Songbird in a Snowstorm [Yandere! Marble Hornets x Reader]

Macabre Thoughts

Exhaustion curled around each and every one of your limbs, but it wasn't quite enough to settle your mind. No, there was far too much to be thinking about right now. The amount of faith you had just put into Tim. How much time you had left before your body gave out or someone decided to stop feeding you. If there was even a way out of this forest. No answer had revealed itself in all the time you had spent agonizing over everything.

Tim had muttered a quick, "I'll be back later," before finding his way out again. The important thing to note here though, is that he never specified when exactly later would be. You waited for later. Both you and Jessica did, anxiously filling your time with card games and quiet chatter. Except it was more than that.

Every word you exchanged was filtered and terse. Glossed over in a coat of honey just in case someone happened to be listening in. Tim's appearance left your skin feeling prickly and left a new layer of fear to look out for. One sidelong glance gave you all the evidence you needed to determine that Jessica felt the same. Neither one of you particularly wanted to discuss your new discoveries. Not now, when there was nothing to gain and everything to lose.

So you waited. And waited. And then waited some more. Until eventually long shadows crept up to engulf the basement. Jessica had called it a night at that point, but you knew she wasn't sleeping. How could she? How could either of you, after everything that happened? At the moment she was on the top bunk, stretched out and taking in the silence. It was a welcome change. Both the quiet and the dry place to rest. Even you had to admit it was kind of nice. Not because the mattresses here were anything to brag about, but because they are leagues above the pathetic tables the forest service tried to pass off as beds. Those beds made the spongy excuse of a mattress you have now seem like five star accommodations.

For what felt like the hundredth time this night alone, you push back the ache that had settled behind your eyes. To be perfectly honest, sleep should probably be the first thing you worry about. Actual sleep though, because laying around like a rag doll doesn't count for shit. Still, something kept you from closing your eyes for more than a few seconds at a time. The fact that you had spent upwards of forty-eight hours unconscious might have something to do with it. Which leaves you with a problem. Nothing earth-shattering like your last twenty problems, but almost irritating enough to make up for it.

Namely, you are bored. For a while you busy yourself with striking the right blanket-to-body ratio for the perfect temperature. But after you kicked one blanket off and slid another to the side, you are faced with boredom and an array of other miscellaneous issues. Laying still in one position for so long had new aches forming all along your body. Speaking of which, your headache raged on with a persistence that was borderline impressive. At least you were no longer roasting in your sheets. The thin t-shirt you donned made the basement's temperature nearly comfortable.

And it was nice. Familiar even, to be stuck in bed with nothing to do. Such an odd thing to miss. The privilege of boredom. Cold blue hues shone through the window, outlining everything in dim light. The basement was a bit blurry, but there was no question of who or what was lurking in the shadows. With a sigh you cozy into the spongy mattress, listening to all the little noises that came with being in the middle of the woods. Wind distantly whistling outside the window, the muted hisses and pops of the small fire upstairs, footsteps-

Footsteps drawing near to the door, where there should be none. Light and even, belonging to neither Tim nor the masked man. Which only left one option. Above you, Jessica shifts in place. Something burns behind your eyes as you pinch them shut. A deafening creak reverberates through the air. There wasn't a single doubt in your mind that Jessica already had a hand on that halfway shattered bottle of hers. Only, you couldn't tell if you wanted her to lay still or hurl herself at the threat.