Benjamin didn't watch when Mr. Graham was shot. He tried to ignore his limp form, tried to listen to Mr. Danya as he explained their situation to them. But he couldn't. Mr. Danya's voice was nothing to the drip, drip, drip of blood from... what was left of Mr. Graham's head. That, and the ringing the gunshot had left in his ears. He knew he should listen, he knew. Or he would die. So he tried, with tears in his eyes.
[
B046: Benjamin Lichter - start]
Ben woke from his slumber and immediately wished he hadn't. He lay on his front, with his head turned to the side. His knees hurt, his head ached, and his insides quivered with nausea. Not moving, he took a deep breath to calm his upset stomach, but it didn't work. He gagged, opened his eyes halfway, and lifted himself off what he realised was upholstery. Seats. Flopping towards the edge of the seats, he retched onto the floor. It wasn't much, just the sandwich he had had for breakfast. A small puddle of sick splashed down and ran under the seats in front of him. He hoped the people in front wouldn't make too much of a fuss, him being sick on the bus like that. Groaning, he pushed himself back onto the seats, and closed his eyes again.
Why had he slept? He never slept on the bus, and certainly not lying face down over two seats. He decided he needed to get up and apologize to the people in the seats in front of him - they were taking him being sick remarkably well. He stretched his legs, meaning to put his left foot down on the floor, but they hit a wall. A wall? Wasn't the aisle supposed to be there? Now he really opened his eyes. The seats, they were old, covered in dust and grime. They weren't the seats of the bus, those had been clean - well, relatively, but Ben hadn't minded. Realizing he wasn't on the bus anymore, he sat bolt upright, his feet circling from behind over the gap and stopping to rest in front of him. He realised his mistake too late, as his headache increased and his nausea threatened to make him lose another meal. "Muuuuhhhhhhhhhhgggrrrr....", he moaned, grabbing his shins and rocking back and forth, trying to lessen the pain. After doing that for a minute or two he was reminded of the pain his knees were in after grabbing one. "Son of a... cow", he ejaculated, through gritted teeth. He shouldn't swear, he thought. He sometimes caught himself doing it, repeating language he heard from his peers, but he knew he shouldn't. Ben had a clear idea of good and bad, and swearing fell clearly into the "bad" box. So why was it what he wanted to do more than anything at this point in time?
Why did his knees hurt? Why, why did they have to hurt? Why now? He was going to have a heck of a time following his classmates during the trip... no, there was no trip anymore. He wasn't on the bus. None of his classmates were around. An idea popped into his head, a memory, a nightmare. Something involving Mr. Graham, yes, and his classmates, and something called Survival of the... of the...
"Oh fuck. Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck!". Survival of the Fittest! He remembered Mr. Graham being shot. He remembered Danya. He remembered the sleeping gas that was responsible for his aching head and stomach. He remembered that he was supposed to kill his classmates. He remembered the collars - his hand flew to his neck; yes, there it was. He remembered his sister. His sister, his mother, his grandfather. Who he might never see again.
His hand went to his back pocket, searching for his wallet. It wasn't there. Then he looked at his surroundings for the first time in detail, looking where it might have fallen out. He was, as far as he could tell by the little sunlight, in the back of a car. Next to him, on the floor, and next to the puddle of vomit, was a black duffel bag. His wallet wasn't on the seats, so he picked up the bag. He vaguely noticed the bag had a number on it,
B046, as he started rooting through it. Dumped the contents on the seat in front of him - a seat which would have been next to him, had he not been sitting with his back to the window - he soon found his wallet. Ignoring the rest of the contents, he flipped it open. There were his seven dollars worth of cash, there was the packet of ketchup from the restaurant he'd gone to last week, and
there was what he'd been looking for. A photo, of him and his mother and sister. He started to cry. Silently, with big teardrops that ran down his face and onto his t-shirt and arms. No! He shouldn't cry. He'd make it out of this alive, god... darn it! He was going to see them again!
But first, that meant getting out of the car. He collected his things, taking a moment to dry his eyes with a tissue from a packet he'd also had on him during the kidnapping. He looked for the weapon he'd been assigned before quickly realizing, with a sinking heart, that it was an etch-a-sketch. Stuffing it - and the rest - into the bag with more than a little bit of anger, he turned around to look out of the car. What he saw almost made him laugh. The people who had put him there had a sick sense of humor, if that hadn't been clear before. He was in a car, which in turn was on what he assumed was a mechanical car lift, 10 feet up in the air. And he really didn't fancy jumping.
Looking around the building the car was in, he guessed it was a vehicle depot. He strained to see if there were any other people around, but he couldn't see anybody. Then he heard a thump. His head whipped around to look at the window of some sort of office high above. He ducked down in the seats, only daring to look at the window while hiding himself. "Thump, thump, crash!", went the window, as somebody hit it with a chair. Ben couldn't see who was doing it, but he didn't dare look too long or hard, in case they saw him. And, since the person was clearly violent, he really didn't want to be noticed by them. He hid in the car and waited until he saw them coming down the flight of stairs that must have lead to the office above. He saw it was a girl - the mute! Kim... something. She was holding a shard of glass wrapped in bandages, a makeshift dagger. Not a bad idea, Ben thought, if you had a joke weapon assigned to you, thinking of his own "weapon". But he was very surprised at how fast she had come up with it, a weapon as violent as that, and decided against revealing himself. He didn't want to take the risk.
When she had left, Ben carefully opened the car door. First, he dropped the duffel bag onto the floor down bellow, then he carefully climbed over to the support pillar nearest to him, to one on the back left. As he climbed he thanked God he wasn't afraid of heights, and then he slid down the pillar. Picking up his duffel bag, he went to see if there were any glass shards left that he might be able to use like the mute girl.
But no, she had stomped them all into tiny, useless pieces. Again, her resourcefulness scared Ben - making sure she had a weapon while others didn't was a cunning move, he thought. He made a mental note that, if he ever saw the scary mute girl again, he'd run like heck. Aw no, he'd run like
hell.
And with that, he started for the exit himself.
(B046: Benjamin Lichter continues in Prince of Nothing)