I'm alright. I'm just fine. And you're a tool, so.

[Super Weegee]

"Do you realize how stupid that is to insinuate?"

That sentence only drained Matthew's patience further. Dropping potential issues was rarely a problem for him. If somebody wanted to be left alone to deal with their problems and whatnot, then that's their business. However, this was one of those rare situations where he would have a hard time doing so. How was this not any of Matthew's business? Especially if she's possibly not in a good position to do anything?

He rose slightly in his seat.

"I'm insinuating that? Look at you!" he said, pointing at himself and then at Joanne, "You keep trying to dodge the issue!"

He took a breath silently, putting together his next words. At this point, he felt like he had gone past the point of no return. She asked what he meant by his last statement, and he already made a point to not beat around the bush. He can't go back on that now, since she asked.

Should he?

"You're afraid of what your parents might do to you if you said anything."

After he said that, Matthew looked around the cafeteria to see anybody noticed his pointing and body language. If anybody was listening to the conversation at all, there would be a fair chance that they would pull out their phones and try to record it. Amazingly still, nobody was even looking in their direction. Even if they were, he didn't care. Trying to get her to tell him what's going on was more important.

[Cicada]

She rose too. Faster, more violently than he had. She was also pointing with the same angry fervor, as her thoughts hurtled through her brain simply too fast for her to make sense of until they were already spat out.

She spat with a growl etched into the gnarled twist of her thick lips.

"No. You keep trying to force the issue. Big. Difference."

She still wanted to take it back. All of it, everything. It still wasn't too late.



"You're afraid of what your parents might do to you if you said anything."



Now. It was too late.

Joanne almost couldn't believe it. Consciously she even entertained, for a brief and shining and painfully innocent moment, that it was her ears mishearing. That it was her fault that Matthew had crossed a line, that she'd merely drawn that line in the sand too loosely. No. It couldn't be that Matthew had thrown a disgusting perversion of the truth at her, one that bit to the soul, one that had no business even being in his thoughts, let alone on his lips. It couldn't, just couldn't be, that she was about to take a match to the bridge between herself and her friend and light it up.

And not look back because she sure as fuck wasn't going to, not after this.

"What. The fuck, is wrong with you, Matthew?" That part was simple enough. The next part was twisting the knife, with vitriol:

"Ever fucking occur to you this shit is why people never want to be your friend?"

She was feeling the vitriol, it was like a high. It burned away the pain of being reminded, of home, of losing a friend. It was a shot of fireball right down the throat, and it made her feel alive with it's sweet falsehoods.

[Super Weegee]

Matthew looked at her, slightly confused.

"What do you-" Before he can manage to finish his sentence, Joanne spoke again:


"Ever fucking occur to you this shit is why people never want to be your friend?"


He went silent yet again as those words were cemented into his mind. He fucked up. Royally. Even if he tried to apologize, what would come afterwards? There was no way that they would be able to have a regular conversation again without bringing up the elephant in the room. He sure as hell wasn't going to talk about this with anyone else either. What if he happened to be wrong?

Still, he let out a defeated sigh. It was futile to try to repair whatever positive connection they had before. Not now, anyways. He then looked at her straight in the eyes and said:

"Ok then. I can take the hint. I can't believe how selfish you are." The words came out of Matthew's mouth as soon as he thought about them. Without waiting for a reply, he stood up and faced her, "But that's fine. It just makes it easier for me to say goodbye to you."

He proceeded to grab his bag and walk away, not bothering to pick up the remains of his food. However, he couldn't help himself from throwing more salt in the wound by saying one more thing to her:

"I'd rather have no friends than fake ones."

Instead of just walking as fast as he could without drawing attention, a meaningless attempt anyhow given that a couple of people closest to his table were giving him looks at this point, he slowed down his walking speed to hear what Joanne had to say. No doubt that whatever she said next was going to hurt even more.

[Cicada]

Selfish, huh?





... Well, he was right. Joanne's thoughts gnarled, twisted. Jagged ink spilled over some abstraction of a composer's sheet, because her thoughts formed discordant chords. A melody singing a note of anger, and then the countermelody. All her thoughts screaming counterpoint, chastising her, cursing her for being reckless, inconsiderate, ungrateful, thoughtless, cruel reckless ingrate disgusting idiot

Yes, she knew it was all her fault. But, she felt all the more callous for it, or in spite of it. Rather, her thoughts liked to spin the narrative. As such: Fuck Matthew, fuck his friendship, and fuck herself for believing in him or believing in herself.

Everyone she could see in the corners of her suddenly exhausted vision was looking. Good. Let them.

"Keep walking, Matthew." She snapped at him, with a cold and crisp barking. It was like he was being slow on purpose. Trying to steal the final laugh, the punctuation mark that concluded the sentence written on their friendship, for himself. As if he deserved to pretend he was the one walking away with his pride still propping up his chin. Let him. Let him assume, let him believe. Joanne could at least be proud that she wasn't that deluded and petty.

God.

GOD, she was so angry. She couldn't even remember why they'd fought, it... was just her parent's faces, distorted into inhumane anger, swimming through her thoughts and she couldn't exorcise the image. She could only feel, the stifling heat of her overly filtered and recklessly pumped blood pooling into mauve red clots in her fingers, up her slowly dissolving arms.

She was at rights to feel like this. Even if she didn't know why, she was valid for her reactions. So she stewed, as was her right, let the negativity hurt as it sunk into her stomach like lead weights.

[Super Weegee]

Keeping the same walking speed as before, Matthew immediately responded:

"Gladly."

As he gained even more distance away from everyone else, his heart began to sink significantly. To say that it didn't feel good would be a massive understatement.

Honestly, he just wanted to forget this. He wanted to forget that this fight ever happened. But he knew that it was going to follow him in some way or another. He can already imagine the rumors spreading. He didn't care.

This day can go to hell.

(Matthew Hunt continued elsewhere)

[Cicada]

That was it then.

((continued in Make A New Cult Every Day ))












Regret was the calm in both the eye of the storm and the storm's aftermath. It was walking two steps from shelter to behold destruction. Then being buffeted once more by the tempest. It was then those same two steps repeated, this time with the finality of the destruction wrought unfolding in all directions. It was everything lost, summed, totaled in a single morose contemplation of wreckages and ruins.

Regret was Joanne Coleman.

She didn't even have the energy to blame herself, she was merely inert and numb. She could see what she had inflicted onto herself and onto a person she had once called friend. She could survey it, study it at a distance from her own body and mind. But ultimately it was.. just there, just a concept grasped like the print of a textbook. Seemingly irrelevant for all it's reality.

Shock, that's what it was. Joanne knew this feeling.

It happened when the people you loved tore their own lives apart and broke their household to pieces. It happened when you watched them helplessly and only contemplated, way too late, the solutions. When the devastation passed and all that was left was herself and her thoughts, and only then would the damned things work. At all other times, no. Silence. Inanity.

But she supposed that was in character, anyways. She was the pointless and the mundane, she was the daughter smiling while people screamed and people cried and everything else once good seemed to dilute away into the gutter.

She lied through her teeth again and again. She'd do it now.






The eye of the storm thus slid by at her whim, and storm clouds closed onto her once more.

Because she was over this.






She totally was.

See ya, Matthew. Wouldn't want to be ya. Just: watch the ass while it's walking away, 'cause that's the good side hun.






Liar.