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When Jimmy found himself back at home that night, it just wasn't the same.
There were a few torch lights missing from the houses he walked by on the way there. There was no pep in his step as he made his way towards his door and reached for the knob. There was nobody to stall around and talk to instead of opening it and just walking straight inside.
No, tonight was different. Tonight was missing something. Missing someone.
A cloud of breath ghosted over Jimmy's face from just above his scarf as he shut his door behind him, a final cold gust of wind blowing inside and tossing his hair about. His head gave a shake, mittens coming up to pat down the wispy strands and readjust his earmuffs.
The walk to his bed was almost reluctant, boots dragging across the dirt floor. Usually he was a bit more eager to sleep after the antics of the day, all the silly things he got up to. By the time he had done his nightly rituals, he was ready to sleep. Well… was it really sleep? Nobody was really sure anymore.
But when Jimmy reached his bed, he didn't climb into it. Instead, he plopped down on the right edge, one arm propped up on his knee as he rests his chin in the palm of his hand.
Another huff escaped him. His eyes flit to different parts of his base, unrest buzzing behind them, bouncing around inside his skull. Perhaps the fingers tapping against his cheek were trying to shoo it away, just like…
A frown tugged at Jimmy's lips, fingers ceasing their tapping for a moment. His gaze fell to the floor, fixed on it, on the mix of dirt and stone and the pebbles scattered throughout, like snowflakes painting a patch of grass.
His eye caught on some spruce. Spruce… like his house…
Jimmy sucked a breath in, pursing his lips as he shot up straight, running a mitten through his hair. Nervous habit, he supposed.
He could just faintly hear the last of the day's conversations beginning to die outside, coming to a lull as the chilly night wind fell over them like a blanket. A loud, whooshing blanket. Muffling the voices of the remaining townsfolk until a final "goodnight" was shouted into the dark.
That's right. It was time to go to bed, wasn't it?
Jimmy's chest deflated as a deep breath crawled its way up his throat, coming out his nose in rushed, almost angry puffs. Something stirred in his heart, something restless and uneased and… sad.
He slipped beneath the covers, pulled them tight as his achy body melted into the mattress. Just like every night. But this wasn't every night, was it?
Jimmy's eyes fixed on his door, burning holes into the spruce. Waiting.
He counted the seconds in his mind. Listened closely for the sound of footsteps against snow or the path. Laid there in silence, just hoping to see the knob twist and for someone to barge inside.
Just like he had to them, so many times before.
The door never opened. The complaining never came. The big, brown eyes Jimmy had grown so excited to see were nowhere to be found.
Jimmy let out a shallow sigh.
God, he missed Bdubs.
He barely even got to spend any time with him, Jimmy's mind lamented as he looked back up at the ceiling. So much protentional wasted, all because he just had to go to the Nether. Who'd he go with, again? Was it Skizz? He could've sworn there was someone else, too… hm…
Jimmy didn't care enough to try to remember.
He just had to accept the truth, he supposed. Bdubs is gone. Gone gone.
His shoulders shrugged as he pulled the covers up a little bit more, his eyes fluttering shut with a hum.
At least he wasn't the first.
…
Jimmy didn't know how long he had been asleep. All he knew is that, suddenly, he wasn't anymore.
He wasn't awake. He was somewhere in between. Somewhere he had grown quite familiar with, despite how odd and uneasy the whole gimmick still was. How had the Watchers learned to infiltrate their dreams? Were they even dreams at all?
Well, wherever Jimmy was now, they had weaseled their way in. As did their little toy.
It didn't take too long before a tune began to ring out from the sky. Some bells jingled in the distance, some sort of animal made a noise. It all kind of bled together after a while. The rushing wind didn't exactly help to make it sound any clearer.
But one thing always managed to feel fresh and festive and frightening. Santa Bot.
Jimmy couldn't move, but if he could, his shoulders would be hunched up and an excited grin would be pulling at his lips. Just like a kid on Christmas morning. Oh, how thrilling every visit was… as annoying as they were.
His eyes could move just enough to flick to the ceiling. And just like with the door, he waited. Because he knew what was coming. At least this nightly ritual hadn't been so rudely interrupted.
Jimmy's heart began to thump against his ribs as the music grew closer, slowly getting louder and louder, falling from the sky like something heaven-sent. And with the power Santa Bot could give them, maybe it was.
With every passing beat, every note that played from the familiar song, anticipation rose in Jimmy's bones. A new sort of anxiousness had began to bloom inside of him. Bdubs's death had really set in stone just how dangerous the world was getting… how it was all the more crucial to get these questions right…
So he laid in waiting, soul bouncing around inside his body like a ball inside his frozen body.
It didn't take long before the music has finally reached that special point, right before the roof would burst open and Santa bot would descend from above—
But the music kept going. And Jimmy eyes, watching the ceiling like a hawk, didn't even see a crack in the cobblestone.
Strange.
Before he could give it much mind, simply assume there was a glitch in the code or the world had been paused… the music began to change.
It was subtle at first. The key began to shift, just one random note at a time. Honestly, Jimmy hadn't even noticed it at first.
But then every once in a while became every other, and then every other became every single one. And by the next time to song looped around, it sounded so disgustingly wrong.
Once high notes now trilled in a way that made Jimmy's ears sting, and the lower ones now melted into muddled pools of noise, so deep they began to buzz inside his head. And as the cursed song went on, they began to weave together, crescendos of pitches crashing into waves of foreign sound.
The feeling it planted in Jimmy's stomach was no less than complete and utter dread.
But still, he kept his eyes fixed on the roof. A glitch, it had to be a glitch. It was common for the games to have random blips of nonsense, quick scares every now and again—
Scratch.
Jimmy's gaze nearly tore away from the ceiling despite his better judgement. Because that wasn't right. Santa Bot had never scratched the roof.
Scratch.
And Santa Bot had also never…
Scraaaatchhh…
Come up through the ground.
Jimmy's eyes shot down towards the floor he could see just beyond the foot of his bed, and in the dark of his home, he could just barely see the way the dirt began to shift. How every scratch and scrape beneath the surface made it shift and sink. Wait, had somebody went to bed beneath him—?
The hand that shot up from the ground seemed to quell that theory pretty quickly.
Its nails dug deep into the surrounding dirt, and moments later, a second hand sprout from the soil. Gloveless fingers scrambled for purchase, the brown covering them barely able to hide the viciously frostbitten skin beneath, black and blue with an angry red that spread up from the tips towards the rest of the hand.
Jimmy could hear every crunch, every noise that came with every movement as the creature began to break free from below. He was frozen. Paralyzed.
It was different from the stillness that came with Santa Bot. Jimmy had long forgotten concern when it came to the robot. Anxiety didn't keep him bedridden, that was simply the gimmick. The code had always kept him in place.
But this? This was fear.
And that fear only grew as a figure rose from the soil, pebbles and bits of dirt clinging to its shoulders, slowly falling down piece by piece. Each one hitting the ground rang like a gong in Jimmy's head, like little mines going off, tiny explosions. The horror it filled him with was that on par of one, anyway.
Jimmy couldn't exactly make out what it was from so far away. The torchlight didn't reach it, just barely out of reach.
He didn't know which would be worse, honestly. Never knowing what that thing was, or having it step into the light. Having to face it.
But clearly that wasn't Jimmy's choice to make. Because the dirt began to crunch as it took a step towards him, a black boot sneaking forward, the warm glow faintly glimmering against the rubbery exterior. The next foot followed suit. Another step. Another crunch.
More black came into view. The rest was still hard to make out from the little light touching it alone. But he thought he saw some stripes, brighter than the black. Warmer.
Jimmy could feel his eyelids twitching and shuddering, could feel the fear wrapping around his throat and squeezing. It was getting harder to breathe. Why was it getting harder to breathe?
The crunching grew louder, an almost hesitant set of shuffling steps now replaced by something starker and stronger. Something more confident. Something… almost angry, in the way the boots dug into the dirt and pushed it around.
Then it was there. In front of Jimmy, just barely. Torchlight finally caught on the figure, and the first thing Jimmy noticed were its eyes.
He…
He knew those eyes.
Big, brown eyes. Familiar ones, ones he had looked into just earlier that day. Ones that he had refused to meet when he—
Jimmy's heart stuttered in his chest as his vision adjusted.
The eyes. They were darker.
It wasn't the shadow, it couldn't have been. Because the darkness wasn't coming from his dimly lit home, it was coming from inside. From a place Jimmy couldn't see. From a place Jimmy couldn't understand.
They stared at him, the eyes. Unblinking. Jimmy couldn't blink, either. He was stuck. So terrifyingly stuck.
It took another step forward… he took another step forward.
The warm glow caught on flesh. On wrinkles carved into skin. On horns.
Then it began to come together.
The black clothes. The brown eyes. The pale flesh. Brown tufts of hair cast gentle shadows alongside the already dark and rigid ones. Yellow detailing popped where it was stitched into the scarf and sweater, neon against the void-like fabric.
And this time, when he stared at him, and Jimmy stared back, Jimmy truly knew who he was looking at.
He couldn't speak, couldn't even mouth the word. But the stunned sound of his consciousness rang loud in clear in Jimmy's mind.
Impulse?
The thing— Impulse, simply bore his eyes into his. No introduction. No explanation. No funny clip. Just eerie, uncanny silence and the distorted music still playing outside the base.
What was he doing here? How was he here to begin with?! Impulse, he… he had died! Jimmy knew he died, because—
Because… he was the first to go.
("Guys, his body's still warm!")
Jimmy swallowed the best he could, being paralyzed and all. Yeah. Yeah, Jimmy knew that.
And honestly, given the way Impulse seemed to be holding up, it didn't take a genius to guess he was dead. Maybe that's why there was nothing behind his eyes. Because he was gone. Gone gone.
But he couldn't be. Because Impulse was still here, right in front of him. And when Jimmy heard his boots dig into the dirt, he realized he was probably going to be there for a little while longer, too.
Seconds that felt like hours passed by as Impulse stared at him. What was he even here to do? Was he here to haunt him? How funny would that be—
A sudden noise jolted Jimmy from his thoughts, and there it was. The familiar question and answer boxes on his screen, a timer up at the top. Okay. So he was here to ask him a question. Cool.
Was he going to test his redstone knowledge? Well, Jimmy wasn't all that good at it, but he knew some trap mechanics. Or maybe it was the same old festive game trivia? Not like Jimmy was any better at that, but…
His twitchy eyes flit to the question:
Question
Did you betray Impulse?
If Jimmy could raise his brow, he would. He read through the sentence again. Because… well, he wasn't expecting that. At all.
His gaze shot over to the answer box. Two simple options:
Answers
Yes.
No.
Hm. So they were back to subjective questions, weren't they? Jimmy felt his chest deflate from the inside.
What had been Scott's advice, again? Always go with the dumb answer?
As Jimmy's eyes moved, a cursor shape followed. He kept it hovered over the second choice. Because the question was stupid. And the answers were stupid, too. So by Scott's logic, he had this in the bag! Quick and easy, barely any time wasted, he just had to lock it in—
Suddenly, somehow more jarring than when it started… the distorted music stopped.
And then, a mere second later, a new answer option appeared.
You know what you did.
Jimmy, confused, tried to tear his cursor away from the "no" it was on top of. It didn't budge. But his eyes could still move around freely. A glitch, Jimmy told himself. The trivia segment is just… it's just glitching out!
You know what you did.
There it was again, popping up just beneath the previous one. Repeated.
You know whAT YOU DID.
YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
Jimmy's throat began to tighten again, his breaths coming out stuttered and uneven as the text began to fill the answer box on the screen. He couldn't look away. What couldn't he look away—?!
YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
Then it was gone.
The words. The overlays. The timer.
All gone, nothing left but Impulse in front of him, still as a statue.
He was completely unmoving, frozen in place, just… staring.
His pupils never even shifted an inch as Jimmy noticed the tears beginning to gather at the corners of his eyes. Even when a few slid down his pale cheeks, his gaze never faltered.
Impulse was staring daggers into Jimmy. And a part of Jimmy had a feeling Impulse needed him to know that that was just what he was doing.
An eternity passed in seconds as silence filled the room. No wind. No music. No breathing except for the strangled panting coming from Jimmy's own body.
Then, a crunch. And another. And another.
Jimmy could do nothing but watch as Impulse stomped over to his bed. He halted at the edge of it, standing still for a moment before he slowly leaned down, face growing over closer with Jimmy's.
In that moment, Jimmy felt small. The impending doom of something coming at you from above with no way to stop it does that to you, he supposed. Had… had that been how he had felt..?
Impulse's frostbitten hand slowly came up to tug down the scarf covering his mouth, lips pulled in a thin line. So neat and held together save for a little twitch now and again.
"You know what you did."
It was spoken quietly. Not a whisper, just… quiet. Oddly calm.
When Jimmy didn't respond, Impulse let out a breath through his noise, akin to a stifled chuckle. His head gave an ever so slight shake. Disappointed.
"You know what you did. You know what you did to me."
The last word came out as a snarl, the corner of Impulse's lip twitching up in a scowl.
"I'm not letting it happen again."
His hand began to fall from his scarf, inching closer to Jimmy's chest. He placed his palm over his heart. An airy, punched out laugh escaped him as Jimmy's heart thumped madly beneath his touch. He could feel how scared he was, couldn't he?
For a few moments, Impulse kept his hand there. Then it began to creep upwards. It gave Jimmy's red scarf a little tug, until it was hanging loosely around his collarbone.
Then, those frozen fingers trailed up further, tantalizingly slow. Jimmy could feel every press of the tips against his skin. They felt so cold. Impulse was so cold.
Suddenly, he felt a thumb against one side of his neck, Impulse's four other fingers resting on the other side. And then he felt a squeeze.
"I might smile. I might laugh. I might even say I forgive you."
His grip tightened. Jimmy's heart spasmed in his chest, banging against his ribs like a caged animal. Petrified.
"But I don't."
They pressed in deeper, and Jimmy could begin to feel the way his ears plugged up, how the world began to shrink in on him.
"And I never will."
Impulse's hand upped its strength, nails digging into the skin of Jimmy's neck. He wanted it to hurt. Jimmy knew he wanted it to hurt.
Impulse didn't stop. He kept squeezing tighter. And tighter. And tighter. And Jimmy quivered internally as a choked noise bubbled up his throat, as his eyes started growing warm and his lips started going numb.
He could only watch in horror as Impulse leaned in even closer, eyes boring straight into Jimmy's soul. He wasn't just looking at him. He was looking at everything that Jimmy was. Every ugly, disgusting thing inside of him.
"I will kill you."
Right now?
Was this it..?
Was this how Jimmy's season was going to end? No, it couldn't be. He was doing so good! He can't die, not like this, not to his own teammate—
Then, suddenly, the grip lessened. Until it was no grip at all, simply fingers resting on either side of Jimmy's neck. Jimmy's body let out a gasp, like a drowning man being pulled from the sea, one that his mind didn't truly process as being him.
Impulse's gaze didn't falter, even as Jimmy's eyes watered and coughs shot from his throat. He let out a soft noise. Maybe a sigh? Something… solemn sounding.
"…Not here. Not now."
As if catching Jimmy's growing relief, Impulse added with determined grit in his voice, "But one day. One day, I'm gonna getcha'. And I'm gonna make it hurt."
Jimmy could only stare back up into the other's eyes as the words processed. And he searched Impulse's face for that familiar hesitance, for the guilt that began to bubble up every time he saw Impulse have one of his moments. Just like with the door and roof, he waited to see those eyes soften and that scowl disappear.
But they never did.
Before Jimmy could begin to question it, to question why Impulse wasn't backing down, Impulse had pulled away. Standing up straight again, slowly inching backwards from the bed. His gaze never left Jimmy's. The anger didn't leave, either.
He stopped in the same spot he had crawled out of, stood still atop the messy soil. And finally, for the first time since he had appeared, Impulse's attention slowly turned towards the trapdoors against the wall. Jimmy could see the way his brows furrowed, just for a moment. If he had blinked, he might've missed it. Thankfully, the paralysis didn't let him.
Impulse's eyes flit back to Jimmy as he reached down, pulling one of them up, gingerly beginning to make his way into the staircase. Jimmy couldn't help the way he tried to scrunch up his own face.
Was he seriously just going to leave—?!
Maybe Impulse could sense his complaining, because he shot Jimmy another venomous glare as he ducked into the tunnel leading towards, slowly beginning to turn his back to the man in bed.
But then he paused. And a second later, Impulse whipped his head back around, maneuvering his entire body to face Jimmy as he began descending down the stairs.
Just like he had appeared, Impulse was consumed by the shadows once more, bathed in darkness as he crept away. And as a final goodbye, the trapdoor slammed shut with loud and piercing thud.
All Jimmy could do now was stare. At the trapdoors. At the dirt sinkhole in his floor. At the complete and utter darkness surrounding him as sleep began to bite at his vision.
He tried to shake himself awake, but he couldn't. He couldn't move. He wanted to so desperately, to break free, to chase Impulse into that tunnel beneath their bases and get rid of him for good—
But… no. He couldn't. He's not sure he would if he could, anyway.
Because why waste the time? Impulse would get dealt with one way or another, alive or not. He always did. Maybe that's why Jimmy didn't feel bad doing what he did. It was going to happen anyway.
His tired mind thought back to the question briefly as his brain began to flicker in and out. Was there really a right answer? Or were all of them dumb, just as Jimmy had thought?
A disgruntled noise bubbled in his throat. It didn't matter. He didn't care. He never even got a reward, anyway…
Jimmy's eyes slowly fell shut as sleep started to take its course, and he felt himself melt into the mattress as if it were a bed of fluffy snow.
…
As he had thought so in his paralyzed state, Jimmy was right. He got no presents. He got no coal, either.
BigB asked him when he stopped by his house that morning what had happened. Jimmy just said it was a glitch in the code, it'd be fixed by the next night, he was sure. Because it was easier to believe that, wasn't it? That it was no fault of his own. That there was something else to blame.
They looked at the tab list together, eyed up the next round of naughty names. BigB told him to get around and get ready to gather with Joel. Jimmy nodded and told him he'd be quick.
Jimmy popped back inside his base, looking through his chest for any extra items he could bring on the chase. Nothing really that he didn't have already on him, but it was always nice to check. Always worth it to do an extra scan of things…
Jimmy shut the lid of the chest, letting out a breath as he turned around. His body jolted as his foot got caught on something, and he stumbled forward, just barely able to catch himself before he felt to the ground.
He huffed, brushing down his clothes as he muttered to himself, eyes darting around to find the offending object he must have tripped over.
But there wasn't any strange item. All that was on his floor was a messy pile of dirt and a small sinkhole threatening to break through to the tunnel beneath his home.
Jimmy swallowed down the hint of bile that begin to rise in his throat. He shook his head. He ignored it.
He quickly fixed the dirt floor with his boot, making sure the soil was flat and solid with a couple test stomps. He let out a breathy sigh of relief, grimacing at the spot for a short moment before waving any oncoming thoughts from his mind… any memories…
Jimmy made his way back to his door, opening it and shutting it behind himself. He spotted Joel from across the town, running towards him as the brunette waved him down, careful not to trip on any bumps in the path.
He stood beside Joel as he began to form a plan with the other red names, looking around the town, oddly… skittish. His eyes bounced from one thing to the next, from one pile of snow to another, from one house to the one beside it.
And as his gaze flit around, Jimmy could just barely catch as a gust of wind blew past a ways ahead, kicking up some snow in its wake. And he watched as it passed through the carcass of Impulse's home. The one he had stolen from. The one he watched burn.
His eyelids twitched in the cold, and they began to clamp down together to blink. But in the sliver of vision he had left, Jimmy swore he saw something in the flurry of snow. Someone.
Someone staring.
Jimmy cursed himself for blinking, brow furrowed as he studied Impulse's house from afar. But just as quick as he had thought he'd seen it… it was gone.
He was gone.
Maybe he was a ghost, haunting him. Maybe it was just a trick of the light, a shape cast by some shadows. Maybe…
Jimmy sighed.
Maybe he didn't want to think about it anymore.
How lucky he was, to get to ignore it. Oh, how lucky.