying to take another soul and you’re laughing at me :((’
There was a pause as Tim tried to formulate a sentence without cackling, but Julia beat him to it by asking, ‘How’s my sweet son??’
Tim glanced over at the ‘son’ in question.
He was perched on the windowsill overlooking Julia’s backyard, furiously grooming himself. Shrouded by the night sky, it was nearly impossible to discern anything outside through the glass. His torturous brain decided, in that moment, to flash a horrifying visage of someone stalking around out there, looking through the window with their hands cupped around the face. Scratching at the glass with sharp nails.
He shuddered, and turned his phone to snap a grainy photo of Beetlejuice before he could think twice on the thought.
‘Just finished eating.’
‘!! So cute, perfect little man, my sweet boy!’
Tim shook his head and exhaled softly through his nose. At least she seemed in good spirits. He had to worry about how she’d cope after this. The nonchalance was a clear front, but who was he to judge her on her relationship with her parents. He didn’t even have a relationship with the one parent he knew was around and kicking.
Tim made quick work of cleaning Beetlejuice’s litter box the best he could before heading back to his place for another … uneventful night.
Work kept him from thinking too hard about how lonely he actually was in light of Julia being away. Though, to be fair, he also didn’t expect her absence to make him feel that way in the first place. Beetlejuice seemed worse off, though, which actually had been expected. He wailed every time Tim left, but then hissed at him when he came in. He chalked it up to the stresses of his owner’s leaving.
Three days.
That was the projected timing. Of course, given Julia’s frequent texts mostly complaining about how frustrated she was about being around family, and if Beetlejuice was doing ok, he suspected she’d be cutting her trip short. There were sporadic asking’s of how he was healing, but it got buried under her rapid-fire texts about other subjects.
Thankfully, for both of them, Julia cut her trip short.
“Ding dong, the wicked bitch is dead,” Julia beamed back at Tim as soon as he opened his door to her.
“Jeez what a way to ring that in,” he gave her a once over, more out of concern than anything. Still dressed in black. She must have driven off after the burial.
“Well, I got through the worst of it, and I figured we needed to celebrate.” She paused, and reconsidered her words. “Actually, it’s only me that needs to celebrate, but I couldn't do it alone or over there … unfortunately.”
“Yeah definitely wouldn’t have uh, gone over well,” Tim trailed off as she slipped past him inside. He raised his brows and went to open his mouth at the not-quite-intrusion but resigned himself to shutting it, shaking his head, and closing the door. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t need her to come by later anyways.
She made her way to his kitchen to which she immediately dug through his pantry, snatching a bottle of Bourbon and a glass from a cabinet to pour it into.
Content to let her do what she needed to unwind, Tim settled himself down on the couch, happy to wait out her restlessness. The AC thrummed to life, bleeding into the once cozy atmosphere he tried to cultivate. He’d been meaning to turn it down again. For some reason it kept spiking up lately. He made a mental note to call someone about it later in case the AC was on the fritz. Wouldn’t do to have that go out when the dog days hit.
Distantly though, beneath the mechanical whir, a hard thud could be heard, accompanied by a pleasant bell.
Tim straightened up a bit, glancing over his shoulder to gauge Julia’s reaction right as she stilled. Focused on what she’d no doubt heard. And then, when the soft pattering of paws brightened to a brisk trot, and the bell chimed in tandem, he saw the rapid joy replace whatever originally shadowed Julia’s face.
Likely, Beetlejuice’s first instinct was to just see what stranger Tim brought inside, but as soon as he saw it was his mother, he dashed over, all the while meowing and wailing.
“Oh my gosh, my sweet boy!” Alcohol abandoned, Julia scooped the cat up with ease to pepper his forehead with kisses. If a cat could grin, Tim would confidently say Beetlejuice was doing it. His teeth were bared, but held no heat, as open-mouthed purrs bellowed out from him. He butted his head against Julia’s jaw, her chin, her cheek, any part he could access in his temporary, air jail. Finally, when she came down from the giddy high, Julia managed to get out, “Why—“
“He kept throwing such a fit after I left, so I finally brought him here so he wouldn’t be alone.”
More so, Tim was fed up with how loud he was being, and the way the cat screamed and yowled. It made him sound like he was dying and he didn’t want anyone calling the police. So he grabbed his bowls, food and litter box first, and then made the dangerous attempt of grabbing the thing and hauling him over.
Once Julia stopped cooing over him, she set him down on the floor and went about grabbing the two glasses she filled with barely a splash of whiskey each. After handing Tim his own cup, she downed what was in hers in one foul swoop, and collapsed against the couch beside him. “I’m as surprised as I am relieved. Glad he didn’t actually hurt you. He’s not very fond of people trying to pick him up.”
“Other than you, of course?”
“Of course,” she grinned, pointed canines poking out from over her bottom lip.
“He must have been desperate then.”
Julia snorted, “ … Must have.”
She stared at the television ahead of her, studying the vague and blurry reflections of the two of them on its screen. Squinting at it, as if she saw something else within that mottled reflection. Nearly absentmindedly, she started picking at the hangnails around her fingertips. The steady, fwick! fwick! fwick! seemed to echo between them.
“Do you think …” her voice caught in the back of her throat, and she paused for a beat longer as if trying to compose herself, before continuing. “That he’s in hell?”
“Your dad?” The phrasing left Tim more stumped in disbelief than anything. Disbelief in the fact that she seemed so … well, maybe not ok, was the best word, but nonchalant? But just as he was about to ask if she was actually ok, Julia prattled on.
“I think he is,” and then, a few seconds later. “He has to be.”
The sun that peeked through his blinds brightened just a touch, uncovered by the clouds that littered the sky, and cast its light through his shut blinds as best it could. Hitting Julia, and casting light against her angular face. And it was in this light, that Tim caught the first sight of water gathering along her lower eyelid.
“Oh uh,” he couldn’t get anything out before she let out a shaking breath that cracked at the end. And as it cracked, so too did she.
Julia collapsed in on herself, a puddle of tears and apologies.
“I don’t know why I’m crying?” She managed to get out.
Tim sat there; left with the awkward sensation of not knowing what to do. He wasn’t usually on the other end of this sort of thing, so his brain couldn’t quite catch up with the rest of his body. He opened his mouth as she went to swipe furiously at her eyes, and then closed it abruptly when she glared ahead.
What did Brian usually do when he got like that? When everything swam overhead, drowning him beneath. He always had a way of phrasing things to make them sound genuine. He probably didn’t mean half of it; the attempts at consoling this shambling thing that called itself a man, called itself Tim Wright. But he always offered a shoulder to cry on.
Physical comfort?
His hands twitched in his lap as he sucked in a breath, and, after a second’s hesitation, finally got out, “Do you —”
Julia wasted no time in bodily slamming into him, arms snaking around him, nearly squeezing the life out of him. “Just—just hold me, and don’t laugh or I’ll beat your ass.”
“I wouldn’t laugh,” he jerked his head down as best he could as she tucked hers under his chin. “Where’d that come from?”
But she ignored the question, and while he awkwardly rubbed her back, she sobbed. It started as these great heaving gasps for air and eventually quieted down to shuddering hiccoughs. All the while, managing to get out the odd few phrases:
“The bastard didn’t deserve this.”
“He’s rotting in hell and I’m sad—”
“I can’t do this, I’m not—”
“It’s not fair. He gets to abandon his fucking responsibilities again, and I’m not given anything for what he did.”
It wasn’t until a scratchy meow caught their attention that Tim was able to move away. He hadn't even noticed the cat coming up, but here Beetlejuice was, pushing his little head between them and clambering onto Julia’s lap.
While he wasn’t necessarily relieved at being freed from holding her grasp (if anything the warmth that seeped out of him from her lack of contact left him wanting for more), he was grateful the cat finally came around. Because Beetlejuice clearly already knew the drill. Despite his protests earlier, having pushed against his air prison in her arms when she first greeted him, he now seemed content to be smothered. If only by necessity it seemed. Julia didn’t hesitate to squeeze the cat as she laid back against the couch. He shifted until he was splayed out on her chest and, with ears flattened against his skull, glared back at Tim as if it was his fault she was crying.
She wiped at her eyes again, a fruitless task.
“You wanna know something weird?”
Julia’s eyes shifted to meet his, but her head didn’t move. “Sure,” she said weakly.
“Beetlejuice actually got in my lap willingly yesterday.”
The quip worked. Gone was the confused misery, and in its place was surprised amusement. As if she couldn’t fathom the possibility.
“Really?”
“I think he liked what I was playing on the guitar more than me, but it got me a chance to pet him without him hissing at me so I took it.”
“He let you …” she trailed off in her awe, and glanced down at the cat in question. “He’s never done that with anyone except me,” the words came out soft, a croaking whisper of a thing.
But that left Tim with a worse sensation. That maybe that was a bad thing somehow, given her tone of voice. “Is that … good?” Now he was regretting the change of topic because it looked like she was on the verge of tears again.
But Julia surprised him by lifting the cat from under his little arms to nearly stand on her chest. She beamed up at him, “He was a little gentleman!” She brought him back down to peck rapid-fire kisses on his tiny forehead, to which the cat left out a discontent, ‘mrm!’ and wiggled to get out of her grip. She squeezed him once before letting him go so he could drop to the floor. He rapidly licked at the raised fur around his shoulders—embarrassed.
“Scared the shit out of me. I thought he was gonna bite for sure.”
“Yeah," she laughed softly. "I just … he usually rubs against the record player or my stereo when I have something playing, but that's it. Maybe he likes the sound?”
“Well, I didn’t give him a full show.”
Julia shook her head, “No, you doofus—” she cut herself off with a sharp laugh. “Like the vibrations. He’ll lay on top of the stereo and purr his heart out. I wonder if, uh …”
“He did rub against the guitar,” he pointed out.
“That was it,” she grinned and then leaned over to haul the Siamese up again, plopping him onto her lap where he paused, took stock of his surroundings, and then continued to clean himself in his new spot, uncaring. “Such a gentleman, I’m so glad,” she cooed.
Tim couldn’t help but smile at that. “You’re telling me, dude. Your cat is terrifying.”
Julia laughed at that but tilted her head up to stick her nose in the air, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, he’s a perfect angel, right Beatles?”
The cat let out a soft ‘mrow’ at the sound of his name
And then, as if it had just occurred to her, Julia glanced at Tim, expression thoughtful. “You think he understands English?”
Tim just shook his head before stretching out his arms and getting to his feet. “More than I’d like him too.”
“I dunno, I think it's sick as hell,” she said. In a split-second, though, a dawning realization took hold, and she stood up rapidly, a disgruntled Beetlejuice in tow. “Think he’d follow my commands if I asked?”
The tone of her voice was enough to leave Tim wary as he eyed her. There was a mischievous grin rising on her lips as she situated Beetlejuice to face him. And, as if he understood the implications, Beetlejuice flattened his ears against his skull as soon as he caught sight of the man. “I don’t know if I like the sound of that.”
“Aw, come on—don’t you wanna test it?” She grinned and this time it was far more menacing for comfort.
“I’m not fighting a Pokémon trainer in real life—”
Her eyes widened in disbelief, and her hold on the cat faltered just a touch. “You know Pokémon, but not the movie, Beetlejuice?”
Tim stepped back, hands held up in mock surrender as she pressed on, cat held out like a weapon. “I just don't watch that many movies!”
”No excuses, old man!”
And then—
Nothing.
Echoes of peeling laughter rang through Tim’s head as he came to, inside his bedroom.
The third odd occurrence.
In the aftermath of his cast being removed, this was the final one before things got worse. Now, as he woke up to a pounding headache, in clothes he didn't remember putting on.
Light flashed through the window across from him as he wearily lifted his head. Light through blinds left cracked open—to see right into the inky black darkness of the night.
He groaned as he scrubbed his hand over his face, squeezing his eyes shut to try and block the incessant thrum in his head. He was no stranger to this occurrence, though. Of waking up with something missing in his brain. Full of holes and cracks leading to vast canyons of time. All just … gone.
What happened?
What had he done?
Was his leg ok?
The last question was easier to answer, as he hauled his feet over the edge of his creaking mattress, and braced himself for pain which did not come. The relief that blanketed him was immediate, a soothing balm over those troubled worries wriggling around, inside the tensing of his shoulders, his jaw, his body.
Tim took stock of his clothing—that same jacket, and jeans combo with his ratty old sneakers still laced up.
Where relief once covered, there too did dread. It made a quick home within him as he stared at the date on his phone.
July the 18th, 4:00 AM.
A full week had passed and he had no recollection of it whatsoever.
Tim swallowed thickly, and shoved his phone on the charger. He could have just … just blacked out and had no issues whatsoever. Sometimes that happened, he reasoned. But his gut instinct said otherwise. A deep nausea had begun to rise in his stomach and an itch gathered in the back of his throat. He had just enough time to stumble to the bathroom to cough, until he gagged, and until he vomited.
Iron stung the back of his mouth as he hurled, and red stared back at him from inside the toilet bowl.
He nearly puked again at the sight of it.
“This is Julia Andrews, if I didn’t answer your call I’m either busy, or you’re a scammer I don’t wanna bother with. Oh, and if your family, that’s gonna be a big ‘ol middle finger to you too … unless you're Harper, in which case, text me, you know—“
The answering machine beep cut off Julia’s tirade, and Tim was left squeezing his thumb against his phone’s on/off button in tandem.
It was already ten in the morning, and she still hadn’t called him back.
He still had a job because, apparently, he went into work, as usual, every single day he was scheduled. He’d exchanged texts with Julia, had a full trash bin, and Beetlejuice’s stuff was gone. Presumably, back in Julia's house. Which, her car was still missing since he first came to, and that worried him greatly, but he held out the relief that she was just running errands. The fact that her car was gone since four in the morning was nothing to worry about.
Nothing wrong at all, even if the nausea bubbling in his stomach said otherwise.
What bothered him the most was his clothes. Even if he’d apparently gone on, business as usual, there was still the fact that he had that same getup that he usually did following those bad blackouts. The ones that led to broken legs, and his car parked beneath trees he didn’t recognize.
Right before it reached twelve, Tim had taken a brief moment to smoke in his backyard, just beneath the awning. He’d already settled into cleaner clothes, content to just recover mentally, be thankful it was a Sunday (he didn’t know how he would have recovered if he also had to go to work that same day), and go on as best he could, when he saw a familiar flash of white dart beneath the bushes lining his backyard's fence.
Beetlejuice.
Cigarette long forgotten on the concrete flooring, Tim hurried over to greet the hissing fury beneath the foliage.
His tail was puffed up nearly to the size of his body, and his eyes were blown out in wide, black, inky pools. But despite the obvious terror, he let Tim grab him with biting him. Beetlejuice was mostly all bark at this point anyways. Even if he howled and spit at him earlier, he was content to bury himself in Tim’s arms once he scooped him up.
He set the cat inside and shut the backdoor, locking it and rechecking it before making his way to Julia’s.
Except, when he saw her car was still missing, he resigned himself to texting her about the situation, and heading back inside.
But as the day waned on, Julia didn’t respond, or … show up.
Every call went to voicemail, and every attempt to text her was met with radio silence.
Julia wouldn’t just ignore him like that. Not unless something was wrong.
So when the clock struck nine at night, and Tim had finally had enough of waiting, he walked over to her house and went to knock on the door.
But—
The door was unlocked, left ajar, and Tim felt … felt what, exactly? Unnerved, terrified, rooted to the floor because his feet wouldn't move? He let out a shuddering breath before pushing his body to move forward.
He didn’t know why he was on edge.
Even if the door was ajar, and the lights were off, and there was nothing visibly out of place, there was always an answer right?
She could have sleep-walked out of there, forgotten to close the door, driven her car off in her sleeping state, gotten into a car accident—she might be in a hospital right now. But that guilt-ridden part of his conscious screamed out that it was his fault somehow; that he was the reason she was gone, because there was just
no
trace
of he
r.
Tim sat at her dining room table, fiddling with a tapered candle stuck to the wooden center, and dialing 911 before he could even register what he was doing. When calling hospitals around the area turned up nothing, he supposed his brain had the natural inclination to turn here.
“Nine-one-one, what is the location of your emergency?”
Tim rattled off the address with only a second of hesitance. Amazed his brain could catch up with the startled fear that struck him when a human being actually picked up. He swallowed down his errant heartbeat and tacked on, “It’s my friend's address—she’s missing.”
“Ok, sir, what is your friend’s name?”
“Uh Julia Andrews. She goes by Jules, she has a uh—sorry, I just,” his voice kept shaking. He wanted to reach back inside his mouth and squeeze until it stopped.
But his hands wouldn’t stop shaking either, and he doubted the two would cancel each other out.
“Don’t worry, sir, you’re doing fine. When was the last time you saw Julia?”
Did he answer with the truth? Of what he, himself, saw? If so, the answer was a weighted week prior, following the funeral of her father. If he answered with the lie, which was technically true, then likely a day ago.
He settled with the lie-truth.
“Yesterday morning.”
There was a weighted silence from the other end before the operator responded. “How old is Julia?”
“I think around her early twenties, twenty-three or twenty-four. She’s maybe a year or two younger than me. She didn’t really celebrate, and she didn’t … like telling her age,” truth was, he didn’t recall her ever telling him.
He didn’t even know her birthday.
Some friend he was.
He pressed a squeezed fist against his mouth to stop it from shaking.
“Does she live alone?”
“Yeah, well … no, I mean, she has a cat.”
“Is her car still there?”
“No, and her phone is missing.” He was quick to answer, but then, without thinking of its importance, he added, “But she left her cat behind.”
Because that was significant.
“Are you able to enter her home?”
“Yeah, I’m here now, the door was left unlocked, but I also have the spare key.” He didn’t know why that mattered. Maybe some half-ditch effort to clear himself from guilt even though he didn’t know—
“Are there any signs of a struggle?”
“Not that I can tell, but she—I don’t know she wouldn’t just leave. She would have been back by now but her car’s been missing since yesterday and I can’t—she hasn’t answered her phone at all.”
“That’s ok sir, calm down. Can I get your name and a good number to reach you, please?”
Tim stared back at the tiny screen, left on speakerphone and counting the agonizing seconds of silence in the call’s time.
2:51
2:52
2:53
2:54
“You don’t … are you not understanding how serious this is? She wouldn’t just get up and leave, especially not without her cat, she loves him—“
“Sir, please—“
“You don’t get it!” His voice was raising but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. “She isn’t like that, she can’t just begone. She has a cat that depends on her, and a friend and, and a sister, who cares about her well-being and if she gets home safely!”
He heaved out and in, great big gulps of air. His chest was tight, too tight to house the lungs that needed far too much oxygen, and now his hearing—he couldn’t—the lady was—
“—do, but we need definitive proof, and it hasn’t been a full forty-eight hours yet. I’ll be honest here, she is a grown adult, and while these cases matter, her’s just doesn’t have anything substantial to warrant a search.”
His brain finally caught up fast enough to get out a stifled, “So you’re gonna do nothing.”
But it was more a statement than a question.
“At this time, we can file away the request, but I cannot guarantee anything else at this time. My suggestion is to get a hold of her family and other friends; see if they know where she is.”
“She doesn’t … sure,” he muttered, the fight having been drained out of him. “Sure I’ll reach out.”
“I apologize, sir but if there’s anything else—”
Tim disconnected the call and slammed his fist against the table, rattling it down to its feet.
Those gleeful peels of laughter still echoed in his head. She’d been so morose, and then to bounce back like that from such a small thing like her cat being nice to someone …
Her home felt devoid of its charm, of its warmth. The backsplash of trees on the wallpaper behind her television and bookshelves felt sinister somehow. And all the little trinkets meant nothing outside of tacky nostalgia of a person who wasn’t there to enjoy it—all of the life that gave it that quality was gone. In its place was something hollow.
A shell of its former self that felt sick, somehow.
So, Tim searched.
He turned the house over in his effort to find something, anything worth finding. A phone number, an address, an email, for literally anyone else.
All he got was the mirror in the bathroom, that held a makeshift calendar drawn in erasable marker—days marked off with every single one holding a reminder to take her ‘psycho meds,’ as she titled them. He noted the lack of July 17th being marked, and the number written beside it. But when he received the answering machine to her therapist, he hung up.
No need to bother going down that road, they wouldn’t tell him anything anyways given HIPPA laws. Though he did call again to leave a message voicing concerns about her whereabouts, and if they could, to reach out to her.
The last room he checked was one that was difficult to open at the end of the hall. The door felt weighted, somehow, and it caught against its frame. As if it was warped; not quite fitting where it had been placed.
Tim didn’t know what he was looking at, at first.
All he could register was that this room had a lot of shelving. Like, almost two walls covered up by shelves. And they weren’t empty, either. No, they were filled to the brim with books and odd journals; picture frames with the eyes of most people cut out.
As hesitant as he was, and given the fact that his brain had come to a screeching halt, Tim stumbled forward and into the oddity that was this … library? Study? He didn’t know, and he wasn’t quite sure if it did have a name to begin with.
Because this wasn’t hers.
Couldn’t be.
This room with a desk pushed against the wall, with sticky notes taped against every inch of the space behind it. All filled with gibberish scribbling and dates, times, names. Odd scrambling words with no meaning, sometimes numbers—ones and zeroes—while others held the odd scratchy drawing of stick-like trees with words planted haphazardly around.
NO EYES.
DARK PLACE.
HOLES IN THE DIRT—ROTTING.
UP IN THE TREES.
CAN’T SEE, RUN, LEAVE.
Every instance of the phrasing was scrawled in black sharpie, bold and eye-catching in a sickening sort of way.
No, that couldn’t be hers at all.
But when he turned around to make his way out, to get a breath of air away from this place, something caught his eye. A flash of white at the window.
Tim swallowed down his stark terror and squeezed his hands into fists. A poor attempt at a brave front, but enough to bolster him with enough confidence to haul the window up, and snatch the paper tacked to the lip of the bottom edge.
It was a letter, sort of. In the dim overhead light, he could make out numbers, the circle around the bottom page number ‘4’ with an X almost crossing over it. There were the odd letters he made out in the mess of a page he held. It sort of reminded him of the blackout poetry stuff they used to have him do when he was younger. A way to express both creativity, and an understanding of how to format with what you’d been given.
Making do.
But how he’d make do with this scrambled mess, he wasn’t sure. So, he folded it into a small square and shoved it in his pocket. If anything, it was big enough to be his best lead. He imagined.
Tim turned on his heel after shutting the window tight and locking it. At the very least, he had her computer, and that had to have something more substantial.
As much as the question stumped him in the beginning, Tim knew the password could only be some variation of Beetlejuice’s name. But he didn’t have to be hemming and hawing for too long. Behind the monitor, on the wall of sticky notes, a phrase stuck out to him.
‘PASSWORD - Beetle58423?’
It had several crossed out previous variations before this. He just had to hope that was the latest one.
For once, luck was on his side in a way that mattered. The computer was quick to accept the password, but loading the actual desktop screen was a nightmare. And for as much as it confused him, Tim quickly got the answer to why, when all of the files saved and pinned to her screen came popping up.
It wasn’t just alarming, it was horrific to see the state of disorganized chaos left there. Julia had so many files saved to her desktop it wasn’t even funny in a small way. He couldn't make out any sort of background screensaver, it was just all … files. Files with gibberish names, with binary code, or with the odd phrase of ‘Cam 1’ and ‘Cam 2’ and so on.
What stood out there, though, above all else, was sat in the very center. A file labeled: ‘Marble Hornets Record.’
On instinct, he clicked on it, and stared with wide-eyed disbelief at the nearly sixty notepad files that opened to flippant notes about unnamed people’s schedules, twitter accounts, passwords, and so on.
And that … that caused Tim to really sit back and think, because where the hell had he heard of that name before? It was a really odd name, so it was able to stand out pretty well.
Marble Hornets.
Marble Hornets?
He kept scrolling down the list of named files, until one stopped him in his tracks. One that swung the floodgates wide open.
Merrick, Jay.
Tim swore and scrambled for his phone, scanning through his list of contacts.
Sure enough. There he was. Set only as, ‘Jay M (Marble Hornets Project).’
He had a lead.
