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The nightmares happen every night. They’re never the same, and yet they are. Always everyone who died telling him how much he failed. The reasons are different, the voices are different, but he’s used to it now.
Brian asking why he abandoned him.
Alex telling him that he hadn’t helped anyone.
Jay asking him why he lied.
Even people he didn’t know, or could barely remember, show up in his dreams to tell him how he’d wronged them. And always, always, that thing, the monster, looming above him, behind him, everywhere, ever-present, taking its victims again and then turning on Tim himself. He runs. He’s terrified. He knew how much things were his fault, he knew, but he was scared, he didn’t want to die, he didn’t–
And then he’d wake up. And he’d feel nothing.
He can’t actually remember the last time he felt something other than a faint self-loathing.
It had to have been several months ago, sometime after he’d uploaded 87 and was finished with Marble Hornets. He drove and drove, until he was far enough away that nobody would recognize him, and tried to move on with his life.
Around the time he’d found an apartment to rent that wasn’t completely run down, he ran out of his medication. He couldn’t afford to see a doctor and get a new prescription, so he ignored it and hoped things would be okay.
He didn’t have any seizures, or have any episodes of missing time. He didn’t see the monster, except in his dreams. He thought maybe he didn’t need to the medication anymore. But gradually, Tim noticed that he couldn’t feel as much as he used to. He thought it was normal at first; even before being dragged back into things by Jay, happy wasn’t… ever really an emotion he could describe himself as having. But it was different, now. If anything he felt lacking. And it continued until even waking up screaming from his nightmares wouldn’t even phase him.
It never occurred to him that fear and pain were things that he could miss, but he does. Desperately. Or at least, as desperately as he can anymore. The small part of him that can still feel something hates that he’s even more of a shell than he used to be, wishes he could feel something more in his life than just the experience of simply existing.
Tim doesn’t want to die. Not really. But he wonders sometimes… if he were dying, would he feel fear again?