Thriller

[KamiKaze]

((Roxanne Borowski continued from We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat))

You know something? You can sympathize, emphasize, with anyone, as long as you think about stuff a bit. See from their perspective, you know?

Let's take Wyatt. One half of the Super Edge-io Brothers. At a glance... well, let's use an analogy. Imagine Mike Michaud and the unholy alternate universe John Cena (perhaps with a goatee) had slimy hate sex in a dark alley while drunk and somehow produce a child. That child is left to fend for himself, surviving only on protein shakes and steroids. And the only way he had to learn basic social skills were a mixture of those awful Roosh V books and 80s teen movies with the parts where something bad happens to the jocks conveniently edited out. Then the child is left to rampage through a normal high school. That was only a start to what the dude was like.

Okay, that was mean. A little too mean, yeah? But, well, everyone had to deal with him in the Anti-Bullying Club. But sometimes, she had to wonder: did Wyatt... ever have a childhood?

Like, sure, he was a kid, now he was a teenager. That's how things typically work. But she heard rumors. Something about him losing his virginity at 12? Roxie remembered being 12. She got bath bombs, and fresh makeup, and a book about cryptids for her birthday. She'd consumed that book, again and again. That same year she and Zelda went to Lake Winnie with the cousins over the summer, and it was great because she was finally allowed to go on the awesome thrill rides. She'd been so excited about that.

Stuff like “I lost my virginity at 12”, if true, painted a picture. Wyatt pushed people around and threw himself around, but it was clear. She wondered if he ever allowed himself to worry about kid things growing up, or if he even was allowed, period. She wondered if someone genuinely hurt him, or told him a bad life lesson, so he became that type of person. Either he was lying to cover up inadequacy, or he was telling the truth, which implied all sorts of things. In any case, that and a few other things made her think Wyatt's ego was a little more fragile than you'd think. So, she tried to give him the benefit of a doubt when it came to the Anti-Bullying Club. When he was elected, Roxie decided to treat it as a sincere attempt despite what he'd said. If he was, after all, he'd be given a chance. If he wasn't and it was his bizarre trolling attempt like he claimed, he'd be annoyed with spending his afternoons with Lavvie and her own spooky one-legged Jewish butt, realize that the joke's over, and leave. Or! He came to enjoy it. The dude was like, well, he clearly never had a movie night just chomping on popcorn and stuff, and she would invite him if he stopped being a creepy jerk.

But yeah. In a way, she felt bad for Wyatt. Didn't mean she liked him, or that anything bad that had or was happening with him was automatically excused. Just that, if you think things over, you have to wonder how damaged he was? Maybe Bret, while we're at it?

Ivy was much the same way, but her baggage was a little more obvious. Roxie heard about her drinking a lot, and something happened at a prom afterparty, but she didn't hear the specifics about that. Just that she broke up with Bret and admitted to cheating on him or something. Again, Roxie didn't really like Ivy. She'd try to be pleasant with her since she was like, Lucas' ex-girl, but sometimes you had to grit your teeth a bit. But, it was clear the woman had issues, issues that Roxie never pried much into, but could only hope that Ivy could find a way to resolve.

Anyways. You can play the same game with anyone. Sometimes people who act in effed-up ways drop little hints here and there, something you can stop and dissect if you so wanted. You have to respect privacy, of course, but you can feel empathy for someone, understand how they are the way they are. You don't have to forgive them or even like them since sometimes that's impossible, but you can at least show a little compassion if it turns out they're going through some shit.

So... about Nona.

Hm. Actually. Nona wasn't Nona anymore. Nona might not have ever been Nona?

See, when the announcement came on, the worst was confirmed. Yeah, Nona had killed Kayla. But things got a little more interesting when Danya was like “by the way, it's Marco now, but whatever.” And Roxie took some time to process the Kayla part before she got to the Marco part. It took her more than a moment to realize what was meant by “it's Marco now.”

Admittedly, Roxie used to be a bigot when it came to that sort of thing. Well, “bigot” wasn't the right word, just that she took her a while get how someone could “feel” male, or female, or anything else? Ignorance, maybe. But she thought about it. In a way, it was kind of like a type of personal horror she only vaguely experienced in her own way. Sometimes, her leg felt like it was still there, and it ached and twisted as if she never had the surgery and her body was crying out for it. A sense of unease, a sense of something not being right. Maybe that's how it feels. Something's wrong, your body and mind tell you something's wrong, but it can be hard to describe or even pinpoint. But, maybe she was approaching that from the wrong angle. The point was, she felt it wouldn't be Marco's or anyone else's job to fully explain to her what living with gender dysphoria is like, any more than it was hers to explain the whole phantom pain thing.

So, let's paint a story. Someone dealing with gender dysphoria(?), with everything that implies, before the game even started had approached her and Kayla, still deep in denial and trauma about the kidnapping. When trying to talk it over with him(?), he thought it was a weird joke, that they were on the trip still, and eventually ran away. So... when he ran into Kayla...?

Maybe he freaked. Maybe he was still in denial. Maybe he'd snapped out of it long enough and panicked. The body was pretty mangled, but she wouldn't peg Marco as like, a Freddy Krueger-style sadist, even if he had the glove.

Roxie wasn't sure what would have happened if she ran into Marco again. She wasn't sure if she wanted to know. The most she could do was to make an attempt to understand why he did what he did. Forgiving him was going to be hard. There was still a boat on a lake that he was responsible for.
____

The thing was about Roxie, she knew that what happened to Kayla was the eventual fate of everyone here. It wasn't Kayla's death that made her realize it, it was the second she realized that they were being kidnapped. Was she scared, sad? Yeah.

Kayla's death had only affirmed it.

She and everyone else here were on limited time. That wasn't a bad thing, though. All things die and eventually decay. Dying wasn't the worst part. Roxie had to admit, the way the terrorists staged things was the worst part.

Right next to the lake she'd noticed a pair of cages inside a smaller pool of water. Roxie didn't think it was for, like, fishing or anything. Didn't help that there were multiple chairs circling it as if watching over the scene. She could only picture it now: someone, likely a sacrifice, being shoved into a cage and made to drown. Or maybe forced to look at some abomination under the surface, slowly being driven insane. The reality was, though, it looked like some kind of torture device. Another piece of mise-en-scene from their captors, making them even more tense and uncomfortable.

Again, the way SOTF worked was a form of torture in itself. You could just kill everyone, but the way things worked you couldn't comfortably mourn the dead if they did it to each other over the course of a few days. Everything, the island they set it on, the fact that they took all their writing utensils and electronics, the fact it wasn't just actual weapons they gave out but also absolutely random things like potted plants, served only to make things more terrifying, both for them and their families.

So, that's why she wasn't playing.

She knew that's what they wanted.

So, what could be done?
____

Roxie's original plan was to accept what was going to happen and try to make the most of it.

Yeah, she was leaving a lot behind. Her YouTube channel, her sketches, her future concepts, her hopes, and dreams. But she knew it wasn't a matter of if, but a matter of when, even before they were kidnapped.

See, when she was younger, she lost her leg. That part was obvious to everyone else. But a lesser-known fact about her was that she technically already had a death plan. Her leg had been buried. She'd remembered her family talking about it, and she knew where it was buried. Sometimes she'd think about that. When she got older, she knew that one day, the rest of her would join that leg. It was something that was expected, thought about.

A bit older, and she thought about her near-death experience, and the buried leg, and the occasional ache that would come and go.

It's never if.

It was funny because she got grief counseling when she was younger, after her surgery. It sounds weird at first, because like, the concept of grieving over a leg sounds strange. But it makes sense, doesn't it? It was part of you, now it isn't. And now you have to learn to live without it. Kinda like losing a loved one. Sometimes she still felt a little phantom pain, but it'd fade away over time.

She'd be remembered and grieved for. They all would. Roxie didn't want to be remembered as “Roxanne Borowski, who died in a terrorist attack.” She wanted to be remembered as “Roxie Borowski, the FX makeup artist.”

She didn't want her death to be sad. She wanted to be remembered how she lived, not how she died. So, she was going to stay alive, at least for now. But, she didn't want to give them the satisfaction of seeing her sad and miserable and scared, nor the satisfaction of her killing someone out of desperation.

….

She realized she wasn't doing a good job of that so far. She'd been moping for a few days.
____

Roxie decided to leave.

She'd been here for a while now, and not getting much done. Of course, she did hear a few noises, a splish-splosh and voice here and there, but she hadn't really seen anyone. Well, she heard shouting at one point, but she wasn't sure if she should investigate. But, on the other, she wasn't one for sitting idle. So that's why she decided to move away from the lake area she'd been hanging around. And besides, she'd promised herself, didn't she? She wasn't going to be scared and stuff. That's what they wanted her to be. And as a horror artist herself, she knew one thing: the worst insult you could dole out to someone like her was to not be scared, and instead pick at all the ways it wasn't scary.

But first, there was something she needed to do.
___

“So, hey.”

Roxie felt weird talking to the camera. She'd done it thousands of times back home, both for her YouTube channel and other things. But to a terrorist camera? Yeah, it was an experience.

“So, hey,” she repeated. “I know like, occasionally people talk to the cameras in these things, and like, sometimes friends and family hear about it? Even if watching SOTF is illegal and stuff, sometimes things make it through, so... uh, worth a shot?”

Roxie smiled, rubbing her neck. She was sitting on Kayla's chair, staring up at a camera hidden in the tree branches. Weird angle, dudes, but it'll do.

“Alright, uh... so. I've been telling myself that I don't need to feel sad over all this. I'm not like, excited to die, obvs, but it's like, I've decided to spend the last of my days not being sad and scared and stuff. They want me to be, and they want you to be. So... uh...

“Hey. If you're someone in my family or know someone in my family, can you please tell them what I'm about to say? Like, I know there's like shock images and stuff, but if you are listening and have a shred of decency, tell them.

“I don't want them to be sad for me. I don't want to be remembered as someone who died in a miserable and pointless way. I know I'll die here, but you know what?”

Her lips curled, but her eyes didn't lift.

“I've accepted it. It's going to happen, at some point or another. I'm doing my hardest to not like, give in to desperation and kill someone, but it's going to be time for me at some point. Can you promise me, promise my subscribers on YouTube and stuff, that it won't be something that'll tear you apart? Um...”

She tried to think.

“Also, um, I think it's smart to have a death plan. Like, what you should do if-- when-- my death is announced. Uh... it's alright if you tell the people on YouTube and stuff what happened. You can do a tribute video too if you want. It's just that, uh... how do I put this?

“I can only remember that one case, a few years back, where this little girl uploaded to someone's YouTube account ranting about how her family was being torn apart by the person being grabbed for SOTF. Um... I trust you Zelda, and I trust Mom and Dad. But, if you put anything up on YouTube... don't do anything like that. You understand, right?”

She laughed a bit.

“Um, what else? Oh... my funeral should be like, in tradition, yeah? But I don't want it to be super sad, also. Like, if possible, can you play an inappropriate song before, during, or after? Like, 'Thriller' isn't super preferable, but if it's all that's on hand, go for it. Maybe make a joke about my death or something. I dunno.”

Deep breath.

“Dunno if I'm gonna be buried here, sadly.”

A moment, as Roxie gripped the bottom of the chair. She wanted to be buried, she wanted to have some choice over how her body was going to be handled. But she steeled herself and looked back into the camera.

“Anyways. It's gonna happen, and I don't know how it's gonna happen or when it's officially gonna happen, just that it's Soon, T-M. I just wanted to let someone know, I've accepted it, and uh, I'm not going to be sad anymore.”

Her face brightened a bit.

“And, I think there are places where I could check out before I die. The art exhibit sounds interesting, and there are manors, and infirmaries and stuff. All abandoned, but like, gotta get some urban exploration done before I die, I guess?”

A genuine laugh.

((Roxanne “Roxie” Borowski continued in Beat the Devil Out of It))