Palaver

Written by Anakin McFly

He shouldn't have come out here alone, the evening sky darkening beyond the canopy of leaves, chill settling upon his skin in hushing quiet until every sound in the woods seems amplified and Alex's breaths are too loud to his ears. Leaves crush underfoot with every step; surely Griffin would have heard him by now; would have seen him by now, though Alex pauses and looks around, blinking, barely able to make out the individual shapes of the tree trunks going down to the lake.

He opens his mouth, and for a moment almost thinks of calling out. But his being here seems increasingly foolish with every passing moment, and fear creeps over the edges of his mind, urging him to turn back home, to where it's warm and safe... home, where he jolts awake in the middle of the night, convinced that Griffin had been standing by the window, watching him sleep, but seeing only a fleeing shadow vanish into the trees.

Sometimes, he wishes he didn't live in a glass house.

How long had Griffin been out there? Hiding... camping out... watching them... him.

Alex found the remains of a campfire that afternoon. The night before, he couldn't sleep, staring out across the lake at the tiny flickering light. He thought about that too-familiar body lounging on the grass, the same eyes Alex sees in the mirror fixated upon the distant house, observing the warmth he could never be a part of.

He tells Kate nothing. Some demons are for him alone.

Cold bites into his boots. He turns, seeing only more trees in the deepening shroud of darkness heavy with cricket song. Moonlight glints off the lake. A perfect place, he thinks, to hide a body. He's suddenly afraid.

He hears footfalls: soft, circling around him.

"Griffin," he says softly, too softly for anyone to hear, his lips dry, but Griffin suddenly seems to be everywhere in the shadows, lurking, watching... always watching...

Alex's hand closes over the flashlight in his jeans. It's a comforting weight, but it would be nothing in a fight. But they are equal, he tells himself in hopeful self-reassurance. The same muscles, the same strength, more or less...

He shouldn't have come out here alone. He hadn't expected it to get dark so quick, and in the brief patches of visible sky he sees that the sun has not yet gone. But here, the woods are ghostly in the crimson pall of sunset, and he wishes suddenly that at least one of the Johns were around.

But he hadn't planned to fight. He doesn't know what he had planned on. Just an impulse... a need to find him, to stave off the paranoia that haunted him each night and made him fear each time he left his home-

"I wondered when you'd come."

Alex whips around, the panic on his face meeting a calm grin.

Griffin saunters out from the shadows and drapes an arm genially around his shoulders. "Alex. What took you so long?"

"Griffin," Alex repeats, tense beneath Griffin's familial touch, the unwanted warmth of his body, his grip just strong enough to serve as a warning not to dare to run away. He can't look away from his face - that face, so wrong on the walking nightmare that has haunted him, the way it had twisted and grown gruesome in his imagination in ways that gave them distance and helped him cope, in ways that he can't reconcile with the smile that now beams at him, repulsively familiar, unmistakably one of them, more like himself than anyone in his world is.

"I've set up camp," Griffin continues with an unabashed cheerfulness that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "I hope you don't mind; the land's not yours, right? Oh, I've got food, if you're hungry. There's good fishing in that lake. It's just this way. Come on."

He wants to run or scream for help. His body isn't cooperating. And who would hear, he thinks wildly. There's no one around for miles. And if Kate comes looking for him, and finds them... His blood runs cold.

"I've got beer," Griffin says as he steers him deeper into the woods, and Alex feels his breath on his ear. Too close. "You like beer? I know Conor does, heh."

Griffin keeps talking: a conversational cadence overlying the silent sanctity of the woods, his voice making Alex feel uncomfortably like he's talking to himself in a stream of consciousness he cannot stop, and that they are one and the same, the two of them, alike in flesh and blood and bone as they walk further from the lake and Griffin chats to him like an old friend, cordial in a way Alex has never known him to be. But still that grip on his shoulders never once weakens, fingers digging into his flesh like a threat, and Alex thinks: I'm going to die.

He cannot bring himself to run.

There's a small clearing - barely a clearing, with only space enough for a deck chair, an unrolled sleeping bag and a small campfire crackling on the ground with a cheeriness that seems as tainted as that on Griffin's face. There's a plastic bag of supplies by the sleeping bag. Snacks, sandwiches, a six-pack of beer. A pair of binoculars lies on the grass.

Griffin leads him towards the chair. "Have a seat," he says, and Alex numbly complies. Griffin drops to sit on the sleeping bag. He reaches into the stash and pulls out a can of beer. "Catch!"

Alex catches it. He looks down at the can, his heart still throbbing hard in his chest. He shouldn't be here.

Griffin pops open a bag of chips. "This is nice, isn't it?" he remarks. "Just the two of us, hanging out. Here-" he offers the bag to Alex.

That's my hand, Alex thinks, staring at the shapes of the angular fingers and the same nails he clips every other week. He looks up at Griffin, the frozen smile on his face, his gaze darkening with Alex's hesitation.

He takes the chips, hoping Griffin doesn't notice that his hands are shaking. "Thanks," he says.

"You're most welcome, Alex."

The chips crunch tastelessly in his mouth.

Griffin is still staring at him. "How's Kate doing?" he asks. "I hear you're having a kid. Congratulations."

Alex stops chewing.

It's fully dark out, now. Just the fire beside them.

"Why are you here, Griffin?" Alex asks quietly.

Griffin says nothing, but his smile is gone.

"The others come here too," he says after a while. "In that outpost you built. I've been in there." Dark triumph flashes in his eyes. "Pretending to be one of you."

Alex feels sick.

Then: but you are, he thinks, and feels sick in a different way.

Griffin laughs softly. "I've been thinking of becoming an actor," he says, and there's something about the way he says it that chills Alex to the bone.

Alex doesn't know the hours that Griffin has spent practicing - being each of them. Being him. A few weeks ago, he surprised Kate at work with a cup of coffee and a kiss. He played Alex perfectly. - but unease still settles in his chest at the look on Griffin's face, and the revelation of his prior intrusion threatens to undermine the shaky foundation of who each of them ultimately are.

For how is Griffin acting as them any different from the actor doing the same? How is it any less real? Who are those people he creates? Alex wonders. Do they too exist on another plane, unaware they are any different from the originals?

"What do you think, Alex?" Griffin asks, a shadow of a smile on his face. "Could I replace Reeves?"

Alex wants to go home.

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