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jay merrick. 18-26, verse dependent. transgender man. he/him. may 17th 1988. homosexual. tuscaloosa, alabama. the cameraman. a case study in bad lies and being a bad dog in search of home. on being a living dead boy. troy wagner. deceased.

who are the liars?

tuscaloosa, alabama. 1988.
jay merrick is born may seventeeth as the first and only daughter to rachel and adam davies in tuscaloosa, alabama. he is paraded around by his mother as a gift from the heavens — a series of fertility issues led the young couple to believe they would never have children, and jay is their saving grace. he is spoiled and coddled by his strictly catholic mother, dressed up frilly dresses and neatly braided hair daily when all he wants to do is play in the dirt with the neighborhood boys.     (from a young age, jay knew he wasn't like the other girls.)     he is dragged to church every sunday and made to pray before meals and before bed each night, even when he's not sure there really is someone listening to all of his prayers.

by jay's seventh birthday, his parents have gotten divorced. he lives with his mother during the week, a home that is cold and quiet and unloving. his mother loves him, this he's almost sure of, but rachel merrick, her maiden name that she gives to her daughter once the divorce is finalized, was not raised to be warm and loving. all she had known was quiet contempt, so now all she knows to give her only child is quiet, strict sort of love. jay finds it stifling. she sends him to catholic school in uniform skirts that pinch his waist and blouses that make him feel like he's choking. every other weekend, however, he makes the trip out to stay with his father in a kind of quiet that is much different than his mother's. his father's home is quiet, not for lack of knowing how to show love, but for simple lack of things to say. adam davies, a former military man, keeps a clean home, free from the distraction of decor, the only room feeling lived in being jay's haphazardly decorated bedroom. it's lonely, but it's reprieve from the watchful eye of his mother.

2002.
by the time jay is fourteen years old, he finally manages to convince his mother to transfer jay to public school. he lies through his teeth to her, a practiced habit. he tells her it'll be good for him. that he'll teach his godless classmates all about the bible, just for her. she believes him by some miracle. he does none of the things he promised her. he lets her dress him up in whatever frills she chooses, and he packs the clothes of his choosing away to change into once he's at school — swapping dresses and cardigans for jeans a size too big and graphic tee shirts and baseball caps to tuck his long hair up into.     (what he would give to chop it all off.)     he tells his teachers and his classmates to call him jay. it's the first name that comes to him when asked, and it just seems to stick. it feels right. it feels the most him he's ever been able to feel.

2006.
jay merrick is eighteen years old and a freshman attending the university of alabama alongside his years long best friend, alex kralie. he majors in film with the intention of becoming a serious director after college. between long hours studying and even longer hours spent getting drunk at house parties, smoking weed in his dorm, and hooking up with nameless boys, jay helps alex with his own film project. alex tells him it's supposed to be some sort of feel good romantic comedy about a boy coming back to his hometown and falling in love with a girl he used to know. major snooze fest. but alex is his best friend, and so jay agrees to come on as his script supervisor. it strays far beyond the types of films jay makes for his own classes — too much romance and too much sincerity, where jay prefers black and white, moody films where one has to parse the meaning from little context clues. jay likes to make films that are tonally confusing and odd. if it wouldn't disturb his catholic mother, what's the point of ever having made it?

are you one of them?

that summer, production begins on alex kralie's marble hornets.. jay works as the script supervisor, a payless and thankless job, but he does it anyways. he wouldn't be able to tell anyone why he does, but he does. he supposes it's something to do before his summer classes start up. eventually jay gets slogged down by his school work and only finds time to help alex with it every once in a while. throughout the filming, alex starts behaving oddly. he gets more paranoid. starts filming himself. he insists to jay that he has to keep the camera running at all times, using up countless amounts of tapes. jay doesn't think much of it. assumes that the stress of filmmaking with such a small cast and an ever smaller production team is just getting to him. until eventually alex suddenly tells jay that he's dropped the project altogether, citing unworkable conditions. jay asks him about what he plans to do with all the unused footage. alex says, burn them. jay can't imagine wasting all of that footage, and so he convinces alex to hand over all of his tapes with a promise of never bringing it up to alex again after that. not long after, alex moves without a word, and jay puts away the tapes — far too freaked out by how serious alex was about never discussing his former passion project ever again.

2009—2014.
years later, jay's long since forgotten all about alex and marble hornets and all the oddities that came with it. he continues with college, continues working on his own film projects, makes new friends. he browses forums, finding posts on something awful about slenderman. something about it scratches at something in the back of his head. reminds him of his old best friend and his scrapped film and the abandoned tapes. jay does some digging and finds them again. he doesn't know what it is, but there's something in him that tells him he needs to go through them. whether it's to figure out if something spooked alex or what, he's not sure. jay quickly becomes obsessed. he spends all day into late nights searching through what must be hundreds of tapes alex left behind, scrubbing them for anything odd to post onto youtube in the hopes that others will be able to make sense of what he can't. by his ninth entry posted, he starts to receive strange video replies from a mysterious figure only known as totheark. the videos are cryptic and even harder to make sense of than the tapes from alex.

the longer jay searches through the tapes, the sicker he gets. he develops a fever that comes and goes over several weeks. he starts losing sleep. he starts looking over his shoulder more. jay goes to the doctor, and all they know is that something is wrong with him, but that they can't tell what. he brushes it off. whatever it is that's making him sleep both extended hours and barely at all is just in the way of searching through these tapes to find out what the hell happened to his old friend. he gets a sickening feeling low in the pit of his stomach that his paranoia doesn't just stem from the mysteries behind these tapes. he almost feels like he's being watched in his every waking move.

through all of jay's searching, he only seems to get sicker and sicker. he starts to find answers, sure. he meets up with a former actor from marble hornets, tim wright. he learns more about the state of mind alex had been in before he abandoned the film. things that jay feels like he should remember too... but for the life of him, he just can't seem to remember that time in his life. he can't seem to remember much, losing larger and larger chunks of time. he starts getting cryptic video replies to everything he posts regarding marble hornets. for every answer jay digs up, five more questions seem to pop up in it's place. just when he thinks he's finally starting to get somewhere, jay comes face to face with slenderman. the operator. the long, faceless beast that he had seen glimpses of in the tapes from alex. he wakes up the next morning with no memories of how he managed to escape, with only the footage from his newly broken camera to show for it.

jay decides to leave his apartment, the place tainted by the operator and by mysterious video replies and masked figures following him. only a couple weeks after he decides to stay in a hotel while things calm down, his apartment burns down. just when he decides to give up his search altogether and change locations again, he feels like he's being dragged into it all over again upon receiving a mysterious tape at the door of his hotel room. it contains footage of alex. filmed recently, and chased down by the operator. jay's not sure what to really make of it.

are you both of them?

and then jay wakes up in a different hotel room, seven months later and with a camera strapped to his chest. all memories of the last several months completely gone. he tries to put the pieces back together. figure out how he got here and when and why, and where the hell the camera on his chest really came from. he searches his hotel room and finds nothing but more questions. he explores the hotel itself in the hopes that he might jog something in his memory. all he comes across is a woman named jessica, her voice tugging at something in the back of his mind that tells him he might know her. he just can't for the life of him figure out where from. he digs through what little tapes and items he has in his hotel room, and he only seems to find more and more questions. he starts hearing odd noises again. feels like he's being watched, like he had before his home burned. just when jay thinks he might be able to trust this jessica figure that keeps popping up (their hotel rooms are adjoined. he thinks it must mean something) enough to explain everything he knows to her, she disappears from her hotel room. all that's left is the handwritten code to the safe in his hotel room, and in it, more tapes for jay to search through. it isn't long before he's confronted by the elusive masked figure all over again. jay doesn't know how, but he manages to get out with all the new tapes in hand, and then he's back on the road yet again.

jay starts going through the countless amount of new tapes he gathered before his escape. they provide him some of the answers he'd been so desperately seeking, detailing just about everything from the seven month gap in his memory. he learns he had finally found alex. he learns that one of the masked figures was the one and only tim wright. he learns that something has changed in alex to cause him to be able to crush tim's leg, breaking it brutally and without remorse. it makes jay shudder to wonder just how close he might've come to being injured by alex or worse. he finds that jessica wasn't just a vaguely familiar face, but someone he had been in contact with. someone who had somehow got caught up in all of this. someone jay had wanted to protect. he feels nauseous thinking that somehow his involvement got her hurt. for the first time since childhood, he finds himself praying. praying that somehow she managed to get the hell out of town and far away from all of this horror.

it's through searching through these tapes that jay realizes he has to go back. he's not sure why exactly. he thinks he aims to look for signs of jessica, or alex, or anybody. regardless of what he really intends to do, he ends up back in the area around rosswood park. he thinks this place must be haunted, and that he must be made of the same stuff to be constantly tethered to this place. always coming back and always getting lost in it. he's back for not even a day before he finds tim, acting normal as ever. acting like his leg hadn't been shattered by a madman seven months prior. he's the closest thing jay has to a lead on anything that's going on, and so jay decides to pursue it. pursue tim.

and so he follows tim at a distance. he hopes to track him down and stage a natural run-in with him. something where tim won't suspect that jay's been following him in the hopes of extracting more answers out of him. he finally manages to do just that by loitering outside the local medical office. he lies to tim. all he seems to really know how to do anymore is run and record and lie. he tells tim he's putting together the pieces of alex's old pet project. that he's rebuilding something out of it and finishing it in alex's honor... or something. jay considers it a miracle when tim agrees to help him with few questions asked. he considers it an even greater miracle when tim tells him he still has old tapes from the filming of marble hornets. behind the scenes footage, this time. sure it's more footage jay has to pour hours into searching through, but it's also more footage that could contain answers and clues as to what the hell he's even supposed to do.

through these tapes, jay manages to find some clues, yes, but he also feels left with more and more questions. he watches alex's steady descent into the man he came face to face with in that missing seven months, from someone kind and funny and eager to work on his film, to someone cold and eerie. someone who's capable of violence to a startling degree. he finds himself drawn to the abandoned hospital featured in these tapes from tim. he feels like there must be something more there. some other clues that might help him figure more out. he manages to convince tim to take him, lying to him with the promise of simply just following up on old location scouting done in the behind the scenes footage. being out there only makes jay feel sick and off, but it makes him feel like he might be on the right track. like he might be able to trust tim enough to tell him the truth. two sets of eyes on all the footage jay's collecting are better than none.

just when jay's finally ready to come clean to tim about everything, tim seems to be one step ahead of him. it's just his luck tim would've looked up his little project and found all the footage he's been posting online for years at this point. he stupidly hopes that if tim would just let him explain, they can work this out and they can work together. tim doesn't want to listen, and as much as the punch he throws jay's way hurts like hell, jay can't really seem to blame him all that much. so what he has to go back at this alone after just little taste of having someone have his back through this nightmare? he knows how to handle being alone, as dangerous as it may be, and as much as he might wish he had just told the truth sooner.

jay knows that tim wants nothing to do with him anymore. he knows that. knows he should set everything with him aside so that he might be able to focus on his investigation more clearly. just when jay thinks he might be getting somewhere on his own, he's led to believe tim's in danger. he knows tim wants to be left alone. he knows that. tim said as much before he swung his fist at jay's face, leaving a bruise that's still healing splayed across his cheek. but he also knows that he can't risk another person get hurt or god forbid worse all because of jay's meddling in all of this. tim can continue to hate him all he wants so long as tim's alive. he doesn't know how or why, and he's certainly not going to ask questions and risk getting sent back to square one with tim, but tim agrees to work with him again. jay knows he doesn't deserve the level of grace and humility tim's showing him, but with all the bad luck jay's been having with this investigation, he's not going to question finally having someone to have his back in all of it.

the paranoia only gets worse. jay's sleep gets more restless. he starts having worse and worse nightmares. he dreams about alex catching up with him and tim and hurting them. he insists to tim that they have to keep moving. switching hotels every few days to make sure that alex can't get to them before he's able to figure out how to fix everything. cure them of this illness that's plaguing them. destroy it at it's root — the operator itself. jay slowly starts to wonder if he can even trust* tim, even after months of traveling from hotel to hotel with him. what he has left of his trust for tim completely shatters when he finds out that tim's been lying to him. hiding a tape from him that shows just how involved tim, the masked figure, whoever he really is, was with jessica's disappearance. it leaves jay reeling and spiraling further into his sheer paranoia. it wasn't enough that he's being watched, it wasn't enough that he's sure his former best friend is on his trail. but now the only friend he has left lied to him.

jay spirals further down. he means to stop tim, to interrogate him on the tape and find out every single thing tim lied about. to really get to the bottom of all of tim's real involvement in all of this. but all tim does is lie to him more. jay knows it. knows that tim's full of shit when he tells him he has no idea& where jessica is, but he doesn't let jay question him any further. tim ties him up and leaves him to go continue jay's investigation all on his own. he doesn't even have the decency to leave jay with his camera to stay as a watchful, unbiased eye on what might happen to him in tim's absence. he doesn't know how, and he certainly doesn't know why, but the still-unknown hooded figure that's been following him for years now allows him to get out and to follow tim on this new lead. jay isn't about to start asking questions now. all he knows is he needs to follow tim, and he needs to be the one to get ahead.

jay catches up with tim at their next clued location, a long since abandoned college near a wooded area. jay stays a few steps behind tim, watching every move he makes. he's not sure exactly why he does it. why he doesn't just approach tim outright. maybe some part of him hopes tim might find alex first and jay might be able to sneak in and play the hero. there is no hero to play, though, because it's alex who finds jay first. alex finds him and points his gun right at him, and he doesn't even say a word before shooting jay in the stomach. jay had hoped that if he encountered alex again, that he'd at least let jay try to say something before attacking. the silence of it feels so cruel. desperately clutching his stomach, jay manages to tumble into the nearest room and lock the door behind him, preventing alex from coming in and finishing the job. he slides down the wall and tries to keep pressure on his steadily bleeding side, and some part of him deliriously hopes that maybe tim heard the shot, wherever he is in this labyrinth of a building. he wonders if tim would even come get him if he had. he knows he wouldn't blame tim for leaving him behind. maybe it's what he deserves. he doesn't get a whole lot of time to ruminate on it before he's coming face to face with the operator again in his final moments of clarity. he doesn't last much longer beyond the thing showing up until the edges of his vision darken, and then it's all over.

hey, we're not supposed to be here / my blood is dirty water, drain it, bleed it / wash it down the drain / devil in the eyes of somebody else's mistake / i am dripping with sweat, my hands / i can't hold anything in my hands / i've only made one mistake in my life, / i've only made one mistake, i'm going

🖭

❛ VERSE : 2006.

set nebulously during jay's time as a student at the university of alabama. jay's a 20-something year old film student by day, pothead party animal by night. or something to that effect. he spends time he should be studying smoking weed and working on making his own artsy, disturbing films.

❛ VERSE : post canon.

by some miracle, jay manages to escape his nearly-fatal encounter with alex and with the operator with just a wound on his side to show for it. after such a close encounter with death, jay decides to get out of tuscaloosa and give up searching on answers altogether. he gets in his car and decides to drive until he runs out of gas, which ends up happening somewhere in the city in northeastern tennessee. he does freelance programming assistance for money, and beyond that, he stays locked inside his apartment. far away from alex and the operator and from anyone else who might be roped into this same nightmare. it's lonely, but it's safe.

❛ VERSE : 2009-2014.

set nebulously within the events of marble hornets.

❛ VERSE : buzz buzz.

jay merrick is the equipment co-manager of the wiskayok high yellowjackets soccer team. granted, not by choice — his counselor thought it would be good for him to be part of the soccer team in some capacity. get a sense of community, or whatever she had said to him. he agreed to sign up for it purely because it was something to do after school that wasn't going home to his mother's stuffy home. really, he considers it just free reign to watch the soccer team practice — he lets misty do all of the hard work and follows her around when coach martinez is watching so he looks like he's doing something. then the team gets to go to nationals, all the way in seattle. jay can hardly wait to see the sights and get to spend time away from both of his parents for a few days. but then the plane crashes, and by some miracle, he makes it out of the wreckage with a slightly busted up nose and a massive headache.