The walls were bleak and unfamiliar. Nothing was notable about them, in that case. The walls were shrouded in the darkness that the closed blinds created. No light poured in and it gave the room a solemn sort of feel— an underlying uncomfortableness.
The bed wasn’t soft, nor hard, but not one that is particularly preferred. That middle ground that isn’t “Just right!” as Goldilocks would have said, but “Good enough...,” as anyone down on their luck would proclaim. The sheets were thick. The type of thick that makes good blankets in winter, but not-so-great ones in summer.
The atmosphere was overall a drab one, and whether the thumping noise that echoed in the room made everything less drab or even more drab was unclear. It added, but maybe it actually subtracted? Glances around the room didn’t help Jessica know more about the room she was in. It just made her situation seem worse.
She had a duffle bag of stuff that were probably hastily packed, but she wouldn’t know. She couldn’t remember. It was then that she realized how much worse the situation was. Where was she? Why was she here? She looks like she was running from something— maybe someone—, but why? Why is she here in a room she’s never seen before?
It’s obviously a hotel room, but it makes her anxious nonetheless. A tension in the air that suffocates, but not fully, instead leaving her feeling breathless. Certainly not the good kind of breathless. Not the kind where you danced till you found yourself euphoric and out of breath. The sort of breathless where it’s like you’re screaming your lungs out into a pillow because how else would you vent your troubles?
The contents of her bag were as follows: clothes and money. She very quickly counted her money. It was too much money for a short vacation— for a getaway from home (without Amy, though? Because she knows she wasn’t tired of Amy)—, but too little for anything long-term (so she obviously hadn’t planned on, say, moving somewhere else). It adds further anxiety to her mind because why would she need this amount? And she doesn’t see Amy anywhere near her. What (or who) was she trying to get away from?
IT WATCHES BUT,
There weren’t enough clothes to last her forever. Enough, yes, to swap daily, if she washed every few days that is. Not her full wardrobe, she notices, and certainly picked without abandon. She hadn’t picked any particular combinations, so this was not a wardrobe suited for some local event. So surely she didn’t get drunk and end up in some hotel. Her head hurt, but not like the pain a blackout drunk would feel. Like if something had been ripped from her, something important, but not vital.
Ending it with her bag, she stands up firmly— almost like she was confronting a problem—, but deflates when she doesn’t even know half of the problem. She’s somewhere she doesn’t know and can’t recall the previous days. Last she remembers, she and her roommate Amy were chatting in their living room about family or something. But she feels like that is far too distant a memory.
She sighs and walks groggily around the room and checks all the doors. One of the doors leads to another door that is locked, so she decides to continue before going to it. The other door leads to a bathroom and the last is a doorway to some midway space between it and the door leading to the hallway.
The hallway is bright— much more than her room was— and empty of people. She ignores that fact because not all hotels are bustling, and not everyone walks through the halls as comfortably as they would in their own homes. The emptiness of the hallway, however, gnaws at her emotions like the unfamiliarity of her situation does. She enters her room again and searches for her phone. It lays upon the nightstand and she grabs it.
The… The time must be wrong? It’s a date she can’t recall ever being close to. Her last memory was with Amy, and that was months back (according to how the dates would match up). How much time has she lost?
WOULD CONFIDENCE DEFER ITS PRESENCE???
She clutches her head, exhaustion overtaking her in a rather mental sense of things. She was tired beyond what she could fathom and there was a paranoia falling upon her. Her mind racing with “Where am I?”s and “What do I do?”s. She goes to her contacts, ready to contact someone, Amy maybe. They were thick as thieves, after all.
But Amy did not answer, and that settled paranoia into her skin similarly to how the overwhelming heat of the sun melts ice. She would have called her family had this newfound flood of emotion not made her worry as to what calling would lead to.
So she stayed in her room, panicked over feeling lost— over the feeling of having lost something. Memories? She’s lost those for sure, if the date on her phone is anything to go by and so, by result, she has lost time. But it is not the matter of lost time or the prospect of losing memories that has her worried. It is the worry that she has lost herself in it.
Eventually she caught sight of a card by the T.V. and upon closer inspection, realized it was her room key. Useful, knowing full well that getting locked out of the one place that could ground her right now would prove to be the worst thing to happen. She grabs it and leaves her room in search of the front desk. She could ask about her stay and hope to know more about her situation.
Passing by a man in the hall, she sets out for it with a confident and determined stride. Eventually, she manages to speak to the lady at the front desk. She had hoped it would be more helpful than it was, but was it futile from the beginning?
WOULD IT INSTEAD PLAGUE ONE’S SOUL TILL THEY ARE LEFT FEELING LOST???
The lady told her that it was a night for one booking, but that Jessica had also come in with a man whom she chose to get a conjoined room with. With a smile, she thanked the lady and went back to her room, more anxious than before.
Why had she arrived with a man she can’t remember? If he was a threat to her, he would be more open about interacting with her? Their shared rooms would have been open to each other, right? Maybe he would have even knocked to check on her. That locked door must’ve led to his room then? Right? Right ?
She thought about it more, worried he might not be safe, but after extending her stay at the hotel, he seems to not know her, too. So she lets a few days pass before she grasps at the first thing to talk to him about. His chest-mounted camera.
She knows that’s what it is. It’s only obvious with how close she is to the man, but she needs to talk to him, so she only asks him what it is. And he was awkward about his answers, telling her it’s for a documentary on hotels . She may not be the type of person to make documentaries, but documentaries in a hotel that isn’t some five star one? A review on the hotel would have been more believable. But she settles on introducing herself so she could learn his name.
When he tells her his, she can’t help the sense of familiarity washing over her. Comforting at first, but the familiarity eats at her like the unfamiliarity does. The name “Jay Merrick” rings a loud bell, but it’s distant and distorted. He fumbles after she tells him that it sounds familiar, confused as to how she might even know him. A voice inside her head tells her that he seemed scared of that.
But like he said, “It’s a pretty common name.” If she’s grasping at straws with this, she’d rather do so more than she would like to be in the dark.
THE FAMILIAR HAS BECOME A THREAT BECAUSE OF IT AND
Days pass and Jay barely speaks to her. Maybe a passing “Hi,” but it’s because she speaks to him first. He seems anxious, too, more than her, like if he is avoiding something. She needs to figure something out and she expects he has the answers.
But first she needs to settle a personal problem. It may be the environment or the situation she has found herself in, but she barely sleeps. She spends time at night tossing and turning, unable to close her eyes long enough to fall into a slumber. Something deep within her seems to prevent her from sleeping. It's as if she knows something that she also doesn’t. An instinct her body is keeping track of, but one that her mind fails to.
Over the coming days, she still tries to talk to Jay because now it’s increasingly eerie that he, aside from hotel staff, is the only person she has ever seen there. She has seen other people, thankfully, such as those when she works (the job she had to take up just so she could stay in the hotel much longer), but in the hotel? Not a single person that hasn’t already been there. And on a roadside hotel, too? People would most likely stop by at least a few times.
She goes to his door to knock, but he mustn't be there because any normal person would have answered. So she grabs her phone and holds it to her ear as she waits outside her door, hoping he gets there before she has to leave for work.
The moment she notices him, she pretends to be on the phone with someone and uses that as a moment to see how to strike a conversation. He has groceries which is weird, because 1) if he was filming a documentary (still absurd), he would not be in the hotel for a month with food, and 2) it has been around one month and he has made no move to leave. She asks him about it, because maybe he’s just some hotel hermit .
“What are you doing here? You’ve been here for a while…” She asks him, to which he tells her his house is being renovated.
His house is being renovated ?!? He doesn’t even bother continuing his bullshit hotel documentary story and that leaves her stewing with a bit of unfondness as she leaves for work. He’s lying to her for what reason?
Is he hiding something from her ? Something deep inside says no, but she wants to believe otherwise. She has been in an unfamiliar place for around a whole month and the least Jay could do is lie consistently.
IT EXPECTS YOU TO FALL TO FAMILIARITY,
That night, Jessica feels asleep, but even in her dreams she feels awake and uneasy. Her thoughts are a blur, but something in her soul feels like it is lagging behind a moving body. She feels dazed and without a clear head. She feels slow, but fast. She feels lost and found at the same time. She feels like a contradiction, but has no mind to figure out why.
But she hears the knocks on her door and it brings her back to reality. She’s groggy and half-awake, but it’s reality nonetheless. The knocking wasn’t the front door, but rather the door connecting to Jay’s room. She walks towards it and forgets to take note of the fact that she was already standing. But before she can open the door, she coughs, her throat having suddenly felt raspy (as has suddenly been happening during her stay at the hotel).
When she does open the door, Jay tells her about loud noises coming from her room. The loudest noises she heard had to have been Jay’s knocks and when she tells him she just woke, he seems confused. He must’ve thought she was the one making the noise? It leaves her feeling sleepless once again, and she doesn’t go back to sleep that night, worried that she’s lost herself to her dreams— lost herself in her dreams.
BUT THE FAMILIAR WILL KILL YOU,
The forest is quiet, but not quiet in the sense that everything is calm. No, it was quiet as if there was no life. The leaves did not rustle, birds did not chirp, and bugs did not buzz. It was as if time was frozen— in fact, there may have been no time at all such a weird place— and it was distressing.
The trees were tall and it did not look like there was a sky— except there was a void. It was dark, but it may not have been night. Surely, there must not exist a day in this world. It was clear that this world lacked any sort of time. The forest in it’s timeless horror was, unfortunately, not as clear. It was blurry— hazy like an unfocused image. There was no sound, but there was a static. The static was almost a feeling, a sense, but not a noise nor a physical thing. The static was akin to hearing, to smelling, to seeing, to existing .
It is an uneasiness. It is an entity. It is terrifying.
It is all so terrifying to the lost child in the woods, learning all this for the first time (but she has learned it all already). She does not know how she got there, but she was there in the woods, alone (but not really). She does not know why she is there, but she was already running, towards something (but actually away from everything).
She is running, no thoughts in her mind, but there are feelings in her being. She feels like she is watched. A young child lost in the woods, but she is unaware as to when she got lost. She is running, but she has no mind to know what from, yet she still runs. Had she any mind, she would have assumed she was running from a monster.
Because do children not all run a monster? Do children not all run from the faceless man in a suit? Do they not? Because young Jessica does and, had she any mind, she would have thought it her life’s purpose— to run from It forever, knowing Its eyes (eyes It does not have) are trained on her every move.
Every tumble she falls, every jump she makes, every step she takes, every breath that leaves her because she feels like no air enters her lungs— It is aware of these (little had they not been the very fiber of her present being) things.
Jessica feels like she is in pain,— screaming her voice raw, yet no sound leaves her mouth, not even a whimper— but her body is numb. It feels like a static— she feels like a static. She feels like she is every uncomfortable feeling at once, but she knows that in these woods, she is nothing at all. She can’t even be sure that she is actually existing, but she will not focus on the inkling of such a though, not when she is running, no—
She is running, as quickly as she can, but she makes little progress. The forest extends with her very stride, but she is in so many different places at once she can not process any of it. Her legs feel tired, yet they do not lag. She is like a puppet, following the motions, but she does not control them.
Jessica is a young child, lost in the woods, and her only purpose is to run from It. It is a monster that all of humanity must fear, but It is an elusive being. She is unable to see It. She is unable to know It— only know that It watches. She wants to cry, and she would have had she been able to. She would have cried and, if she could have controlled any bit of herself, she would have gladly died. If it meant It was not watching her, she would have gladly died .
SO SEEK THE FAMILIAR FOR IT SHALL SAVE YOU.
Jessica wakes up, finding that she was in a sitting position, a mask held loosely in her hands as if she was supposed to know why she has it. The dream she just had was long (unusually so for a dream, because dreams are like short clips of a video— snippets of the whole) and it makes her realize that it is not the first time she has had the dream (always the same, with no change), and she doubts this time will be the last.
She checks her phone, but not before letting her eyes scan the room, checking for something. Jessica has no idea what to check for, but it feels like her body is still moving on its own. Preparing for danger, but hoping for safety. Her phone reads a date days pass what she last remembers. It reminds her that her stay at the hotel is not normal. That this is a recurrence and that is not normal. It reminds her that suddenly, she feels as though she is not normal. Like she is someone else now and it terrifies her.
But the mask in her hand doesn’t. The mask she is holding— the mask that she has never seen before— does not terrify her. The mask, rather, makes her feel well , for once. Her stay at the hotel has not been well and she has not slept well nor has she felt well, but for once — with the mask in her hand— she feels well . Her head does not ache, for once , and her throat does not feel raspy, for once .
She realizes then that she feels normal . No threat hangs in the air and she feels normal . Her paranoia is gone for a bit and she feels normal . She feels normal . The rest of the day feels normal. The rest of the day is normal and Jessica is normal. But she only sees one issue with that. She doesn’t feel like Jessica (not the young dream Jessica who only runs, nor the physical Jessica that wants to be done with these newfound problems ) .
Her body is moving, she feels it moving and can see the actions from her own eyes (a contrast to how she “moved” in her dreams), but she feels like she isn’t in control. It’s as though she were watching a movie, sitting in the theatre and taking in all that’s shown. But she is not the camera that recorded the scene, she is only the watcher, and it is so much better than being the puppet.
She is a watcher and it is a newfound sense of normal.
And the next day, Jay takes that normalcy away from her. He took it away from her the moment he knocked on her door, reminding her that he is also not normal. When she opens the door— noting how she suddenly felt more in control of her body— Jay fumbles over his words at first. She suspects that maybe it was on impulse that he knocked, especially how he begins to awkwardly ask about local parks. She’s confused at first: why does he want to know about parks?
But then he tells her it’s ‘cause his job is being relocated so he’s decided to look for a new place. He says that he wants to move next to a nice park and Jessica tells him that she’s probably been to Rosswood park as a kid (but she can’t say with pure certainty that she has, yet she feels like her visit there was recent. Though she can’t shake an underlying feeling of seething rage. She’s mad— at him, the situation, the hotel—, so very mad.
When she calls him out, Jay feigns innocence. He pretends not to remember telling her about the documentary or about his apartment and it makes her so very mad. But she keeps that rage in because she needs to cling to something. He rips normalcy away from her so the least he could do is cut it out with lies, but she’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. She’ll humor the possibility that he is also forgetting his days here.
But then he brushes her off, making her seem crazy. Making her feel crazy and all he had to do was slip into his room, away from her like she was crazy. But she can’t possibly be crazy, right?
Retreating back into her room, an anxiety chewing away at her soul like bugs on a carcass, she feels like every weight that wasn’t on her shoulder yesterday is on her now. It feels suffocating, and if she knew what it meant to have one, she would have assumed she was about to have a panic attack. Instead, she settles on knowing she has a coughing fit (but it does not ease her mind in any way).
She stumbles throughout her hotel room, tripping over her duffle bag, and falling onto the floor. She doesn’t know what to do. Jessica’s throat is scratchy, her coughs coming out in hacks and her breaths leave her body painfully (pain that while, yes, she has grown used to them, do not hurt less with each fit). She lays on the floor, coughing, coughing till she can’t no more and suddenly, she feels like she is in her dreams again.
She feels like she is watched, her body feels like static, and this terrifies her more than anything. Because this is not a dream. This feeling is more real than anything she’s ever experienced. Her livelihood is fake in comparison to this nauseating feeling of being watched. She does not see what watches her, but she somehow knows where it is. There are no trees to cover it this time, and she hasn’t the ability to get up and run.
She tries to crawl away from the presence that sends her body into all states of fear— the presence that freezes her; the presence that makes her body prepare to fight despite how badly it tries to flee. Beside her bed, a corner she tries to cower in, is her mask. She does not feel her body moving towards it, but she is in control. She knows that this time she is, and she feels that grabbing at the mask surrenders the control she has. But she doesn’t want the control, so if she must surrender it, she will do so willingly.
Her hand manages to grab the mask, her coughs garnering more intensity as she does, and she reaches to put it on her head. The mask— the white mask with a skeleton-grin— provided her a sense of comfort yesterday, she could only hope it helps again.
She will not cope well knowing that the mask could not save her (not like she hoped it would), because she dreams again. She dreams of running from It, and she’ll run till she can get rid of It. But she can’t get rid of It. Not right now. Not while she is so vulnerable. Not while her body is currently hers. But she only wants the mask to save her, so she allows another to take her body from her, if only a bit, it only to get away from It—
There is a woman who wakes up on the floor . She wears a mask, but it is as much her face as the one beneath it. She manages to leave the room— to escape It— but she knows It will not be pleased with this outcome, and now she has to inform The Mask and The Hood of an upcoming change, whatever it may be. There is a woman who runs in every sense of the word, but right now, she is The Skull, and she runs from It so that Jessica doesn’t need to.
IT IS HOME— THE UNFAMILIAR— AND IT IS SAFE.
The next time Jessica finds herself in full control of her own body— no sleepwalking or the like— it is January 12th. The preceding weeks were accompanied by blips in memory, a fleeting conscious moment, and then more blips in her memory. The entire time, she has felt asleep, but her body has not rested well. Her body has not rested well, her head aches, and her chest is scratchy. But it is on the 12th that she finds herself able to stare at her phone and process the information before her.
Her mask— the mask, because she resolves in the moment it is not hers — is on the bed beside her. She glares at it, unhappy it is here, because something tells her it didn’t save her as she hoped, but just pushed the moment of suffering to a later date. She grabs the mask a moment, but throws it across the room the moment she begins to feel at ease.
The mask doesn’t help find normalcy as she first hoped and that makes Jessica feel bitter. She feels bitter— bitter towards the mask, towards the hotel, towards Jay— so very bitter. She sits on her bed, head in her hands, thinking bitter thoughts. Why would she think a mask can help her escape the monster that terrorizes her (she’s learned there is a monster, but she could never learn how it looked)? Why was she so dumb to just stay in the hotel? Is it because of Jay…?
She then gets a bit mad, lifting her head up to look at his door. She made the final decision to stay in this hotel because of Jay . She knows— somewhere deep inside of her, she knows — that she is here because of Jay. All because of Jay! He ’s the problem, the fault in all this. He ’s the liar and she has to accept that.
She has to, but right now, she chooses not to. She stands up— a confident fire within her soul ready to expel all her anxieties— and heads to the door. She inhales as she grabs and twists the door knob, and exhales when she knocks on Jay’s door. She intends to give him an earful, call him out on all his bullshit, and maybe they wouldn’t even acknowledge each other after all was said and done.
When he opens the door, Jessica’s mind fixates on the camera and then remembers that the two of them are just coping differently. She eases a bit, confused about why he’s recording her. But then she gets a bit mad again, calling out his lies and then she explains to him her experience in this hotel because he has to be going through the same thing? They can’t live in adjoined rooms and not suffer in the same ways? Right?
And then he tells her he’ll explain it all, but that they need to leave. They need to leave ? This whole situation is just crazy and it’s so bad that now they need to leave ? She complies, but she feels woozy at the notion of them needing to leave. She makes an attempt at packing her stuff, but most of it already was. It has been every moment since she first woke up in the hotel room.
Something told her she would need to be ready, but right now, she feels too overwhelmed. Too overwhelmed by the severity of the situation to care about how everything is already packed. And she is most certainly too overwhelmed to care about the piece of paper with numbers scrawled on it that certainly wasn’t there before— and too overwhelmed to care that a man in a mask is in her hotel room.
She wanted to make a noise, call out to Jay, say something, but she knows this man isn’t isn’t the monster that she fears with every fiber of her being— the monster who chases her in her dreams. But she can’t seem to think much— not about how his mask resembles the one she tossed away from herself—, not while she’s passing out in the middle of her hotel room. Not while she needs to accept that some things are beyond her control.
IT IS SAFE BECAUSE THE FAMILIAR IS DANGEROUS.
Disoriented, Jessica wakes up on what feels to be a dirt floor and her back against a tree. She leans forward, her palms pressing against the dirt floor— floor that reminds her of her dreams, but are not paired with the crippling fear— and she groans. Her mind is racing with thoughts. Did she and Jay go somewhere? Did she sleepwalk again? Who was the person in the mask? Is she safe? Is she safe ?
Her mind is racing with thoughts, but all she lets out is a confused “What happened?” She gets no response, she isn’t even up off the floor yet, but a hand touches her back. The touch isn’t invasive or intrusive, rather, the touch on her back seems to intend to be comforting, but she’s only more confused.
She raises her head, ignoring the hooded person beside her because if they were a threat, they would have already hurt her (she reasons this with herself, but can’t be sure). What does seem like a threat, though, is the flashlight peering through the trees, searching for something (someone, she assumes in the end). She asks who it is, but the hooded person covers her mouth and she can’t help the gasp and whimpers escape her.
They may not be a threat— the hooded one—, but she reserves the right to get scared. The way they tell her to shush like the situation is just one she shouldn’t make a noise in, it’s nerve wracking because what are they hiding from? She knows he probably means well, but the disorientation of being in an unfamiliar place has made her anxious in the past and it definitely still makes her anxious right now.
The hooded person tries to help her up, but Jessica is stubborn and confident. She tells them, “It’s fine, I got it,” as she roughly shrugs her arm away. When she is properly standing, she sees that the hooded person notices how close the light of the flashlight is and grabs her, making a move to run away. She has no choice but to comply, yet she can’t even be sure if this person is safe.
Jessica and the hooded person don’t make it far, though, as the one with the flashlight yells at them to stop. They do, but the light is almost blinding in the pitch black, so Jessica has trouble seeing what the flashlight man is holding. Before her eyes can adjust to the dark, the hooden person grabs her hand and makes another attempt at running.
However, behind them she hears a gunshot. She screams— she screams hoping that she didn’t get hurt. The hooded person lets go of her hand and continues to run off and Jessica only follows a bit before she crouches, curling in on herself, and moves off to the side so that she doesn’t get shot . Jessica would only be able to get so far before the man with the gun shoots her, so she can only accept that she’ll die here or somewhere else. Thankfully, the man went pass her, shooting at the hooded man a couple times.
The shots scare her, but when the man calls out her name and mentions Amy (specifically that he and Amy were dating), she feels inclined to trust the man. He says he’ll help her get out of the forest, which is more than the hooded person had done (he only shushed her), so of course she has to trust him, right?
The only thing is, is that she doesn’t know why she’s in the forest in the first place. Why? She sees the hooded person’s camera and makes a move to pick it up. She reasons that the camera has to show her why and how she got to the forest. Wasn’t she just in a hotel? What happened to Jay? Is Jay okay ?
Alex, he said that was his name, let her have the camera, but he says he’ll explain the whole situation after they leave, but Jessica feels like they’re only going deeper into the woods. Something deep inside of her tells her that all of this is wrong, and Jessica believes it, but she knows that some things are out of her control.
Alex starts up conversations, trying to ease her nerves, most likely, and he tells her he can help catch her up on everything she needs. She wants to trust him, she does, but she finds herself quietly doubting Alex. He has a gun and it would be super easy to shoot her and that installs distrust within her. A bullet flies faster than a person could move. She has no choice but to follow him (but she wants to run).
When he takes her to the tunnel, he tells her to go ahead. He’s been suspicious of being followed, but with a gun, he shouldn’t have all too hard a time surviving…
He gives her his flashlight and that makes her anxious. The feelings she’s been feeling since she turned up at the hotel, they’re back, and that terrifies her. Jessica is terrified, and nothing eases her. She tries to tell herself she’s just needlessly paranoid, but something deep inside of her (almost like a voice, she realizes) drowns her out. It’s like it’s yelling at her— her mind is yelling at her and that is not comforting. No, it is a bone chilling fact.
IT WANTS THE FAMILIAR TO KILL YOU.
She turns around, hopeful she can scream back at her own mind, but then she sees Alex’s gun pointed at her. She turns the camera and flashlight towards him and rocks back and forth on her feet. She wants to charge at Alex, and when he tries to blame all this on Jay? Her body lunges towards him. She sees herself do this, but she knows that her body is moving on its own.
She isn’t in control. She isn’t in control as he doubles over. She isn’t in control as she picks up the gun. And she isn’t in control when she yells at him to shut up.
She regains control when the hooded person runs by her to beat up Alex and she sets down the gun for a moment so she could grab the flashlight, but then picks it back up as she runs off. She runs, even if her mind yells at her to go back and help finish off Alex. No , she is in control right now, even if she shouldn’t be. She will not listen to herself right now, because her only goal is to get away from both the hooded person and Alex— even if it means denying instinct.
SO WHY DO YOU NOT TRUST THE SKULL???
Jessica is running, so many thoughts racing in her head, and so many feelings she is trying to repress. She feels like she is being watched, but she doesn’t know by what. She has half a mind to know it is that thing , but she can only hope this is another one of those wretched nightmares. She can only hope, but right now she is running. She is running, even when she feels she doesn’t make it closer to the end of the woods.
She sees a man, tall and in a suit and she calls out to him. She hopes he can help her, but every fiber of her being is telling her that this is no man. It is a thing, and It is what watches her. When she is alone, when she is dreaming, when she is working, and when she is existing, it is this thing that watches her (and perhaps it had been watching Jay, too).
She realizes this all a bit too late, because the moment she notices its lack of a face, all of Jessica’s mind seizes and for the first time, she does not dream, nor does she sleepwalk. She and The Skull are silenced, but they could only hope it is not for long.
The walls were bleak and familiar. Nothing was notable about them, not yet at least. The walls had a bit of light that poured in through the blinds, highlighting lines across the walls. The light that poured in Jessica that it was time to get up— but she could do so at her own pace.
(The Skull always invites The Hood over into Jessica’s house. The Hood mostly chooses to use Jessica’s computer, though. The Skull never asks why.)
The bed wasn’t soft, nor hard, but she prefers it this way. It’s that middle ground that is “Just right!” as Goldilocks would have said. The sheets were slightly thin. Jessica finds these types of blankets ideal, because in winter, all she would need is multiple blankets to be warmer.
(The Skull thinks The Hood is doing something with the videos they record. The Skull does not care to pry.)
The atmosphere was overall a tranquill one, and whether the ticking clock added to it. Glances around the room reminded Jessica that she should focus on decorating her apartment room more. With time, her new place would be rather homely. She has a computer at least, some clothes, and a few plants throughout her room. She wants more candles, soon, but she’’l only have some when she can afford them.
(The Skull does not know why The Mask does not visit, despite being invited, but The Hood won’t say the reason for this. It irks The Skull, but perhaps The Hood would rather stay silent than to lie.)
She sits up and moves to get out of bed, but she finds that her mask is beside her pillow. Recently, she wakes up beside it and while she doesn’t mind, she can’t help but wonder when it is that she puts it beside her. She didn’t go to sleep with it? She can’t remember, but she doesn’t care to bother about it. Not right now because nothing matters. Not while she feels safe.
(The Skull is given medicine— two pills each time— that The Hood always presents as an offer of thanks. The Skull knows it wards off The Operator. Hopeful, with these pills The Operator can finally accept being told “Goodbye.”)
She picks up the mask and smiles. It fills her with a sense of ease, and she likes to think of it as a good omen. Everytime it is near her, Jessica can’t help but feel calm. The skull-like mask has that surprising effect on her. Life is stressful, but as long as she has the mask— her mask, as she has come to fondly refer to it as—, she feels she can get by.
BECAUSE AS THE SKULL, YOU FEEL SAFER.