I'm a bad dream/That I just had today

backslash · #1

((Sylvain Kessler continued from First The Sirens, Then The Lights...))

Sylvain's hand clawed up out of the darkness beneath the jetty, clumsily grasping for the platform's edge. His teeth were chattering violently by now, and his fingers were nearly numb, leading him to have to rely more on his entire arm to grasp anything and drag himself along. When he finally managed to pull himself up and slide beneath the railing, it was more of a slog than a shimmy. He had to stop when he was about three-quarters of the way there, leaving his feet hanging off the side of the jetty while he gasped for breath.

When he finally managed to fill his lungs adequately, he dragged his legs onto the wood and slowly, achingly turned onto his back before going limp. For a long time - it felt like a long time, anyway - he just laid there and stared up at the night sky without really seeing it, breathing hard.

His shoulder hurt. He was lucky he hadn't dislocated it, wrenching it the way he had when he almost slipped off the clipper ship's ladder. His wrists hurt too, the lingering ache of the gun's kick combining with the sting of cold from being submerged for so long. That had been a stupid move, probably, going into the water like that. It had seemed smart at the time.

The buzzing in his head had faded while he made his escape and his focus had fully tunneled in on pulling himself through the water, but it was back now. White noise in the background of his thoughts.

They had motivational speakers at school pretty regularly. People who stood in the auditorium and talked about how you had your whole life ahead of you. None of them ever brought up or even seemed to think about the fact that that while they were telling you to live every day like it was your last, that day very well could be. Having your whole life to figure stuff out didn't mean jack if your life ended at 17.

Sylvain had never needed those speeches. He already lived life like that. What was the point in being miserable now for a chance at happiness and success in the future? Why shouldn't he enjoy himself now, if nobody could ever know how much time they had left? He was never upset when people took down or cleaned up the things he created, because they weren't created to last. Neither was he. Nobody was.

The trouble with everything was that people wanted it to have a point. Everything was a means to an end and not an end unto itself. School was about grades and not learning, and your extracurriculars only existed to get you into a good college, which only existed to get you a job. Your passion also had to be your side hustle, or else it was worthless. Go go go, produce produce produce, sell sell sell.

Banksy was a hack, but Sylvain had never fully gotten over how fucking funny it was when that million-dollar painting of his shredded itself after auction, nor the quote he'd given about the event: "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge."

The buyer and the auctioneers and all the art snobs could spin it and say that the whole thing had just made the shredded trash valuable in itself. They were making themselves feel better. The real art was the moment when it happened, the shock and confusion and the realization that they'd been played like a goddamn fiddle. You couldn't get that back or make it last.

Sylvain was...

...He was pretty sure he was laying in bird shit.

He shifted, and there was a crackle under his back that said he was definitely laying in bird shit.

He sat up slowly, the movement pressing a long groan out of his lungs. He was out of the water but still dripping wet, and the pins and needles and other assorted pains were creeping in. He needed a change of clothes. He didn't have a change of clothes.

He peeled his gloves off and tossed them aside, flexing his fingers with a grimace. There were marks around the base of each one where the seam of the fingerless gloves had dug into his skin, and his fingertips were wrinkled and pasty pale in the moonlight. He took the bandanna off of his neck, and wrung it out as best he could, and then sat hunched over with it in his hands instead of putting it back on.

The chain of his necklace was cold against his skin, a thin, icy line beneath the more solid weight of the collar. He kept forgetting he was wearing the necklace until it dug into him or otherwise made its presence known. He hooked one finger around the pendant, a lump of painted resin in the shape of a human heart and some tiny flowers.

The gun was still there, a weight against his hip. He didn't know what being waterlogged would do to it. He should probably try to take it apart or something, let it air out. He didn't know how to do that, either.

Sylvain wondered if anyone had woken up for their shift on the night watch and found him gone. Hopefully not, or if so, hopefully they'd be chill with it. He wasn't in the mood to get an earful over abandoning his duties, or whatever. He was sure they'd been fine while he went out to clear his head.

Mm, irony.

You had your whole life, short as it was, to figure things out. SOTF just sped up the process a little bit. If you didn't decide early on who you were...

God, you found out.

Aaaaand they were gone.

Cool. Cool cool cool. Sylvain went on a little walk, a little detour, had a misadventure or two, and his group fucking abandoned him. Nice one, thanks Alaska. He'd have blamed Laura for it, but Laura wasn't playing team captain, and Sylvain actually didn't think she would have just up and left and gone wandering around in the middle of the goddamn night on her own, because well, she wasn't him.

Whatever. They couldn't have gotten far from where the four of them had made camp initially. He'd bump into them eventually; he had to, they had all the stuff still. He needed fresh clothes and a snack.

He had to see their faces when the announcement came on in the morning.

der_bird
damn
he came back up

Jubilee
I saw

der_bird
how mad is Dezzy

Jubilee
She went to bed
I'm glad tbh
I need to see if any of these dumb bitches get killed trying to take Marion's collar off

der_bird
did you put money on them succeeding or dying

Jubilee
Both, what do you take me for

der_bird
nice

((Sylvain Kessler continued in CocaineQuest 2021))