Paradigm

[Pippi]

((Laura Hakštok continued from All On Me))

There was one thing she could do with the last moments of her life on this godforsaken flotilla.

Cocaine Quest? Great idea that had obviously turned into a total goddamn bust. Marion’s escape plan? Well, 100% of the members of that escape group were swimming with the fishes around about now, not that Laura had felt any inclination towards joining in with it anyway. Goddamn, Pat? Noreen and fucking Pined Apple had gone and stolen him, kidnapped him, and then had probably just abandoned him somewhere, as if just because he didn’t have a heart, or any other organs for that matter, he didn’t have feelings. And then Anēnāsa had gone and died like a bitch anyway. What a fucking dweeb.

And she didn’t need to go over the Alaska situation again. As if it wasn’t taking up all the free real estate in her head already.

Well, almost all of it. Cause, hell, there was still that one, dumb, hopefully not-full-of-cum idea that she could still pull off, even after she’d lost everything else she gave a damn about. Oh boy, and ‘pull off’ was definitely the optimal term here. She wondered what the general audience sitting on their asses back home would think of her stunt. Wondered what they’d think of her.

She wondered about most of them, at least. She knew exactly what one particularly insidious group would be thinking, because they were as predictable as they were creepy.

It wasn’t a difficult plan to set in motion, hell, you could call it a two-step plan if you fudged the steps together a little bit. The hardest part was finding a suitable location for it. Most places she wandered, it was either too close to a line to get it all started, or too far a drop for her to relax comfortably. It took a little while of the same old aimless wandering before she found the perfect spot; a four-seater, open-air boat with an outboard motor, that looked kinda like someone had supersized a fucking dinghy, and made a sound like a. Fuckin’. Really heavy balloon when she slapped it. It was right on the edge of the Central Jetties’ cut-off point, and she could see, on the far side of the thing, a ladder that the dipshit owner of the boat hadn’t put away before giving this thing up to the production team.

Aww yeah. It was all coming together.

She knew she was gonna have to work quickly; now that she wasn’t walking, she was beginning to freeze her tits off, which would probably make the next part real disappointing for the aforementioned predictable creepy freaks. She flipped off the nearest camera, before she slipped out of her swimsuit, shrugging the lacy black and white bastard down to her feet and then kicking it up into her hands. She stepped onto the boat, windmilling her arms briefly as it rocked underneath her weight. There were a couple of oars left in the boat - jeez, this dude really didn’t give a shit about his personal property, huh? - and she picked one of them up, shoving the armholes of her swimsuit over the paddle until they felt nice and secure, then using both hands to secure the oar upright with a combination of the oarlock and a heap of rope on the floor.

Fucking perfect. The S.S. Maid Bitch, ready to set sail.

It only took a couple of steps to reach the other side of the boat, and Laura padded over, sitting on the side of it before swinging herself around and onto the ladder. She began her descent; no time toe-test the water for freezing temperatures, so thank fuck it was just kinda lukewarm.

And as she sank into the water until only her head and shoulders were visible above the surface, the collar around her neck began its countdown.

[MurderWeasel]

The collar makes it three beeps before a voice joins the sound.

"Hey, Laura.

"In the mood to talk a little?"

[Pippi]

Yeah, this wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind when she’d pulled the idea of skinny dipping in the cruise ship pool outta her ass, days upon days ago. For a start, she was totally cokeless, the huge cocktails in each hand that she’d somehow manifested when imagining this scenario were nowhere to be found, and her fellow dipshits in the evolutionary stages of ‘Scantily Clad’ down to ‘Totally Naked’ were… well. Most of them were fucking dead. Real cheerful fucking thought for a skinny dipping pool party.

Oh, yeah, and she was floating in the fucking ocean, kicking her legs while clutching onto a metal boat ladder, rather than in the flotilla’s actual goddamn pool. In her defence though, she’d poked around there earlier during her pointless wandering. There’d been a body and what had looked like a fucking serving cart dunked in the goddamn thing, which would probably have killed what few remaining vibes this event had.

Besides. If she was gonna do this utterly insane thing, she figured she might as well go out doing it. Her life expectancy had been, at most, reduced to about a week since the moment she’d first woken up on that shitty pirate ghost ship. She was gonna die. It was, y’know. She wasn’t exactly fucking jazzed about it. But it was, fuckin’, whatever, overall. Best of a bad fucking bunch. And so she wasn’t gonna go out like a bitch, she was gonna die as she’d lived; naked and stupid.

Fuck, Naked and Stupid woulda been a great Champions username. MenGetPegged had fucking ruled, but all great things had to come to an end. If only she’d fucking realised this bullshit was gonna happen, she could have spent at least a week using it.

Yeah. If goddamn only.

The sky was still goddamn boring, the sea was still goddamn grey, her tits were still goddamn nonexistent. As far as places to go went, it kinda sucked. But whatever. She was finally doing something she’d stated she was planning on doing, whoo, go her, release the confetti and fireworks.

Laura opened her mouth to say something. Turned out, though, there was one more guest at this pool party she hadn’t accounted for.

There was a brief pause once Jewel had finished talking, punctuated by the fourth beep of her collar.

“Sure.”

She kinda really fucking wasn’t, tee bee aitch. But it wasn’t like she could just slap her hand over Jewel’s mouth and tell her to fuck off, and also, not like she’d say something like that to Jewel fuckin’ Evans. ‘sides, even if she didn’t have anything to say in response, maybe it’d be nice to have someone by her side at the end of the world.

“Not like I’m planning on going anywhere.”

God, Jewel better not be about to fucking tell her that the coke was just a couple feet away on the boat, and that she’d walked right past it. Then she’d have two whole motherfuckers to haunt.

“You ever been skinny dipping, Jewel?”

[MurderWeasel]

There's a soft chuckle.

"No. No, one of my friends used to joke about it, but there aren't a lot of good places in Whittree. Or maybe we just never got around to it. I guess it's on my list still. Probably not before we get back to shore, though. There's a pool here too, but there are a shit-ton of cameras all around it.

"Is this the sort of thing you did a lot? Any special, you know, tips to improve the experience?"

[Pippi]

“Not a lot. Once or twice, maybe. Wait, no, three times. Or, shit, maybe more that I was too crossfaded to remember.”

Right, right, Jewel had come from some shitty podunk town in the middle of who-gives-a-fuck, hadn’t she? It was funny that Oklahoma could be abbreviated to OK cause, wow, yeah, that sure was the biggest compliment you could give it, huh? It was probably pretty hard to go skinny dipping at some wild and crazy party when the biggest pool in the area was, like, a pothole in the middle of the road when it rained. And when the biggest event of the year was the Annual Potato Growing Contest or something.

And of course, now that she was a goddamn household name with book deals and movie offers and talk show spots and this fucking mentor role out the wazoo, she probably couldn’t spare any time at all to just relax and strip off and jump into a lake. Not without some batshit fan slash stalker slash paparazzi snapping photos from the bushes.

Man.

“I dunno if doing it in the middle of the ocean is usually this shitty, but this is pretty shitty. I’ve gone skinny dipping at the, uh, beach after sunset, some lake a ways out from Miami, and in someone’s pool at a party I sure as fuck wasn’t invited to.”

Laura looked down as she slowly kicked her legs, barely able to see her pale skin through the darkness and the hazy ripples of the ocean. Had she gone skinny dippin’ with Alaska before? She thought she might have, on that trip down to the lake, but that had definitely been one of the occasions she’d been totally off her head, and the only reason she knew she’d been there at all had been cause she’d woken up in a tent by the shore, totally butt naked. They could have both done it in the pool. Fuck, they coulda just… they didn’t need Sylvain or Sergio. They could have left those two losers behind, and fucked off to do whatever the hell they wanted. No more weird tension from hanging out with a goddamn murderer. Just them two. Like the good times.

“It’s better with other people around, though, just a group of dickheads fucking around and having fun. And even better than that if you’ve had a couple bowls beforehand, and you steal some, like, Chardonnay or some bullshit from your parents’ wine rack.”

Her collar beeped again, almost cutting her off as she finished speaking, which was real fucking rude of it. It reminded her of that fucking, what was the term… the fucking Pacer test or whatever, the bleepy boop running thing, run from one side to the other before the beep gets ya. When was the last time she’d done one of those? She knew the last time she’d been intended to do it, that had been a couple of weeks before this whole shitstormshow, but if Laura was goddamn anything, it was the master of skipping out on bullshit she didn’t wanna do. There was always some tragic incident involving a broken foot, or a swollen ankle, or “my grandma was killed by a Pacer test and this brings back horrible memories”. She was pretty sure her gym teacher had just given up at this point.

“Oh. Yeah, and the persistent reminder that you’re minutes away from dying and also that all your friends are dead, that kinda kills the mood. So avoid that if you can.”

[MurderWeasel]

The reply doesn't shift gears too much in tone at first, but dips to become more sad and bitter as the topic shifts away from death.

"I'll keep it in mind. I mean, everyone's always minutes away from death. The question is whether we're talking about millions, or hundreds, or ten. There's room to change that, until there isn't.

"I don't have to talk about that if you don't want. I just figure it's better to mention at least once.

"When it comes to friends, I don't know how many good options I have. I've made some okay friends I guess, but my best friends from home, well, one or two are dead. But most of them just turned out to be terrible, and we're not friends anymore."

[Pippi]

“Huh.”

She didn’t say anything for another couple of seconds. And she probably would’ve stayed quiet for even longer than that, if the beeping of the world’s most inconvenient alarm clock and Jewel’s own words hadn’t gently reminded her that she might only have another couple seconds to speak. She figured the producers were probably fucking around with the collar detonation time limit, given she was mid-conversation with her mentor and this providing some pretty fucking good TV - she’d watched, like, every single episode of this shit, stoned or not, so she knew every single one of their ever so sneaky tricks - but no doubt as soon as they were bored of her, they’d pop her head off like a goddamn champagne cork.

“Can’t say I get it personally, but that’s mostly just cause I only ever had one person I coulda called a friend anyhow. Turns out, it’s real easy to go to a shit-ton of parties and stuff that nobody wants you at when the host is drunk as fuck, or when you go as your bestie’s plus one. But, well. She’s dead as shit now too. So I guess if I did get back home I’d have a grand total of, ooh, let’s see, fucking zero people waiting to greet me.”

It was an almost imperceptible movement in the darkness, with the ocean surface lapping against her body, but Laura sank a little further into the water, her shoulders slumping and disappearing beneath the slate.

“I was one of those shitty friends anyway, I mean, like, you’ve fucking watched me all season long, haven’t you? I’m fucking awful. Completely terrible. Yet she… still decided she wanted to waste her time hanging out with a no-hope stoner like me. Although that was prolly cause she was just as blazed as I was half the time, anyway, point is, I really fucking appreciated that. Never actually told her that, though, cause, again; shitty fuckin’ friend.”

She jabbed both thumbs at herself, her hair catching droplets of sea spray as her hands broke the surface and her legs kicked a little harder. She grabbed the rungs of the ladder again, and sighed. Man. She really was just gonna let her heart spill out here, huh? Like her body just couldn’t fuckin’ wait to get these thoughts out, like they were dripfeeding poison into her veins.

“So, like, what were you saying about how there’s always time to change, right up until deathy boi is tapping you on the shoulder with his fuckin’ skeleton finger?”

[MurderWeasel]

A beep separates Laura's speech from the reply.

"Moments can be long. And you can learn a lot in them, and do a lot. I know a little about sitting around waiting for the end. And, who you are? That's not something the world tells you, or your friends tell you, or whatever. It's something you decide, and know.

"Or it can be, at least. I think it can. I know it's a lot harder to do than to say.

"For what it's worth, I'd take a shitty best friend who's there for you when it counts and who stands by you no matter what over a wonderful best friend who runs away and sells you out in your hour of need."

[Pippi]

“Bro, I think you’ve got me mixed up for someone way more goddamn intelligent.”

Laura gave a short, blunt laugh to emphasise exactly what she was trying to communicate, to make sure that Jewel knew that she was trying to say ‘I have absolutely no clue what you’re saying here bitch’.

She immediately fell silent after that, though, providing enough dead air to prompt her collar to give her another helpful little beep as a reminder, a message to say ‘Hey, quit being boring, we’ve got our fingers over the detonator and you’re running out of time.’

But she still didn’t speak, even after that. It wasn’t a long enough pause for the producers to enact Gentle Persuasion on her again, but it was definitely long enough for the silence to say ‘Actually, I do know exactly what you’re talking about, but I have a reputation that I’m bullheadedly perpetuating even though my head is literally about to fucking explode’.

“You’re right, though,” she said, finally, looking down into the water. Christ, the refraction did not do any favours for how her body looked, and it was already standing at the lowest rung of the ladder to fucking begin with. “Like, I guess that’s the bottom line, huh? That I woulda died for Alaska. And like, actually fucking died for her, I was like a second away from doing so before Sergio…”

She exhaled, letting the rest of her words escape her mouth and disappear. Jewel had seen that whole thing already, dipshit. No point reminding her of it. No point reminding yourself for no damn reason.

“But, like… this whole thing, me floating here naked, waiting for my neck to fucking implode, that’s not… It’s not about that. It’s not about being a fucking shitty friend or any of that shit, if it had been then I woulda topped myself years ago.”

She gave another short, ugly, humourless laugh. She gave just enough space, this time, for her collar to think about bleeping at her, before she spoke up again. That might’ve been a fun game to do, if she’d had a single shit left to give. Edging the collars, taking one step into the danger zone and then dipping back out just before they prepared to blow her. Up.

“But it is about who I am. Or, more to the point, who I can’t be anymore, if I make it back home alive.”

[MurderWeasel]

There's space from the collar too, and when the reply arrives, it's spoken carefully.

"I think I understand.

"I've met a lot of people who made it out now. And there's only one who I think might be the same person as before.

"It's not me, of course."

[Pippi]

“Well you can’t just say that and then not gimme the full deets, c’mon dude.”

She didn’t give enough time for said deets to be conveyed before she started talking again. It wasn’t like she didn’t wanna know - cause she did wanna know, y’know? - just that like. Man. She knew she didn’t have much time left. And she knew she didn’t owe anybody a goddamn explanation for what she was doing. ‘Cept maybe Alaska, but she’d be able to hear all this shit in purgatory anyway, unless she was already stoned outta her gourd on ghost weed.

It just kinda felt like she owed Jewel something, you know? That her mentor at least deserved some level of explanation as to why she was on her way to suck Davy Jones’ dick. Did that make sense? Was that even the slightest bit fucking believable?

Yeah, so, this was just some long, roundabout way for her to try and get closure for a life misspent, thanks a fucking lot.

“I know that, like, I would be a different annoying bitch if I had a sudden change of heart and got outta the water right now, and also somehow was the last person alive here, like, my best fucking friend got her guts shot out right in front of me, that’s not something you just forget about. But on top of that, the life I’d have to live, the life you live? Man. It’s a fucking lot.”

She sighed. A shiver rippled through her body.

“You know what I wanted to do when I was a dumb kid? Actually, fuck, what a stupid question, course you don’t, like you were hanging out with a smaller, less shitty version of me, fuck. Anyway, literally the only goal I had rattling around my tiny little head was that I wanted to make videos about my life, and not even any interesting shit, the very first video I made was literally about me walking out in the rain and finding a fucking frog, and that was it. But, like, I think that was almost the point? I didn’t wanna get 12 bazillion subscribers or anything like that, I just wanted a couple of nice comments on the videos I made, and a handful of people to look forwards to every new upload, and all that mushy crap that’s kinda making me wanna throw up right now.”

“But that didn’t happen, cause my parents are dickwads, and time passed, and I smoked a whole fuckton of weed, and I joined in on a few of Alaska’s streams, and I kinda got the urge to stream myself, so I set up a Twitch channel and started recording myself playing shit like Champions and Combat and a whole bunch of those weird dating sims that crop up on Steam, specially the ones with lovingly detailed art of previous SOTF winners’ cocks and balls. And that was fuckin’ fun, dude! That was real good. Most of the time I wouldn’t get a whole lot more than like, 70 to 100 people watching me, and most of them were just people jumping over from Alaska’s streams, but that was perfect for me, just dumb videos of me fucking around in video games for a little group of people who would laugh at my shitty jokes and terrible gameplay. Or of me just fucking around in general, there’s a video of me eating a fucking pile of chicken nuggets that even you mighta seen, that started to pick up traction shortly before I got McAbducted. Like, 70 doesn’t sound like much, but if you had a party and you got 70 people who turned up, you’d be like, ‘fuck yeah, 70 people who give a shit about what I’m doing, this rules’. It was… it was nice. Eurgh. Yeah, still feels like vomit in my fucking mouth.”

“And it just got me fucking thinking, over the last few days, which is a dangerous goddamn prospect lemme fucking tell you. Like, I know you know this way fucking better than I do, but SOTF is the biggest goddamn thing in this country. You’ve got people hanging on your every word, refreshing their goddamn phones constantly waiting for another tweet, you’ve prolly got, like, TV shows and conventions and viddy game voiceovers up the ass, like, thats a whole different life that you never asked for that you can’t fucking escape from. Like, how many creepy dudes with cameras do you have to deal with on a weekly basis? Fucking, Pascal from 26, he did everything he fucking could to distance himself from this goddamn show and what fucking happened? We still know exactly where he lives, his husband’s name, his goddamn dog’s name, hell, someone managed to figure out his favourite fucking brand of cigarettes from a series of blurry-ass paparazzi photos a few months back.”

“So if I make it out as the last bitch standing? Then what? I go back to my stream, I boot up Champions, I load in, fuckin’, thousands of randos watching me, not because of the dumb content I’m producing, just because I won. I could be fucking anyone, I could have any face, I could have the personality of a goddamn dead slug, they’d still all tune in, just because I won SOTF. It doesn’t matter if you’re a fucking fan favourite or the biggest cunt in the universe, everything you do matters to this goddamn audience. All the shit I’d do previously, everything I’d say or tweet or play for the intention of nobody but Alaska and my stream viewers and the dipshits from school who didn’t block me on social media, that gets turned into a spectacle for the entire fucking country. I don’t wanna be scrutinised by shitty tabloids cause I turned up to a convention with a t-shirt that says ‘Cunt’ on it. I just wanna smoke a bowl and jack off and play some fucking champions, and you bet your goddamn ass there’ll be 50 online headlines slamming me the second a hint of smoke hits the back of my fucking throat.”

“I know this is all, like, selfish as shit, but hey, guess what; i’m fucking selfish, it’s my goddamn brand. I just… want an uneventful life. That’s all. All I’ve ever wanted. And I know I just… fuck, I couldn’t fucking handle the one that you have.”

There was a brief silence. A sympathetic beep from her collar.

“So, anyway, how’s the weather like in wherever the fuck you are?”

[MurderWeasel]

There's a quick little chuckle.

"It's not so bad. We're on this other boat, kind of nearby, I don't know if you can see from where you are. I'm waving. You'll have to take my word for it.

"...I tried streaming, you know. A couple times, but the first, right after I got out of the hospital, I got so pissed off I threw my laptop into the wall. And there are lots of photographers everywhere, especially right now. There was this whole thing I did with my socks just to fuck with them, and...

"...

"I don't think it's wrong to be selfish. Not in your position."

[Pippi]

“Yeah, sorry, can’t see shit in this darkness. Plus there’s sea spray all over my fucking glasses. Can barely see my own tits, not that there’s anything much to see anyway.”

She chuckled as well, and this time, for once, it was genuine.

“I think I remember that, your streaming shit. Not the, uh, babyrage you just talked about, but I think I saw you on the front page of Twitch or something. Kinda just ignored it, to be honest, no offense or whatever, but I figured you were just kinda jumping onto a bandwagon. Doing what all the popular kids were doing, y’know? Trying to stay relevant, or forced into it by an agent or whatever.”

She paused again. She idly splashed her hand through the water, watching as the droplets cascaded from her fingertips. Was it really true that, like, fingernails kept on growing after death. If so, hell fucking yeah, maybe that’d undo the damage from years of constant nail-biting that pissed her mom off so much.

“Guess that’s another black mark against the whole ‘escaping’ thing, huh? And, God, fucking with people is my favourite goddamn hobby, but there needs to be some kinda emotional connection for me, y’know? People I’ve gone to school with, people I’ve been forced to spend an hour long Champions game playing alongside, the lumps of shit that call themselves my parents, that kinda thing. Doing it to a wall of camera lenses and phone cases just sounds so fuckin’... nothing.”

She shrugged. She sighed again. The water chopped against her neck and her shoulders. Her collar stayed silent, as if even the alarm was holding its breath.

“I don’t think there’s… anything that anyone can say that’ll stop me from being selfish. Not anymore. Not when there’s nothing and nobody to give a shit about, looking forwards.”

[MurderWeasel]

There's a faint sort of "hm" sound, or a throat-clearing. A second more passes, and then comes the reply:

"It's liberating, isn't it?"

[Pippi]

“It’s… I guess that’s one way of putting it…

…

Yeah. Yeah it is.

Feels freeing. Like, I’ve always intentionally not given a shit about anything, but now, knowing exactly what I want now that there’s nothing to care about, it’s…

Yeah.

…

Hey, uh. Thanks, and shit. For talking. And for trying. Even if I don’t totally think I deserved it.”