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Tim coughed into the old linoleum floor, wincing, then rolled onto his side to look up at Sarah’s face. She crouched beside him, arms resting folded on her knees, camcorder in her left hand with its lens pointed toward him. The plank with a small spatter of his blood on it rested beside her. She’d taken off her frowning mask and was staring at him. Tim had no idea why. It couldn’t mean anything good.
Partly he was just glad it hadn’t been Brian under the mask. The possibility had been there, and he’d had no idea what he would have done if it had been him. At the same time, he had known Sarah: they hadn’t been the best of friends, maybe, but they’d had a couple drinks together commiserating about how much of an asshole Alex had been. And it’d been her this whole time. Stalking him, breaking into his house, stealing his medication, hiding his personal medical files in that damn maintenance shaft. The longer he thought about it the angrier he got.
The pain and achiness didn’t help. Sarah had cracked him above his eye with that heavy wooden plank as soon as he’d ducked around the doorway into the abandoned classroom, and then hit him again in the chest so he’d fallen back against the wall. While he’d been reeling from the second hit Sarah had tied his hands in front of him with some kind of cord that cut into his wrists. Whatever was behind his back right now was sharp, and he could feel dust settling into his eyes.
She’d also grabbed his bag and tossed it several feet away under an old desk.
The camera, for its part, had bounced out of his hands as he’d fallen and landed right above his head. Tim had no idea if it was even recording Sarah’s face from that angle. (The fact that he was thinking about what the camera would see had him worried. Was he more like Jay, and all of them, than he’d thought? No, he can’t be.)
He tried to kick at Sarah but it jarred his head so bad he had to stop. Tim bit the inside of his cheek to keep from yelling; he had no idea how violent Sarah might get at loud noises. Instead he looked right at her, as calmly as he could. “Let me go.”
“You abandoned him,” she said almost thoughtfully.
“What—” Sarah was talking about Jay. “I didn’t,” he said, blinking away whatever was dripping down his forehead. “He’s dangerous, he would’ve tried to kill me, I didn’t have any other choice.”
Sarah nodded slowly. “He is distorted. That doesn’t mean you didn’t abandon him.” As if that was all she’d been studying Tim for, she got up, walked over to where Tim’s bag was laying and nonchalantly started fishing through it.
Tim’s stomach sank as she pulled out the small orange container that held his medication. He had taken some when he’d parked outside the building just in case trouble showed up, but he had no idea how long she was going to leave him there. “I need that,” he told her.
“Will you,” she said. She slung his bag over her shoulder, turned around and knelt in front of him again, carefully placing her camera on the floor beside her. Then before he knew what she was doing she had dug her knuckles into his head, right where she’d hit him before.
Tim yelled and flinched backward instinctively but only thing he got for his troubles was a sharp crack on his head from the wall behind him. Under the pain and nausea, he could feel her digging in his side pocket. “Get off me!”
The pressure on his head let go a second later, Sarah grabbing her camera and backing off, his keys glinting in her hand. She exhaled and stuck them in her pocket with his medication. “I need these,” she said simply.
Of course she did. Tim breathed through his nose, trying to will away the light spots in his eyes. She’d abducted Alex from Tim’s house and gotten here; she would know how to get back. She was going to go after Jay. And, thanks to Tim, Jay wouldn’t be able to run. “You stay away from him,” he said, pushing himself upright with his elbow. His head swam even from that and he had to lean against the wall, but he glared anyway, hoping she wouldn’t notice. “If you even—”
“Liars don’t get to have regrets,” Sarah cut him off. She’d pulled her mask back on and both its and her camera’s sightless eyes stared Tim down. After a second’s pause, she said, “Look at what you came here for.”
Tim hadn’t been lying, it was for Jay’s own good; why couldn’t anyone see that? “I am not a liar,” he spat, “Stop calling me—”
Sarah was already gone out the classroom door. Her fast steps sounded down the barren hallway.
Tim yelled after her but he knew it was useless. She wasn’t coming back. He clenched his hands into fists and hit his head against the back wall on purpose a couple times, feeling the familiar self-hate well up. He’d tried the best he could, but this whole thing had just ended up like the last ‘entry’ put on repeat. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
After a while, as always, the rage and self-hatred drained away into a steady hopelessness. He sat with his knees pulled up, listening to the squirrels and rats run around the abandoned building and feeling the seconds tick down to when his medication would wear off and he wouldn’t be safe anymore. He kicked out at a nearby loose stick that had blown in from somewhere.
Then he froze. God, he was stupid today.
Sarah had left his feet untied. Why would she do that? It was a trap, that was the only thing that made sense. But what had he come here for, anyway? If she hadn’t been lying in her note… For the first time since he’d gotten hit in the head, Tim looked around the abandoned classroom properly. His immediate impression of white paint, grey floor, no working lights and tall windows were all still true, but now he also noticed a wooden door off in the corner. It had faded numbers painted on it, suggesting it might lead to another classroom instead of a supply closet. "Look at, huh," he wheezed to himself.
Getting his hands free was hard, but he managed. He threw the cord as far away as he could. His head was aching, and his chest still hurt where she’d hit him the second time, and paranoia about his medication trickled through his thoughts, and now his wrists were sore, and he felt sick both from the accumulated pain and the fact that Jay was about to be kidnapped and it was Tim’s fault. He got up anyway. The dizziness, a rush of blinding static behind his eyes, wore off quickly enough. He pulled the crappy knife Jay had threatened him with out of his back pocket and opened it.
The next classroom turned out to be just as derelict and greyscale as the first, plus smaller and without windows. Alex Kralie was tied to a chair in the middle of the floor.
He had gotten skinnier since Tim had seen him on the tapes, and grime-covered enough to be mistaken for homeless by someone who passed him on the street. His eyes were dead cold. He looked over as the door opened and nodded like he hadn’t expected anyone else. “Funny seeing you here, Tim.”
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