Notes from an Even Smaller Island

[randomness]

"You absolutely sure?" Lucilly looked calmer now, but Amanda had no idea how much that translated to being fine. How much would it take for her to go running off like that again?

Any of a million hair triggers could set someone off like this and Amanda could't be sure how long they could avoid that. How close was she herself from going off like that and doing something stupid. It seemed unlikely now, but she knew enough about SOTF to know that people often did break down. Why wouldn't they. Terrible things were going on left and right, and there was nothing and no one here to stop them from going and doing something stupid, and the terrorists had probably done the absolute best to create an environment that pushed them towards worst-case scenarios, no society, no rules, no adults to police them.

All she could do was to do her best to not mess up. And that meant that she had to trust Lucilly for now. Trust her words that she was okay, even if she didn't look it, even if there was no way she could be okay here, no way anyone could be or should be okay with all that was going on, would be going on, and had gone on here.

She let go of Lucilly's shoulder, even if for some reason not absolutely certain that the girl wouldn't take the oppurtunity to run instantly.

"Come on. The others are probably worried too."

She took a tentative step forward, hoping that she'd follow.

[Riki]

"I am certain."

She said, uncertainly.

It was a lie, and to tell lies was what Lucilly was never taught, but it was a lie she made nevertheless, for it was with noble reasons she swindled, and it was her own person she swindled the most.

Putting aside the pondering of intent's meaning and the fulfilling action, Lucilly saw that Amanda had let go of her shoulder. There was a moment of hesitation, it seemed. A moment of hesitation in both Amanda and Lucilly, yet Amanda was who took the first step.

Yet hesitated again, so that she could beckon Lucilly to follow. Lucilly nodded and affirmed, and as Amanda walked back to their common companions, Lucilly followed one and a half step behind.

[decoy73]

"Jaime? Have you seen anyone? I mean, like, if someone comes by injured..."

Jaime shook her head. "Nope. Three of you were the first people I saw. Might be able to help someone who's hurt, if that's what you're asking."

If they don't try to murder my ass

Jaime sighed. "Emma, do you figure there's a way out? Like to just get out of here and tell these assholes to fuck off?" Wishful thinking, at best, but she would have slapped one of them if she hadn't been cuffed to a chair and held at gunpoint when they'd told her she'd have to go kill people for no real reason. "Cause I really want to tell these guys to fuck off." Jaime looked at a camera when she realized that they could see and hear her.

"Hey, Danya, hey Jimmy!" She waved to the camera. "Just want to let you know that you can all go fuck yourselves!" She greeted the camera with fake cheer. If she couldn't get out of here, she could at least tell them the truth.

[KamiKaze]

"Ah... that's what I meant. I was thinking that if someone comes by hurt, we could, you know, help them out."

If they're still alive, Emma added mentally, but she stopped herself from thinking that.

Then Jaime decided to insult the terrorists.

"Shhh!"

Emma looked around her, as if something expecting to happen. She didn't think their abductors would appreciate someone insulting them, and if they were petty enough... were they petty enough? Well, they were terrorists. She wasn't sure if something would happen if they started yelling at them. She remembered a detail. It came up when she did her project, and they'd mentioned it during the briefing. Emma touched her neck, feeling cold steel. If they wanted to, they had the ability to kill them literally at their fingertips. Just a press of a button, and then... gone.

It didn't help that Amanda and Lucilly still weren't here. But their voices were getting closer. That was good. If it turned out the terrorists were the type, though...

"Anyways, they want us to kill until only one of us lives, but... I don't want to. It's beyond disgusting. You don't want to either, right?"

Jaime most likely didn't. Even if she had a temper, she still was a good person, right? She'd been with them for this long without anything happening, and she just insulted their captors. Amanda and Lucilly, they were good people too.

"I hope something happens. Maybe someone will send a-"

She cut herself off in realization.

"... boat."

Emma remembered another detail. In 2008, over 250 were abducted. But about 30 made it home. That wasn't a huge number. But it was something, anything. There was a way out.

"Jaime," she said. "Do you hear about the one class that got kidnapped? In 2008? They were able to rescue some of them. If we hold on long enough... we might be able to go home, right?"

Home.

That seemed like the most beautiful word right now.

[randomness]

Her voice was wavering, Amanda was sure of that.

But Lucilly followed, and they made their way down the corridor. Amanda didn't know what to say now. Was there anything left to say? She could only awkwardly lead her back to to the others in silence, turning back every so often, just to confirm that she was still there.

The voices grew clearer as they walked towards them, Jaime insulting the terrorists, then Emma talking about escape, or rescue. There was slight irritation at that. Had they been talking the entire time? Every second that they were talking was another second not searching the rooms. Another second where whoever was bleeding was moving a step closer to dying. Another second wasted into nothingness, never coming back ever again.

"Hey, we're back," she said, shortly after rounding the last corner.

The bloodstain was more visible now that she knew it was there. It was a lot of blood. Too much.

"Did you guys find anyone?"

[Riki]

There had been little to no, and in truth it was none at all, further talk between Amanda and Lucilly. With each step taken, the voices of their friends drew a bit closer and closer. Yet it felt as if Lucilly experienced a heavy and deafening silence, a muteness, pressing down on her and pressing down on Amanda.

Though, she knew, it was an image of her mind, a trick played by the residue of panic. There was no silence, but instead there were steps and there was chattering and there was still that small spot of blood.

Lucilly looked at it once. Once and only for a moment, and quickly enough, Lucilly looked away, looked at Amanda and watched Jamie and gazed back to Emma.

[decoy73]

Emma was such a prude. What, were the fuckheads going to blow her up just for badmouthing them? Jaime rolled her eyes. It was then that Emma started talking about what had happened in 2008.

"Sure, I'd like that, but I'm not holding my breath. They may as well have erected a giant-ass brick -"

"Hey, we're back." Amanda said, Lucilly about two steps behind her. "Did you guys find anyone?"

"Nope. No one here, so far as I know."

Hey, it was technically correct, right?

[KamiKaze]

((Timeskip approved, but lemme know if there are any issues.))

"Oh, you're back!" Emma said, a small smile on her face for a split second.

However, she stopped for a moment at Amanda's question. She looked down at the tin case still in her hands. They were still supposed to find out where the blood came from, weren't they? But they'd... gotten distracted. Every second lost was another moment someone was still hurt, and... they could not have much time. Jaime had distracted her. No, shouldn't blame her. They both were distracted.

If the person was still here... still alive, there was probably still hope for them. Probably. She turned her head to look at the shining puddle of blood. There was a lot. And yet, here they were, distracted. The longer they dawdled, the less chance someone could have.

"Perhaps they're in one of the locked rooms?" she asked.


They'd spent the past two nights in this ward. It wasn't a pleasant sleep. Emma sometimes had trouble sleeping to begin with. Whenever she mentioned it, some people thought it was ironic. But it was something that was actually pretty normal. Anxiety, though, hadn't helped at all with actually getting some rest. It didn't help that because of it, sometimes her sleep paralysis would act up. It wasn't a nice experience. The sensation of being trapped and the occasional nightmare imagery wasn't fun. Trying to get some rest while people around you are dying wasn't fun. The two combined? Was uncomfortable as all out. When she repeatedly tried to lay down inside one of the rooms, she'd see a shadow of someone standing in the doorway, and feel her muscles lock up. Just a hallucination, she'd tried to tell herself.

They'd left her pills in the bag, though, which was good. It seemed like they'd removed a few from the bottle, so Emma had checked to see if they had been tampered with in any way. Other than there being less, it was still the same light purple pills she'd been taking.

She'd try to remind herself of another thing. Emma still remembered the story about the boats. Around 30 had made it home, but only out of 250. They weren't able to save everyone, but there was a chance, wasn't there? They just had to keep moving on.

A few times, Emma would hear noises. Sounded like people talking, but she didn't dare investigate. They never did find out where the blood came from, but the announcement the following morning gave them an idea. She hated it. Tina, her cousin, one of her first friends, was dead. Conrad and Joshua had died, too. Scarlett, a girl from orchestra, she had been killed with an axe. Conrad had killed someone else before his death, too. When Emma heard the news, she was shocked. The same person had killed both Tina and Conrad. Isabel Ramirez. She was a girl who you'd think she'd be on closer terms, but never really was. But she remembered that she was a mean-spirited person. She'd bullied Tina before, didn't she? And now she'd killed her and Conrad. She tried to remember the person who Conrad killed. Harold Porter, wrestling team, right? Kind of an opinionated person, but he was a very idealistic one too. He didn't deserve to die. No one deserved this.

Emma didn't know what made Conrad kill Harold, or why Isabel did the things she did. She didn't know why Jasmine, a girl from the anime club, had killed Joshua, either. All she knew was that there were dead, and they weren't coming back.

The rest of the day was still and quiet. The entire time, Emma thought of Tina, Conrad, and Josh. She didn't really cry; she was still too shocked for that. If anyone asked how she was, she'd just smile and say she was okay. But the weakness in her limbs told her otherwise.


Soon enough, the next morning came. And Emma couldn't even get past the first few names this time. Her vision doubled, she felt dizzy and weak. After a certain point, she just quietly slipped back into the cell she'd been sleeping in, closed the door, and plopped herself onto the cot. Even as she felt her body grow numb, the names and jokes kept going. She felt like throwing up, but she didn't move. Eventually, it stopped.

It felt like an hour before she eventually lifted her head. Maybe it was shorter, maybe it was longer. But she wasn't sure if she could go out to see the others anyways. They'd comfort her, say something, anything. But Emma, perhaps for the first time in her life, wanted to be alone.

She slowly pulled herself back up into a sitting position, her limbs still shaking and weak. This was all some kind of sick dream, right? She just imagined the announcement. Maybe she was still tired, or maybe she misinterpreted. Maybe the announcements were just jokes and misdirection to get them paranoid. She tried to come up with any explanation preferable to the alternative.

Eventually, she stood up, and walked towards the steel door. With a bit of hesitancy, she opened it again. She stepped out, and sat down on the dirty floor. For a moment, she didn't know what to say. Instead, she just let out a:

"Hey."

Her eyes were cast to the ground.

[randomness]

They didn't find the source of the blood. Not for lack of searching, but several of the rooms in the corridor remained locked, and Emma had guessed that they'd hidden themselves in one of those rooms.

It was an exercise in frustration. It was just one person, and there were four of them, trying to help, but despite everything, they could get nothing done. She had expected them to come out of their hiding spot eventually, but even as night fell, they had found nothing, heard nothing, and Amanda was starting to get sick of nothing.

They retreating to a ward for the night, trying to get some rest despite everything. She managed to sleep, a few restless hours, but more of those were spent pacing outside the room, looking for more clues, looking for something that could help the group out, anything to just keep herself working.

The announcements were a blur, each of the names almost half-expected, as if she could have said, I guess if anyone was going to snap it was them. Kimiko was the real stand out here, Kimiko was way low on the list of people she expected to hurt anyone like that. And yet she'd won some sick award for that. People were dead and people were killing and she couldn't even help one person.

Were they dead? Was someone dead because she'd failed to do something? She didn't know, and it didn't seem that she'd ever get to know. She doubled up on her search efforts the second day, even breaking down one of the locked doors in frustration, receiving a shower of splinters as a reward. But no, nothing.

Not literally nothing, but there were only bits and pieces of what might have once been useful items, or things far too massive to carry around. The terrorists had done their job well. If you needed a pile of rotten boxes, they had plenty of those. But as for anything that they could use, anything electronic, anything sharp, it all seemed rusted, broken or useless.

They'd talked a little, to try and burn time, but that was all it was. It was hard to talk when there were so many things that seemed out of bounds. School, friends, college, jobs, family, each of them were iffy in their own way, and she wasn't going to think about it for as long as she could. Thinking too hard about what her family was feeling would just make her even more upset, and that was the last thing she needed on this island.

Time simply continued to pass and night fell and dawn came once more and Amanda found herself slumped against the bed when she awoke.

She was rarely groggy when she awoke, but she now felt like she was thinking clearly, perhaps too much so, things just a little too sharp, ideas making too much sense on the inside of her head.

It was the third day now.

They had been here for something like fifty hours.

But nothing changed, nothing seemed to change and nothing would change if they were just going to sit here in the ward.

They'd wasted two days and they got nothing for it.

At this point she needed to do something, anything, to change things.

There were people out there dying and she was in here crumbling away from the inside out.

The announcements made everything clearer to her, and when Emma stumbled back into the room she made an announcement of her own.

"We've gotta move." She was sick of this room. Sick of these walls. Sick of being unable to do anything in here.

"I don't think it's a great idea to stay here for much longer. There's gotta be a better plan out there than just sitting here, doing nothing, and hoping that we don't get killed by one of those guys." She looked at the others in the room, hoping that one of that would confirm or deny what she was saying. She wasn't talking out of her arse, right? She was making sense, right? She looked at Lucilly, at Jaime, at Emma, gauging their reactions.

"I mean our goal is to live. And if we just sit here, we're not going to get rescued right? We actually need to do something. If we want to live, we need to go and make something happen."

What was she saying? She just wanted them to get out of this room. She didn't have a plan or even a plan for a plan for a plan. She just wanted to go.

She'd gone too far. She knew it. But words couldn't be taken back, and she could only wait nervously to hear the reaction to her words.

[Riki]

Lucilly and Amanda and Emma and Jamie looked for the one who had lost already, but they lost any trail - had they picked one up in the first place - and in the stead of a wounded man they found nothing. They saw nothing. They saw nothing. They felt nothing permeating through the very space they occupied. They felt it echoing across time. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Just nothing.

As there was nothing but nothing, Lucilly found herself sleep. Another form of nothingness, perhaps. Advanced nothing. She slept uneasy. She slept all too far from what one would call 'well'. Oh, what was it, she wondered again and again, as Lucilly woke from slumber again and again. There was no, but there should be a 'be'. The nothing that she experienced was a wound, bearing witness to something being there, and yet something she was unable to find.

She called out to the 'nothing', she called out the 'be' from it. When silence replied, she realized.

---

Lucilly had been drained. She had been drained of the contents of her body. She had been drained of her tears. As she heard the names on the announcements, she was simply unable to shed any tears, as there was nothing she could still shed. Lucilly - oh poor Lucilly - truly drained from all that was life and that once filled. Her words, her feelings, her resolution. Even the very essence of her own time had been inevitably cast away as her terrible reality ate it all the same.

She was surprised when she woke to another announcement. Except she was not.

Words filled the room. They hung somewhere in the middle of the air. She would have understood them, at another time. Nonetheless she noticed them. She rose up from her stupor and realized from whence these words came from. Amanda talked. She talked, and talked more and looked at Lucilly and she looked at Emma and Jamie too. The exact nature, the exact meaning of her sayings was completely lost to Lucilly's ears, but the heard of them was not. She understood. She understood the sentiment, and for a moment she felt rejuvenated.

Grown, new, and excited perhaps. Enough to wake up, enough to stand up. Enough to walk, shuffle, across the room to meet next to Amanda. She would have said anything, though her own tongue was lost just as well. She hoped, the gesture would be clear to understand.

[decoy73]

Two days had passed. Conrad was dead, Christo was dead, Sandy was dead. It sucked, but Jaime at least tried to put it in the back of her mind. Then there were the biggies - Tina and Sabrina Luz. In and of themselves, no big deal. Add Emma to the mix, and well, the effect was obvious. Substitute "Tina Luz" and "Sabrina Luz" for "John Steinbeck" and "Jennifer Steinbeck," and Jaime herself would be the wreck.

That didn't do shit on how to help her though, did it? There wasn't a "Condolences on your cousin and sister getting axe-murdered" card that wouldn't get her punched in the face. Then Amanda had to try and be inspirational. She could have just said "Let's go somewhere else." In all honesty, it was a toss-up. On the one hand, their current position was pretty solid. On the other hand, Amanda was going, and she was the only other one who wasn't either completely useless or a sobbing wreck, no matter if there was a reason for it. To add to that, there was probably a dead body somewhere, and the walls looked like piss.

"Sure, whatever."

[KamiKaze]

When Emma came out of her room, the first thing she had expected was them commenting on the announcement. Maybe trying to comfort her, ask if she was alright. Not like she wanted it, though. She wasn't sure what she wanted right now.

She looked up. Emma tightly closed her eyes for a moment. Leaving. That's what they were discussing right now. Amanda, apparently, had been getting antsy, and... well, she didn't want to sit around here anymore. The other two seemed all for it. Lucilly stepped towards Amanda, Jaime said "sure". Emma... was conflicted. They'd been safe here thus far. On the other, it wasn't like staying here was going to be good for their mental health. She felt like she'd have a clearer answer under different circumstances, but...

Her thoughts wandered. She tried to remember what the morning of the trip was like. It was normal, nothing special. She and Sabrina ate breakfast, then headed to school to get on the buses. Obviously, they didn't know what would happen. She couldn't have foreseen that it was possibly one of the last, if not the last, times she'd seen Sabrina alive. Emma couldn't even remember what they had for breakfast, or any conversations they had, or anything particularly notable. It had already started to fade away, like something that happened a few years ago.

With a few swings of an axe, someone had ensured that it'd be the last time.

Emma tried to focus on the topic at hand, but it was hard. Stay or go? That was the discussion. Amanda wanted to go, so did Jaime and Lucilly. As relatively safe they'd been so far, there were a lot of advantages to leaving. She'd remembered that there was an odd smell coming from one of the rooms, that only seemed to get worse with each hour. They'd never investigated, nor did she want to. And... it was better than the lobotomy theater, certainly. But maybe staying here wasn't the best right now. Maybe they needed something better. A change of pace? And, some part of her wondered. Could they have done something to help Sabrina if they'd left? Tina? Conrad? Josh?

Emma tightly blinked again. She loudly breathed, in and out. Some part of her hoped they wouldn't notice.

"I'm for it. Just... I might need a moment. Maybe"

She wasn't sure if she was up for walking right now. Some part of her simply wanted to curl up alone somewhere, not talking to anyone. But another part of her told her they needed to leave. Keep moving. Walk. Get out.

"We... um, might... need more food and water, anyways. We've got plenty of food, you know, in the bags, but... uh, only four bottles. Might be a good idea, to look around for more water, just in case."

Her voice was quiet, meek, and cracked. Emma's hand slid to rub her neck, as her eyes once again looked towards the ground.

[randomness]

"Yeah. We need water too. "

Amanda hadn't thought of that. It should have been obvious that her the remaining bottle wouldn't last too long, but somehow it had slipped her mind completely.

Somehow it seemed that her stupid idea wasn't so stupid after all. Obviously, she wasn't the only one who wanted to get the hell out of there.

They weren't going to get water here. They weren't going to get any food here, they weren't helping anyone by doing nothing and they wouldn't be getting off this island by sitting here.

But what was the plan?

But where would they go? The asylum was large enough to just find another room to hide in, but if they were going to do that, they might as well just stay here.

They needed to do something. But she didn't have anything beyond that fact. Her mind stalled at the word plan repeatedly, failing to come up with anything more concrete than the word 'plan'.

Escape sounded good on paper. It would be great, wouldn't it? If they could get some secret SEAL task force to pull them out of there like those kids six years ago. But they needed to do something to get it to happen, and she couldn't for the life of her come up with a hint of an idea.

"So that's four yes votes." Water. The only place with water she could think of was the beach, but that wasn't quite drinking water.

"We should pack up, get ready to leave," she said. They could come up with a plan after.

The contents of her own backpack had been laid out in somewhat neat piles on the floor. She'd looked through what they'd been given a few times, but there was nothing there that would help them escape. There were a few tidbits of facts in the booklets they'd been given, but they were largely of the 'don't do this, or you'll die' variety.

She stuffed them hastily back into her backpack now, including a few wrappers she refused to leave on the ground. Sure, that hardly mattered now, but somehow it still felt wrong to leave them there. She acquiesced to her conscience, stuffing them in one of the side pockets of the bag, where they wouldn't get in the way of anything.

The gun was the last thing she remembered, having simply laid in the side of the room, unused and untouched since they had first settled down here. She was half tempted to just leave it there, and not have to worry about shooting anyone. But reason and paranoia somehow beat out anxiety, and she picked it up anyway.

She shuffled around near the door, waiting for everyone else to finish up their own packing.

She needed to come up with a location before everyone else was done. Come on, she needed to think.

((Amanda Tan continued in The Greatest Sideshow on Earth))

[decoy73]

((My apologies, but I'm at the two week mark))

Jaime picked up her stuff. Everyone was in agreement that they had to get out of this shit hole, both in the sense of their current location as well as the game in general. Of course, Jaime had a lot to do to pack up, as Amanda so helpfully advised.

Step 1: She zipped up her bag.
Step 2: She slung said bag over her shoulder, and started walking.

"Well? Let's find somewhere that doesn't smell like piss."

((Jaime Steinbeck continued in The Greatest Sideshow on Earth))

[Riki]

Lucilly had sought to find a direction. A direction for herself, found by herself. She realized that the great being who set the course of her fate - he was longing for direction just as much as she did! It was a thought of blasphemous character, but Lucilly could not help but to think it.

Jamie used a most improper word. Lucilly revolted internally. Yet when she did so, she knew that for once there was light rising in her.

[[Lucilly, continued elsewhere]]