The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. One

[Ciel†]

When you were young you were the king of carrot flowers.


(Ami Flynn continued from Lucifer Fell.)

12:00 PM

Ami Flynn stared at the open doorway for a long, long time. Stopped staring at it and started staring into it. She did not stop until a gust of wind slammed the door closed. The sound alone was enough to bring her out of whatever daze she threw herself into.

She didn't know what she was looking at.

...

Maybe Mira stepped out for a second.

...

Ami opened the door all the way. She stepped in.

The covers to the bed were tossed haphazardly. Mira's dufflebag was gone. The rations had been strewn about like they didn't matter. She canted her head and stared at the gaping wound in the wall. In the same shape and size as Katarina's blade. The same one that dug it's way into her leg.

Mira was gone. She left. And a voice inside Ami's head told her that it was not because someone found her.

The thoughts were back, impulses, sudden and booming. The gun was still in her hand. Flick the safety off, point it at your head, Ami. Do it. It'll all be over soon. She wasted enough time, Ami had to finish what sh...

Ami dropped the gun. Forget it, just forget it, Ami didn't even want to kill herself anymore.

...

She wanted to kick something over, hurt something.

...

"Fuck."

Ami slapped herself in the head. It's all her fault that everything's swept away. Everything has been swept away and now there's nothing left. There's nothing left and it's all her fault, all her fault.

She felt the lump in her throat before the rattling. There was a dull 'tap tap tap' coming from nearby. It was her gun, she thought she dropped her gun. Her hands were shaking. That was the important part.

God, why did she leave Ruby? Ruby seemed like a bull-headed, transparent person, the sort Ami liked. She didn't even mind if Ruby was sneaking peeks at her, especially when Ami was changing for bed. Ami wasn't about to encourage that sort of thing, regardless whether or not Ruby was... well, gay. The only other person that showed interest was Maynard, and Ami had the advantage of a shower and fresh set of clothes. But Ami was only just coming to terms about Mallory. She didn't need to complicate it further.

Besides. Ruby was no Mallory. Not even close.

But she was somebody. Ami needed somebody, anybody, but she had nobody and it was all her fault.

There was a tremble in her lower lip and she bit it with her front teeth. Ami didn't know the voices were voices but they shouted at her regardless and the shouting turned to white noise and the white noise turned to buzzing.

"I wish you were here."

Not just to Mallory or Ruby or Maynard but to all of her friends. Christ, she didn't even get to say goodbye to any of them. Maynard was still alive but... he killed someone. Besides, she doubted he would be happy to see her anyway. Things were rocky and if he was off the deep end, Ami couldn't... she didn't want to...

But she needed someone. This wasn't like when Sara was killed where she flicked a switch and turned herself off. This was something else, she chose to go alone. But she didn't know that she would be alone. She thought she had Mira! But now Mira was gone. Chances are Ruby and Deanna were gone too. They were gone, Ami had no one else and it was all her fault.

Everything was going dark. Even though there was light everything was going dark and she - her eyes were burning and she -

No. No no no, she would not break. They would not break her. Ami Flynn was not weak, Gavin was wrong, she could handle herself, she... she just didn't want to be alone. This wasn't what, this wasn't how it was supposed to happen... She...

She heard a voice, a literal voice, in her head. It sounded like her mother and it told her to go ahead, you're alone now, let it all out.

Ami dropped to her knees. She couldn't hold it back anymore, no matter how many times she hit herself and said 'get it together.'

It's okay, the voice said.. You're alone now. No one has to know, Just let it out.

A soft, steady stream of tears lapped at her cheeks. Ami tried and failed to keep the sobs at bay. She cupped her hands over her eyes and just let herself go. Let it all out.

Ami wept harder than she had in her entire life. No one interrupted, just as the voice promised her. It was just Ami and all of the little regrets eating away at her belly.

It didn't make Ami feel any better. In fact, she was objectively worse. Sure, the weight on her shoulders was gone but something else took it's place: fear. This wasn't the same fear when she realized Katarina managed to sneak behind her. This was absolute terror of the unknown. She didn't know what was going to happen or what she was going to do or anything.

She didn't know. And that scared her, deeply, profusely.

[Ciel†]

And how you built a tower tumbling through the trees.

1:00 PM

Ami started searching from room to room. She didn't know why. It was all useless. She wasn't going to find anything useful. And she didn't. Not really. She found a notebook, stained with dirt and grime from incubation over god knows how long. A few pages were already used. Who knew. Maybe she could write something. Ami Flynn's Final Words, in a place where no one will ever find them.

The fact that she found a notebook was a cause for pause. Why would they take every book in her bag? Why take her pens and pencils and her letter from Princeton? Why do all of that when you're going to leave paper on the island anyway? She didn't have the patience to answer these questions. Besides... it wasn't like she was going to come up with anything substantial. So she threw the notebook into her bag and kept looking

It wasn't until she moved to another floor when she stumbled upon a body that she did not see previously.

Her first reaction was shock.

The second was 'Oh, it's just Naomi.'

...

Ami's knees gave out for the second time in a hour. She pressed her back against the wall and slid down until she was sitting on the floor with her legs sticking straight out.

Naomi was just laying on the floor with her arms stretched out, palms facing upward. Ami swallowed. She swore her throat was ready to close up and suffocate her.

"Hi Naomi."

Naomi didn't respond. She didn't even turn her head to look at Ami. Ami couldn't blame her for it.

"You know," Ami said, wrapping her arms around her legs and propping her chin against her knee, "I always kind of hated you. Like, you were always nice but it was like you... like you were a snake oil salesperson or something."

...

"That was a joke. I know I'm not very good with jokes."

Naomi's eyes were closed. Her features were obscure but Ami could swear she was gritting her teeth.

"I don't know, maybe I got the wrong impression? I'm just really quick to judge. You were probably nice."

Even in the dim light, Ami could see a bit of entrails a few feet away. Her entire stomach was hollow and everything else was rotting away.

"I wish I had gotten to know you better, back home... You didn't deserve this."

The niche inside Naomi's chest was like a breeding ground for maggots.

Ami said with her face pressed into her hands. Jesus Christ. What was happening to her?

[Ciel†]

In holy rattlesnakes that fell all around your feet.

2:00 PM

Ami had trouble keeping her eyes open. Whatever fumes Ami had been running on for the past several days was quickly running out. She could barely keep her eyes open. She needed to sleep and she knew passing out next to an eviscerated corpse was a really bad idea.

Ami picked herself up. She opened the closest door she could find and closed it behind her. She got ready for bed, which meant pulling down her pants, kicking her shoes off, and hopping into bed. The bed was comfy, all things considered. Better than any of the beds she had slept on previously. Or maybe it was the lack of sleep that made it feel nice.

Ami sat in bed for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling, before she reached for the dufflebag. The Frankenstein gun was hard against her cheek. But, if she closed her eyes, she could tell herself it was her childhood teddy bear. That little white lie was enough to make her feel at home.

Ami Flynn slept for twelve hours. It was the best rest Ami Flynn had in her entire life.

[Ciel†]

And your mom would stick a fork right into daddy's shoulder.

2:00 AM

The first thing she noticed when she sat up in bed was the silence. No birds, not even white noise, just the void. Even hollow chasm that she called a head was mute. No voices reverberating in the dark. Ami wasn't stupid. Whatever was inside of her was still there, and it wasn't going anywhere. She would just have to deal with it.

Just like this 'game'. She would just have to deal with it. But Ami knew better. Hell, she knew all along, you come right down to it. She knew the 'game' from the start but she was too scared to stop and think critically.

... Ami sighed. Sat back.

Ami got up. Didn't even bother to put on pants. She unzipped her dufflebag and pulled out the ratty dust-covered notebook she found while scavenging. Ami blew the dust off along with the dozen pens. Opening the page, Ami went through and meticulously went through each and every single pen. All but four had dried up.

She also took out the Mr. Danya's Guide to Survival, a book that she neglected before. She flipped through it once. Then she started ripping the pages out. Then she took out another bundle of papers. the instructions to her gun. She started tearing those too until she had a good number of tiny pages. Then she took the adhesive tape out of the medkit and taped the map to the wall.

Ami did not have much. And she was afraid that even this was going to be grounds for the terrorists to become suspicious. But you can't figure out the solution to a problem if you don't stick your neck out, this, Ami Flynn knew. What she had was enough. Ami wasn't going to waste time trying to be sneaky when she wasn't breaking any spoken rules.

Ami took a step back, looking over the snowy wall with her hands on her hips. They were trembling.

Take a breath. Inhale, exhale.

Better? Alright. Time to get to work.

[Ciel†]

And dad would throw the garbage all across the floor.

3:00 AM

The only way to solve a complex problem is by breaking it all up into manageable parts. Start with the easiest job first. The dangerzones seemed like a perfect place to start.

Ami figured that would be the case in finding a pattern in the dangerzones. She was wrong. In fact, when she made an outline of the safe 'zones', Ami caught herself smiling at how elementary it was. Why the terrorists were being so transparent about what they were doing, she didn't know. Didn't particularly care either. All that mattered was that they were corralling the kids like cattle to the north-west side of the island and they weren't being particularly subtle about it. She felt a bit of pride, figuring out their little 'game'.

Then again, Ami had not exactly been paying much mind to where she was going and why. She only remembered the dangerzones because they only recently started partitioning off areas. Maybe everyone else already figured the pattern out and had already moved to accommodate. That could explain why the town felt so deserted. Or maybe that was because everyone else was dead. Hindsight, didn't matter. All that mattered was the here-and-now.

She circled 8, 9 and 10. She crossed out 5 and 11. Then she started writing notes in the bottom-right corner.

[Ciel†]

As we would lay and learn what each other's bodies were for.

4:00 AM

She stopped writing. Writing would imply that she had time for punctuation.

She was scribbling, a pen in her hand, another braced against her earlobe. Her mind swam at the same pace as it did at home, connecting the dots that her sleep-deprived pea-sized brain could not begin to estimate. Ami didn't know what time it was and, frankly, she didn't care. All that mattered that what she was writing down made sense. She knew she was on to something, nothing concrete but it was better than nothing.

[Ciel†]

And from above you how I sank into your soul.

5:00 AM

She got creative with that one. Wrote it large, underlined, and stuck it right on the center of the chaos. She wanted them to know, not know it all but just enough. Plus. It helped her to get into the right mindset. Every time she started thinking in terms of the game she would walk right over and stare at it. Take it all in real slow, repeat it to herself ten times. Then she'd get right back to work.

[Ciel†]

Into that secret place where no one dares to go.

6:00 AM

It was an accident. She could have handled the situation better but it was an accident. It wasn't like the hundred-plus murders that Ami played no part in. Ami could just as easily forget about Sara Corlett and she wouldn't be tearing herself limb from limb over it. If Ruby could see past that, why couldn't Ami? Why was Ami so obsessed over this one girl that she didn't even know?

Because those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

Because Ruby and Deanna didn't acknowledge Sara Corlett's corpse.

Because Sara Corlett did not kill anybody.

Because Sara Corlett was a human being. Just like Ami Flynn.

Because what Katarina Konipaski called 'survival' was nothing more than a child crying out for attention.

Because Ami Flynn was better than that. Or, so she thought.

That's why she couldn't get Sara out of her head. That's why she was burdening herself with all of this baggage. And no matter of rationalizing was going to ever change that. She would just have to deal with it, lift her head back and choke it all down. She would not allow herself to get any on herself, not again. If she survived, she would mourn.

That didn't seem very likely, even with the dwindling numbers. But she promised she would keep her word and mourn if the odds fell in her favor. Not just Sara. Everyone. She owed them that much.

[Ciel†]

And your mom would drink until she was no longer speaking.

7:00 AM

There were footsteps. Ami stopped on a dime. He went to speak but the stillness had invaded his throat. The smaller boy pulled his legs closer. They were silent again.







The footsteps were heading away, towards the stairs. Ami's body trembled.






Ami breathed. She brushed the sweat from her forehead.

Christ. This was nerve-wracking. For a second she thought someone was about to walk in.

Funny, how she was faced with someone else and her first reaction was to hide. Maybe Ami Flynn was really 'playing' and she was just deluding herself.

No. She wasn't playing. How could she? This wasn't a game, after all.

[Ciel†]

And dad would dream of all the different ways to die.

8:00 AM

Ami wasn't playing a game. She was certain of it.

Games are built on a stringent set of rules. You can't just knock over the Jenga tower when it's someone else's turn and snatch a win. That would be cheating. So one would think that the 'rules' to the 'game' Ami was playing would have a similar set of rules.

But that wasn't the case at all. Ami read the handbook back to front! Any of the 'rules' contained in there were more 'suggestions'. Gentle shoves, tiny ideas, with a big heaping load of despair. 'Can your best friend kill you?' Very nerve-wracking stuff. But they weren't hard rules.

Really, you could simply disregard everything the terrorists were saying, find a nice corner to hide in and wait things out, only getting up in order to run when needed. That was the smart thing to do. Hell, strike Sara from the record and you'd have an outline for why Ami was still alive, pretty much.

When a person with no kills and no desire to 'play' and has just as much chance to win as someone actively hunting down people, in your game about killing people, you have problems.

But it wasn't just the 'rules' that bothered Ami. It was the papers too. Taking away the papers and leaving a notebook laying around. If Ami could find paper in just a hour, anyone could. Why would they take take the papers they had on hand and leave papers on the island? It didn't make any sense.

Unless if you wanted to keep track over what information gets passed along.

Ami didn't know if that was the reason but it made sense the more she thought about it. What the hell could kids share on a scrap of paper? Nothing that would shatter the game to pieces. But bringing information in... You wouldn't want people bringing anything that could help them get the collars off. It was clear that they planned out every minute detail in such a way that they had contingency plans for what could happen on the island. But none of that planning mattered if the kids you're kidnapping can bring in information. This was the reason why they took all the electronics too. You wouldn't want people bringing anything that could help them get the collars off.

Escape. Right. That presented the biggest hole, the one that started nagging at Ami ever since they made the collars beep almost a week ago.

The collars. She remembered Zubin and his plan. Ami could not recall if his name was on the announcements or not, but if he was still alive and not actively killing people, he was probably still trying. Or maybe it was all an act and he was cruising through the 'game' on a lie. Ami honestly didn't give a shit. Zubin was an idiot if he thought he could do anything with so few people left alive.

But wasn't that odd? He wasn't exactly making his plans secret, if his cover-up story was any indication. The people running the game must have known that he was up to something, especially when they could see everything. So. Why didn't they pop his collar?

Gavin tried to escape. He had a group, too! The terrorists killed all of them. So why Gavin and not Zubin? Did that mean Zubin wasn't considered a threat? What if he already figured out a way to get the collars off and was saving it for the last moment? How could they know whether he was on the level or not? Why would they let a potential threat go?

The answer to that was obvious, really. The terrorists only intervened when people were actively trying to escape. Ami could name two other examples off the top of her head, Tessa Blackridge and Joey something. They popped their collars too, on the same day the terrorists . It could not be coincidence, that had to be the reason why they made everyone's collars beep.

But. That left a rather glaring hole too. Because Joey wasn't alone when he was trying to escape. He had help from Rosemary Michaels, someone that Ami knew only by name. And with good reason. They didn't blow her collar. They gave her an award instead. She was given food and a weapon. A pat on a back for trying to break the rules. Why is that? Was Rosemary a special case? And why was she lumped with two other killers?

Well, maybe that was the wrong question to ask.

Why would they single out someone who was trying to escape and then send her in the direction of two known killers?

For the exact same reason they made everyone's collars go off. They wanted to make it seem hopeless. To push people away from the idea of escaping and closer to the concept of killing your best friend. That was the exact same reason why they gave Ami a gun she could never use, why they advertised people's names, why they announced who killed who, why they started sectioning off part of the island and why they included the handbook in Ami's dufflebag.

It was all an act in order to condition people. Push people a certain way and see what happens. They didn't care who won. All they cared, care, now, in the present, is about results.

And that was why they didn't pop Zubin's collar. Because they knew that if he was going to do something, he would have done it already. Or maybe they knew Zubin so well that they were certain that he could never actually go through with his plan. And, by extension, they might have known Ami. Maybe even more than Ami knew about herself.

That was all speculation, of course. A third-hand account of what happened and why. But it was clear they weren't so firm about their 'rules' than they acted and that afforded Ami just a bit of pride.

Ami only wrote 'this is not a game' as a way to psych herself up. A few hours later, she was absolutely sure that it could not be a game.

She didn't know what this was. She only had a slight inkling, an idea brewing in her head, but that alone was enough to make Ami shudder. Because she... she didn't want to know. Not really. Especially if this was what she thought this was.

But it couldn't possibly be that. No way. It couldn't be. That would be more sick and depraved than a simple 'game' a thousand times over.

It could not be what she was thinking.

Right?

[Ciel†]

Each one a little more than he could dare to try.

9:00 AM

The announcements happened at Nine Am. Ami remembered this. And, so far as she knew, they arrived on the dot. Ami had her notebook ready, her pen in hand.

"Another fine day's work from you all, if a bit lacking compared to the past. We're getting down to the wire now. I want each one of you who's left to take a moment. Think of your bedroom. Think of the street you grew up on. Think of your family."

...

This comment was aimed at everyone, not just Ami. She understood this. So she shrugged it off and kept scribbling. She kept writing when she heard Ruby's name. She felt a chill when Katarina killed Rosemary but forced a nod and kept transcribing. She didn't stop until they announced the awards. When everything was quiet again, Ami got up and slowly made her way over to the map. Crossed out 5. She returned to the notepad, ripped out a page and quickly scribbled something. Then she taped it to a well-placed corner, perfectly in line with one of the cameras movements.

"I'VE LIVED WITH CORPSES IN MY BASEMENT

YOU DO NOT SCARE ME"

Ami stood at the center of the room, without moving, barely blinking. The camera turned to the note, stopped, then turned back to Ami. She watched that camera for ten minutes. When they did not blow her collar, Ami went to go fold up the map.

Ami didn't know whether they were paying attention before. They could have seen the deli platter of notebook pages and thought nothing of it. But that little message, planted in such a way that they had to see it, was bound to attract some ire. Maybe she would simply become a nuisance to them, a child crying out for attention and nothing more. But, really, that's what Ami wanted. She had a plan, just not one that involved escape or the collars. It hinged on the gamerunners paying attention.

Ami was going to visit the Park. Then the School. She would look for a watch in the meantime, avoiding anyone that wasn't named Deanna, Maynard, Matt, Ruby or Zubin... or Hansel. After all of that was done, she would come back to the room and finish the plan.

Ami didn't know if it would work. Maybe the terrorists would decide to pop her collar before she could do anything and it would all be over. But it wasn't like she had much else to do, other than killing herself, so the threat of death really did not bother her.

She quickly threw the map and the notebook in her bag. She quickly put on another pair of pants, grabbed her gun and closed the apartment door behind her.

(Ami Flynn continued in A Manic Depressive Named Laughing Boy.)