For What Happened to Daisy

[swirlythingy†]

Edgar spent the last second of his life distracted by self-doubt.

The traditional thing to do would have been to see his life flashing before his eyes, but, frankly, it wouldn't have been all that different anyway.  All the decisions he'd never made, all the people he'd never got to know.  If there was any justice in the world, his memories would have been filled with quiet scenes beneath leafy canopies with just a camera for company.

Instead they were filled with the things he had seen, and done, and not done, during the course of his five days in hell on earth.  The absolute certainty, the minute before he entered the greenhouse, that he wouldn't let the game get to him.  The ambitions to get a group together to execute a grand plan he'd never even managed to formulate.  The days wasted hiding away or prowling around in the background of the island, because it was easier than getting anything significant done.

More than that, though, he thought of the things he had never spared a thought for before.  Cody had just been a scared kid, they were all just scared kids, thrown together with dangerous weapons and lethal threats.  Travis had just been a scared kid when he met him for the second time a short few minutes ago.

And as for his own choices, he knew now that they were never as noble as he pretended they were.  He'd had an opportunity to call it off, to put a stop to all this, to act like he'd promised himself on the first day he was forever going to act, when Travis was at his mercy.

Every inch of him ached.  His head swum from the double impact, and his vision and hearing were foggy.  He could hear Travis's threats, and he could hear the loud revving of the trimmers, but he just couldn't do anything about it.

In the instant before the roaring blade pierced his flesh, he finally understood how Survival of the Fittest worked.  Nobody was immune.  Travis hadn't deserved this any more than Edgar had, and for as long as everyone continued to act like they had just done, there could be no more living - only suffering.

There should have been another way.  Maybe he could have saved everyone after all.

Then again, maybe he never had a chance.

B065 EDGAR TOLSTOFF: DECEASED

[Delroy†]

Darkness...

It had all gone black when he had finally jammed the hedge trimmer into Edgar for the killing blow. After that, he remembered little. He was lost in a flurry of violence, filled by feral rage.

When he finally came too, he was standing in front of what had once been Edgar Tolstoff. The body had been reduced to a pile of bloody meat. The hedge trimmer suddenly felt incredibly heavy. He was almost completely out of breath. Not to mention how the pain suddenly came back. The threat had been taken care of, and now his body only wanted rest.

Not yet...

He slowly limped away from the Storage Yard, two bags on his back, covered in the blood of two classmates, dragging his hedge trimmer behind him. His body ached, his hand was bleeding, and his bags felt extra heavy. But he was alive. And he smiled.

[Travis Webster continued in Olive Branch...]