so self-indulgent and self-referential, no audience could ever want you

[delicateMachine]

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

((A girl in a nice dress wakes up and remembers she’s in hell.))

There were thousands like her, almost all of them long dead. Even among her fellow 80, what made her special? Worthy of attention? What did millions of prying eyes latch onto as they glanced her way?

The girl had an attempt at an aesthetic, at least. Tall, pale, slim. Yellow was a violently eye-catching color, and it complimented her long blonde hair well. She was a sunflower, or a ghost who had forgotten to bring her mourning attire. She was aloof, in a way one might find cool. The large, floppy hat she wore from her fanservice outfit was an expert touch, though it toed the line between graceful and completely ridiculous.

Appearances were really only a foot in the door, though - when people liked the look of you, they’d be willing to linger on your footage for a while, but you had to do something with that attention, or you’d lose them to the showboaters, murderers and monologuers alike.

The early stages were rough. All the competition was alive (briefly, for some of them, but the exceptions only served to soak up attention they’d never get to reap themselves) and there were only so many ways to wake up, weren’t there? You cried, or screamed, or broke something, or broke someone, or shot yourself on the spot. Might as well just fast forward ten minutes and skip to the good stuff, right?

So, you hit the ground running. What was next? Gimmicks were an easy way out. You could ask someone about ‘that reporter kid from last season’ and they’d probably know who you were talking about, though they wouldn’t be very excited about it. Would the same be true in five years? Two, even? If you made it to endgame, your legacy might stick around, but probably just as a punchline.

The answer was insultingly simple, really. You had the sort of easy charisma possessed by people who streamed paint drying to an audience of thousands. You had to write your name in blood. You had to somehow do something no one had ever thought of before. Easier said than done.

Since the dark-eyed harvestmen had first shown themselves, Lark Wilson had gotten about ten nonconsecutive conscious minutes to think about all this, between the death row march from her third-floor classroom and now. She figured her logic was sound, but was struggling with where to take it.

What did she want?

She had dressed up that morning feeling like just standing out a little, but she’d forcibly been shoved onto the center stage, despite her protests that she was a chronic extra. Did she want to be a star, or at least go down in neon flames? Did she want to follow her whims and simply satisfy herself with half-assed hedonism? Did she want to make a legacy just for its own sake, praying her family would get some merchandise royalties?

She could play it cool for a while, but every undecided second had a cost - attention, money, blood. God, abstract theorising was so much more comfortable by comparison. It was all made up so there weren’t any consequences for anything, really. You could change your mind like the wind.

Satisfied with how the hat fit on her head, Lark knelt down to take another look through her bag, causing her collar to shift a little on her neck, and she instinctively placed a hand to steady it

there wasn’t an eye on her there was an eye in her it was a part of her with its hands wrapped around her neck it’d only go away when she went away

dammit not even enough rum in there for proper ego death no easy way out she’d probably just get a headache and die with a hangover, ha

how would it feel to cave in someone’s skull with that sack would it crunch or would it squish would the blood explode out or just kind of ooze

jesus christ she didn’t want to die she didn’t want to die she didn’t want to fucking die

what time was it? what day was it? she was supposed to be making tacos for dinner with her dad after school he’d been busy all month and she’d been looking forward to it

time to undergo the mortifying ordeal of being seen by people who probably presumed to know her already

every step every breath every second recorded her death would outlive her would outlive her family would outlive her memory too close too close TOO CLOSE

Lark tied her bandanna around the collar, roughly in the middle.

“Sorry,” she said, voice shaking only a little bit. “You’re too close. Nothing personal.” Some peripheral vision would probably leak through and it obviously wouldn’t do much against sound, but she’d salvage what little privacy she could.

There was a wooden walkway that nearly overlapped with the small sailboat she was on, which was good, she hadn’t planned on going swimming. She dumped out some of the ball bearings from the sack, making its weight much more manageable to swing around while still having a noticeable heft to it.

((If she still had a future, it waited for her out there.))