Broken (Ticcimask, Masky's Side)

Chapter 9 - Arguments and memories

I immediately knew who he was referring to, and I tense up. My jaw clenched and my knuckles turned white from gripping my clipboard so tight.

"Shut up," I say. He let out a cough and then took a few pills from a pill bottle he had in his pocket. "And stop stealing my pills," I say, setting my work beside me to motion accusingly at the bottle.

"You shared them with Jay before," he says while putting the stolen pills back in his pocket.

"You stole them," I say.

"Jay might not have stolen them, but they still didn't keep him from getting killed," he says.

"You didn't either. You didn't even try to stop him," I say with an almost inaudible cough.

"I could say the same about you," he says. I stand up and take a step towards him. My vision darkened slightly and my ears filled with distant static, but I ignore both.

"I did try! I tried as hard as I could to keep him safe!" I yell. Everyone in the living room was staring at me now, but I ignore them too.

"You left Jay in a place Alex could easily get to. Without Jay acting as a catalyst you wouldn't have beaten Alex, and Alex would have gone to your house and killed Jay," he said.

"You could have stopped him before that happened!" I say with a slight cough.

"Saving Jay wasn't my plan. Unlike your plan for Jay, mine worked," he said.

"Your plan got him killed!" I yell.

"As I said, my plan worked," he says. I take another step closer to him.

"Are you saying you planned for him to die?" I say with another cough.

"Yes," he says. I finally snap, and I give up fighting the darkness and static that had gotten worse each second of this argument. The memories and emotions surfacing that I had been trying so hard to repress got too much for me to bare, and I black out.

I wake up collapsed on the floor having a coughing fit. I frantically grab my pills from my pocket, and I move my mask enough to take them. I took two of the pills, and I start to breath a bit easier. I cough a bit more, and I spit out the blood that came up. I try to sit up, but i'm too unstable and fall again. I shake my head to get rid of the static and darkness that clung to my senses. After a second or two I can hear and see again, and I succeed in sitting up. I readjust my mask to be able to see properly, and I look around to try to get my bearings.

Why am I on the floor? How long was I out for? When did the couch get knocked over? Why is everyone staring at me like i'm going to attack someone? Why does Hoodie look like he was just running for his life? Is that my knife on the floor? Yup, that's my knife. I pick the knife up and put it back in my pocket.

I try to remember what happened before now, but the only thing I remember is the argument with Hoodie and being furious at him.

Did I attack Hoodie? I guess it would make sense if I did. 

"Masky, I demand an explanation as to why you attacked Hoodie this instant!" Slender yelled from behind me. Well that answers that question.

"He knows what he did," I say. Hoodie seems to have caught his breath, and he turned to look at me. I notice his jacket now has a tear on the front of the left shoulder, but it doesn't look like the cut hit skin.

"I did what I had to, Tim. Jay had gotten too violent and irrational. If I hadn't done what I did the cycle would have just continued with new people. Do you really want that to have happened? Do you really want everything that happened back then to repeat with more innocent people getting dragged in?" he says.

"Of course I don't, and don't call me that, Brian," I say.

"You're gonna have to accept what happened. You can't just act like it never happened," he says. I have no response to that, so I just stare at the ground. I know he does have a point, but I don't even want to think about the past or the new information I just got about it.

"I believe I understand the situation now. I won't punish either of you this time, but if something like this happens again there will be consequences," slender said teleporting off. The room falls into a tense silence, and I sit there on the cold floor of the -- now destroyed -- room motionless.

"A-are you o-okay, M-masky?" Toby asks while hesitantly approaching me.

"I'll be fine," I say.

"Are you sure? Coughing up blood isn't a good thing or normal," EJ says.

"Good thing my life isn't normal then," I say, standing up and walking off. I walk to my room and into my bathroom. I put my mask on the sink and turn the water on to rinse the metallic taste of blood out of my mouth.