3WW (The Loop (For 12))

[Kermit]

((Michael continued from a place he should have stayed in))

He wandered aimlessly with only a geographic location in mind. He found where he was going, somehow.

He arrived at the scene of the crime. There were shell casings everywhere. Different calibers. Bandages covered in dull lay next to the place where a large dark spot had been washed from the forest floor.

The trail of blood had been washed away by the rain. It was okay. He didn't need it to find where he was going.

He remembered the way. He knew it well.

And so he walked. He followed the ghost trail into the night; flashlight in his left hand, pistol in his right.
____


When he heard the crash of waves, he knew he was getting close. He could see the ocean, and in the foreground a familiar gravel bank. He glanced around; saw the rocky outcropping he'd slept on three nights prior. He walked down to the shoreline, looked out over the horizon, and inhaled deeply through his nose. The sea breeze felt nice; though it was less a breeze and more a steady, strong wind. He was glad he was wearing his windbreaker.

He sang; his voice waxed and waned. He wanted the song to sound haunting. He wanted it to hurt whoever was listening.

"Deep blue sea, darling
On a deep blue sea
Deep blue sea, darling
On a deep blue sea
And it was mama that got drowned in,
Out in that deep blue sea
Oh,"

Suddenly, he was hit by the scent of death, wafting along with the wind. He briefly looked upwind, further down the beach. He could see a silhouette laying prone on the gravel beach. That was them, probably. He wondered who it was. He kept singing as he walked closer.

Deep down somewhere, he already knew who it was.

"Dig his grave, darling
With a silver spade
Dig his grave, darling
With a silver spade"

His flashlight lit up the figure. He could make out details now. It lay chest-up, feet pointing toward the sea. Its face was turned toward Michael. Its long, long hair was plastered to the ground around her head like a dark halo. She had no eyes. Something had eaten her eyes. Parts of her face were torn off, especially around her mouth. He could see her smile, because her lips and most of her cheeks were gone. A bright white sliver of cheekbone shone through the mottled grey-green of skin and brown-red-black of rotting flesh. There was a rip across her neck; a gleam of spinal column. She was wearing a formerly-white tank-top kind of thing, torn open from the front. There was a gunshot wound through her chest; widened by days of decay. He could see exposed rib-bones through the hole, even from this distance. She was still wearing her bra. THANK GOD she was still wearing her bra. Whoever this was, they deserved the dignity not to be gawked at by the cameras and sexualized as a corpse. She wore a single, red shoe. The other one had presumably slipped off at some point.

He didn't know it, but by this point, he'd begun to sob.

"And it was brother that got drowned in
Out in that deep blu-"

His voice stopped working. His mouth stopped moving; only hung half-open, screaming in silence. His hands were shaking. His hands wouldn't stop shaking. His eyes defocused; widened.

He wordlessly fell sideways to the ground, the position he landed in mirroring that of the other body. The flashlight landed beside him, still illuminating all that remained on earth of Beryl Mahelona.

She'd washed up like driftwood.

He stared through the two holes in her face, the ones that had once been her eyes. He wanted to look away. He couldn't. His body wouldn't move.

"I'm sorry," he managed to choke. His face twisted. Tears trickled down. "I'm sorry."

Over and over and over again. "I'm sorry."

He had a lot to be sorry for.

"I'm sorry."

After a few minutes, he curled up into a little ball and wailed into his knees. His hands clawed at the gravel. He tried to make mouth words but that part of his brain had turned off. He cried.

He cried. He just cried.

Eventually the tears stopped. He lurched at Beryl.

He gave her a big hug. He buried his head in her shoulder, feeling her cold, spongy, rubbery skin against his forehead. She had no eyes. She had no face. Something had eaten her face. He screamed. He screamed and screamed and screamed and didn't stop until his throat dried out.

"You have to go. You have to go. You can't be here. This is a prison. You have to go," he rasped to her, silently.

He needed Nick here. He needed Nick to put her back. Nick was strong. Michael was weak. Michael could barely carry a jug of milk.

Nick wasn't here. Nick was fucking around with Marco or something. Michael was here. Michael had to do this. He was the only living person here.

He rolled away, up to his feet. He placed his backpack on the ground, and retrieved the rubber gloves from his first-aid-kit. He took a swig from the LSD-laced bottle of red fruit punch-flavoured water. He put the gloves on and sat down next to Beryl. Something had eaten her face. She had no eyes. There was a hole in her chest. Her throat had been torn open. He could see her skull.

"No such thing as coinky-dinks. I miss you. I have so much to tell you, but some things are better left unsaid, I think. Plus anyways, I have a feeling you already know most of what I wanted to say," he said, hesitating.

He sniffled; bit his lip. He remembered how she had looked back when she had eyes; back before something had torn her mouth out. He remembered how she looked when she'd been alive. He remembered how animated she'd been, always a spinning blur of hair and jewelry and bracelets and smiles.

She still had three green bands on her left ring finger, a blue band on her left index, a red band and an orange band on her right pinkie, and a blue band on her right index. There was a strand of seaweed hanging out of the tear in her throat.

"I'll see you again someday, I hope; when this is all done with. Let Jeremiah know I'm sorry about Nia, if you can," he paused. "E ulu i ka lani, e ulu i ka honua. I still don't know what that means."

He paused again.

She had no face.

She had no face.

She had no face.




"You can't stay here, Beryl."

He nodded and stood up. He grabbed her by the right hand, feeling through his glove the rubber bands somehow still on her fingers. He pulled as hard as he could, so that she'd be parallel with the shoreline and easier to roll in. As he pulled, the skin on her hand came loose and he was sent sprawling backwards.

Her hand's skin was still held by his glove, silly bands and all. He gritted his teeth and tried not to start crying again, staring at the loose skin in horror.

Then, he exhaled amusedly.

"Oh, I get it. Degloving. Because I'm wearing gloves. Nice one, Beryl."

Michael remembered he and Morgan'd made jokes about cutting his (Michael's) hands off and using his skin for gloves (he had really soft skin). It felt less funny now.

He stood back up, holding Beryl's hand's skin limply as it dangled about in the wind. He tossed it into the sea.

He was ready for round two. He grabbed underneath Beryl's shoulders, and pivoted her to the orientation he needed. He walked around to her side, pried his fingers under her back, and tried to flip her over, towards the sea. He grimaced, his arms straining. Beryl weighed nearly twice as much as he did.

It didn't matter. This had to be done.

He got her there eventually. The water lapped up into her head through one of her eye-sockets as she lay at the boundary between sea and land, making a gurgling sound akin to one made by a water cooler.

Michael walked back over to his bag. "Like tears in rain, except it's not rain; it's the tears of everyone who's ever existed. If I don't make it back, just read Kurt Cobain's suicide note. That'll sum it all up nicely, I think. I love everyone so much and I hate everyone, and it hurts, and I can't take it anymore, and it's better to burn out than to fade away, et cetera," he paused. "I dunno. I can't swim and I'm waiting for the acid to kick in, so we'll see what happens."

He sighed.

"The Past is a Grotesque Animal, by of Montreal."

He inhaled. He reached his arm into the bag, grabbing Bearyl by the head. He placed Bearyl on the ground. He slipped off the blue wristband Beryl had given him as a gift, and placed it on Bearyl's head like a crown. He grabbed his gun. He took a few steps away. He sang.

"The past is a grotesque animal,
and in its eyes, I see
How completely wrong I can be;
How completely wrong I can be.
The sun is out, it melts the snow that fell yesterday.
Makes me wonder why it bothered.
I fell in love with the first cute girl that I met
Who disagreed with Georges Bataille.
Standing at a Swedish festival,
Discussing Story of the Eye;
Discussing Story of the Eye.
It's so embarrassing to need someone like I do you.
How can I explain?
I need you here and not here too.
How can I explain?
I need you here and not here too.
I'm flunking out, I'm flunking out.
I'm gone, I'm just gone.
But at least I author my own disaster.
At least I author my own disaster.
Performance breakdown and I don't want to hear it,
I'm just not available.
Things could be different, but they're not.
Oh, oh, things could be different, but they're not.
The mousy girl screams, "Violence, violence!"
The mousy girl screams, "Violence, violence!"
She gets hysterical,
'Cause they're both so mean,
And it's my favorite scene.
But the cruelty's so predictable.
It makes you sad on the stage.
Though our love project had so much potential,
But it's like we weren't made for this world.
Though I wouldn't really want to meet someone who was.
Do I have to scream in your face?
I've been dodging lamps and vegetables.
Throw it all in my face,
I don't care.
Let's just have some fun.
Let's tear this shit apart.
Let's tear the fucking house apart.
Let's tear our fucking bodies apart.
Let's just have some fun.
Somehow, you've red-rovered the Gestapo circling my heart,
And nothing can defeat you -- no death, no ugly world.
You've lived so brightly -- you've altered everything.
I find myself searching for old selves,
While speeding forward through the plate glass of decaying cells.
I've played the unraveler, the parhelion,
But even Apocalypse is fleeting.
There's no death, no ugly world.
Sometimes, I wonder if you were mythologizing me like I was you.
We wanted our film to be beautiful, not realistic."

He paused; held his hand out in front of his face. He stared at it intently.

"Trip's started."

He lowered his hand and kept singing.

"Perceive me in the radiance of terror dreams.
You can betray me.
You can,
You can betray me.
Teach me something wonderful,
Crown my head, crowd my head with your lilting effects.
Project your fears onto me,
I need to view them.
See there's nothing to them.
I promise you, there's nothing to them.
I'm so touched by your goodness,
You make me feel so criminal.
How do you keep it together?
I'm all, all unraveled.
But you know no matter where we are,
We're always touching by underground wires.
I've explored you with the detachment of an analyst.
But most nights, we've raided the same kingdoms,
And none of our secrets are physical.
None of our secrets are physical.
None of our secrets are physical now."

He raised the gun with both hands, flicked the safety off, clicked the hammer down, and shot Bearyl in the head.



He stripped down to his underoos, leaving his clothes nicely folded next to his bag (he didn't want them to get soaked if he did live). He placed Adam Dodd's pistol on top of the pile, and he walked over to Beryl.

"All Is Lost, by Alexander Ebert. It's an instrumental piece, I ain't singing it."

He slowly, surely pushed her out to sea until his collar began to beep. The seas were rough. Wave after wave slammed against him, threatening to send him off balance and drown him. He could hear the ocean whispering to him. He could hear all the sealife whispering to him.

He could hear Beryl whispering to him.



He whispered back. "You gotta stay out there this time. You can't come back. You have to be free. Please, you have to be free," he shuddered. He could feel the cold from the ocean seeping into his bones. "You have to be at peace."

"Goodbye, Beryl. I love you. I always have. I always will."

He let her go.





He made it back. He could still hear the whispers. He took the gloves off. He got dressed. He looked up at the stars.

He crumpled to the ground, screaming and convulsing in pure emotional agony.

No matter where he looked, he saw Beryl's corpse, waterlogged and with its face torn off.

It was a bad trip.





He changed his pod. He'd spent most of the day without any insulin. He sat on the gravel beach and stared blankly as the sun came back up.

Eventually, the announcements played.

Julien Leblanc killed Ashlynn Martinek.

Justin killed Mackenzie Baker. Michael lifted one finger

Quinn bludgeoned Bert. Caged Bert. Caged Bird. Two fingers.

Angie Cortez strangled her brother Ramsey.

Nia had killed Bill Dover. Bill was a wholesome dude. It couldn't have been anything other than murder. Three fingers.

Blaise shot Joanne Coleman.

Erika sniped Katie Augustien and Saffron Fields. Four fingers. Five fingers. Erika had a motive not to kill Katie. Erika killed Katie anyways.

Napoleon Complex shot Brandon Murphy.

One of the Rennes twins jumped off a cliff.

Erika shot Oliver Lacroix. Six fingers.

Erika shot Tom Swift. Seven fingers.

Quinn killed goddamn Dick Smith. The smart nerds won against the gamer nerds. Go team.

Marco V. killed Arianna Moretti with a chainsaw.

Facebook Lucas stabbed Radish Silverman with a tree branch.

Morgan was alive. Lori was alive. It didn't matter.

Nia won BKA. At least that meant she probably wasn't dying from the wound Michael'd given her.

And that was that.


Michael looked up at a camera with tired, empty eyes; tears of hatred. His lips were a flatline of contempt.

"Seven people. Seven people died yesterday because of me. I should be dead. I don't know why I'm not dead. I don't know why I'm alive and a third of the class isn't. I still remember all of them. I still remember."

He glared through the lens, not once blinking.

"Abel Zelenovic, Toby Underwood, Christine Bright, Beryl Mahelona, Felix Rees, Yuko Hayashibara, Violet Quinn, Dante Valerio, Benny Murray, Phillip Olivares, Terra Johnson, Mikki Swift, Bree Jones, Sapphire Waters, Danny Chamnanma, Cammy Walker-Grimsley, Ron Kiser, Kyle Harrison, Desiree Beck, Kayla Harris, Jeremiah Anderson, Mercy Ames, Gina Petrov, Caroline Ford, Clay Barber, Reuben Walters, Rhonda Lawson, Camila Cañizares, Blake Davis, Ned Jackson, Dolly Upton, Alexander Brooke, Cheridene Williams, Layla DeBerg, Emil Van Zandt, Arjen Kramer, Stepney Cruz, Tristan O'Hara, Bryan Merryweather, Ashlynn Martinek, Mackenzie Baker, Bert Wren, Ramsey Cortez, Bill Dover, Joanne Coleman, Katie Agustien, Saffron Fields, Brandon Murphy, Jessica Rennes, Oliver Lacroix, Tom Swift, Richard Smith, Ariana Moretti, Coriander Silverman."

He seethed.

"I remember."

A blink.

"I don't know why I'm alive. I should have died the first day, I should have died in the commissary, I should have died when I ODed on pills, I should have died when Erika was pointing a gun at me, I should have died at the yacht, I should have died when Claude was pointing a gun at me, I should have died when I was leaving Violet, I should have died last night when I walked out into the ocean on acid. I didn't die. I'm still here. It hurts and it hurts and it hurts but it never stops; though I guess if any of this was supposed to be easy, it wouldn't matter how it ended. All I had left was trying to die happy. I think the only thing that's ever made me anything close to happy is making other people happy."

He paused.

"Which makes it unfortunate; the only things I've ever been able to do right are hurting people and talking to corpses."

He looked down at the ground.

"I guess what I'm trying to say to you is," he looked back at the camera, "fine. You win."

He put the white robe back on. He shrugged. His voice was higher in register, annoyed and exasperated.

"Michael Froese is dead."

It was still a lie, but it didn't feel like one. Whatever he wanted the truth to be, it had died days ago with Beryl Mahelona.

Everything was in order in a black hole. A post-truth Michael.

It was time for him to break up with his pride and start to flirt with satisfied. Time to pretend.

He flipped his hood up.

"Death is not a fearful thing. It's living that's treacherous," a small smirk split his face. "Marshall Applewhite said that, I think."

He raised his arms to the sky and fell to his knees.

"Blessed are the dead; kneel before the One. Lay where you are, rest where you are. I am infinity; lift me where you cannot."

He'd made that up on the spot. He was getting good at this.

A quick, dry laugh. "I swear, y'all better make me into a t-shirt decal or something."

He walked away, holding the pistol in his hand, The Many-Eyed Bear's perforated head poking out from his backpack. The blue wristband remained conspicuously in the gravel, eventually being washed away in the tide.

((continued elsewhere))

[Kermit]

He stopped walking. He flipped his hood down and looked through a camera.

"Oh, y'know what, fuck this. I'll drop the act for a bit and just explain what I'm doing. I don't want to be remembered for my actions; I want to be remembered for the why. I want to be remembered as a human, not as a silhouette of a cartoon character."

He scratched the back of his neck.

"Empathy," he paused. "Empathy. Let me start off with a tangent. The general scientific consensus is that asking questions is a uniquely human trait. Any non-human we've managed to figure out ways to communicate with hasn't asked us any questions. Coco the gorilla has never asked a question. There's a single exception to this trend: Alex the African gray parrot. You've heard of him before, probably. One day, while he was in front of a mirror, Alex said to his handler, 'Am I gray?'. It's up for debate what exactly he meant by that; if it was a question, or if he was just repeating words he'd heard before. We don't know if he really meant it. We won't ever know for sure. He's dead."

A long, pregnant pause.

"Back to empathy. Empathy is instrumental in asking questions. In order to ask questions, you need to be able to understand that things outside of yourself exist and have, like, conscious experiences. It's often argued that empathy is what makes us human. I'd disagree. Yawning is contagious because of empathy, allegedly. Now, here's a fun fact: Yawning is contagious for dogs too. Try it out, yawn at your dog when it's all chill and stuff; it'll yawn back probably -" he interrupted himself, "- I'm getting off-topic here. Empathy. The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experiences fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner. Merriam-Webster's definition. It is not the same thing as sympathy. Sympathy is when you share the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of something else, because they're also your feelings, thoughts, and experiences. I'm not a fan of sympathy; it and empathy are opposing forces, in a way. Empathy gets you constructive discourse; sympathy gets you echo chambers and tribalism. Empathy good, sympathy bad - unless you're in a place like this. Here, empathy destroys you and sympathy keeps you sane."

He pursed his lips.

"I guess I'm unlucky. Everyone I've ever felt sympathy for is either dead, is crazier than me, is hanging out with someone crazier than me, is someone who wants to murder me, or is someone who I've already abandoned. It's pretty wild, I've never even felt sympathy for myself, I don't think."

He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes for a few seconds.

"I've been trying to kill my empathy since day one. It won't die. I don't think it can. I still can't see someone without feeling all the hurt they've been through. I feel, like, comparatively fine when I'm alone; but being with people is pure fucking agony. That's why I talk to dead people; it makes me feel dead too. It makes things numb. It never lasts."

His eyes flitted away from the camera for a few seconds. He grimaced; a few tears working their way out.

"I can't kill empathy, but I can kill the things that make me feel it. So that's what I'm doing now, I think. Everybody dies here. It doesn't matter if you're selfish or selfless here, nobody makes it out. You can check out, you can't leave. The longer you live, the longer you hurt. Killing isn't necessarily immoral here, depending on why you're doing it. I'm doing it to give people a way out; that's the real reason why I killed Camila. I was bullshitting Erika; seeing if I could play the villain," he paused. "And I guess I can, because she killed four people after letting me live; I presume it was because she thought I'd thin out the competition."

He scratched the back of his neck again.

"So, I guess killing's a mutually beneficial thing with me. The people I kill get an end to their suffering, and the people I don't kill get someone to hate; something to distract themselves from the fact that they're going to die during the next eight-ish days. I get something to numb the pain - palliative care, I guess - and I get to help people, which still feels nice. That's everything I needed to say, I think."

He nodded his head and flipped the hood back on.

"Thanks for coming to my TED talk, y'all. Before I go, lemme leave you with something to think about. Repeat after me," he walked up close to the camera, grinned, lowered one eyebrow, and raised the other. Visible on his glasses' lenses, one could see a recursive series of reflections alternating between his glasses' view of the camera and the reflection of his face on its lens. "Am I gray?"

He did a snappy fingergun at the camera with his left hand and walked away, robe fluttering in the wind. He knew that last part would fuck with at least somebody watching, and for that he was glad. It was the only way he could hurt them and they were the only people he really wanted to hurt.

((continued elsewhere for real))

[Kermit]

He stopped walking again. He kept his hood up and looked at a camera. He walked up close to it and took off his glasses.

His eyes focused. He blinked a few times. There was a look of pure dread on his face, like he was staring down death itself. In a way, he was. He was staring into the eyes of his own reflection. He didn't recognize the person looking back. Pupils and sclera, but no iris. Just big black dots sitting in larger bloodshot white dots.

"...my eyes. What... What happened to my eyes?" his voice broke. He lifted his hand up to his face and brushed the hood off. There was an ugly dark purple semi-circle under each eye. He looked like he had raccoon eyes. He looked like someone who'd been in a car crash and fractured both their orbits. "What the fuck is happening to me?"

His throat made a dry hissing sound. "I - I don't... this isn't about Alex the parrot. I'm not talking about Alex the parrot right now. Ignore all that shit about Alex the parrot. I don't know if anything I said then was true. I don't -" he took a few stumbling steps back. "I don't know if anything I've ever said was true. I don't know if anything I've ever thought is true. I don't know if I'm going crazy or if I'm just tricking myself into thinking I'm crazy. I don't -" his face twisted, "- I don't know if I really ever even really loved Beryl or if she was just an excuse."

He crumpled to the ground in a tiny ball. The tears wouldn't stop.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just -" he choked, "- I just wanted to die. That's all I ever wanted. I never wanted to exist. I never wanted to be alive. I never wanted to be alive. All I ever do is hurt people and I - all I wanted was to die and I can't even fucking do that right."

He sobbed wordlessly on the ground for a few minutes until he slowly lifted his head and glared weakly at/through the camera lens.

"I hate you."

He slowly stood up, gripping his pistol so tightly that his knuckles were white.

"There's a song; For 12, by Other Lives. Listen to it. Or read the lyrics. Or don't," he spat. "It's not like you give a shit."


This time, Michael Froese actually left.