The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

[almostinhuman]

If Nadine was in agony before, the stomp brought an entire new level of it she couldn’t have braced for. Her breathing worsened, ragged and clawing. He was hastening the end, even if he didn’t know it.

But nothing he did to her mattered anymore. He’d already killed her, this was just the coda to that.

What’s more, he’d just handed her a knife and guided it right between his own ribs. Now all she had to do was twist.

“He’s… just l-like her… ac-actually.”

[Applesintime]

“How? Go on.” He lifted his foot.

[almostinhuman]

The pressure in her chest abated- somewhat, anyway. There wasn’t much sense in hiding all this anymore; if there was ever a time to speak of what she’d done, it was now. She had nothing to gain from lying, so perhaps he'd finally listen to her. Not because she wanted forgiveness or an apology; she just wanted to finally fucking say it out loud.

“Someone… else shot her. I d-don’t know who.”

She’d never learn who’d done it now. But would it have mattered if she had? It’s not like she could’ve killed them. It’s not like killing them would’ve made Marion any less dead. For all she knew they were already dead too.

“I tried to… to save her, but she wouldn’t hear it.”

Not that she’d had the power to stop Nadine, really. She should’ve gone over her head, at least tried something. Marion may have hated her for it, but at least maybe she'd still be here.

“She asked us to test… the c-collars. To test her theory out on her.”

Perhaps Shoshanna deserved a little blame for this too. But she understood Shoshanna’s reasons. Besides, Anthony had no reason to care about her involvement, and it was wrong to speak ill of the dead.

“It didn’t work.”

Understatement.

“Doesn’t… matter. Still my f-fault.”

And it was. But finally speaking of it, confessing to someone, made it feel just a little less so. A lighter load to carry, for however little time she had to carry it.

She broke eye contact with him, let her head roll to the side. He could do whatever he liked with the information. Cry, yell, kill her, kill himself. It didn’t matter. He had the complete picture now. She didn’t know what she was hoping he’d do with it, just that he’d do something.

[Applesintime]

Anthony considered this new information. So it was a mercy kill like him. Like Beau. For a minute or so, he stood there, processing it. Someone had shot Marion. She had asked Nadine to test on her collar, to try to use it to figure out a method of escape. And it had blown her neck up. It would be… it wouldn’t be murder, not on its own anyway.

“Maybe it wasn’t murder. But with your actions, attacking me and refusing to tell me anything, you’re still a player.” He sighed, looking down at her. “Maybe if you had told me this at the start, we wouldn’t be here. But it doesn’t matter. It’s not murder, but that doesn’t change anything. Not now.” Even if it wasn’t murder, even if that was enough to reclassify her, she was already dead. She’d bleed out.

“But…” No. “Don’t you dare insinuate Beau is anything like that.” It didn’t matter. She wasn’t a friend. She was a player. “Maybe your first kill was to be rightful, but what about your next? You can’t… You’re a player. Even if your first kill was… justified, it doesn’t matter. You were waiting to murder. And then…” He couldn’t think straight. Cognitive dissonance, he thought they called it.

Here’s a red-hot question for our viewers; if Marion Rosales’ death was rightful, wasn’t murder, should Nadine still be a player?

That’s what Anthony was trying to figure out, at the least.

[almostinhuman]

The strength had gone completely out of her. She couldn’t lift or turn her head to look at him anymore. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, listened as he stumbled drunkenly through trying to explain himself, only to find he couldn’t.

It was confusing. Upsetting. Infuriating. Like a computer desperately trying to repeat a task it didn’t know how to perform, stuck in an infinite loop. She shut her eyes, unable to keep watching something shaped like her friend try and fail to justify its own murder of her to itself.

“Please just... st-stop. Fin-finish what you… you started.”

[Applesintime]

Anthony, in the midst of a crisis, barely heard her. If she wasn’t a player, and he had attacked her because he thought she was, which he was like, fairly confident about at the time, because she didn’t tell him anything, was he still right? Was he still righteous? Did that make him a player? No, no, it was her fault, because she had refused to tell him anything. Was it? Should he have listened, been less aggressive? He drowned in a haze of confusion, a million different answers clogging his brain.

And then, clear as the Sun, clarity came to him:

He wasn’t a player. It was Nadine’s fault that she had died, because she had refused, refused to tell him anything at all about her killing of Marion. Maybe that on its own wasn’t enough to make her a player. But her evasion of the topic, refusing to answer him, her attacking him and threatening him with a nailgun, that was enough. So she was a player. He was the hero. It all made sense. Perfect sense.

“Gladly.” Anthony spat, pressing the barrel of the De Lisle against the side of her head and pulling the trigger.

[almostinhuman]

It was over. The sadism, the sanctimonious drivel, the pitifully poor self-justification. They were done with it. Finally. Fucking finally.

Luanne and Matias had a chance now. They could possibly figure something out and get the collars off. They might bump into Rhonda, who could protect them better than Nadine ever could’ve. Matias could find Ashanti, since clearly she mattered to him. Fuck, maybe Laura would be done fucking around and they could get her out too. Maybe if they did it would make up for Nadine’s failings. Maybe it would make up for Marion and Shoshanna and Jasper and all the others.

She hoped so. She could live with that.

MM07 NADINE FLORES - DECEASED

[Applesintime]

Anthony stared down at Nadine’s corpse, twitching ever so slightly as blood and bits of brain bubbled out of the twin holes in her head, staining the white ceramic tiles beneath her a dark crimson. After what felt like an eternity, he remembered to eject the casing, and it clattered down onto the ground. Pulling the gun barrel away, tinted red with Nadine’s lifeforce, he didn’t feel better. Another player was lying dead at his feet, his blood on her hands, intermingled with the blood of four others. It should have been a joy. Something to celebrate, but instead he felt empty, slightly bitter, and a mixture of a billion other emotions.

Leaning down, he pulled her backpack off her corpse, moving her arms so he could get it off, and opened it up. He didn’t really need much, did he? He had taken someone else’s food god knows how long ago, and he was doing well for medical supplies. So all he took was the alcohol. It would serve as a medical disinfectant if he needed it, or he could try and make a Molotov out of it, or if he just needed something to pep him up. While he was here, though, he could use something of Nadine’s. Opening her medkit, he pulled a long strip of bandage out as well as her scissors, and cut the top and bottom of the strip down a little, so it would fit in the little things on the front and the back of the gun. And then, with a little swearing, a lot of patience, and nimble fingers to tie it around, Anthony made himself a sling for his De Lisle. It didn’t feel all that great, and it was sort of makeshift, but he was fucking sick of carrying this thing around everywhere. Putting the sling on, he noted it was a little, like, chafing, but he’d take that discomfort.

After that, he threw Nadine’s bag and what he didn’t take from it overboard. Next, he sorted the contents of Diana’s bag as well, chucking everything but her gun, the ammo for it, and an instruction manual detailing just how you loaded the fucking thing overboard. All the gun stuff went into his bag; he could load it later. Luanne and Matias were well away by now, he was sure of it. But that didn’t matter. He had another kill under his belt, no matter what she might have said before she died, how she might have tried to defend herself. She was a player, and that’s what mattered.

At least, that’s what he told himself.

“It’s your fault.” Anthony murmured bitterly, zipping up his bag. “It’s your fucking fault. If you had just said something, if you had just told me the fucking truth, we wouldn’t be here. But you had to attack me, you had to deny, you had to lie, and look where we are now. It’s your fucking fault!” He was aware that shouting at a dead body made him look like a nutter, but he needed to vent. “If you just had said, if you’d just told me why you did what you did, then you’d still be alive and I would have no reason to go after you! Fuck’s sake.” He glared at her corpse. It was her fault. And she probably would have still been a player anyway. Defending Matias, working with him, a player - she was a player by association. That fact made him feel a little better, but he still couldn’t shake off the weird feeling that had followed him since Diana nearly killed him. All water under the bridge. No point worrying about what-ifs and could-have-beens.

He needed to hunt.

((Anthony Golden continued in All Cats are Grey))