Oakside Forest (My 'Masky' and 'Hoodie' origin story)

Chapter 1: New Beginnings

I look out the window as Jay turns off the highway and onto a narrow, one way road. Trees surround both sides of the car and I hear Tim shift in the back. "You ok?" I ask him. He looks at me and nods, obviously nervous about the forest. "Don't worry, this isn't Rosswood." I reply, seeing him relax a bit, but not much. I can tell that what he's been through has really messed him up. I mean, I know he used to be cautious. But now he can't go near places with lots of trees or he'll panic. Badly. I look at the blur of green and brown as the car drives down the road. "Hey, Brian.." Tim says to me, the first thing he's said since we left rosswood. That was about two hours ago when he woke up. "Yeah?" I respond, looking at him. His jacket is still covered with leaves and branches but he doesn't seem to care. "...Are you sure he won't follow us?" He asks, tiredness and fear present in his voice. I sigh. "I'm sure he won't follow us." I answer, feeling a pang of guilt that I can't be completely honest with him. I know that Seth is keeping him busy, and that Alex is surely dead after...well..that. But...I don't know if The Operator will stay in Rosswood...I hope he does - for Tim's sake. I look back at him, he's lay down and ended up falling asleep. His chest is rising and falling at a steady pace, making the leaves on his jacket shift with every breath he takes. His head is tilted to the side, allowing me to see the scar going across the side of his neck. God, I feel so guilty for making him go through that. I've had to do it to myself a few times after some of the worse fights i'd get into with Seth and I know it hurts like hell. I mean- It's a burning hot piece of metal going against bare skin, followed by alcohol, of course it'll hurt. However, all the other stuff i'd put him through. Making him go back to Rosswood in a last ditch effort to stop Alex and Operator, knocking him out and forcing him to have attacks just so Seth and I could get a few pills. I mean, half of it worked. But the trauma I made my best friend go through...No one should go through what he did - I wouldn't even put that on my worst enemy...Yet I made my best friend go through it. The whole time he wanted answers, and I wanted to give them to him. But, I couldn't tell him what was going on. It would've just put him in more danger, and I didn't want that. We got so lucky. everything could've gone so wrong and we'd all be dead for real..."We're here" Jay says, breaking me out of my thoughts as we pass a sign saying "Welcome to Oakside".

I look back at Tim. He's still asleep but his breathing has gotten faster. To the untrained eye it would seem exactly the same. But from 5 years of reading hundreds of books about mental and physical health, going to classes to learn how to do basic - and some advanced - medical procedures, and having hundreds of signs for different things like strokes, heart attacks, etc drilled into my memory, you'd know if someone was having a nightmare like second nature. I lean over, my  seatbelt restraining me a little but giving me just enough room to reach Tim. I grab the sleeve of his jacket and shake him awake, causing him to jolt upright and start panting as though he just ran a marathon. It's common for this to happen after being woken from a nightmare. "hey, calm down. It's ok." I say to him, letting him regain his thoughts before looking at me. "I.." He tries to speak, but the fear he's probably feeling prevents him to. He looks at me, then at Jay. I put my arm out as he reaches over and grabs me, still breathing pretty heavily. This is the third time this has happened the whole trip. He'll fall asleep, have a nightmare, i'll wake him up and he'll check to make sure we're still alive by grabbing me and making sure that I wasn't a ghost or something I guess. I never understood that since I never had nightmares before. I mean, the worst dream I've ever had was when I was daydreaming and thought I was in class and that the teacher was telling me off. It was my mother telling me to go to bed. I chuckle at the memory a bit and look at Tim. His breathing has calmed down a lot and his death grip on my arm has loosened. "You ok now?" I ask him, still smiling. He looks at me with a relieved yet annoyed expression. I guess he thought I was laughing at him. I quickly regain my composure and roll my sleeve up to see how red my arm would be and, as I expected, there were four quickly fading white lines across my arm surrounded by red, a few of the cauterized scars showing. I roll my sleeve down once it returns to its normal colour and look back at Tim. "Sorry...Is your arm ok?" He says, adjusting back into reality and looking at the crease in the arm of my hoodie he's made. "Yeah, it's the third time you've done it and i'm getting used to it now..." I joke, raising my hand to show I was ok. He just looks at me and shifts around, moving back to the window of the car. We've moved more into the middle of the town and the forest is no longer visible, but he still stays as far away from the side it's on as possible.