The first time Tim woke up with blood on his shirt front, dried on his chin, the coppery taste lingering in his mouth, he had been alarmed. There was something vaguely familiar about the whole situation. He didn't remember coughing at all, nor collapsing to the ground. It had been mid-afternoon, last he remembered, but the nearest clock told him it was well past nine. The still open blinds of the window several feet away confirmed this. The carpet had marred his cheek with tingling craters and it had taken him several minutes to stand, drag himself upwards with the help of his dresser, and find the pills. Tim did not remember if he had been looking for them before. He remembered coming home from work, turning the tv on for background noise in his otherwise empty house. He had taken a shower. But after that, everything was dark. Just another thing to bring up at his next doctors appointment.
The second time Tim woke up with blood on his lips and the back of his hand, smeared like watery lipstick across his skin, he knew exactly why. This had happened before, when he was a child. The doctors had given him medications, pills, every sort of therapy legal in the state of Alabama, and eventually, it had stopped. But Tim remembered the blood, and the screaming, although he wasn't sure if it was him who had screamed, or something else. Tim did not remember what had caused it. The pills had made him forget that. They had made him hazy and dumb, unable to fight back against the doctors or the nightmares until eventually, they slipped away and he left the mental hospital and scraped out a life. A life free of screaming and pills that made him complacent. Free of whatever had put him in the hospital in the first place, or, so Tim had thought.
The third time Tim woke up with blood on his hands, seeping into the swirls of his fingertips and drying there to make them stiff, he didn't want to know why. He was unsure of where the blood come from, or why the painted black and white mask was there again. He had done this a few times now, but he had never woken up with blood like this on his hands before. He had no idea whose it was. No matter how many times he checked his own body, there were no wounds on it. His mouth tasted like blood, but it always did now. The woods were Rosswood, like they had been before, although Tim did not know why it was always Rosswood. He had woken at dawn, like before, with a layer of dew soaking into his coat and trickling onto his scalp. Tim tried not to think about whose blood was drying on his fingers as he fought his way out of the woods and underbrush, finding his car parked alone in the lot and his keys zipped up safely in his pocket. As he started the engine, Tim tried not to think.
It wasn't the first time Tim had watched his own blood swirl down the drain, pinkish and diluted by the too-hot shower spray. He had pressed his forehead against the cool tile to steady himself, lightheaded by the sharp stinging of the horizontal slices on his thighs. The razor lay forgotten, momentarily, on the edge of the tub. It had been happening nearly every night, waking up in the woods, huge chunks of time missing from his life. Unexplainable to his boss, his doctor, himself. But this calmed him, made him feel in control. This way, he knew exactly whose blood it was that trickled down his legs and pooled around his ankles, running between his toes. These new lines might add to the others, if they were deep enough, collecting like tally marks in places that he wouldn't have to explain to doctors. One to mark each time he caused someone else to bleed, and awoke with the proof dried on his skin.
Tim had lost track of how many times it had happened. Waking up with broken legs and watching videos that were of him, but not him all at the same time. Seizures and knives and his whole life going to hell on the other side of a camera. Jay's camera. Faithfully recording everything, providing clues and context to situations that Tim would not have had otherwise. This way, he knew who had broken his leg, whose body he had seen laying face-down and smashed in the Rosswood parking lot. He could now account for some of the nights he had gone missing, or where his pills had went. Jay and his cameras had pieced together his life, provided a comfort that Tim had forgotten could exist. But not even that could have lasted. Jay's camera had recorded his own death, and the pills had run out so long ago that Tim didn't bother to try and remember. He knew it was coming, building up like a tension in his body, an insistent tugging at the corners of his thoughts. He wasn't sure what the point of fighting it off was. Maybe this time, he wouldn't wake up in Rosswood, blood caked in his hair and teeth, unaccountable for his own actions. He had no one to urge him to fight it off, no one to wake up for. Maybe this time he wouldn't wake up at all.