That's When I Reach For My Revolver

[MurderWeasel]

((Darlene Silva continued from Mad As Hell and Not Going to Take It Anymore))

Darlene didn't make it far from the mouth of the cave. Her progress was slow, laborious, painful—but that last point was kind of the smallest of her worries right now. It just didn't seem that important that things hurt, because she was at least still around to feel it.

Her thought process at first had been to bring Max somewhere far away from the horrible cavern, somewhere beautiful and peaceful and calm and probably not even the sort of place that actually existed on the island now, but it didn't matter because it had just been a fantasy anyways. In movies and books it was easy to lift someone up and carry their fallen form away, even if you were small and weak like Darlene, but in real life it was really hard and she left a faint trail of blood in their wake, maybe hers and maybe Max's and probably both.

They were off the path, at least, maybe twenty feet into the foliage, a trail of disturbed undergrowth and displaced twigs and leaves behind them, in a little cluster of trees. It was out of view of where Stephanie probably was, or had been. Darlene still hadn't quite sorted out her feelings on the girl, or more accurately, she hadn't managed to come to a conclusion as to why she was feeling how she was and whether it was in any way at all valid. She'd been hyping herself up too much, watching so keenly for signs of betrayal, even though as best she could tell nobody had betrayed her in her time here in any real way. But still, she always had to keep her eye on someone—on Beryl, tall and strange and wild; on Lucas, heavily-armed and just maybe a pervert; on Stephanie, who swung from almost catatonic to the one who had herself together. It was too much, in a way. Darlene mostly spent time alone when given the choice, or on the edge of things. She always observed people, but felt better doing so from a distance, from the safety of the crowd. She didn't much care for being noticed in turn.

Max was propped up against the oldest and thickest of the trees, its trunk gnarled and its bark thick and grey, rock-like. Darlene had found the emergency blanket when going through her first aid kit, so he was wrapped in that now from the neck down, tucked in like he was sleeping. She hated how ugly and silver it was, so bright and gaudy. Someone might see. Someone might come and investigate, might follow the obvious trailed she'd left, and she didn't want that. Max didn't have anything to take—at least, she didn't think he did. His bag was back in the cave, still, if Stephanie hadn't made off with it. He'd been hard enough to drag on his own.

Darlene's sweater was wadded up into a ball between his head and the tree, like the world's lamest pillow, but she didn't have anything better. It was at least dry now, and wasn't too gross because she'd had to take it off so early and it had gotten rinsed some by the rain. The clothes Darlene was actually wearing were at least twice as filthy, but she wanted to say ten times worse, or maybe a hundred if you factored in that they were not just sticky and sweaty and dirty but also now kind of torn and liberally speckled with blood.

"I'm sorry," she muttered to Max, "I'm sorry. Just a second. A moment, I need to—I, I'm sorry."

He'd told her not to apologize, a few days ago. He'd told her he didn't even know what she was apologizing for, and Darlene had admitted that she didn't either, but had insisted that she stood by the sentiment. It was just the same now. Max didn't have to say anything at all—had he been in a position to, then there still would've been no need, albeit for entirely different reasons. And it wasn't like Darlene had no clue what she was sorry about this time, but rather that there was no one single thing. There was so much, too much to ever fully get through.

She was sorry she'd been so pushy about searching for Jonah and Arizona. If they'd stayed in the village they wouldn't have found their erstwhile allies, but now here they were still without the couple and so much worse off for the attempt.

She was sorry she'd run on ahead without the flashlight out. If she'd been just a little slower, or if she'd been ready, then she wouldn't have gotten hit by surprise. She'd barely understood what was happening, but she thought mustache had mistaken her for someone, maybe. If she'd had the light out, he would've seen that she wasn't whoever he thought she was, and maybe he wouldn't have attacked, or if he did maybe he would've aimed better and then Max wouldn't have had to worry anymore or intervene and could've just run away.

She was sorry that she'd doubted Stephanie, and sorry that she'd abandoned Stephanie, and sorry that the only reason she was sorry about either of those things was that Max wouldn't have liked them very much. She'd wanted to do right by him like he had for her, but that only went so far, right? If she'd been warmer to the other girl, would anything be different? Not for anyone who mattered. They weren't around to see it.

She was sorry she'd been scared of the mancatcher—and, by extension, Max—for even a moment. She was sorry she'd squirmed and cried when he'd pinned her down, sorry she'd thought he could ever really mean to hurt her. She hadn't known him, hadn't trusted Jonah quite enough to see. There'd been a terrible accident and nobody understood what was going on and the others were scared too, but even then when they thought she might be dangerous (because they didn't know her enough either) they'd only used the smallest amount of force they could, and they hadn't caused her any harm. And they'd been right, because when she was on the ground panicking, if she'd had free reign of her limbs and the gun, who knew what she might've done?

She was sorry the gun was in her shaky hands now, sorry as she held down the trigger and spun the cylinder, listening to the rattle. She was sorry that she almost liked the noise. It was soothing in a way, a mechanical rolling that was like raindrops on the window in the summer, or maybe like a train. It was the closest thing to music she had besides her own singing, which wasn't the same because she could never surprise herself.

Slowly, Darlene looked all around and then she set down the gun on top of her bag and set to work with the first aid kit. This was another thing she was sorry for: that she was going to have to focus on herself for a little and let Max hang tight. It didn't really matter. He wasn't going anywhere—or, put another way, he was already gone. She knew. She wasn't in denial about that, though she kind of wished she was. She wasn't even pretending exactly. She knew, but that didn't mean it wasn't still her job to do right by him.

Darlene had been kind of unconsciously trying not to look too much at the injuries either she or Max had sustained, but it was harder to keep from taking note of her own wounds because she wasn't all wrapped up from the neck down in a silver space blanket and because they hurt. Her right forearm was the first thing to really pop out, because it was right there in front of her when she was tucking in the blanket or playing with the gun, and also it was probably the least serious so that made it easier to focus on. There was this cut that was also sort of a burn, from where a piece of hot metal had gone flying and nicked her. She padded it with a little piece of gauze and then wiped it with the antiseptic towelettes, which made her tear up because it stung a lot and also because the little single-serve packets reminded her of getting dinner with her family at KFC where they had pretty much the same thing to clean your hands with after you were done eating. Three band-aids hid the cut, and it wasn't bleeding that incredibly much so it would probably be fine.

Her left shoulder came next. There was a long jagged gash that made a line in both her shirt and her shoulder, and she had to sort of pull the ragged edges of the fibers out and that took her beyond tearing up into straight up bawling territory. She had to stop and start and she hated herself a little for sending Stephanie away and also a little (but a little less) because the lost potential utility was the only thing that made her remorseful about her actions. She cleaned again, with a new sterile towel, but it was hard for her to reach behind her back properly and she couldn't really see, and when she searched with her fingers feeling the torn edges of skin and the slow, warm trickle of blood made her queasy so she didn't try too hard. She put a few little band-aids on it, and then stuck a big pad that was maybe supposed to go over a knee on top of the whole thing, covering it up. She did all of this through the hole in her shirt, which made it more awkward physically but also more comfortable emotionally, kind of, as it let her not take her shirt off which might've been more comfortable physically but would've been much more awkward emotionally.

After that, there was nothing left but the hard parts. Darlene patted around her head and found two cuts a lot like the one on her shoulder, but fortunately shorter and shallower. They felt warmer and maybe bloodier, though, and the wipes came away even more stained. Worse, she couldn't stick band-aids on the cuts, because they were in her scalp, surrounded by hair, and the hair got all matted and tangled in the sticky part. She didn't know what to do. At least her hair was still in its braid, though that was ratty and matted by now, loose loops of hair all over the place. She decided that the scalp wounds could wait a moment and felt around her ear and immediately regretted it and wished she'd finished up the other stuff first because this was going to be hard.

Darlene didn't know what the flat fleshy part that made up the top of her ear was called, but one of the spikes in the bat had punched through it right above where the ear joined with her head and had then been dragged out, splitting the bit of ear down the middle. The top half of her ear was like a snake's tongue—bifurcated, that was a word she knew—and for just a moment all she could do was be fascinated and move the front half further from her head and the back half closer, amazed at how they were independent of each other now. Then she opened her mouth to scream but instead just whimpered.

What could she do? What did you do about this? Darlene needed stitches. She thought probably her ear wouldn't fall off if she didn't get them, and it actually wasn't bleeding as much as she expected (but that was relative because it seemed like the sort of thing that, just conceptually, should be gushing out all the blood in her entire body), and so probably she wouldn't die, but... but this was a stitches situation, right? This was the sort of thing people got stitches for, but there wasn't any needle and thread and Darlene didn't even know how to sew and she couldn't see her ear so if she tried on her own, then... then she'd just poke a bunch of holes in it like she was trying to become a punk! It was a thought that was actually just a little bit funny, and she was able to laugh for a second before she remembered to feel bad about it.

In the end, she found these things called butterfly strips and used them to kind of pull the pieces of her ear together and hold them there against the side of her head. It didn't feel very firm but it was the only thing she could do, and she couldn't see how she looked but she was okay with that mostly, and she stuck a few absorbent pads on the cuts on her scalp and then took a big roll of gauze and just wrapped it around and around her head. She had to keep stopping to adjust the angle because it was getting in her eyes, and it pushed at her ear and the gashes and made the tears come stronger, but after what felt like a whole hour she had wrapped her head up a lot in gauze and it seemed to be covering the butterfly strips and the pads and holding them tight enough, at least she couldn't feel a bunch more blood coming out but there was a lot of blood all over her already so it was hard to say.

...the things holding her ear together were called butterfly strips, Darlene belatedly realized, like butterflies the bug. Her earrings were also butterflies. So now her left ear just had some extra butterflies on it. It was a really dumb thing to think but also it made her feel the teeny tiniest bit better so she didn't rake herself over the coals for it. She could have this one moment.

Nobody had come and bothered her while this was going on. Max had of course not moved. It felt like it took a really long time, but probably it didn't. Darlene had read about that once, that people perceived time in a weird way where new experiences made it seem a whole lot slower and routine things were faster. She'd never had anything at all like this before, thankfully, so maybe that was why it felt how it did.

She'd meant to do something more for Max, but now that the time had come, Darlene couldn't think of anything. She stood up from where she'd been messily sitting in the dirt and twigs and walked around a little, looking for maybe a better tree or something nicer to wrap him in or something to hide him from sight, but there wasn't anything. This was as good as it was getting. She came back and looked sort of in Max's direction but not at him for a while.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled again, for all the old stuff and then this new thing too.

So with nothing else to do, she put all her medical things that weren't used back in the box, and found a little Ziploc bag that she shoved all the stuff that was used into and also put in her bag, because she had bigger worries than littering now but she didn't want to just leave a whole bunch of bloody trash lying around where Max was. She checked the gun, spun the cylinder again and listened to the music it made.

Then she turned and took a step to leave.

Her bag swayed, still so lumpy and unwieldy. The dog's head bumped Darlene's elbow. She froze.

Her throat all of a sudden felt very very tight, and she swallowed but it was slow and hurt. She looked down, and glass eyes met her gaze. She petted the dog's face a couple times, scratched at its neck. It didn't respond, but she thought it liked it. She imagined it did—it was just a toy, of course, but it made her feel better. It felt good to pretend, just a little.

Darlene was getting teary again, but she inched the zipper on her bag down and pulled the dog out. It was really big, so big she could barely imagine how it had even gotten in anyone's stuff to begin with. She was so happy that it was here, but also sad because it wasn't going home either. It didn't matter, but she wondered where it really belonged, whether it had sat in a big net over someone's bed or hung out behind a door or in a pile of dirty clothes or what.

She walked over to Max and set the dog next to him, fussed with it for a while until it was sitting in a kind of dog-like pose, its head leaning in towards his. She leaned in too and touched her head to the dog's face, and a couple tears made the fur darker.

"Thank you," she whispered, and she hugged it and messed up the pose a little but it was more natural this way anyways.

"I want you to stay with Max now, and keep him safe," she said. "Thank you. Goodbye."

Darlene's throat hurt and the spot on the roof of her mouth at the very back hurt like someone was pressing against it as strongly as possible, and she looked at the two long and hard and considered for a little just sitting down next to them and staying and never going anywhere again. She couldn't, though. She didn't want them to see her give up.

So finally, Darlene got going, lighter bag at her side, gun in her hand, Max and the dog falling further behind her with each step.

For the very first time since she woke up almost a week ago, she was truly completely alone.

((Darlene Silva continued in Merry Christmas, You Suckers!))