a/n: this is early but i'm in a shit mood so i feel like projecting my sadness into this since i won't get this done until like next month unless i do
The deeper James ventures into the jungle, with the soil melting beneath his feet, the darker it becomes.
/
Kendall wants to talk to James about those nights when they were rantipoles, when they shared the stars amongst each other and no one else- when they exchanged secrets unbeknowst to anyone but each other, when their bond went from good to great, and great to unbreakable. He wants to ask do you feel it too? But he can't, he's absolutely adamant against being selfish when James had gone through what he had.
Besides, why would James listen? After hearing James' story, if he was James, he wouldn't even listen to anything that came out of his own mouth.. It would seem rather suspicious if he tried to ask about emotions when James' been through what he has. Kendall was like James in a good many ways, and one of them was that he questioned everything. So if someone came up to him after a trauma and tried to start an emotional waltz, he'd want no part of it, not at all.
/
James is in pitch darkness now, the only things that he can see are the ringed pads of his hands in front of his face. Barely. Still, he continues to walk with the promise of finding civilization, finding the source of that music. As he walks, the music slowly, slowly, slowly changes, over time the cacophonous beats coming out haphazardly and eventually just sounding.. wrong.
James thinks nothing of it- their equipment fucks up all the time when they're on tour, so cacophony is nothing new. But when the music cuts off, James is worried. Scared. Sure, he's got the survivor pack on his back, but why use it if he can still see.. at least a little? James shakes his head dismissively and continues on, letting the hollow silence ringing in his ears to lead him on into darkness.
He hopes he finds something, anything soon.
(Be careful what you wish for.)
/
"Dude!" Carlos gawps, his eyes rendered wide as saucers. "Why didn't you just call someone?" James stiffens, and Kendall promptly swats Carlos on the head.
"Jungles don't have cell towers, dumbass." He sneers, and Carlos whines playfully, shuffling closer to Logan and pressing himself up against the other boy like a scared cat. Logan shifts uncomfortably on the leather seat, his gaze flickering like premature fireworks, and scuttles up against the wall, breaking the contact. He looks over to Kendall, whose oblivious gaze is intent with worry on the poor little trauma victim in the bed before them.
James relaxes, laughing a little, and says, "I actually did try to use it, once. Once I got to the fairgrounds-"
"Wait, the what?!"
"Stop interrupting him and maybe he'll tell us! Damn, Carlos, it's not like this is easy for him." Ugh, Logan wanted to wipe that glower off of Kendall's face. With his own face. Instead, he looks down and ignores the fact that his cheeks are melting blood all over him.
/
He can see lights. Lights. People! James picks up the pace, breaking into a wholesome run. The trees slip by quicker and quicker and begin to thin out, and the wind doesn't stop nagging his hair until he's completely out of breath. The trees are completely gone now and he can see again- or at least, sort of.
The moon's barely bigger than a pinhead in the sky, casting a useless, haunting glow upon everything around him. It's dark, but it's definitely better than being under those treetops, feeling suffocated, directionless, lost.. James shakes his head, tells himself he's fine now. He looks around for the source of the lights, excited to find out where they were coming from.
He doesn't see them.
"Fuck! No, no, no, no!" He shrills, spinning in circles and walking backwards hysterically, desperately. He feels something warm and hard against his back and stiffens.
/
It's not like Kendall doesn't have enough to fret about himself: he's still trying to deciper what the fuck is going on with him and Logan. Even if James was willing to listen to Kendall's confessions or less likely but more hopefully return the feelings, he'd still have Logan to worry over. Kendall's never been good at reading him, he's not that great with seeing into darkness, and that's why he draws a complete blank when he stares into Logan's eyes(no matter how much they shine).
He figures it's best to just make like James and induratize himself for now.
/
James screams, turning around quickly and finding himself face-to-face with a sign.
It's clearly been around a long, long time, peeling cedar wood stained dark from acid rain and muddy floodwater. The sign is covered in splinters, sharp little things that remind James of a frightened porcupine. There's writing on it, it's English, he knows, but there are red scuff marks on top of the black, messy print in the worst places.
All he can make out are the words "we won".
/
Carlos cut over it's face. He couldn't handle it. Now his arm is just a collection of messy white scars, tally marks of every time he just wasn't strong enough.
He'll get better, though. For James- no. For Logan.
Yes, Carlos decides. He'll do it for Logan. After all, how hard could it be to not do something?
(Probaby more so than it sounds, but for Logan, he'd do a whole lot of hard things.)
/
James steps back from the sign, utterly horrified by the grotesque appearance of it, and freezes. "Holy shit." He shakes his head vigorously because he's hallucinating, he's insane, off his rocker, he knows he is, because there's no way that's actually there, there is not a disney park in front of him- hell, there's no way there's a Disney park in the middle of the jungle. There are only Disney parks in America and Paris, aren't there?
This is improbable, fucking impossible. He's a first-class celebrity, he would've been the first to know if Disney just out of nowhere decided to build a park as far from civilization as possible. He stumbles backwards even more, rubbing his eyes to make sure he's actually looking at a delipadated, abandoned Disney park- and the unmistakeable cursive lettering spanned across the large, imperial-like gate behind the sign say otherwise.
He almost still thinks he's hallucinating, even when he steps forward to touch the black-cold metal bars of the tall gate, even when he runs his fingers over the thick chain bolting the gate shut, even when he crumbles rust residue under his fingertips- there's no way this is real.
(But it is, he knows it is- he just wonders if it's too good to be true.)
James peers between the bars of the amusement park and sees no sign of life, but this is where the music came from, isn't it, so why wouldn't there be life here? He steps back and observes the fat rings of the protective chain. How was he supposed to get to civilization if he couldn't even get inside the park to begin with? Carlos' words ring in his head, strong and clear: Just place your hands between the cylinder and then central housing, then hit it with a sledgehammer.
James' stomach twists at the memory, but he's glad it came to him. Now, he doesn't have a sledgehammer, but he can probably improvise..
Looking around, James sees something that looks like a part of a statue laying in the soil a few meters away. He grabs it and, with all his might, slams it down against the lock of the chain. For an ageless piece of rusted metal, it's pretty strong, and despite James' best efforts, he accepts the fact that he just got beat by a small piece of metal. He also accepts that there's only two other options if he wants to get in: climb the gate, or dig under it.
He wonders how badly he wants to get in there.
/
Carlos can clearly see that Logan and Kendall are drifting apart. He wonders what happened, question's always on the tip of his tongue(he is the curious one), but he never dares open his mouth.
(Not because he's scared of asking, but because he's scared of being answered.)
/
James decides the only choice that he really has is to die trying to survive or to die out of fear of dirty hair. He figures he'd rather have dirt buried in his hair then be buried himself and sets to work climbing the gate. It's slow, painful and tedious(he fell off it more times than he has fingers), but eventually he maneuvers himself to the top of the gate and carefully lifts himself over the pointed peaks perched on it, careful not to fall on them because damn it, he's James Diamond, not James Shish Kabob.
Currently he's clinging to the top of the gate and staring down at the other side, and God, it's amazing. Even though nothing is even remotely light and all of the rides are completely off and if anything, buried under inches of mold, James' heart doubles in size at the sight of it, squeezing his lungs with awe and taking his breath away. He can see so many familiar rides and characters down there that he can't help but beam excitedly. He readjusts his backpack and jumps nimbly down to the ground, his feet quietly making a dull sound against the soil.
The entire park explodes- rides turn on and run faster than normal, with teacups spinning dangerously fast and airplane rides turning into a chromatic, doughnut-shaped blur in the sky; lights turn on at their brightest capacities, blinding James from all angles; the music- the music- the music- it sounds like the soundtrack to 'Steamboat Willie'- except it's repetetive, skips over notes over notes and plays backwards and discordantly on occasion. It seems like the park is alive, trying to communicate with him. As fast as the flare of terrifying overload comes, it's gone, and all rides and lights return to normal speeds and brightnesses.
James presses himself against the gate in fear, not wanting to move a single muscle in fear of angering- what, the park? He was being ridiculous. Afraid of a park? That was absolute bull. He probably just landed on a switch or something and turned on everything, no biggie. He forces himself to unplaster his sweat-slicked, shaking body from the cool metal gate and take a few steps. It's safe, he knows, but he can't help the feeling of his heart crawling into his mouth farther and farther, stealing his saliva and swelling up fear in the back of his throat.
(It's just a park, James.)
/
Logan spends most of his days sleeping now, everlastingly exhausted from forcing apathy, ignoring his 'friends' and studying. He doesn't mind it too much, though- sleep, though never plagued with false darkness or self-concocted pain, was never exactly easy to achieve for him. Nowadays? He's out like a light when his head hits his pillow.
Of course Kendall and Carlos had tried to talk to him, fill his head with lies like We need you, don't starve and We love you(pfft.), please eat, but Logan knows better- he knows what he heard. He's a fucking genius, he's fucking Logan Mitchell, who are they trying to fool? Certainly not the one with a 4.0, the one who aces every test and knows things by heart after only reading them twice. He is an intellect, that's what he is, and he doesn't need their petty fabrications to distract himself.
(Eventually, Carlos and Kendall stopped trying.)
They were in the way, his friends. In the way of him achieving his full potential, being the best he could be. Before, he'd cared too much. He'd tried too hard. All he had gotten for his efforts? Walked over, used and taken advantage of. He'd always given them the benefit of the doubt, hoped they were just needy, but once he'd heard the words actually come out of Carlos' mouth, he was sure.
They didn't care.
So he wasn't going to either. He hasn't seen the pale white lines turn to thick red strokes on Carlos' wrists, the glossed charcoal under his eyes, the slump in his step and the way his voice has turned into an eternal yawn; hasn't noticed the way Kendall's eyes have turned to ash, the way he barely talks anymore, spends all his time with James(ugh), how he's never around- how un-Kendall-ishly detached and disloyal he's being. Logan doesn't see it.
(No one can see with a mask on.)
/
James has been walking around the park for a few hours now, abusing the privelage of being in a fully-operative Disneyland by himself. The initial uneasiness that the power-malfunction of the park had caused him faded quickly, replaced with giddy, child-like excitement because honestly it's a Disney park- is it even physically possible to be scared when you're riding Dumbo?
Of course, the novelty of the rides faded quickly, but the childish happiness inside him hasn't yet. He's spent the past half hour or so raiding the food stands' pantries and fridges, seeing if there's any forgotten food he can salvage. He did find some- lots of it: turkey legs, popcorn, bagged cotton candy- hell, he even found a freezer full of meat in the back of one of the resturaunts.
The meat seemed relatively fresh, so he had a strip of it dangling from a tree nearby while he was successfully attempting to make a fire. All it took was one waterproof match and a few torn-up brochures he'd found, and he had a fire. The flames lap at the darkness hungrily, cackling and crackling red-hot into the night. James grabs the meat off the branch and skewers it on a twig, pretending it's a marshmallow and not a piece of dead animal that is however months old.
He raises it above the pit, and range tendrils of fire burn the rawness out of the meat, sending sweet-smelling smoke into the air and making James' stomach rumble. He watches as the edges crumble into sooty brownness, and he lifts it up to his mouth and chomps down on it. He's pretty sure it's not pig meat, but it's taste is quite akin to bacon, although it has more of a caramel-ish aftertaste to it. Shrugging thoughtfully, he gets up and stomps out the fire, pulling the survival pack onto his bag as he does so.
James' vision blackens at the edges, kaleidoscopic smudges of darkness bubbling in the corners of his eyes. He shakes his head vehemently to try and chase away the disturbance, but the transition from intense orange light to nighttime jungle was a little intense for his retinas, and he staggers forward blindly, looking for something to lean on with what little vision he still has. He feels a plastic object in front of him and leans against it as he desperately rubs the dizziness out of his eyes.
When his vision clears, when the black spots in his sight crawl away with their tail between his legs, he slowly pulls away from the object he's pressed up against and turns to look at it. It's some sort of telephone booth, he realises, but it's got writing on the top of it in some sort of foreign language. James recognizes it as Indonesian or Malay, he's not sure, but who gives a shit because there's a fucking phone booth right there! James immediately forces open the door, which opens with an ear-piercing screech and steps inside. He looks down at the sleek black telephone headset, notices a red smudge on it's glossy surface, notices the way the smudge looks vaguely like a fingerprint, realises what the smudge is, picks up the phone to inspect it closely and fucking freezes when he sees a distortedly familiar face being reflected on the plastic, it's there, it was there, for just seconds but damn it it was there and James can't breathe, he wants to turn around but he can't he won't, but God, he has to, and he starts to, but-
Suddenly, the floor is swallowing him whole, the light is rushing out of his body, tugging at his hair, he is velocity, and as he falls the darkness cackles at him. You fell for it, it mocks.
He's going down, down, down, not enough time to even remember to panic-
anditallgoesblack.
a/n: i'm very good at making love triangles, aren't i? :D well, now you know where the music is coming from, but i left ya'll with a cliffhanger again(BOOO)! still, i wrote this pretty damn quickly. i don't know how long it's gonna be until i post this, but i finished it the day after i uploaded chapter 5.
also like i said, i'm sort of scaring myself with this story so i may not finish it. xD if i dont, i'll make a chapter explaining the rest of the plot because i'm a huge pussy and the antagonists/james-hurting-things are basically taken out of the scariest nightmare/hallucination ive ever had so whoop. if i don't finish it, though, that would make this the last chapter, because you find out who the james hurties are in the following one, or so i planned. that's not an 100% sure thing though, because i'd probably force myself to try first, you know? xD i'll probably finish it, don't worry, but i'm just warning you guys. o.O
until next time, fanfiction!