My Murder Fantasy

[Slam]

((Lucas Brady continued from The Unavoidable Sun))

Time had healed none of his wounds. His throat burned hoarse, the walls rough like sandpaper, the chords strained like strings pulled too tight. His body still ached from where he had been beaten, an off-putting bruise hidden by his mud-encrusted shirt. He hadn’t made an attempt to wash.

He was crouched over in the dirt, stick in one hand used to trace lines in the dirt. The grooves took no legible form, they just served to give the illusion that he was writing something. He had always thought better when he wrote things down, but even that dignity had been stolen from him. Everything was being stolen from him. They wanted to steal his life next. They would succeed too, at the rate it was going.

He had had a goal at the start of this. No, he had had a plan before this had even been reality. Those late nights reading about Survival of the Fittest, horrified at the world for allowing such a thing, and horrified at himself for indulging in such morbid masturbation. But he had read the details and learned the game. He had seen how it was played, who the winners were and who the losers were. How he used to see himself, how he used to think other people saw himself: he thought he’d be the guy who got everyone home. He was smart, he was social, he could beat the terrorists. He knew the rules, the cliches, the patterns. He could save everyone.

But that was all a delusion. That wasn’t how the world saw him, not anymore. Not since a stupid internet thing that he was so sick of defining his life.

So he’d crossed out the loose scrawling that represented ‘Hero’. That option was closed. There were three others remaining.

He could do nothing. Just ride things out, wait to get murdered. Wait to die. Get the shit kicked out of him until then. He deserved it, of course. Cross 'Fodder' out.

He could kill himself now. Find a big cliff to jump off. Slit his throat with the stupid joke weapon they’d given him. Find Wyatt and call him a steroid abusing freak and let nature take its course. Or just call Nathan a retard and really suffer a miserable death. Because heaven fucking forbid you might hurt his feelings. Treat them like everyone else, except not really. No-one gave a shit about hurting his fucking feelings, after all. Cross 'Quitter' out too.

All that hate, that was why he was still crouched over the last option. It wasn’t even a word, because all those feelings at the same time couldn’t be named and didn’t need to be.

People like him, the scrawny guys with no friends, the Alessios and the Theodores and so on, they weren’t the winners. They weren’t even the guys who died as martyrs.

They fit into one mould, and that mould was filled with the blood of his classmates.

Could he do that? Could he just kill everyone?

Well,

A bird, or a squirrel, or something that didn't matter broke the silence overhead. Lucas paid it no heed.

Why couldn’t he? Why did it matter? No-one gave a shit. No-one was going to remember him fondly. No-one was even going to let him join their dying posse.

Why should he bother pretending anymore, that he liked anyone at his school? Why shouldn’t he just indulge in one last fucking hurrah and go out on his terms? He might even win. He could J.R. Rizzolo his way to a book deal. Maybe it could be his own presidential platform.

He laughed.

Yeah, he laughed. It was a weak, pathetic noise, as his throat was far from cooperating with him, but he laughed a hearty laugh. Politics were such a fucking joke. Everything in life was, it turned out. He laughed some more. You spend eighteen years trying to play the game, falling behind and winding up on murder island because you just happened to be on the wrong bus, before you could even bounce back. He kept on laughing. Jesus may have went through hell, but at least people still liked him. What the fuck was he complaining about?

He fell on his arse, laughing and laughing his silent final laugh. He fell on his back, staring up at the canopy as he kept on grinning. He finally got the punchline.

And now, he supposed, he could finally start enjoying life again.

((Lucas Brady continued in Marco Tries To Take A Bath))