Jay rolled to his side, groaning in pain as he curled his knees up to his chest. His palms pressed desperately against his temples, as if by some feat of determination he could keep his head from falling apart. It felt like he'd been turned inside out, run through a juicer, and tossed back together with only the barest attention to detail. He couldn't think, not for some time.

Everything that he'd experienced in the past few months felt like nothing in comparison to the disorientation and pain that he was feeling now. Even the other day's events, the surreal basement, everything that he'd witnessed as if by third party through his tapes was nothing. Even if he could remember all of those previous events... right now he could barely decipher up from down.

Eventually, the pain settled... at least it settled enough to comprehend that he was laying on his side, the world before him divided in two. One half was littered with dry, dead grass stubble, the other consisted of horizontal bars. No, trees. Sideways trees.

He pushed himself upright, moving quickly at first. Slower immediately after he realized that his head was swimming with vertigo. Seated upright, he turned to the light, lips parting slightly as the space before him registered. He knew this place... somehow.

A bonfire was burning low, casting low, red light and heat even from this distance a dozen or so feet away. Stumps circled the stones that contained the fire... but nobody sat there. He looked around the immediate circle of the fire and beyond, but he couldn't see a thing. He was alone, as far as he could tell.

Jay stumbled upright, staggering as he nearly lost balance. Somehow, he felt as though a misstep was more dire now than simply losing his footing. He walked slowly, carefully, and eventually settled himself gingerly on one of the logs facing the fire. A long, soot-charred branch rested nearby. Jay picked it up and prodded at the fire, sending a spume of cinders and ash floating upwards, buoyed up into darkness....















The lamp guttered audibly and died as the first rays of morning crept in around the edges of the sheet, dimly illuminating the first's sty. Two figures were sprawled unconscious on the floor. One, the other, was curled in a fetal position under the table. He woke with a start, wondering how he'd gotten there, then had another shock as dream-like fragments of the night before flickered into memory. He peered out from under the desk and spotted the uncomfortably slouched figure of the man, collapsed half off of his chair.

"Oh..." The other murmured, dread welling up as he realized that the first was not present. "Oh, shit."

He pulled himself out from under the table and moved on hands and knees over to the man. His fingers found the man's carotid artery... there was a pulse there. Faint, but it was there. The other was more concerned when he noticed dried blood caked inside the man's earlobe. "Oh... oh no." He grabbed the man's shoulder and gently rolled him onto his back. Caked red trails marked the man's forehead, cheeks and nose. An unhealthy looking puddle of the stuff had crusted to the carpet below.

"This, this isn't good." The other kneeled back, bringing a hand up to run it through his hair. A thought struck him, and he looked around the room. The video camera was missing... the good one was missing. Had he dropped it?

No, it was missing. Definitely missing.

He used the chair to drag himself to his feet, light-headed and groggy as he was. He found and fussed with the mangled backup camcorder, but the thing was toast. He tried to pry it open, but it seemed so badly damaged, things must have been fused together. The other set the camcorder down on the table and wandered out of the first's room, a little shell shocked. Only when he'd found his half-empty water bottle and had taken his pill did he seem to come to awareness again.

The first was gone. The man was still here. The man was suffering a head injury... so... the man was gone. It made sense to him.

He nodded to himself and wandered into the bathroom. Took the mask off, settled it on the counter. Ran some water and splashed it across his face.

Coloured droplets? He looked up at his dim reflection and frowned. A nosebleed, dried now. He scrubbed his face clean, scrubbed the mask clean, returned to the first's room with a wet cloth and did his best to scrub the man's face clean. The stain on the carpet he couldn't do anything about... but that wasn't a concern right now.

At this point, the other needed to get a second pair of eyes... and the only place that he could think of that still had those was the man's house. Get the man cleaned up, then, get them both back to his house. The first was gone.

The other had no idea what this meant... but he couldn't allow himself to panic.

He set about moving the both of them. This time he'd make sure that there were precautions in place. This was not going to end the same way that it had last night.















The fire was nearly out. Jay prodded at the somber red coals in the pit, trying to pry badly charred chunks of wood to the air, to bring back the light. He felt a deep chill that wasn't being dispelled by his proximity to the fire. It was partially the complete isolation that left him cold, partially that his thoughts kept slipping away. It was a struggle just to focus on what had happened over the last few minutes, and Jay was feeling like he had been here for hours. Days, maybe. Did night last this long?

He heard something snap outside the perimeter of the known and he froze, eying the darkness beyond his tiny bubble of safety with owlish intensity. What was that?

"...Jay?" a voice called, tentative. He stood, wavering on his feet for a few seconds while he fought to keep balance, but nobody came into the light.

Raising his brand with its still-glowing edge to the darkness, he cast his voice out. "Hello?" The greeting was quieter than he had expected. More wavering than he would have liked. He tried again, "I can't see... where are you?"

He watched a figure move hesitantly out of the darkness, towards the light. Towards him. "Alex?" He didn't risk rubbing his eyes, even if they felt like they were blurring things in and out of focus. The man who slunk into the circle of tree stumps looked... damaged, somehow. He was wearing a heavy jacket and he still looked as cold as Jay felt in his t-shirt. "What... what are you doing here?" Jay asked, surprised enough to gape. "Where are we? How'd we get here?"

The other man collapsed onto the tree stump nearest him, reeling dangerously. He looked drunk, though that wasn't quite right, either. Jay dropped his branch and leaned to support his friend, though Alex raised both hands before Jay could touch him. "It's alright," he stated simply, though even he didn't sound like he believed himself.

The two regarded one another, Jay looking concerned, Alex looking all too wary. "You're a mess," Alex stated after some silence.

"You too." Jay bent to pick up his brand, righting himself and digging the charred point into the hard-packed earth, then leaning on it as if it was a walking stick. "You have to tell me what's going on," he pressed, facing the other man again. "Ever since last summer..."

"'Last' summer?" Alex mumbled. He'd pressed his knuckles under his glasses, was rubbing his eyes as if he was exhausted. Maybe that was it: Alex looked like he hadn't slept in days.

Jay, frowning at Alex's question, explained, "ever since I dug those tapes of yours out of my closet last June..." he trailed off. Jay didn't like the way that Alex had gone stock still. The way that his eyes had snapped into sharp focus unnerved him... that was definitely an accusing glare, and it made Jay extremely uncomfortable. He averted his gaze, shifting slightly as he looked into the fire pit.

The silence seemed to drag on, and Jay shifted again to better support his weight on the branch he was holding. Catching a slight movement from the corner of his eye, he glanced back in Alex's direction, then gave an incoherent cry as he recognized a face with huge, black eyes resolving from the darkness.

There was no time to react: Jay moved forward at what felt like a crawl, but the masked figure was already bringing his arms down, and in his hands Jay saw a heavy piece of firewood. Alex crumpled from his perch as Jay tried to intercept, too late.

Jay tried to stop his forward momentum as the masked man turned his attention from Alex's prone body to him, but he was much too slow. He heard the piece of firewood thump hollowly on the ground, dropped by the masked man, saw him lunging forward. Raising his arms to fend the attacker off, Jay felt himself pushed backward, towards the fire pit...

...A moment later, his back slammed against something hard, flat. Everything was pitch black. A heavy weight thumped against him and knocked the air from his chest, and a sweaty hand that smelled of pine sap smothered his mouth and nose. Jay gave a muffled cry, but the hand only pressed harder. He tried to get his footing under him, but it was soft, sinking. Shapeless. Where was he now?!

He heard a loud crack, felt a shift, and suddenly light flooded the tight space around the two of them. He glared at the silhouette of the masked man who was pressing him to the back of the closet, but it was impossible to tell what the man was thinking; he couldn't even see the eyes behind the damned mask!

Jay caught a glimpse of the wall just beyond the closet, and realized that they were in the abandoned house. The brief surge of adrenaline he'd felt a moment ago was doused by a shock of fear -- weren't they outside a moment ago? He went quite still, and felt the hand move away from his mouth. Felt the masked man back off. Taking a deep breath, he counted to ten... or he would have, if the man hadn't grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him out into the hallway.

A light flickered almost beyond Jay's perception, and now he did scrub at his eyes with his free hand. Nausea and disorientation flooded him, left him feeling tight-chested. He was hyperventilating, and he resisted the tugging at his arm that he felt only peripherally.

Maybe it wasn't that the light was flickering, so much as that his vision was snapping too bright, too dark. He couldn't tell anymore. He realized, vaguely, that the masked man was half-guiding, half-dragging him towards the blinds at the back of the house... back outside? Jay turned his head and looked into the wreckage of the living room as they passed it.

A dark shape -- a person -- stood behind an overturned sofa and watched them. Jay, frowning and squinting, wondered if he'd seen the person somewhere before...

A harsh tug jolted him out of his reverie, and Jay sluggishly turned his attention back to the masked man. They were slipping out past the glass door, into a brightness so shrill that it blinded him completely.















The other was beginning to feel as though dragging prone bodies to and from houses was all that he had to look forward to from life. He was only thankful that they'd left the man's house unlocked, or he'd have had to resort to other methods to get in. His hands had been shaking the entire time that he'd been driving, and he'd worried that someone would spot him on the highway, see through him because he wasn't wearing his mask. He worried that they would spot the unconscious body of the man resting crookedly on the back seat, guess at what was happening. Worse, he worried that, across the median, standing amongst the trunks of the trees that abutted the highway, the suited figure that he dreaded was watching. Without proper eyes to capture him, it was more than likely that he was watching, only the other would never be able to properly spot him.

Despite his well founded fears, the highway had been all but empty, and the short walk to the man's house had been uneventful. The other, feeling all but naked without a video camera or his mask in place, trundled the man into his house, through the door. He nearly stumbled and fell over the unsorted pile of shoes on the other side of the threshold, nearly slammed the man's head into the wall as he tried to recover. Cursing under his breath, the other managed to avoid both with the kind of adroitness awarded only to those who have no one to acknowledge them, and he continued on into the house.

He glanced around the living room, feeling strangely more at ease now that he was inside the messy place, and hefted the weight of the body carried perilously over his shoulder. The couch was piled with detritus and the floor was barely clear enough to cross without breaking something. The other, seeing no place to dump the unconscious man, decided to move onward.

Padding along in the comfort of silence, the other pushed the man's bedroom door open and moved inside... and nearly dropped his burden as the man's body spasmed. Turning the near drop into a controlled release, the other settled the man's body on the floor and watched him spasm again. So taken with ensuring that the man didn't keel over or hurt himself, the other jolted in surprise as the first stole through the door without a sound.

"Where did you come from?!" the other asked, pressing a hand to the man's shoulder as he felt a third tremor strike him.

The first lifted his mask up over his face, throwing it forcefully to the floor. It didn't do much; the mask was light and the carpet absorbed its impact, robbing the first of any satisfaction from the action. "He knew!" he spat, grabbing at the hair above his temples and raking his scalp with rigid fingers. "All this time, laying a trap! He knew!"

"Who knew? What trap? Last night?!" The other nervously cleared his throat, eying the discarded mask warily. His own was dangling off of a belt loop... he fingered the plastic of it after a moment, given that the man had slumped into a less tortured pose and didn't seem to be about to tremor again. The other didn't like being in the man's room without wearing the mask, but he hadn't had time to put it back on.

The first slammed the door shut, turning away from the other as he tried to compose his thoughts. "Last night... what time is it?"

The other shrugged, looked around the man's room for some indication. "I don't know, morning, sometime early?" He heard a thin, exasperated whistle. "What happened?"

"The less you know," the first seemed to patronize, "the better."

"I thought we were in this together," the other scowled. He didn't like working with the first, but they'd come to an agreement some time ago. Even if the first was extremely difficult to work with, at least they could rely on one another, couldn't they?

The first leaned over and picked his mask up, not deeming to look at the other. When the other opened his mouth to speak again, he found his arms filled with the backpack that the first was shoving over. "We need more tapes."

"He's not doing well," the other nodded to the man's still unconscious body.

The first tilted his head down, just enough to cast a disapproving glare. "I know. We need more tapes."

"It's not a good idea to leave him like this."

"I'll be here. Besides, we need more camcorders." The first slipped the mask back into place, "I'll look around here. Everything should still be in the backpack."

The other rose to his feet, shouldering the pack and glancing down at the man, who was still propped up against the wall. The truth was, he wasn't sure that leaving the first with him was a great idea... he'd hardly left his own room for the past three years, and he was irritable and sardonic when push came to shove. There was still the mystery of where the first had come from just now, and how he'd gotten here so quickly. Had he been lying in wait all along? The other shook his head, cast the both of them one last look, and slunk out of the room without another word.

There was too much that he didn't understand... and he was only really beginning to realize that. "Tapes," he muttered, walking through the open front door and out into the world. "Too many tapes."