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 Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2016 6:08 pm
They're running and Shiloh's legs are screaming. His lungs are burning. There's sweat dripping down the back of his neck and he feels wolves licking at his ankles. He doesn't look behind him. He can't; it's game over if he does.
There's a door at the end of the long, silver hallway of the Sorrowful One's court. Shiloh slams his wrist down on the handle, shoving the door open, feeling his heart catch in his throat because god damn he has to stop to get the damn door open. They'll catch him. They'll catch him and they'll catch Jamie and it'll be done, they'll be dead, they'll be—
...
...This house is quiet. It's dilapidated. There's a television broadcasting some late night infomercial and it keeps cutting out with static; whoever lives here doesn't care about the cable quality, apparently. Which...
Does anyone actually live here?
Shiloh's still in overdrive; he can't think—he can barely breathe, and yet... yet he can't tear his eyes away from the abandoned stack of beer cans next to the couch. It's a scene he hasn't seen in months and he doesn't know how to critique the picture. He hasn't noticed the fact that his aquamarine garments have shifted into normalcy; there's a jacket, a shirt, jeans.
His hand is ice, frozen on the door knob.
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Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2016 7:55 pm
It feels like the shadows are right on their heels, driving them further, forcing them to run. It doesn't matter whether the chase is real or fabricated, because in his mind Jamie fears being caught, he fears being separated from Shiloh again. There are a lot of other things he fears, too, but they're stomped flat beneath his feet as he moves. There's no time to stop and consider.
When Shiloh struggles with the door, Jamie is silent save his heavy breathing, knowing there's nothing he can do that wouldn't get in the way. It's like watching a movie more than anything. It's a scene he can't interact with.
And honestly, even when the door is finally open to the other side it feels that way. It's a sight he doesn't recognize and one that feels so devoid of warmth and life that continuing inside should be a crime. Jamie doesn't even want to speak at first, as if breaking the low, static-filled hum of the atmosphere will shatter their world into something irreversible. He has to open his mouth, though. If he doesn't, no one will.
"Where... are we?" he asks between strained breaths finally calming. He takes a step inside, turns to look at Shiloh, and his mouth drops. Immediately his hands shoot to his own head. Between his fingers is thick, familiar fabric. The beanie... it was back, it was safe. He yanks it down and cradles it to his chest like a child.
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Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2016 8:20 pm
"I don't..." the words die in his throat, the light goes out. It's dark in here except for the television, and Shiloh can't help but watch it. He's mesmerized by the pictures, the lights, the actions. It doesn't matter if the man is trying to sell him on useless conjecture; he's hooked like he's never seen this sort of thing before. When he tries to remember his room, there isn't a light box in there, it's blue—no, grey? Fanciful— no, bland? He looks around the room.
Bland.
It isn't until he looks at Jamie that he notices his attire. Jamie is cradling someone to his chest and Shiloh can't shake the familiarity, but he can't tell what either. He snorts a sound out of his nose that might be indignation or fear before looking down at his feet, beautiful ivory shoes replaced with someone he can scarcely call a shoe; they're falling apart, whatever they are, and he doesn't need rain to know the holes in the fabric would betray him. He sucks in a breath. He exhales.
The man on the tv says don't miss this opportunity! in such a cheery voice that suddenly, Shiloh feels like shutting the box off. He feels like man first discovering fire and he hates it.
"This isn't court." he states, voice void of any real tone. It's drop dead and weighted, cautious, exhausted. He walks over to the pile of aluminum cans and kicks the tower over. He's not sure why, but it makes him feel better.
One of the cans is half full. It spills its contents onto the floor. Shiloh notices it isn't the first stain. "I don't like this place." he says suddenly, body ridged, but he can't discern why. Is it because of the change? Is it because it's different? This is Ashdown, he knows, it has to be, but...?
He stomps over to the stair well, looking up at the white circles that indicated the presence of a handrail. Whoever owned the house had pained the walls white; they contrasted, told stories. In a rush he dashes off again, this time finding his way into the linoleum paved kitchen. There's a table but no chairs. There's a fridge and—
—nothing in it, save for some indiscernible dinner left over from however many weeks prior. The light flickers. It's grimy, rotted, left behind. Shiloh exhales a shaken breath.
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Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2016 9:11 pm
Jamie is surprised when his anxiety doesn't immediately demand they turn and leave, like they're not just invading some stranger's residence. For an untold reason he doesn't feel any prickles of worry over the fact that the TV is on as if someone might return from the other room any second. The nervousness Jamie feels is instead rooted in the clatter of cans against carpet, in the stains that seem as much a part of the floor as they do the walls and the ceiling and the very air they're breathing. It's the tiniest details that make things feel off in ways he doesn't understand.
Jamie is uncomfortable, but it's obvious Shiloh is more so. He clings to his beanie—the one that used to be Shiloh's—like a lifeline. It's all he has left to tie him to a world that only exists in memories now. In this particular moment, it's all he has to steady him enough that he can follow Shiloh around the house without shaking.
"No one's here..." It was both an observation and a prediction. Eerily the light flickered overhead and Shiloh's shadow stuttered against the countertops next to the fridge. From the corner of his eye, it looked like another person. Another Shiloh.
"Should we leave?" he asked, cautiously touching Shiloh's shoulder as he avoided looking in the fridge or anywhere that wasn't his back. I don't like this place, either.
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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2016 12:59 pm
"I want to." he says a little too quickly, panic hitching in his throat. He hits a concrete wall on the fast track—it's no stops, 80 miles per hour—where would he even go? He's lived his life so long (it seemed so long, but it was only three months, three long months) and—how is he supposed to command his own free will? How is he supposed to act on his own? Exist on his own? He doesn't even know where he lived or anything about his old life; no, he buried that with his pain long ago.
Spite the shadows seem to murmur, and it makes the hair rise on the back of Shiloh's neck. It makes his skin break out into goosebumps. He's chilled but the air isn't cold, it's hot and heavy and oppressive. His breathing stutters, the core of his chest shaking. Jamie touching his back was little comfort.
Spite.
"I-I can't." there's something shackling him to this place. When Shiloh thinks of the word 'home' it's a dilapidated image of the lapis court and something grayer, something normal, someplace where it doesn't always rain and yet feels like a downpour. Water drips from the sink—quiet, staccato, even—like a heart beat. It plops against the water ringing around the drain and it sounds like glass shattering.
"I can't." he repeated.
He finally acted. He tore himself from the malevolence of the kitchen to the stair well, ascending it, swallowing the dry lump in his throat, cringing when the steps creaked.
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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2016 2:49 pm
It would be some time later when Jamie learned why Shiloh sounded so desperate as he denied his own will to leave. Now, in the moment, he couldn't understand it.
"Shiloh... we can, we just-" His hand recoiled at the sudden movement as Shiloh shot out of the kitchen. "H-Hey!"
What was this place and why did it feel like this; like they shouldn't be here, like they shouldn't touch anything, yet like it had its claws in Shiloh in the worst way. Its strangeness was akin to Other Ashdown, but it wasn't. No, this was most definitely the real world. They had escaped. If Jamie allowed himself to doubt that, he might've panicked.
"Wait for me..." he whispered under his breath, refusing to let him go alone, but careful as he moved up the stairs with his paws.
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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2016 2:55 pm
Shiloh wasn't listening to Jamie, not now, not as he got to the top of the stairs. The hallway was barren. There were four doors: Shiloh started at the one furthest from the others, consequently the biggest. There was a bed and an ashtray over piled with cigarettes, ash left on the presumably-once-white sheets. Shiloh looks at the entryway to the closet.
If he could bristle, he would.
The door slams behind his ankles as he gets out. He felt like he shouldn't have seen what he just saw, but why? His skin is crawling. "I..." he feels sick but he cant say it.
It's like a stageplay vaudeville as he goes down the rest of the doors. Next one, bathroom. It's filthy. Next one, empty. There's something sad about that room. Next one— a bed. A bed?
A bed.
It's gray.
It's bland.
"Oh my god..." Shiloh whispered under his breath.
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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2016 3:10 pm
"S-Shiloh..." Even with his hat as a security blanket, Jamie was beginning to lose his nerve, beginning to fray at the edges and shiver where he stands. Watching his friend pace back and forth with a franticness he couldn't properly place made his anxiety spike and his heart squeeze within the confines of his rib cage.
"W-What is it? What did you see?" he tried to ask, to coax the words that held fast on Shiloh's tongue. He didn't receive an answer and it felt wrong to press. All he could do was watch, knuckles white around the fabric of the beanie, standing as close to the wall as he could be without touching it. It was only when Shiloh discovered the scene behind door number four that Jamie found it in himself to get closer again.
For a second time he tried, "What... is it, Shiloh...?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2016 3:34 pm
"What is it Shiloh?"
He swallows.
"What... is it, Shiloh?"
His fingers twitch against his palms, tiny crescents left behind on his skin. "I don't..." he tries again but his words feel like sandpaper grinding against sandpaper, rough and unnatural and painful and absolutely disgustingly dry. He tried to swallow again, but the muscles wouldn't work. He's left with dysphagia in his stress.
"...I know this place." he finally manages, walking forward. Placing a gentle hand on the bedsheet, his lip curls. It isn't very soft.
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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2016 5:41 pm
Shiloh told him "I know this place" and Jamie put two and two together. It's like puzzle pieces fitting into one even though they're both damaged and torn. "Oh..." he said in response and at first it's all he could get out. Looking around the room, the bland, grey space that does little to speak to him of Shiloh, it just doesn't feel right. It didn't match the Shiloh he remembered at all.
Then again, when Jamie recalled the situation with Shiloh's father, he realized it probably shouldn't be so surprising.
"You... do?" He gathered himself enough to step foot inside. It was a slow, surreal trek to the bed. "Then is... do you think this is your house? I-I, um, I've never been here."
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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2016 6:14 pm
Shiloh's face is blank as he responds, "I don't... I don't know why... or how..."
But he doesn't seem keen on the notion of a house. How could someone live here? How could someone live like this? It didn't even feel like anyone had been living here—and that's when it clicks. Why would it? He had been replaced. Who did that leave? There's a blurry figure in his mind, tall and imposing, but it isn't Melany. He doesn't know who it is. He's not sure he wants to.
Instead he seats himself on the bed, staring idly at his hands and the long jacket sleeves clinging to his wrists. He touches the fabric. It's soft and worn and weathered. His pants have holes in them. His sneakers are ratty. It's atrocious. The tree outside the window blows in the wind and smacks against this house.
Shiloh jumps, foot catching something under the bed, the only semblance of personality to this entire room.
"I-I know this place..." he repeats like its gospel, stooping down to grab the corner of the object in his hands. It's a book. The cover is hardback but stained in spots. He opens it.
It's filled with sketches. There's rooms with lots of tiny desks. There's sketches of what looks like a park. There's flowers. There's turtles. There's fish.
There's Jamie. It's labeled 6/1.
They stop after that. Shiloh doesn't say a word.
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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2016 6:56 pm
When the sketchbook comes out, Jamie knows immediately what it is before it's opened. He holds his breath, almost afraid to see what the pages might hold. It was almost like coming back to a game of Animal Crossing after far too long and wondering who left you this time. Except this was real life and the fear was that much deeper and more significant.
What he sees is both what he expects and what he doesn't. The pages are dated in some places, proof the sketches truly were Shiloh's, and then they stop suddenly. It's barely halfway through the book.
6/1, the last drawing. It was hard to decide whether he should be stuck on the date itself, likely one of Shiloh's last days in Ashdown, or the subject matter, the picture of his own happy face looking back at him. Back then it would've been a mirror image. Now Jamie was frowning. Now he was fighting to keep the twist of his heart from making him cry.
Slowly, deliberately, the beanie goes back on. It was warm from his hands and comforting as it covers his elongated ears.
He can't comment on the drawing because if he did he'd lose it. Instead he stooped down, pulling out another sketchbook and another and setting them on the bed. Underneath he could see so many more, a testament to how much Shiloh loved to draw. That's when his fingers brushed against something else, solid but decidedly not a book.
Without asking Shiloh if it was okay, assuming he wouldn't have an answer, Jamie took the box from under the bed.
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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2016 7:17 pm
"It's you." Shiloh speaks even though the silence speaks volumes. He doesn't tear his eyes away from the smiling face, even as Jamie movies to unearth more things from the grave under the bed. "It's you." he repeats, and suddenly the memories softly fit back together. This really is his room. This really is his house.
"We really were friends..." and he closes the book, voice choking out into a whisper, the way a flame flickers on a candle. He doesn't know what else to do besides staring at the artifact in his hands, and he only tears his attention away when Jamie produces a box.
His head tilts to the side, weary with exhaustion and apprehension. "Those're my..." he reaches forward for the box, flipping it open to reveal hundreds of cassette tapes. There's a recorder for them sitting on top. He exhales softly, joining Jamie down on the floor.
There's another box filled with cassettes too, except this one is labeled "empty" and it isn't near as full. When he turns his attention back to the first box, he gives it a slow look before plucking up one of the tapes. There's a date on it. There's a date on all of them. They go back for months, maybe years.
He grabs the one on top, and in addition to a date it has "for shiloh" scrawled under it. Shiloh knows this is his own handwriting. He knows it's too neat for his own handwriting too; so who's is it?
He shoves it back into the box.
"This is my room." he states calmly, almost too calmly. "We—I—"
"We should go." there's a sense of urgency there, but it's so tired and dead that it's monotone and flat.
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Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 8:09 am
Shiloh doesn't continue the thought and he doesn't need to. What they are isn't a mystery, because Shiloh had told Jamie about the audio journals, about how he used them because of his dyslexia. Here in this box were countless collections of Shiloh's feelings, most likely good and bad. It was all the things he felt he needed to say.
He watched Shiloh look over one of the tapes and tried to read the cues in his expression, but... There were none, not really. His friend looked tired. He looked ready for this trip down memory lane to be over, but not much else.
When Shiloh told him it was time to go, Jamie listened.
"Okay, but I think... we should take some of this with us." It's not as if they won't be back. This was Shiloh's house, after all, but something in the urgency compelled him to follow his gut on this one.
Behind the door he finds a backpack. It was Shiloh's, from high school, and was still full of notebooks and folders and loose paper. Beel never bothered to clean it out, but Jamie did now, discarding the schoolwork on the bed so he could fit as many sketchbooks as possible.
"Can you, um, can you carry one of these?" As he asked he motioned to a box. There was some control in his voice now as he fought back the tendrils of worry from moments ago. His heart was beating an uncomfortable rhythm, but he was ready to leave. "We can go to my place..."
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Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 6:39 pm
Shiloh's expression was glazed over as Jamie started to move around him, speaking in tongues, communicating in an emotion he wasn't quite fluent in. The realization that this was his house coupled with the realization that he had had a life before Melany was overwhelming. Again, his throat felt like sandpaper rubbing against sandpaper, gravely and rough and harsh against the shallow breaths he was trying so desperately to breathe.
It's the control in Jamie's voice that makes him shoot to attention; it's the command. He's like a hound, collar pressed against neck, choked and frothed and ready to spring loose. Melany made him this way. She trained him to obey, she taught him discipline, she gave him solace and purpose in absolute obedience. She festered spite in the core of his stomach and she crushed his hope, threw reigns around his spirit, made him a weapon. For what reason? He couldn't know. Maybe he would be free if she had died—and maybe she still did, maybe—but those people were trying to save her, and things like Melany die hard.
Even if she was dead, she would live in every dark crevice of his mind. It was life-like enough.
"Yes." it's not 'yeah', it's not 'sure', it's "Absolutely.", because he can't say no, he can't refuse, he's scared to. What can Jamie do to him? Nothing. Does it calm him? Not even slightly.
He stoops down and picks up the box effortlessly.
"That's fine." his voice is smooth and collected despite how his hands shake. It doesn't matter, so long as the rest of his body is poised, so long that he carries himself elegantly. His eyes can be dead inside, but so long as he listens, he has a purpose.
Something buzzes in the backpack Jamie's rifling through. It's got five percent battery left and hundreds of missed calls.
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