SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

Sabrina looked up from her wandering. She saw people. Her feet dragged over towards them. She wasn't really thinking anything. She was just ... she didn't really know what was going on in the fog of her mind, and she didn't really have the mental energy to find out.

Easy enough. Almost peaceable, as things went.

He glanced at Dorothy, smiling a little. "Just Machete, hm?" he asked. "I suppose I do have an unmistakable resemblance to Danny Trejo. I think it's my dark hair and weathered features."

He glanced down at himself, then moved towards the doors to the warehouse, making sure to keep his distance from the man and the women. "If you'll pardon me!" he called over his shoulder. "I'm not dressed for this party!"

He started to push his way inside, then stopped as he saw a woman walking towards them. Wrong, somehow: slumped and strange, like she'd already been hurt.

"Are you alright!" he shouted, eyes flickering past her, looking for danger.

"Nah, I'm good, Wayne. Knockout gas does a number on a girl's appetite, doncha know," Asha said with a shrug. "Thanks for offering, though." She felt a lot better about him, now that he'd actually spoken. Dude seemed nervous, but not nearly as dangerously as Alex was. More reserved, less twitchy. Probably still thought he'd be able to live, somehow. Well, not like she could fault him for that.

Dorothy, though, didn't seem to be doing so hot. Maybe the good vibes released by the hugfest had lost their strength, and the situation was sinking in for her again. Not good. Oh, it would have to happen eventually as part of the process of healthily accepting her own impending demise, but no reason it had to be now, out in the open and among strangers. Asha hoped she'd be able to cushion the blow as much as possible, make it more of a lethal injection than an executioner's rusty axe.

Alex saying his goodbyes and jogging away was the perfect excuse to move along. Asha didn't know what to make of his shouting, and under normal circumstances she'd stick around to make sure everyone was a-ok, but she couldn't in good conscience drag Dot along with her. You couldn't just try to balance people's happiness like a checkbook, knowingly stressing someone out in the hopes of making someone else's life easier.

"Well, it's pretty damn dreary around here! No place to hold a respectable party. Let's go, alright Dot? You're invited too, Wayne, but no pressure. Follow us if you wanna," Asha said, slinging her bag over her shoulder. After checking to make sure Dorothy was following her, she strolled away, humming her earlier nihilistic song.

((Asha Sur's just waiting for time to steal them all away.))

Too many people in one place, Asha and Dorothy had to leave because who knows what will happen if the spark of a fight starts and consumes everyone there. Alex was distracted by a girl, Dorothy wasn't sure who she was, she knew just a little about her from her actions so she decided that he wasn't a problem. Maybe her and Alex were good friends?

She also got the confirmation that the Danny Trejo fantasy was shared between both Alex and her, she felt good about that. Knowing she wasn't the only one confused because of Asha.

Dorothy was now fully standing. She sidestepped toward Asha, looked one last time behind her - at Alex, which she wished he wouldn't go on a spree, then Wayne, hoping he'd chill out a bit and the girl, acknowledging her presence with a nod- and followed her friend, the handle of her bag wrapped around her arm.

((Dot escaped her maker))

Wayne didn't know what the junior girl - Dot, from what Asha had just said - meant by the look she had given him.

It could have been a warning. She could be the sharper one of the two. That look could be telling him that Asha might be fooled by his little casual joke and his hands up in the air and his assurances and his face set straight like he wasn't hiding a damn thing, but she wasn't fooled. She sure wasn't.

Or it was just a look.

He couldn't keep second-guessing himself. There was an opening, an offer for an excuse to leave. Better to keep moving. Better not to have to deal with a new arrival. New information. Alex's two swords.

He swallowed his uncertainties, and followed Asha and Dot away.

((Wayne Cox continued in Time steals us all away one day, does it not?))

Sabrina looked up at him. It was, it was someone.

"Are you alright!"

Sabrina looked at him as she fell towards him.

"Where are we? Why us?"

Well, alright.  Not fucking around was she?  Straight to the heart of the god damn matter.

Alex stared at her, his mouth slightly open, his eyes wide.  That was...extreme.  What had she seen?

Well.  What the all had seen.  A man shot dead so casually, just to prove how quick and easy it could happen to any of them.

The cameras are still rolling.

Alex dropped his machete to the ground, and spread his arms wide, as though offering her an embrace.  "I don't know where we are!" he said, taking two tentative steps towards her.  "But as to why?"

His voice hardened, sweeping his gaze from side to side with what he hoped was imperious confidence, so any cameras saw a man utterly in control, utterly unafraid.

"They are monsters preying on the weak," Alex said.  "We will have to show them they chose the wrong prey."  He took another step towards her, and offered her one of his hands.  "Come on," he said.  "Let's get somewhere quiet."

"I don't know where we are! But as to why? They are monsters preying on the weak. We will have to show them they chose the wrong prey."

The boy stepped towards Sabrina, and offered her one of his hands.

"Come on. Let's get somewhere quiet."

Sabrina looked at him. He looked serious, like he actually wanted to help.

"O-okay. Where do you want to go?"

She agreed!  She actually agreed!  Alex did not have to force his easy smile this time: he felt it blossom across his face almost against his will.  She listened.  She believed him.  He played the role, and it seemed real!

For the first time, he felt like he'd actually chosen the right role for this place.  For the first time since waking up in confusion (crystallized by the almost delicate gunshot that had ended Mr. Graham), he felt as though he might win through, even with this awful thing on this neck.

So, confidence suddenly restored, it was easy to laugh, both gladly and nervously.  "Well, to be honest," Alex said.  "I don't have much of a plan.  Right now, my best hope was to change out of this-" He gestured down at his body.  "And put on something that doesn't make me look like quite such a prick."  He jerked a thumb back towards the door to the storehouse he'd been approaching when he'd seen her.  "I believe this place might have clothes.  Help me look."

He led the way back to the door, shoved it open and wrinkled his nose against the musty smell inside.  That mildew stench was not exactly a good sign, but then, it wasn't like Alex had an abundance of options.

He plunged into the dark, making sure the door was open to allow sunlight inside.

The guy went on about his plans. He didn't seem to have any at the moment, but he was going inside to change his clothes, and needed some help in finding some. He opened the door, allowing her to see inside, and smell something not very good.

Sabrina followed him inside.

So they searched.

It was not an easy search, by any means.  Alex had no way of knowing how long this place had been abandoned, but it had been abandoned, no question of that.  Some boxes had rotted away, and patches of mold clung to shelves and walls.  Alex wrinkled his nose and made a few wry comments to Sabrina, trying to settle her nerves (and, in doing so, trying to settle his nerves).  He had to play the part expertly.  He had to be so effortless and unconcerned with danger that no one could help but believe he was good enough to win.

Eventually, however, Sabrina managed to track down some clothes.  Scrubsof several different colors in a sealed crate.  He started to change at once, only to remember too late that Sabrina was present when he saw the embarassment on her face.  He had been in the performer mind-set, thinking of quick changes behind the scenes where no one much cared who saw what or how much.

"Sorry," he said, grabbing his clothes and whisking them behind a convenient shelf.  

When he re-emerged, he had lost his designer jeans and replaced them with scrubs.  Red on the bottom, black on the top.  More, he had clumsily cut apart his old jeans with the machete and fasioned some strips of denim into makeshift knee-pads, a little tight but firm in case he needed to do any crawling.  Lastly, he had cut apart another red scrub top and used the fabric to fashion himself a headband.  He hoped he had achieved something of a wasteland chic effect.

"Thanks," he said, smiling at Sabrina.  "Now, I think I'd like to get comfortable with my weapons.  Please keep back."

He stepped into a nearby aisle, a bit wider than most of the places in this storehouse.  He practiced with the ridiculously tall blade first.  Clumsy, too clumsy, but feel the power in those swings!  If he could just learn to use it, he might cleave a man in two.  Still, it was awfully slow...

By contrast, the machete was swift and felt lethal in his hand.  It brought to mind visions of The Raid, and for a moment he departed the land of horror and doubt, departed from learning to use a blade to kill someone, and entered the wonderful world of make-believe violence, slashing and slicing and kicking at unseen enemies and-

The machete slipped from his hand towards the end of an enthusiastic combo.  The flat of the blade bounced off of his boot and slid rattling across the floor.  He stared at it, and at his foot, and imagined that blade slicing open his skin to reveal a red welling of blood and meat and...and...!

He hunched over on his knees, damp with sweat, bile in his throat.  He stared at that blade--that very real blade, that blade that had been given to him in the hopes that he would strike someone down with it, slice over their flesh and spill their very real blood.

For a moment, he hesitated.  But what other tools did he have?  What other choice, as he stood on the last stage of his life, with this collar around his neck?

He bent to pick up the machete.

Rea screamed as she dived out of the way of the machete thrown at her.

((Rea Adams, continued from Waking Up in Strange Places is not so unusual for some))

Her mind burst into a panic as she pressed herself against a wall. Someone was actively trying to kill her now, for the first time in the game. The horror was crippling, the sheer thought of being stabbed, beaten, or gunned down like an animal was enough to make her lose all reason and cower behind a pile of boxes. And she had no idea where Will was. The only person who could keep her alive, and she couldn't even see him.

Coming in here was a mistake. Her words echoed in her head.

"Hey, Will, hold up a sec. Maybe we could find something useful in there, like a weapon or something."

This was entirely her fault. She was such an idiot.

And the whole reason why she was about to die.

That boy was gaining on her, striding forward with a blank look in his eyes. Getting closer to the machete on the ground. She tried to run, but the terror she felt at that moment was causing her to freeze in panic. Finally, just as he bent down to pick it up, she forced herself to at least try to escape from him, to flee to the safety of Will. She began to turn away from him to run, but her legs refused to move, leaving her paralyzed with her back exposed to a psycho with a very large knife.

He bent to pick up the machete.  He saw her, from the corner of his eye.

Ah, but those are such idiomatic phrases, in their way.  Let us break them down.

"Saw."  Well, what did that mean?  "She registered visually."  Yes, true, but the "she" is at issue.  Who is "she"?  Is there a "she" before the fact?  Isn't there just a presence, moving from the very periphery of his gaze.  So it is less "she" and more, "Something registered visually."  

Now, what of "From the corner of his eye"?  Technically true, perhaps, but that does not express the very peripheral nature of his awareness.  He was alone, save for a presence he knew very well: then, quite suddenly, a new presence intruded.  An unfamiliar presence.  One he knew had not been there.

And even taking all this into account, you would be ignoring the larger context, wouldn't you?  Ignoring his training, slashing his swords and imagining them wielded towards violent ends.  Imagining what those weapons could do to another's flesh.  Imagining what those weapons could do to his flesh.

So.  "An unfamiliar presence loomed suddenly at the very fringes of his awareness, when his head was already filled with fears of violence."

That's a very different story, isn't it?  A much more understandable story.  Surely anyone who heard it would see that it wasn't really his fault?  Surely...

Surely anyone who heard it would understand, as that woman jerked back gasping, why he had whirled around, and slashed.

Will heard the scream.

((Will McKinley continued from Waking up in a strange place isn't so unusual for some...))

Will ran into the room, his hands fumbling the revolver out from his pocket.

Will saw a machete go into Rea's back.

Will stumbled to a halt, eyes wide, lungs heaving, heart pounding.

He watched as the steel parted clothing and skin, juddering as it hit the spine, sending vibrations through the attacker's arm.

His gun hand came up almost automatically, the hammer back before he had even aimed. With a shaking hand, he pulled the trigger, not caring for aim or the noise, just caring that whoever had taken Rea would die with her, except he wouldn't get the luxury of being buried.

No, thought Will, his face set in stone. He would kill him, and he would leave his bastard body to whatever scavengers dared live on this godforsaken island, because he had just killed Rea, and ohmygod why had it been so early?

The gunpowder billowed outwards from the end of the gun, and the tear from his face fell down, each mattering as little to him in that moment as anything else.

Because Rea was going to die.

A searing pain sliced through her back, thudding to a halt when metal hit bone. She collapsed, falling forward in defeat, carelessly slumped on the ground. She fell on her side, arms strewn about her. She curled up in the pain, clutching her hands to her chest. Tears began to stream down her face.

Dead so early, and so unceremoniously. Put down like livestock. Such an undignified death, a waste of life that had such a promising future. She thought of her parents. And her friends. And all the people she would never be able to see again. All because of some kid in a warehouse with a sharpened piece of metal.

Will was standing there, a look of twisted rage on his face, arm stretched out in front of him holding a smoking revolver.

"Will..." She was cut off by a fit of coughing. She tried speaking again.

But before she could even get off a syllable, another fit of coughing. So she simply tried stretching her arm out towards him. It was all she could do at this point. Desperately grasp at the one thing in the world she knew she could count on.

She knew that she had let him down. He could survive this. He was strong, fit, skilled with guns, and had a background in hunting.

But that would all go to waste if he was an emotional wreck. Seeing her like this, lying in a rapidly widening pool of blood, tossed on the ground like discarded rubbish couldn't be good for him. Losing someone so dear to him, it would be a pain even worse than the one she felt in her back. He'd seen through her rough exterior to find someone he cared about, taken her virginity, spent so much time with her, and now he was going to lose her.

The edges of her vision were beginning to darken. She knew that she didn't have much time left. And yet somehow, despite the storm of turmoil around her, she was at peace. The pain in her back was beginning to numb, and the thought that she would never have to kill someone gave her a small respite.

As she looked at Will, and as her last breath left her body, she smiled.

A faint light in her eyes died.

And she was gone.

---

Rea Adams: Deceased