A Chuckpost

[General Goose]

((Chuck Soileaux continued from he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghost.))

Chuck liked the sea air. New Jersey's sea air wasn't the best. Not when you'd grown up on a diet of the musky and paludal odours of the Louisiana wetlands. Probably not objectively the best scent in the world - more of a pungent nasal bombardment than an alluring aroma, Chuck had to admit - but there was something raw about it. Natural. Unfiltered. It defied every rule of good taste, and yet, when on a day trip to the marshes, Chuck made sure to pause. Inhale. Even then, he knew this was a prized feeling. One that was finite. Under threat. Not ubiquitous, and not to be taken for granted.

This is how nature smells, it said, and after being exposed to the disharmonious concoction of scents and smells that defined city life, Chuck valued it all the more. Was what made him a conservationist, really. Even in New Jersey, though, he still enjoyed the sea air. Couldn't hold a candle to the wetlands.

Chuck picked up a rock. As a child, he had had a fascination with the myriad of shapes and forms nature would produce. No such fascination existed today. A quiet appreciation, sure, but no real sentimentality. He turned it over in his hands. It was fairly heavy for its size. Dense. Could probably knock a nasty hole into one of the cameras. Threw it into the sea. He was a fan of skipping stones, but he didn't bother putting any of the necessary technique into this throw. From high up on the cliff, he wouldn't be able to appreciate any of it. Hopefully it'd hit a seagull dead on the head. He was, as mentioned, a conservationist. Seagulls were asses, though.

He still had the bandage wrapped over his eye. He would do some exercises, later. To try and adapt to a lack of depth perception. He did not intend the bandage to be a permanent thing. Wounds needed some air, some time to breathe. But, as a precaution, probably sound practice to do so anyway.

So many deaths already. Too many deaths. Friends. Acquaintances. Drinking buddies. Classmates. Debating partners. Friendly rivals. All gone.

But the one that stuck in his mind was Lance. He did not know Lance well. He knew the abridged version of Lance. The surface.

But everyone deserved a legacy.

He had reflected on Lance's plan. It was stupid. Phenomenally so. He would not honour a dead man with a suicide mission. But maybe, just maybe, there was some logic. Some hope. Some way of rescuing the spirit of Lance's endeavour. He picked up another stone. It was a round one. Bar a blunted protrusion on one side, it was almost spherical. He turned it over in his hand, using the bump as a handle of sorts.

This would require some thinking. Chuck fancied himself as intelligent. As possessing a fine eye for details. But he was aware of his drawbacks. He was no prodigy. No silver spoon. His sharp eye for details came at the cost of a bad eye for the bigger picture. Essentially he was just some guy. This was probably a task well beyond his skillset. But, if he had to flatter himself (and there were worse sins one could commit on this island than pride), he was one of the smarter abductees. He owed it to everyone to try.

He was feeling pretty good about his chances of survival. And then, Chuck then spent a minute wondering why, no matter how much he opened one of his eyes, he couldn't see a thing. When he worked out why, his hope for his own survival was promptly put back into place.

((Chuck Soileaux continued in We Know Who Our Enemies Are.))