The Distance Between the Landscape and Dusk

[Maraoone]

((Matias Juarez continues from The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living))

Matias sat slouched against the side of the boat, right arm splayed behind him, hand dipped into the tepid, lukewarm sea. He had his head tipped back, faced up at the cruise ship that towered above them. Luanne sat just feet across from him, close enough for him to play footsie with her if he wanted.

He hadn’t even been able to look her in the eye after everything. It wasn’t that she’d done anything wrong or that he had any issue with her, it was just…

The boat bobbed up and down like a dead fish, and made exactly as much distance towards anywhere as said dead fish. So, from his position, he could pinpoint each individual window on the cruise ship, each figure passing to and from the hallways, and even each little bird that perched itself on the railing. And no one had come running towards them, friend or foe.

And he knew this because, after they’d managed to drag and haul themselves from the ship to the jetties to this tiny sailboat, he hadn’t been able to look away from where they’d come from. He had kept watch on that fucking ship for… he didn’t know how long, all he knew was that in the time he’d been watching, the sun had dipped first below the ship, then the horizon. And then it was just them in the shadows, waiting. He didn’t know if he’d been hoping or bracing for someone, all he knew was that he’d been waiting, and no one came.

And, there could’ve been better uses of his time than just waiting. They could’ve done some more brainstorming, he and Luanne, they could’ve tried to find more people, they could’ve tried to find more corpses, they could’ve tried to find more outlets, they could’ve, could’ve, could’ve.

But a pool of blood had formed in Matias’ shoe, enough that his sole squelched like a sponge when he’d been dragging it across the jetty planks. The bandages wrapped around his thigh, outside his jeans, had come undone, and it was like they’d never been there now.

And there was a notebook he’d been told about, with more escape ideas than any of them had come up with together, and it was maybe in one of the hundreds of rooms on the ship, maybe in the pockets of someone who would never use any of the ideas.

And there was a bright orange bandanna tied around his elbow, a bright orange shirt on his torso, and almost no one had paid either of these items any heed, not even the ones that were supposed to. The last one he’d run into had shot at him, and the only one who’d paid it any heed had decided to be anywhere but here with him, and maybe she’d had the right idea.

And there they were, on this stationary boat tethered to a stationary jetty, not really doing much other than waiting for someone they didn’t want to come or someone who never would. For a moment, he thought that maybe he should’ve chosen a better landmark, or a safer boat, or a boat with more vantage points, or a boat with more escape routes, but, right now, he got the nagging sense it didn’t really matter which boat they chose or which jetty they ran onto. They’d end up here anyways.

So there they were.

The light had faded enough that he wouldn’t be able to distinguish any passing silhouettes against the dark of the ship anymore, so there was no longer any point in keeping watch. His head fell down, his gaze landed on his companion across the ship.

She hadn’t actually managed to carry him all the way here. She’d dropped him somewhere around halfway to where they were now. They were about the same weight, he thought. So he’d dragged himself the rest of the way, arm slung over her shoulder, and a hundred meters had never felt so long. It was the kind of run where you had to keep your breathing at a certain rhythm, literally catch your breath, or else you’d lose it and you’d double over gasping and then that was another second lost, another meter that Anthony could’ve used to catch up to them. Like the runs his coach had subjected him to, the ones where, if you stopped, you’d have to do another lap, so there was no choice but to keep going, one more lap, one more meter, one more step.

But he understood. He didn’t know if he would’ve been able to carry her as far, even without the leg injury. And he knew that, without her, he would’ve been lying next to Nadine. The least he could do was acknowledge what she’d done for him.

He felt so fucking useless.

His gaze fell away from her again, towards the ground. And he muttered a single ‘Thanks.’

[Kermit]

((Continued from The Third of May 1808 (Execution of the Defenders of Madrid)))

In the year 1786, a man named Francisco Goya became a court painter for the Spanish crown. In 1793, he nearly died from a fever, and then he went deaf. In 1795, he was appointed the Director of the Royal Academy. In 1799, he was promoted to be the prime painter of the Spanish royal court. In 1801, he painted a portrait of the king and his family, while also simultaneously accusing them of corruption via the painting's use of contextual clues and subtext. In 1807, Napoleon invaded Spain, and the country was torn apart by a very bloody war, which lasted for seven years. In 1820, once again, he nearly died from a fever. It was then that he began work on what are now termed the Black Paintings.

Painted directly on the surface of the interior walls in his home outside Madrid, the Black Paintings were never intended for public display. They were the purest form of Goya's self-expression, unadulterated by the need to appeal to an audience. Generally speaking, all but one (which is of his lover) are incredibly disturbing to look at, and are not for the faint of heart.

Among them is arguably Goya's most ubiquitous painting. You can buy it on a coffee mug for the low, low price of $15.49. Buy it today!

Luanne's favorite of the paintings was, however, The Drowning Dog. And as such, with only the fading light to guide her, she was currently sketching it from memory on the vaguely browned pages of a captain's log she'd found below deck.

[+] To her, she was drawing her own current self-portrait.

It was at this point in time that Matias said something. 'Thanks,' he'd said.

The scratching of her pencil stopped.

She glanced up and nodded her head. And then her eyes flicked back down to the page, except this time she wasn't really looking at anything anymore.

The scratching of her pencil did not resume.

[Maraoone]

She barely acknowledged what he said. Bitch. She seemed very, very intent on writing on the piece of paper in front of her instead, as she had been for the past couple of minutes. So, he leaned himself over, stretched his neck towards her, legs shaking a bit, desperately trying to stay glued to the bench. He slipped a little, his leg moved an inch, the wound brushing through denim against rough wood, and he shrunk in on himself, air sucking in through his teeth.

After wanting to curl into a ball and die for a second or two, he recovered enough to raise his head, give a proper lookover of the paper filled with... literal, actual scribbles.

He blinked a few times, just to make sure his vision wasn't going bad or whatever. It wasn't. So, he asked her this.

"Is that a diagram you're making for our next escape plan."

He'd meant it as a question, with a rising tone at the end, but he didn't have the energy for that. Didn't really matter, she'd gather what he meant, he thought.

[Kermit]

It wasn't, and she knew he knew it wasn't.

She was so tired of people turning every interaction into something that could be won or lost. So she was just going to pretend like she hadn't heard anything, and hope that Matias would get distracted by something more productive, like not trying to hurt her feelings.

She felt like her body had frozen completely, except for the tremors she could feel increasingly beginning to pluck away at the tendons in her hands and wrists. And her lip was shaking too.

[Maraoone]

He clicked his tongue. Scrunched his brow, mouth hanging open incredulously.

"What the fuck?"

Was she fucking crying?

"It was a fucking joke! I was just- I was joking!"

He moved away from her, falling back onto his seat with force. Scoffed.

"Can't get a fucking light moment on this island, Jesus."

[Kermit]

Luanne's hands had been shaking for a while. Ever since Nadine had been shot right in front of her, she'd been shaking. And so now she couldn't even fucking draw. She didn't care about Matias's joke. She just, God, fuck, she was just so freaking tired of brittle smiles. She was tired of sarcasm. She was tired of the stress. She was tired of the worry. She was tired of the petty skirmishes.

And she was sick of cruelty. She and Matias had interacted like, what, three meaningful times? Once where he beat her up and almost killed her because he thought she was acceptable collateral damage, once where she literally saved his life, and now this.

...

She took a short breath in, and let the captain's log flick shut. Then she shifted her body in the direction of anywhere but Matias.

Her voice was quiet, but it had a backbone to it.

"Do you like hurting other people?"

[Maraoone]

His body stiffened at her question, breath stopped, core braced. He glared at her hard enough he hoped she could fucking feel it burning into her.

"Fuck off."

He pressed his hands into the seat, leaned in close to her again.

"I fucking got myself shot trying to take down the biggest killer on this island so more people wouldn't get hurt. I got myself shot, I joined your escape attempt, I fucking- I do all that, yet I'm- yet I'm still a bad person for just trying to make this one moment a bit less miserable than the rest."

He picked up the captain's log and banged it back on the floor between them.

"Fuck you."

[Kermit]

Oh.

So he was one of those sorts of people.

Oh no.

He was too close. He was close enough that he could hurt her. He was shouting and rambling about how he was such a nice guy and that she owed it to him to be his doormat or something. She didn't know what she'd even done to initially set him off. And she was pretty much trapped here with him. And -

- her back pressed into the bench, and suddenly she was acutely aware of the uncomfortable sensation of a pointy bit of crab scepter poking her in the butt, which was good, because it was nice to have a reminder of where the scepter was. But it was also bad, because it wasn't like she could quickly pick it up in case she needed to defend herself, what with it between her and the bench.

So she was in danger.

"Stop."

Her voice was smaller this time.

[Maraoone]

"IF YOU WANTED ME TO STOP, THEN YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE FUCKING SAID SHIT IN THE FIRST PLACE."






The silence immediately after felt oppressive, smothered any other thought that could've slipped into his head into the aftermath. It was hot and quiet and tense and angry, as if the air was angry, as if the vitriol he'd spat out had soaked into the air around them.

The only sound he could hear was himself breathing in and out, in and out, harsh rush of air through his lungs, nails against chalkboard.

For a moment, he didn't even remember what had led them here. It was just him and her and this horrible moment.



He started muttering to himself, scratching the back of his head.

"...fucking...do I like hurting people, the fuck did you mean...I don't...I don't like this..."

[Kermit]

...

"..."

...

...

For some reason, now that he'd shouted really really loud, she was less scared. Mostly because it was clear for her what she needed to do right now.

Her heel hit the deck as she stood up. Then she grabbed the crab stick, and then after that she took a step backwards out of the bench alcove thingy or whatever it was called. The part of the boat with the benches. She stepped out.

"This isn't going to - we aren't going to work," she stated to Matias.

Still facing him, she took another few steps back, along the length of the sailboat, and closer to the plank thing on the opposite end connecting the deck and the jetties.

She didn't have anything else left to say to him. She was leaving.

[Maraoone]

"I-

"Wai-

"You-"


There was still some small part of him that wanted to grab the crab scepter from her, because he'd been the first one to take it and he wanted it and he'd been meaning to ask it from her but he'd forgotten and now it was the last chance he had to get it cause she was leaving. She was leaving him. She was fucking leaving. And that same small part of him wanted to yank her along with the scepter, just plunge her into the sea. He could do that. He could do that easily. He could do it right now.

But this whole thing had escalated so quickly, it had been quiet and then it had been loud and now it had this, and he could keep it going if he wanted to but he didn't, he hadn't intended for it to be like this. And he had so much to say to her, because she'd called him a sadist and he didn't fucking deserve that and she needed to know that, she was in the wrong and she'd escalated it and she needed to know, but none of it meant shit again because she was leaving again, he was being left alone again.

So all his words and all his protests trailed off into nothingness, and he just watched as she stepped onto the plank, as she continued heading towards the jetties.

[Kermit]

Was this the right thing to do?

Probably not, no. It didn't feel like it.

But part of escaping was avoiding killing each other. And to be honest, that felt like something that would be very hard for her and Matias to avoid. So they had better odds of both making it out if they weren't together.

She wanted to stop and let Matias say something, but stopping while standing on this plank felt like something that was gonna result in her losing her balance and falling into the water. So.

Her foot hit the jetty.

((She'd always really hated it when she got the last word in.))

[Maraoone]

She was gone and he still didn't

She was receding into the distance and he still didn't remember why this was happening.

It was because

He was mad at her because

He was mad at her because she said he liked hurting people.

She asked him if he liked to hurt people.

She'd asked him that after he joked.

He'd joked and she started crying.

He'd joked and she'd started crying and he'd gotten mad and she'd asked him if he liked to hurt people.

He'd gotten mad because it was just a joke and she asked him that and in that question she assumed that he'd meant to hurt her, but he'd been trying to make her laugh.

He was

He'd been trying to make her laugh, and she put malice into it, and she said, she asked if he liked hurting people, and it pissed him off.

He'd been pissed off because he'd been trying to do a good thing, he'd been trying to make things light and happy because everything sucked, everything felt miserable, and she put malice into it, and he hadn't even managed that one thing, and she'd fucked it up, and if she'd just taken the joke, then things would be fine.

He'd just joked, and it blew up into this whole thing, and she'd started crying, and he'd gotten mad, and she'd told him to stop when it was her own fucking fault in the first place for putting such little faith in him, and he'd gotten mad again, and she'd left him, and he could articulate, now, all the reasons why she was wrong, all the reasons why she should stay and say sorry to him, because it was always him, he was always the one who fucked up, he was always the one that made every fucking thing go wrong, and he wanted someone else to take the fucking blame for once because it was her fault, it was her fault this time, but she wasn't fucking here anymore with him.

He leaned over the railing of the boat, shouting at the now inch-tall figure in the horizon.

"COME THE FUCK BACK HERE."

He slammed his hand against the railing a few times.

"GOOD LUCK ESCAPING BY YOURSELF, YOU WEAK BITCH."

Slammed it a few more times.

"FUCK YOU."

And. That was it.

His short, mediocre, barely existent attempt at escape was over, like that.

The ideas were still with him. He could find a corpse, try to shock the collar off it, or shock the collar off himself if he was feeling particularly suicidal, but he wasn't, and the principle of escape wasn't the point.

The point was that his last, best chance of making it off this show had just walked off the ship and wasn't coming back.

The point was that he might as well just fucking die here.








Or he could die elsewhere.

He got the sense that she wanted him to, like, just curl up here and die. That she regretted saving him, and that she wanted to just dump this burden on some random sailboat and leave him to rot and call it a day. And, well, he didn't like the idea of doing what she wanted him to do.

So he wouldn't. If she didn't want to play ball with him, he'd find someone else. Or, he'd do it by himself if he fucking had to, like he should've done from the start.

Whichever was easier.

Whichever was an available option.

With a grunt, a scream, he pushed himself up, hauled himself onto the plank, and began his long trek away.

((Matias Juarez continues in I Want to Conquer the World))