The Last Gilroyal

[laZardo†]

Eduardo had been glued to his screen for the past few hours. His parents had just gone to bed, but he snuck out and switched the TV on soft. Rumors had been flying around Southridge that one of the "gayer" contestants was dying. He'd been fairly on edge ever since the game began - or rather, ever since he'd found out Damien was playing. He tried his best to subdue his enthusiasm every time Damien killed someone...but he dreaded the day his guns would go quiet.

Right now, his channel-surfing had landed him on what was supposed to be Fox News. Instead it was a tranquil park scene on rather cheap closed-circuit camera.

"Oh God-" came his choked reaction as he saw who exactly it was walking into the park, dripping blood on the trail.

===

((Damien continued from The Field of Dreams))

Damien was dying, and it was a fact that he couldn't shake off as he walked back into the withering paradise where he had killed Roland Kelly nigh 24 hours ago. He had dropped each of his items as he'd fled, one by one, first the revolver with a single bullet left, then the unspent bullet by unspent bullet by baseball bat lightening his load but not releasing any of that burden. It wasn't hard to tell he'd been fatally wounded either, with that bullet hole in his torso near his neck, dangling arm and limping walk. Even harder to tell that this was the same boy who had gleefully killed others in the days before, as his revenge for a lifetime of pain.

It took him a few fleeting seconds to realize that he'd suddenly stopped in front of one of the park benches. It wasn't just any bench though...it was the same one where he'd sat beside Roland Kelly before blasting his brains out. He could tell despite his blurring vision, because said corpse was sprawled across the ground just to his side, already being consumed by vermin that were already starting to scout up Damien's legs for their next meal. Not that the itch and sting of a few bugs could compare to the bullet holes and internal damage that had already eaten away the rest of his body.

And it wasn't as if that damage compared to the emotional pain of discouragement, which weighed him down enough to sit down on the bench. Although it was a fairly soft landing, he felt as if all his guts had suddenly spilled out from his stomach and that his spinal column had collapsed from it. It was ironically relieving that he believed it didn't matter anymore.

Damien wouldn't get to kill Reneé Valenti, the queen bitch of the gang. He wouldn't even get to kill Nicole, let alone that blonde mercenary she'd sent to lay waste to him like this. He wouldn't get to show the world that he'd meant business, that nobody could pick on someone like him and get away with it.

"What...what do..." Damien's whimpers were interrupted by his now-erratic breathing and sobbing and the periodic coughing of blood from his self-destructing body. "What do I do..."
Take a rest, Damien...you deserve it... The voice of his friend was still as clear as ever.
"But I..."
It's gonna be all right, kid...you need the rest...
"I...I'm..." It was already impossible for him to stand up, let alone move his mouth or even speak.

He lay down on the bench, which was long enough to accomodate his entire body, and looked up as he pitifully coughed up the last of his blood. A last tear also escaped his eye, trickling down the side of his paling face and around his ear, into his blood-matted black hair.

It's...it's over...

Damien looked up into the starless sky and gave one last smile at the heavens, one last smile at paradise before his vision gave out on him and his head tilted to face forward.

==

"Damien...please...don't...you can't...I..." Eduardo's hands started to slip down the screen as he started to sob. He did not want to believe Damien was dead. He did not want to believe the last breath of his best friend was releasing whatever hope was left in the world for justice.

It took the on-screen notification of his death to finally drive that realization home. He had been kicked out of school by a student who had just gotten his chance in the spotlight, but among that and all those jocks going to the pro sports arenas and their chicks becoming supermodels he had been clinging to hope that maybe somewhere in this world there was justice for the little guy.

"Oh...God..." Eduardo slipped to the side as he finally let go of that hope.

===

The sun's first light started to pour through the withering leaves of the trees and flora. The light's glow seemed to rejuvenate the trees, restoring some of their former color. A new day was dawning on the island.

The only light Damien was seeing was the solid white of his dream world and new home for eternity.

===

Nicole breathed a sigh of tainted relief as Damien finally went still on that park bench, watching it all from her couch in the living room of her Denton home. She closed her eyes and started to pray her thanks to God for freeing her for the pain of living with an androgynous serial killer from her son. Her slate of failure to raise a child was wiped clean. Yet were she not alone in the room, someone besides God might have found it the most insensitive things she could ever say about her own flesh and blood, and she was especially thankful for that.

In fact, she had already planned out her next moves. She had already made the calls to schedule a press conference in one week, after the mandatory "grieving" period. She would speak about how her son was martyred, "seriously consider" renouncing her bid for the Board of Education, and - at least this was her expectation - she'd rise from the ashes of this chaos with a more powerful reputation than before. Hell, she figured she'd even become the Secretary of Education.

And now that Damien was dead along with his father...perhaps a reversion back to her maiden name was in order, just to seal the deal. Anything to bury the memories of failed opportunities - and to finally put to rest the fear that those memories would come back to haunt her.

===

Damien saw that light... and the silhouette of his special "friend." Perhaps that would explain why Damien was curled up naked (and neuter, after all this was now technically the afterlife) and crying, as if that "friend" would be violently disappointed with his disciple.

You did well, it began.
"But I...failed..."
You didn't fail...though I'm disappointed you didn't totally succeed either...
"Reneé...Nicole...they're still alive..."
And what your actions did to them...well...their times will definitely come soon enough.

===

The redhead-who-would-be-a-star was a mess of what she'd used to be as she sat trembling in the back of her parents' car, wearing only her PJs. She had no idea of what had just happened as the car was whisked with police escort through the city's warzones to her therapy session outside Denton. She didn't care if there was a photographer waiting to capture her in her state of mind.

For the last few days she had been frightened out of her own body that Damien would not only win the game, but that he'd come to kill her in an especially painful way. Her parents had to use quite a bit of force to restrain her after they found her locked inside the bathroom with a knife, and out of her utter fear she had lunged at them with an intent to kill. Had this not happened in the privacy of their luxurious condominium, she would have already been thrown into a mental institution, her downfall captured on every camera.

Even after she was sedated, her rage subsided, even after she was eventually notified that Damien had indeed died, Reneé Valenti knew this wasn't over.

The cameras wouldn't stop rolling until she'd died too.

==

"So...what happens to me now?" Damien asked fearfully.

A black rectangle opened up behind Damien, much like a sliding door. The little boy put his hand to his mouth in shock.

You're not going to hell. Who do you think I am, the devil? Come on...go in.

Damien tried to start for the doorway, but hesitated.

I'm not going to molest you either. Come on.

Damien got to his feet and walked slowly into it.

Immediately he could see what appeared to be a small mob of zombies approaching him from the darkness. Most of them wore the sweater-vests characteristic of P.J. Gilroy students.

"Wha...what is this!?"
I'm going to need you for something sometime soon. I'd like you to stew there for a while so I can get you the way I need you.

Almost everyone from his list was there. Marvin Hendrick, Elias McConnell, Franco Sebberts, Garry Dodd, Vesa Turunen. All of them with the gruesome injuries he'd given them. Franco looked especially distorted given that he'd been crushed by a collapsing factory, but they all walked as if they had been skeletally reassembled and were injury-free. There was Kristey Burrowell with her long blonde locks looked even more cruel and sadistic with some of her flesh rotting away from the slash wounds he'd given her. Even Peter Rosenthal, the fat kid he'd only met briefly at the pagoda, with a hole in the back of his head.

Damien let out a frightened squeal - similar to that of a wounded small animal - and stumbled back, falling onto his behind. He tried to scurry backwards, but his friend proceeded to grab him up by the shoulders and shunt him forward onto the mob's feet. He looked up at each of their faces, but couldn't find one.

"Wh...where's Roland!?"
Unfortunately, Roland believed in a little something called "repentance," but one good apple won't reform the whole bunch.

Damien tried to struggle as "Garry" grabbed him by the neck and started to pull him back toward the waiting zombie mob.

Don't worry, you won't die in here. You're already dead, remember?
"Wait! Who are you!?" Amidst the chaos and impending hellish pain, it was the only question worth asking.
Oh, Damey, Damey, Damey. I thought you'd have figured it out by now.

The shadowy figure put his hand to his face and appeared to literally peel his skin off...but instead the pitch-black silhouette that obscured his face simply peeled off like a layer of film to reveal his true face.

The resulting shock to Damien was worse than imagining what the zombies would do to him.

"Oh God...you're-"

Without another word, the "door" slid closed, leaving Damien to the darkness and his ghosts.

===

"Eduardo? Wake up..." came his mother's voice. "Have you been out here all night?"

The boy gasped as his eyes jolted open. He slowly sat up, but didn't look at his mother, who was dressed in her nightgown and apron. He could smell breakfast cooking.

"Is there anything wrong?" she asked, noting his tension.

Eduardo looked into the TV screen, which was blank. His mother had turned it off when she'd come into the living room to find her son curled up in front of it. He could see his reflection in it...and from what he could tell it was as blank as the screen itself.

"No...no. Nothing's wrong." he replied with a sigh.
"I hope you weren't watching that awful Survivor show last night...now come on and have your breakfast. The bus will be coming soon."
Eduardo sat still as he watched his own reflection in the TV screen. It seemed to be losing detail by the moment, as if his face was fading from his skin.
"Are you sure there's nothing wrong?" his mother asked, with a more caring tone in her voice. "A lot of people had friends in that game."
"No mama...nothing's wrong," he replied softly, one last tear trickling from his left eye duct. "Nothing's wrong anymore..."

Nothing's ever going to be right either...Damien...

B6 - Madison, D
19 July 1993 - 27 June 2006