📹Marble Hornets: After Entry 35

Chapter 5

It was still and quiet outside of the abandoned hospital. Wind blew through the window as Hoody leaned out to watch the forest's branches wave and sing.

There was a calmness in Mother's gentle green. Hoody could stay out here forever, preferably long enough for leaves and moss to replace their veins and bones. Maybe that was the only way to or away from the Ark. Maybe it wasn't even a place at all. Who knew what Hoody truly saw in those fragmented dreams, dreams that felt more real than the waking world. Where is it? What is it?

Seth knew more than them. Of the three messengers, he could see and hear the most from beneath his fursuit head. But he was difficult to find, and appeared only to ask for help from Hoody and Masky, and to guide them.

Hoody's mouth felt sour. Everything was so much easier with someone trustable directing them, giving them and Masky focus and purpose without having to think or talk to each other. They worked together, but they were missionaries, with no time for distracting things like friendship.

Now, they were stuck alone together with nowhere to go, nothing to do, and several days to waste. Maybe even weeks. It didn't help that Masky seemed to be growing distracted already, fixating too much on Hoody and not what actually mattered: killing Alex. Hoody felt like a wild animal under observation, producing a reflexive growl deep in their throat. No one understood what they were, since they were nothing. And it would stay that way.

A warm familiar voice sounded, from something barely remembered. No words, just a dim feeling of comfort. It wasn't Brian's voice, it was a memory. An echo of wanting to be known. Of being invited to be known. The voice belonged to the same black and white mask that waited for them in an empty room, somewhere in the hospital.

Hoody shoved the memory away and turned abruptly from the view of the window, as if the trees would start asking them questions, too. Questions they had themself but would never acknowledge.

Then, Hoody was seized by a vicious force. They stopped in the middle of the room as coughing seized the body, crumpling their legs and dropping them to the hard concrete. Hoody's brain and vision clouded with the same raging bursts of color.

They forced deep breaths into their lungs, fighting against the nothingness that had them by the throat. Hoody clawed the floor through their gloves. It will not happen. The nothing that would swallow them, body and soul, until it was all they were. A nothing that consumed them until it became them. A horrible, terrible, endless nothing. It was one of the few things Hoody genuinely feared.

It will NOT happen.

Suddenly, Hoody could feel their heartbeat again, painfully spasming in their sore ribs. The nothingness began to subside from where it came, and Hoody's senses were dragged back into alertness, like a cold motor engine struggling to start. They had to take several long breaths to pull themself apart from the clinging void that threatened to suck them away. Hoody's vision settled back into red and blue miasma. They could feel the body's hands on the floor now. The raging sea became a drizzle once more.

Hoody tried to stand, legs shaking. They ached all over, and could tell they were nearing the point of exhaustion. They would have to rest their host's frail body before it gave out completely, and there was no one left to hunt Alex.

For a moment, Hoody imagined laying back down on the abandoned stone floor, and never getting up again.

Not yet.

There were things they had to do first, like making sure no one else would be hurt by a certain evil that called itself human. That was all there was. Hoody existed to stop the pain. Focus.