Tragic Solo

jimmydalad · #1

((Aria Samuels continued from Hi Kids! Do You Like Violence?))

Some time ago, Aria had stopped crying. His eyes still stung from the disinfectant and he refused to open them at risk of receiving the retribution of the sun. The sun may have set by now, but Aria would never know so long as his eyes ached. His fear of the sun and the pain in his eyes reached a point where he had used his checked shirt as a blindfold, crudely wrapping it around his head. Even if he opened them, he would be welcomed into the embrace of the comforting darkness.

He had thought about using the water in his bag to ease his suffering, but then remembered that the water was for drinking, not wasting away trying to somehow alleviate the situation he was in. Dehydration was much worse than the pain he was going through, so he held off on acting on that impulse. That didn’t stop him from occasionally reaching into his bag and stroking the ribbed edges of the water bottles.

Aria had been stewing. He thought of all the people that were responsible for his situation. The crazy psycho bitch that held him at gunpoint at the beginning. Jasmine for killing Paris. Brigid and Christopher for letting Jasmine be a crazy psycho fucking bitch. Fucking Baxter for obvious reasons. Sarah because she was just an annoying bitch and Aria didn’t like her anyway. Heck, he might as well throw Adumbis in there as well. The only two people that didn’t fuck him over or piss him off were Paris, who was dead, and fucking Maxwell Lombardi.

Why did everything in this game screw him over? First there was getting the stupid fucking trumpet, then there was the girl who nearly shot him, then the only good thing that happened on this godforsaken island, Paris, was taken away from him by some crazy ex-girlfriend and her stupid posse. The eyes didn’t help, thanks a lot Baxter you fucking asshole. This whole situation sucked and nearly everyone here sucked. The only good person he had met had died before he had any meaningful time with him.

The pain of his eyes just fed into his anger. Each fuelled the other as they linked together to form this cycle of frustration that he relished in. As the cycle continued, more things began to feed into it. In his current state, he couldn’t fulfil Paris’s wishes. He was fucking useless. The gun had no fucking ammo, so it might as well be the trumpet for how useful it was to him. If someone random psycho found him, he was dead in the fucking water and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

Aria yelled. He shouted, screamed and hollered in a mixture of pain and frustration as it was the only way he could cope. He smashed his hands on the floor, incoherent rage escaping from his body with each strike that hit the ground. Fuck everything.

His hands ached. Now that the anger was out of his system, Aria was left with a sense of nothingness. He still hated pretty much everyone he met up with, but what the hell could he do about it? He couldn’t see and his gun was empty. Was he supposed to just fucking sit here and wait for his death?

Hell no.

Aria wanted to survive. Maybe get revenge on some assholes while he could. Along the way, he’d fulfil Paris’s wishes of stopping players too. That’s the least he could do for him. The question was, what could he do?

His bag could be nearby. Aria heard Baxter and Sarah leave in quick succession. If he could somehow find the bag, maybe he could reload Paris’s gun. He reloaded the gun before. It shouldn’t be so hard to do it blindfolded, right?

It was better than nothing. As he started to feel Paris’s face to get his bearings, he also began to dig things out of his bag. Scissors were his priority. Then he got out some water bottles and the pocket mask. Everything else was left next to Paris. The bag was on Paris’s right side, so once he found Paris’s left hand, he could go from there.

Hooking his leg around Paris’s arm, Aria began to crawl with his mishmash of items in in his right hand. His face slid against the ground, his makeshift blindfold picking up dirt and stains as he moved. He stretched his body outwards, grasping onto thin air. Eventually, leaving the other things by his side, he took out the scissors and jammed it into the floor. Unhooking his leg from around Paris, he moved forwards, hooking his leg around the scissors before trying again.

He repeated this process again, using one of the water bottles this time. Once again, there was nothing. At this point, his clothes were being dragged through the mud, the wrinkled clothing becoming brown with dirt and grime. Though the pain in his eyes was slowly starting to be matched by the pain in his body, but Aria knew this was something he had to do. If there was something within his power he could do, he’d do it, because he fucking had to.

Leaving his foot against the water bottle, Aria reached out once again. At first, all he could reach was thin air. Aria reached again. On the tip of his fingers, he felt the familiar touch of fabric. Invigorated, he reached out once again, managing to get a grip of the thing he had been searching for. Immediately pulling it towards him, Aria tightly hugged the bag. He shared a tight embrace with Paris’s bag, letting time pass by as relief washed over him.

He made his way back to Paris with the help of the trail he left behind, dragging the bag along with him. He took the water bottle with him, but left the scissors. It really wasn’t worth the effort. As soon as he got back, he dived for the cartridges. He needed to load Paris’s gun. Have some line of defence in case he got attacked now. He’d also be able to go hunting once the pain in his eyes were gone, though by this point the burning had become more muted. He fumbled in the bag, getting increasingly hasty as he found it harder and harder to find the fucking cartridges. Why the fuck were they so hidden? Goddammit Paris, why’d you have to be such a pacifist?

Ok, so maybe it was harder to reload a gun blind than he thought. He had thought it would just be a repeat of the mechanical processes he did before when he first loaded the gun. The first problem came with telling which way the cartridge faced forward. He had to put Paris’s gun down to get a proper feel for the cartridge, feeling each groove and edge before he could properly tell which side was the front.

From there, it was a finagling of getting the old cartridge out and then putting the new cartridge into the gun. His fingers carelessly fumbled about with the gun, unable to use sight to aid the process anymore. He learnt how the gun felt, the smooth barrel and every little crevice. This was probably the most intimate he had been with anything, let alone another person. Each touch acclimatised him to Paris’s gun, each stroke further reinforced his connection to the gun.

Eventually, Aria had loaded the gun. He softly caressed the fully loaded gun in his hands, sighing softly to it. Quickly pointing it in a random direction, he fired the gun. The gunshot ripped through the air, disrupting the serene silence of the world around him. With a content smile, Aria made his preparations for bed.

His eyes still hurt. It was a lifetime ago that Baxter threw it in his face, why was the pain still there? It wasn’t even the type of pain that was overwhelming. It was like a little omnipresent pain, like a paper cut or some sort of itchiness.

Whatever it was, it refused to go away. So, Aria laid there, closing his eyes but being too distracted by the pain to fully reach the state of comfortable sleep. He was surprised that no one had found him. At this point, he assumed that somebody would come across the cliffs, but instead, he was just stuck here.

As he tried to sleep, Aria found himself snuggling into Paris. His body was cold and stiff, yet Aria wouldn’t budge. Maybe the coldness of the body helped distract him from the burning in his eyes or maybe it was the fact that he could pretend that things weren’t going to shit and that he didn’t just lose the life of his friend.

In the end, Aria wanted to. It wasn’t like anyone was there to judge him like usual. That was nice. Didn’t help with the dull itchiness of his eyes, but at least he could find something positive about this experience.

At some point, his exhaustion won over the pain as he collapsed on top of Paris and finally fell asleep.

((Aria Samuels continued in Perilous Prelude))