....Wait, who the hell was Claire? Was there someone else here-
- Oh. No. Catherine was... Catherine was slipping. She was losing coherence. Her mind was unravelling. She was like an Alzheimer's patient except in really fast motion. She was like Michael, except she was allowed to die.
Soon, the real Catherine Zier — the intangible Catherine Zier that only existed in Catherine Zier's head — would be gone. All that would be left behind would be the memories of the mask she chose to wear, selectively curated by others to serve some purpose.
It was sad. There weren't really any other ways to describe it.
Mikey glanced over his shoulder, towards Teresa and Yuka. Teresa was smiling, whispering something in Yuka's ear. She was up to something, but like, he figured she was always up to something, so it was okay. He was glad he was good at pretending to be an idiot.
He just needed someone who could make him feel not-lonely, and Teresa did that well enough. She wasn't a rebound from Beryl. She was a rebound from Morgan.
Beryl was just a particularly soul-crushing nostalgia now. She didn't need a rebound.
Mikey's eyes drifted over Yuka's. Yuka swore at him, yelled at him for not doing something he never directly said he would do. "Bitch I never said that!", Mikey wanted to say but did not say, because he was afraid his voice would betray just how much he actually agreed with her. Instead, he shrugged, gave a lopsided smile, and dabbed as she walked out of the door.
Michael wasn't a wolf like Jonathan had said he was. He was more like a dog; lost without someone to tell him he was good. Maybe
that was what he needed Teresa for.
"Zach, you should probably leave, actually," he muttered as he fumbled with one of Catherine's belts. He got it unclipped. Catherine was going to die. He still wrapped the belt tight around her leg, because he didn't know what else he could do. His voice got really quiet, because he didn't want the Gucci Gang to hear what he was saying. "Catherine, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about making fun of your belts. I'm sorry we weren't friends. I'm sorry things happened the way they did. I'm sorry for shooting you twice. I'm sorry I exist. I'm sorry."
He missed being able to think without his thoughts having multiple contradictory meanings. He missed being able to say something without it immediately feeling like a lie. He missed not being Schrodinger's Michael. He missed being able to remember the things that happened inside his head. He missed being able to tell whether or not he was awake. He missed being real.
But did he really?
Something clicked — or shifted, or snapped, maybe (he didn't know; he knew now it was useless ascribing physical properties to mental processes) — in his head. He'd figured it out.
What if there was no real Michael.
and it was like he was only alive on someone else's terms and he wasn't worth killing and
Catherine had always been dying. He'd only narrowed the definition of her deadline.
He couldn't tell if Zach had left or if he was still here or if he was helping Catherine or if he'd even ever existed at all. Didn't matter.
and Michael started talking. To Catherine. He was still squatting. He didn't want to get his knees all bloody.
"Lemme tell you a story."
At The Bottom Of Everything, by Bright Eyes.
"Once, there was this woman, and she was on an airplane — doesn't really matter why, I guess — but uh, yeah, so she's on this airplane flying over the sea, and she's, uh, sitting next to this guy, and she'd tried to, like, talk to him, but the one time she ever even heard him talk was when he, uh, ordered a cocktail from a flight attendant, and so the woman's there sitting next to the guy, and she's reading some boring magazine article about some country she's never even heard of and probably won't ever hear about again, and she's feeling really bored and very sad aboard this airplane, and then, uh, all of a sudden there's this mechanical failure, and it's really bad, and, uh, an engine goes out, so they're — they — the airplane, y'know, starts falling, like, just diving towards the sea, and the pilot, he's on the intercom, and he's saying, y'know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Oh God, I'm so sorry, and he just keeps apologizing, and the woman turns to the man and she asks him, uh, she asks him Where are we going, and," he slipped his sunglasses off and looked into Catherine's eyes, "he says, We're going to a party, It's a birthday party, It's your birthday party, and we all love you very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very much, And then, this guy, he starts singing a tune, and it goes a little like this, I guess," he stood up and moved out of Catherine's line of sight, walking to another part of the room.
He started singing, softly and quietly, accompanied by the occasional zipper noise, click, or beep. No instrumentation intended. He was up to something else.
"We must talk in every telephone, get eaten off the web.
We must rip out all the epilogues from the books that we have read.
Into the face of every criminal strapped firmly to a chair,
We must stare, we must stare, we must stare.
"We must take all of the medicines too expensive now to sell.
Set fire to the preacher who is promising us Hell.
Into the ear of every anarchist that sleeps but doesn't dream,
We must sing, we must sing, we must sing.
And it'll go like this, all right.
"While my mother waters plants, my father loads his gun.
He says,
Death will give us back to God,
Just like the setting sun is returned to the lonesome ocean,"
He walked back over to Catherine, now wearing the 𝐠𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐢 robe / sunglasses combo, and holding something made out of white plastic. He crouched down and pressed the plastic against some bare skin on Catherine's upper arm. It stuck there firmly, attached by an adhesive.
"This should help with the pain. Might feel a little pinch at first, though," he said, before fiddling with a little handheld phone-looking object. The plastic on Catherine's arm beeped twice, made a few ticking noises, and then made a loud SNAP as the delivery cannula embedded itself into Catherine's arm. He stood back up.
"Then, the airplane hit the water, and there was this great big splash, and everyone on board was killed instantly, and then they all sank down into the deep blue sea," he said. Then, abruptly, he threw himself out of the open window.
((He was happy just because he'd found out he
really was
no one.))