WHO: Max, Teddy, and Jack WHAT: Trying to get to the bottom of this WHEN: Afternoon, day 2 WHERE: Hotel Lobby WARNINGS: language, feels
“Well,” Max said to no one in particular. “That was interesting!”
Truly, he hoped that he and Teddy and the rest were somehow high on some local flora, clicking their heels and wishing for home. There had only been one time he’d had an experience like that--people really needed to label their brownies. And it had been different.Things weren’t as concrete as they were now. People answered him. It wasn’t like one person heard him and another didn’t. Plus, everything had been super wiggly and hilarious, like one giant inside joke. None of this felt hilarious to him now. In fact, most of it felt like he was kinda being punished. Maybe he was.
After seeing Ash take the knife and head back toward the rest of his group, Max had followed for a little while. There were a lot of people he didn’t know, but that was okay. He liked meeting new people. Except they didn’t seem to notice him either. He heard that the tour was heading back to the hotel soon, so he wandered off in the direction he’d last seen Teddy.
“Teeeedddyyyyy,” he singsonged as he playfully kicked up geysers of sand. “I need to ask you a queeeestioooon.”
“You need to?” Teddy was looking through tide pools at the moment. There were little creatures, trapped in little bubbles of life. Kept in little bubbles of sand and water. Like the outside world didn’t exist. It was fascinating in it’s own way, but there was a little hollow ache he couldn’t quite explain.
He looked away, up and over towards Max. “Like how deep a need are we talking here?”
Max settled as he moved to stand near his friend, looking down into the tide pools as well. He was quiet for a moment before he shrugged. “I’m just thinking about our hallucination. And I’m wondering if your hallucination is the same as mine. Because I just saw Ash and he cut his hair. So I want to know if you can see him and if so, does your version of this hallucination have his hair cut, too, or is this like.. I didn’t like his hair, so in my hallucination, I cut it.”
The hallucinations. The reason why people seemed to be ignoring them, why things didn’t seem to make sense. But hallucinations didn’t last this long, unless they were persistent. Unless his perception of time was collapsing. But it seems so linear. That white rabbit was pulled from Teddy’s thoughts though at the mention of Ash.
“Wait. You saw Ash?” The hurt was barely held back on the tip of his tongue. Why was Max seeing his boyfriend. Not that Max knew. They were friends. But why of all the friends Max had would he see Asher. “Where?”
It took Max a moment to remember. His concentration was heavy enough it almost seemed like someone had pressed a pause button. Suddenly, he turned, pointing back toward the beach where he’d come from. By then, the tour group was gone and all that remained was that sad sandcastle. “He found my pocketknife. I didn’t know it was missing. He looked really sad and he wouldn’t answer me, but then he took my knife and left.” He paused for a moment in contemplation. “I was thinking that maybe Sally got him here as like..a surprise, so my bad if I ruined that for you.”
Teddy was pulling up to his feet, the strange dreaming from looking at the tide pool becoming a focused, arrow pointed clarity. The clarity felt odd, like a tunnel as he looked out to try and see Ash at the end of it. “I didn’t know you dropped your knife.” Teddy answered, but his feet were already moving towards where Max pointed.
There was no one there but it didn’t matter. A rising strange panic at the idea. Maybe it was a surprise. It seemed like what Sally would do. “Where would he have gone?”
“I didn’t,” Max answered solemnly. “But it’s like everything else. Until, you know, there it was on the beach.”
He followed at a slower pace as Teddy started to move and glanced up from the sand with the question. “Oh!” he brightened. He knew that answer. “Back to the hotel. He was part of a tour. So when that ends, they’re headed back to the hotel. Do you want to go find him?”
“But it’s your knife. It’s not like everything else.” Teddy shook his head as he kept walking. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. Where had he slept last night? It just all seemed.
He didn’t want to think about it. But he did want to think about Ash. If he was on the island. Maybe, maybe this was something more. Like a big step. If Sally knew enough to surprise him with him. “Yeah.” He put on the smile that always seemed so easy and blinding. “If he’s here, I mean, he came all this way for me probably. So let’s surprise him back!”
That was true, but when something didn’t have an understandable explanation, he chose the route of least resistance. At Teddy’s smile, Max grinned back. “Great! Wanna race?”
“Sure, if you’re ready to lose.” Teddy flashed another brilliant smile and took off.
“Hey! That’s not fair!” he shouted before rushing to catch up.
What used to feel like a walk that took forever from the hotel to the beach and back went by pretty quickly. He had a reserve of energy that seemed to stretch more than it had before waking up on the beach, but he didn’t mind.
He didn’t slow through the jungle. But he did as they reached the lobby doors. They’d have to wait for someone to open them. Maybe, if they were lucky, it would be someone from the tour group!
When a bellhop finally pushed a cart out of the doors and toward the parked car of an arriving guest, Max led the way through the automatic doors and into the lobby. “Hm,” he said. “I wonder if they’re back yet.”
Doors. Why would they hallucinate doors that wouldn’t open. But then they did. It was this strange irritation that Teddy couldn’t quite explain. And Max was right, there was no tour group. At least not yet. “We weren’t too far behind them, were we? If they were walking.” Teddy frowned slightly. Maybe the math worked out.
There was that cliche about feeling alone in a crowd that Jack had never understood. He wasn’t one to feel lonely, nor was he one to be ignored. And yet that afternoon, he had felt that acutely. It was disorienting, being nearly invisible, and while the rage he had felt when Izzy disappeared had largely evaporated and left him exhausted, he was still on edge and expecting the worst. So when he saw Max and Teddy enter the lobby, he expected to be invisible to them as well. Still. He had to try.
“Hey! Max! Teddy!” He waved, hoping to god that Izzy wasn’t the only one who could see him.
“Oh, they were on a boat,” he said to his friend. Max wasn’t sure how long it had been between the beach and the tour and the walking. He was thinking about it when he saw the other boy’s wave. “Hey, Jack!” he offered excitedly before waving back. It was always nice to be seen and heard. Maybe their hallucination was wearing off. He threw a glance toward Teddy in excitement.
A boat. That was new. Shouldn’t Max have told him that? But maybe it made sense. They could still be on their way from the dock. Another distraction was brought up and he smiled as Jack called out their names. “Hey!” he waved back. “So you’re not shunning us?”
Okay, three people could see him. Jack gave a relieved sigh. “Shunning?” So they were experiencing the same thing he was. “That’s what you think it is? Nah, man, shunning is intentional. It’s a choice you make. They can’t see us. We don’t exist.” He spoke matter of factly as if he wasn’t deeply disturbed by everything that was going on.
“I think we’re decided on hallucinating,” Max supplied in an attempt at helpfulness. “The doors don’t work for you either?”
“Hallucinations wouldn’t be solid though.” Teddy added to Max’s guess. “And how can we not exist. We clearly exist. I mean look at us.” Teddy motioned along his body to show.
“We aren’t solid though. I fell right through one of my friends, like I was a ghost or something, or a hologram.” He couldn’t help but shiver at the memory, despite how he was trying his hardest to pretend that he was okay. “And sure, I can see you, we can see each other but them,” he gestured at the people around them, paying them absolutely no mind. “They can’t. And Izzy... she was here, we were talking, and then she fucking just disappeared. I don’t know, but something fucking bad is going on. It’s like...” he almost had it but there was still a block, something that was preventing him from seeing the truth. “I don’t fucking know but I will figure it out.”
Max canted his head to the side. “Maybe I’m right about being cursed. Or this is a parallel universe.” Pause. “Maybe it’s the matrix. We’re glitching.” He considered for a moment, thinking, about how this could work. If they weren’t a hallucination. If it wasn’t a dream. What did that mean? Curses were fun to think about, but they couldn’t possibly exist. Again, he froze in thought. Slowly, Max’s image flickered out, like someone turning off a television. A moment later, he reappeared, frowning. “I don’t know. It wasn’t one of the guys you came with, was it? Because I saw Jeremiah earlier and I know Jude’s around here somewhere.”
Teddy stared at Max, trying to put together what just happened. There had been something different. Like his eyes weren’t working, or maybe he was getting faint. He hadn’t eaten yet today. There wasn’t a light feeling in his head or a rumble in his stomach, but Max seemed almost not there for just a moment but then he was and it couldn’t be that. Could it?
“When was the last time I ate?” he asked to no one in particular, looking down at his own hands. “When did any of us eat?”
Jack was contemplating the idea of curses when Max slowly faded away, reappearing a moment later. He looked from Max to Teddy then back to Max, before fixing Teddy with a disbelieving stare. “I’m sorry, Max over there just fucking vanished and you’re thinking about food? Didn’t you see that? He was gone!” Or maybe he didn’t see anything. Maybe this was all in Jack’s head.
And Teddy did pose a good question. Jack couldn’t remember eating, but he didn’t feel at all hungry. It was certainly odd, but it paled in comparison to everything else that was going on.
“So that worked,” Max offered eagerly. “I ate a muffin earlier, but they are not very good. I would not recommend them.” Now, he spun in a small circle. “Do I have wings yet? Or a tail?”
“He did, didn’t he.” Tedy’s voice was soft and lost because he thought it’d been an imagining, a trick of the light. But Jack had seen it too. He reached out and pinched Max again, just like this morning, to be sure.
As before, Max yelped with the pain of the pinch. “Stop that!”
“No wings or tail but wait wait wait hold the fuck up. ‘That worked?’ Did you just intentionally disappear?” It was insane and Jack had no idea how Max could be so calm about this, but he also couldn't help but admire him for it. “How did you do that?”
“Duh, this is a dream, dude. You can do anything in a dream,” Max supplied. “Including pinching each other.” He tossed Teddy a look and took a step away from him. “No unicorn horn?” He felt his forehead with disappointment. “I’m not really sure how. It just kinda happens.”
“You can’t do anything in a dream.” Teddy frowned, he seemed to be doing more of that lately. “You can’t feel things in dreams, that’s why they’re dreams.”
Jack crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. “Bro, this is not a dream,” he agreed. “I don’t know what’s going on but it’s real.” He didn’t understand how Max couldn’t see that. “What do you think happened to us?” he asked, turning to Teddy.
The angry look on Jack’s face made Max fall silent. He scuffed at the floor with the toe of his shoe a few times, looking around, hoping the tour group might make an appearance. They were there, after all, for a purpose.
“I don’t know.” Teddy shook his head, trying to piece through it. “It’s like. We’re here. But we’re not. And things are so different but the same. I can’t keep track of time.”
Jack frowned. “Yeah.” He hadn’t really thought about time but he had woken up on the beach, unsure of when it was or how he got there. “Did either of you…” He swallowed hard. “When I was on the beach, I suddenly couldn’t breathe, like I was being choked. And the same thing happened to Izzy and she was coughing up water and for a minute she looked, I don’t know, dead.” Had something happened to them? Was this some kind of purgatory or out of body experience? But he couldn’t remember getting hurt. “Did you experience something like that?”
Oh. That had happened to him. With Jer. Max nodded slowly, his expression easing into confusion and then realization. It probably wasn’t a dream. “Yeah,” he said. “It happened to me, too.” He shifted from his left foot to his right, glancing away from his friends and back toward the door. Nervous. “Jer tripped over my foot this morning and that didn’t hurt. Then it felt like, I dunno. Like every part of me was broken. And I couldn’t breathe. But it went away really fast. Like someone flipping a pain light switch.” He shrugged now. “I’ve gotten hurt a lot, but never like that.”
As it all ran through Teddy’s mind, the familiar feeling of rasping, shallowed breathes that became harder and harder. The pain that spread out through his stomach and then just seemed numb. Numbness seeping in everywhere. His legs gave out, crumpling till Teddy was sitting there on the floor, staring out at the pattern on the floor.
“Are we.” his voice cut out there.
Jack felt a wave of sympathy but there was nothing he could do for him. There was nothing he could do for himself. “Maybe we should find our bodies. Maybe we aren’t really… dead. Maybe just dying.” It seemed like a false hope but they had to try, didn’t they? It was better than the alternative. “Maybe if we can just reconnect with them, things could go back to normal.”
Looking between Teddy and Jack, Max wasn’t sure exactly what to do. He found himself settling on the floor by his best friend, reaching out a hand to gently rest against his shoulder. “If we are, at least we’re all together. But we can’t all be dead. I’ve seen and talked to a lot of people.” It felt like an improbability that so many of them could have died together. “We have a lot of places to look, then, cause I’ve been all over Shipwreck beach and through the jungle and haven’t seen anything like that.”
“You said Ash cut his hair.” Teddy said quietly, staring at the floor. The lines of the tile all seemed to swirl together. “Ash wasn’t supposed to be here.”
“I saw a friend who wasn’t supposed to be here too. He also looked different. And sad. He wrote my name in the sand.” Something must have happened to them. That’s why their friends were here. But if they were dying, wouldn’t they be in the hospital? Why would their friends be here, on the island, at the hotel, unless it was already too late for them. Jack shook his head, unwilling to believe it. “It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t remember anything bad happening to me.”
“I don’t know,” Max said, his voice sharp and pained. “I don’t—“ He moved to stand and took several steps backward toward the doors. “I can’t—“ Several more steps. His image blinked in and out for a few seconds before he solidified again. Coincidentally, the doors opened as he stepped past the trigger and he aimed his thumb over his shoulder pointing toward the door. “Outside.” He swallowed and stepped backward again. “I’ll be outside.”
There it was, that flickering, just like some dead person in a horror movie for a scare. And there it was, the door opening and that seemed like something so momentous and hollow that Teddy wasn’t sure how to articulate it.
“Out. Yeah.” His eyes snapped up to the opened door. Fuck.
Jack watched Max go with a growing sense of dread. He couldn’t blame Max for leaving, but he needed to remember. He needed to find answers. “I need to find my friends. Or myself. Or something. You okay here, man?” He snorted. “Or well, as okay as we possibly could be given that we might be fucking dead.” His laugh was hollow and forced. There was no point in trying to lighten the mood.
“Yeah.” Teddy breathed, a bit of a laugh that felt sad more than funny. Maybe he could sink through the floor. Just get swallowed up. If they were dead that was a thing floors could do. “At least I’m still hotter than Casper.” he added ruefully.