Ang Pagbibinata ni Diego Larrosa

[Maraoone]

((Diego Larrosa continues from The Ultimate Test of Cerebral Fitness))

He came back to the temple half an hour, he guessed, after he'd left the cliffs. It had taken him no longer than five minutes to run from here to the cliffs just an hour ago.

The contents of his stomach had been expelled a few minutes ago, and yet there was still that sickly feeling of phlegm sliding down his throat. The world swayed less than it had a few minutes prior, but it swayed nonetheless. Stars sparkled and twinkled in his eyes, and yet they did nothing to better illuminate the rapidly dimming world around him.

it was fine. It was fine. He just had to stay awake. It was best to think of it as an all-nighter. He'd pulled those before for math exams, for essays in English, history.

It had felt like life and death back then.

His muscles shivered under the weight of all the war instruments he carried with him. The strap of the grenade launcher continued making its mark in his shoulders and that was fine. It was a part of him now. Ty's gun continued to dig into his hip and that was fine. It was a part of him now. Marceline's gun and his shovel dragged his bag down towards the earth, and yet he still kept them aloft, and that was fine. They were a part of him now. He would let all these things fuse with his skin if it meant survival.

The sun of the temple rose above the horizon just as the sun of this world dipped behind him. Beneath the temple sun, the entrance gaped open, allowing Diego to peer into the gaping abyss.

He didn't feel like entering there.

Without another thought, he passed the entrance and walked around the side of the temple, only to come upon a corpse. It was just barely nestled among the trees alongside the path that led to the cliffs. He'd been too busy to notice it the last time he passed by there.

He walked towards it hoping he'd find more supplies, more food to replace that which he'd vomited out. He hadn't found that, but there was something wrapped in a cardigan, placed on top of the body, Princess', theater girl, barest of acquaintances. He retrieved it, unwrapped it.

It looked like a yearbook. The name of the school looked familiar. He'd seen it on the news a few years back.

He stared at it for a few seconds, regarded all the long-dead faces that adorned it. He then pocketed the item in his bag. He missed reading. He'd have to look it over later when the light would allow it, next morning perhaps.

After that, he stumbled his way towards the back room of the temple, what was their equivalent of a sacristy, he guessed. Once he entered, he pulled the door closed and slid down against the wall, bag falling with a thump. Having solid ground beneath him helped. The world still tilted left and right but he had solid footing beneath him now, it was fine.

He should've taken caution when entering the building, perhaps, but there were what? Less than two dozen people remaining? He'd been through enough, he figured God would let him have this one thing for today.

He pulled a bottle out of his bag, rainwater from yesterday, gulped down a quarter of its contents. It tasted like copper; he still bled from where his teeth had been knocked out. Once he finished drinking, he licked the gaps with his tongue obsessively. The last time he'd had a gap, he'd been 10. It had grown back before. He ran his tongue over the gaps as if they'd grow back again this time, any minute now. It was odd feeling nothing where there had been something before.

He wondered if the gaps would show when he smiled. But he wouldn't need to worry about that for a while, he thought.

The water would be his meal for the day. He didn't feel like eating.

The next course of action was to patrol the building, make extra sure that there were no other intruders here waiting for him. It was scary, but that was good. It would keep him awake. It would keep him away from his thoughts. He was tired of spending nights and days alone with his thoughts. He couldn't avoid them forever, but even a few minutes of respite would be welcome.

He dug into his bag and fumbled for the flashlight. His chest felt tight. He breathed in and out, but it felt wrong, sounded wrong. Like someone else.

His ears must've been ringing still. They'd fired lots of gunshots at each other. It was nothing. It was nothing.

After a few long seconds, he finally retrieved the object, turned it on. And then, without even taking more than five steps outside the threshold, he came upon a pile of moldy cushions, bulging outward. He tried to sniff it out, but that just gave him stabbing pains. Right, Morgan had broken his nose. Right. He'd switched to mouth breathing without even fully realizing it. Not as if he could smell anything anyways, oddly enough. Morgan had fucked that up too, perhaps.

He nudged one of the cushions off instead, and was met with the blown-out, dead-eyed face of Nick Ogilvie. Fourth body he'd seen for the day, by his count. It didn't really stare at him; the gunshots had kinda made him go wall-eyed.

The corpse was placed flat, next to a support beam. There was a tacky black-red pool beneath the head, a pool that Diego had just stepped in. He stepped back, cursed under his breath.

Marceline had done this to him right before they'd met. The announcements had confirmed her confession. Revenge, she said.

The only relevance he held to Diego was that he was another face Diego's eyes tracked in the hallways of Hunter High, one of the faces adjacent to Lorenzo and his crowd. There'd also been some relationship drama, but that didn't matter then, it didn't matter now. Bearded, Scottish accent, a bit rough for his tastes. Still handsome.

Was it fucked up that he was still looking at his face? Trying to reconstruct it, imagine how it looked without the hole in the middle of his forehead?

He kicked the cushion back onto his face, backed off from the pile. He looked behind him, to his left, right. The room still seemed empty.

The rest of the patrol went without incident. The pile of marshmallows from last time was still there, slightly more diminished from last time he'd been here, over a week ago. They were a slightly more tempting prospect now, but the potential risks of food poisoning outweighed any possible benefits he could gain from eating them.

Across the room from Nick, framed by the entrance, there were two bodies, blood recently spilled, still wet. He'd seen them alive the hour prior.

Aurelien had paid Marceline's debt for him, and it had cost him everything. Blaise's head was twisted off to the side, swollen, malformed. Good for him, he thought.

The two bodies by the entrance were still there where he'd found them. The unrecognizable corpse from before, the one whose face had also been blown out, was gone, probably disposed of. He avoided the cushions, he knew what was there already. He walked around the room once more. Blaise and Aurelien's bodies, the marshmallows, he avoided the cushions. Another time. The bodies, the marshmallows, he avoided the cushions.

This room was empty now. Nothing left here. He entered the threshold of the backroom and walked to the side, eyes fixed on the cushions before the wall obscured it. And then he was fully in the room, and he was alone.

The dark had fully set in now, with only the flashlight providing any image for his eyes to register. He scanned it across the room once, twice, thrice, but found nothing, no one. The idea of an intruder somehow entering without his notice had been too ludicrous, anyways.

Too much to hope for.

The light had bounced back at him at one point, however. He walked over to this glimmer and found a shard of reflective glass, snapped off from who knew where. He looked into it.

His left cheek was mottled blue and purple, swollen eyelids just above it giving him a half-squinted look. His nose bent to the right, trails of blood running to his upper lip, lower half of his face generally smeared red. He bared his teeth, it hurt to do so, the left looked emptier than the right, lopsided.

Morgan had made his mark. These injuries were a part of him now. That was fine. These things could be fixed. Anything to survive the island. He placed the shard back onto the table, face down, his eyes stung now. This was fine.

The good thing about being alone was that there was no one around to look at him.

He didn't want to look at anything else for the meantime. The temple was empty. It was late. He was tired. He was scared.

But, that was the worst part of this night in particular. Though the world swayed less and less, it still swayed. He couldn't let a concussion take him down, not after everything he'd done, everything he'd been through. It was fine. This was just an all-nighter. Just one night. And if there were another night, then the night after that. It'd be fine, he could do this.

The flashlight flicked off. The world was dark.

He pulled off the strap of the grenade launcher, laid himself down, back flat on the ground, floor seeping heat from his skin. It felt cold now. He felt exposed.

Last time he'd been here, there had been three other people with him. Gervais, Stephanie, Lorenzo. All dead now. Last time he'd been trying to sleep here, he'd been trying to steal glimpses. The rain had been consistent, everyone had been soaked. Lorenzo had asked if he could change, Stephanie had said yes. Diego had looked away, there had been shuffling of fabric. Diego tried to look back—

Pulling himself out of sleepiness was as simple as touching his new wounds now. He brushed his fingers against his cheek, and waves of fire went through him. He blinked, and his cheekbone ached and groaned.

That was good. That was better.

But what if he looked back in time? What would he have seen? What was it like to look at that in real life? Would Lorenzo not have noticed? Or what if he did? If he did, would he have hated him for it, or would he have smiled back at him for it?—

He traced the curved path of his nose, he whimpered a bit. He'd made the decision a while ago not to snap it back in place. He didn't have the will to put himself through that. If he lived, the doctors could place it back for him, and if he died, then it wouldn't matter.

It'd be a long couple days though. Air barely entered his nose, it hurt, it hurt, almost nothing got in. It felt difficult breathing.

Lorenzo knew, right? The first time Diego looked at him, Lorenzo had grinned back, he knew. He'd been fine with being looked at the days they'd spent together. So maybe he should've looked back in the temple. Maybe, no, he definitely should've allowed himself longer than four seconds—

He pushed his fingers against the bandage on his rib. The wound hadn't had time to congeal when he'd covered it up, it was probably still raw underneath. It felt like a papercut in comparison to all the bruises on his face, but they were still barbs penetrating into him. He pushed his fingers harder, his ribs screamed.

That was good. That had to be enough. It had to.



If he did die, there wouldn't be a lot of seconds left.

He had the entire rest of the night to pass by. Thousands of seconds.



The good thing about being alone was that no one was around to judge him. No one could look into his face his eyes and judge him for what he was thinking. For once, there was solace in solitude.

No one else was around to look at his broken, swollen, purpled face.

No one else was around to look at the bloodied boy as he arched his back, tugged his pants and boxers off, followed by his shoes.

No one else was around to look at him as he took hold of himself.

No one besides the myriads behind the cameras.

But they'd seen him do a lot of other things, right? He'd stripped down in front of the cameras God knew how many times now to change, to bathe, just for the sake of lying down naked. He'd looked and lingered at a lot of other men without them knowing, and they'd seen all that. He'd hurt and robbed people, and they'd seen all that. He'd killed four people, and they'd seen all that. What was one more sin for the pile, what was one more atrocity for them all to witness?

Lean into it, right? Why couldn't leaning into it feel fucking good for once?

He did it because he wanted to. He did it because he could.

He did it because he had looked, and looked, and looked, and he wanted to be looked at, for once.

He wanted to look at Nick for four more seconds, for a lot more than four seconds. He wanted to look at all of Nick's friends for more than four seconds. He wanted to look at them for as long as he could, he wanted to take them in, he wanted to memorize them, he wanted them to become his, he wanted to have something, someone for once.

He, he, he wanted to look at Lorenzo for four more seconds, for a lot more than four seconds. He wanted to look at him despite what he'd done. He wanted to live in a world where he hadn't done what he'd done so he could stop feeling so fucking guilty for once. He wanted to live in a world where he hadn't done what he'd done so he could imagine being with him. But no one could see Diego's thoughts, no one could tell why he was doing what he was doing, so he could imagine, and he could want all he'd want, and no one would be able to stop him. He'd done what he'd done to Lorenzo's corpse, he'd atoned for his sins, he could think and imagine all he wanted, it's not like he'd ever be able to act on those thoughts right? right?

So, so, he wanted Lorenzo to fuck him. He wanted to be fucked, and he wanted to be used. He wanted to wake up, and find Lorenzo next to him. He wanted to be looked at by Lorenzo, and he wanted to be cherished. He wanted to wake up in the morning and he wanted to see Lorenzo's face framed by morning light again, and he wanted Lorenzo to cherish him and care about him and regard him as a person he wanted someone anyone Lorenzo to look at him that way to love him that way, and then they could talk about the weather or their jobs or what they wanted or what they wanted to eat for breakfast or whatever it was two boyfriends did he had no idea what boyfriends did he had no idea how any of it worked all he knew was that he wanted him.

He wanted to love and be loved.

He wanted to look and be looked at.
He wanted to see, and be seen.
He wanted
He wanted
He wanted

He wanted




He wanted.

















Diego gradually grew cognizant of the sweat drops that coated him, despite the chill of the night air.

He looked to the side, and there was a small lens trained on him. It had been trained on him the entire time.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds, hard enough to make his face hurt. And then he opened them.

Drops and flecks of cum had landed on his dick, stomach. He wiped it all off with his hand, smeared it against the floor. He wanted to rid himself of the stickiness between his fingers, but he didn't want to reach into his bag with his sticky fingers and dig around what had been Cam's bag with his fingers and look for a tissue or a cloth or something with his fingers. He felt tainted.

This was their version of a sacristy, right?

He wondered if the god they worshiped was watching.

He continued rubbing his hand against the floor, over and over again, until his hand had been rid of the feeling as much as possible. A tackiness still stuck to him.

He looked down at the hand he'd used. It had been the one with the scar, the one he'd made for Lorenzo all those days ago.

He wanted to throw up.

His breathing grew deeper, but it felt constricted, tight. There was a cross necklace he wore around his neck, a gift from his mother. He'd had it on the entire time. It felt like it was choking him now.

He breathed deeper and deeper, faster and faster, until all of a sudden he stopped. For a second, he didn't want to breathe, and so he didn't. But, there was something off. He could still hear himself breathing, but he wasn't breathing. He could still hear
breathing.

Diego continued to hold his breath.

There was a broken, sputtering intake, outtake of air in the background.

Someone else.

He felt like his face would burn off.

Without even pausing to put his clothes back on, he picked all of his belongings up and ran out the backdoor, back where he came from. He did not stop until the darkened sun was no longer visible, until he was sure the other person, whoever they were, was not within sight.

When he finally stopped, he pulled his jeans back on. His legs felt sweaty, sticky, gross, he felt sweaty, sticky, gross, but he needed the cover.

When he dressed himself, he sat down against a tree, curled inwards, and he stayed like this the rest of the evening.

He didn't want to be looked at anymore.

((Diego Larrosa continues in perverse verdict))

[Emprexx Plush]

Blaise's head was twisted off to the side.

Swollen.

Malformed.

Blinking.

[Emprexx Plush]

Something in his hand. He was looking at something in his hand. He was moving something in his hand. He was touching something in his hand. He wasn't looking at something in his hand, his eyes were closed, he was moving, he was touching something in his hand, flat on his back it was all that stood out, up and down with wet slapping and soft breaths, pieces and pieces all pointing to one glaring singular picture drawn together by all too familiar scents and motion tinged with shame demanding reprisal, demanding mockery, demanding judgement, demanding something

Blaise's head was twisted off to the side.

Swollen.

Malformed.

Blinking.

But they saw nothing.

But they said nothing.

But they understood nothing.

They blinked.

Their head would not turn away.

Time passed.

[Emprexx Plush]

Stood up again, huh?

They blinked.

Or, shoot, we're still...huh. This is takin' awhile. Really draggin' it out. I thought we...well it's hard when it's all outta order. Y'know, peekin' ahead and all that.

Blinked.

Still it's a rough break, ain't it? Prolly woulda been out of here sooner if that dance partner had turned up and gettin' left in the lurch, yeesh, guess it suits this whole thing but it's pretty pathetic. Mighta been kinda nice to one last thing of consequence, right?

Blinked.

We really doin' this? We really about this? I mean, it's pretty much a steamin' pile, we're all on board with that ain't we?

Blinked.

It was dark.

Now that ain't my fault. I ain't the one draggin' feet on this. Coulda fixed that any time now, you had a good long spell.

It was dark.

Blinked.

Right. Okay. I get it. You want something done, you gotta...

It was dark.

And then it was light.

It wasn't.

It was light, faint light, but light streaming through the cracks in the temple door. The sun was up. There was a day waiting outside.

It was night. Nothing changed. Nothing moved.

Except it wasn't. It was day. It was day and there was a body rising with the sun. Barely dragging up on aching feet, only one arm able to support the motion, jaw loose, dried blood crackling from stillness to motion, but there it was headed out the door.

There was no body in the temple.

Not anymore. It was in the sun.

It was going nowhere.

It was going for the woods.

((Carl Concluded Blaise Elsewhere))