Unmonitored Lizard

[KamiKaze]

((Nora Moriarty continued from Your Luck Has Run Out))

And she kept running.

And kept running.

And kept running.

And kept running,

Even when she found the road he mentioned, even when she gasped from her mouth, even when her body screamed from the exertion.

Until she fell face-first on the side of the road

Her breath came in loud bursts. Tears went down her face. She felt dizzy.

Just a moment. Then she’d get back up.

[Yonagoda]

...

...

"Was that real?"

Please tell me it's real.

[KamiKaze]

Nora lifted her head. Spat out some sand. Looked around her. Paused when she saw someone else.

Saw who that someone else was.

She wasn't sure what to say. Or do.

Her body trembled. With relief? Fear? Or something else?

[Yonagoda]

Hopefully relief.

[KamiKaze]

She frowned.

Breathed in and out.

Maybe it was relief. Maybe. She wasn't sure what to say. She still wasn't sure how to face her.

After a beat, she said it.

"Is that you? I... you're bleeding."

She wanted to lift herself up and see what she could do.

[Yonagoda]

She was so neurotic right now that she is liable to just bury her head in the sand and scream and never come out again because she didn't really know how she'll ever cope with this and live her life again when or if she gets out and also it's just sort of surreal that all of this happened and that she had a girl die near her when she was asleep and it was for nothing because they're all alive now and-

"Not my blood. Mostly, anyways."

Wait no that came off wrong.

"I uh... woke up to uh," she gestured towards herself, "This. Lucine. Someone else."

Melodie wanted to laugh, because her mind was so out of it that it just decided, fuck it, hind brain take the wheel.

"Are... did you...?"

Kill anyone? See anyone die? She forgot about who killed and who died, because it was hard for her to take count and remember them out when the brain had so many other things to do (run, hide, piss/vomit/shit without being caught since it'll be an embarassing way to die, worry about her period coming and if anyone can, like, smell it or whatever, eat, sleep, hide, cry, try to wash her clothes/herself also without being caught, have nightmares about Jenelle's head staring her down and calling her a cunt, etc etc.) so like she was, well. Like if Nora did like shank someone when she wasn't paying attention it was fine, legally self defense probably, not really her problem anyways (it always was actually she really cared too much for the poor girl.) She wouldn't judge anyone for killing anyone to be honest, because she probably would've done it too, honestly some part of her was surprised she wasn't the one to off Yvette, didn't wait until Astrid's back was turned and slammed her head against the wall until it bloomed red, it was kind of a desperate situation.

Someone on the discord server once said that crime was a microcosm of a corrupt society; maybe stomping a girl to death or something would be a microcosm of these fucking furries trying to reenact battle royale or whatever. Like honestly she was kind of detached from it all (??? maybe??? She'll have to get a therapist later) because she only saw two people die and killed nobody, she ultimately she could go back with clean hands and smile and play the victim, say that she did no harm, that bitch [insert murderer here] was crazy, etc. etc. She could cry to the media, she could avoid legal persecution, she could sleep tight knowing that her presence (hopefully) did more help than harm.

And in the end of it all she could think of herself as a survivor and not a victim, because she refused to give in.

(Alright maybe she was sort of veering into moral high ground. So fucking what. Her friends are killed or killed someone else; give her a break.)

(To be honest some part of her wanted it to be traumatic. Wanted to see more blood, more guts, more death. Because then she'll have an excuse to be as broken as she feels right now. She got away relatively unscathed- her blood still in her body, her brain still in her skull, her consciousness still un-corrupted. She slept through someone having their neck explode right in front of her. So what that she held Jenelle's decapitated head, she's seen ISIS videos on liveleaks before. So why is this different? So why did she still feel like she'll get home and spend the next thirty years of her life taking pills and drugs and failing to be a normal, functional person?)

(She wanted it to hurt so that she'll really be sure that she was hurt.)

(Melodie always thought of herself as a bad person because it comforted her to know that she'll never have to conform to societal expectations of goodness, but her badness was mostly fictional, mostly limited to the arbitrary. Darkfics and roleplay and meat on the carpet. But then this all happened and she wasn't who she expected to be. Like her entire constructed persona and view of herself was fake. It's stupid, angsting over the fact that she's a good person.)

(When they get home someone's going to blow their brains-)

(Maybe it'll be her-)

(She always had a low capacity for stress-)

"What did you see?"

So that's where it all circles back. One broken girl trying to connect to another; 'we have endured this together,' a plea for a kind hand and a word of acknowledgement, of empathy.

(When she gets home she'll never be able to look at blood the same way again one way or another)

She didn't realize that she was crying until she felt the wetness in the sand, and then she realized that she's collapsed, too.

Mind cranking at 100 miles per hour, brain trying to process things, she's never been the kind for numbess actually, in retrospect it was repression- her brain didn't wipe the feelings out, it held them at bay until they could erupt again and she'll burst, spraying them out like the cuts of an overripe fruit. And it feels like all that grief is leaking out of her like a fountain. Physically, too. The crying. Yeah.

"I don't want to... I want to know. But not too much."

Please tell me something good. Please tell me something kind.

[KamiKaze]

"I…"

Nora gulped.

"Saw Orion. And Joel. And Lucine… long before she…"

She looked down, her limbs trembling.

How would Melodie react if she knew the whole truth about Orion? That Joel only did it because she tainted his water? If she survived, what would she tell people?

"Orion, he…"

Breathed. Dug her hands into the dirt.

"... Drank my water."

Maybe she'd play it off as a honest accident.

[Yonagoda]

"Oh," she said, and she was a bit too focused on how much her situation sucked to focus on how much Nora's also sucked, probably more than her, because if she focused too much on Nora then she's going to break down from all the horribleness of this situation, really what did she expect, asking Nora to dump her trauma on her?


...

Ruth looked from the window of the car, her beady eyes squinting from her frown.

Where are these kids?

...


"Well," and to be honest that was a major underreaction, "What happened?"

[KamiKaze]

She dug her nails into the sand deeper, like she could be picked up and ripped away. Nora started gasping. Tears ran down her face. She wanted to scream again, but her throat was hoarse.

She couldn’t do it.

Could she?

The words ‘I poisoned Orion because of the threat, Joel finished him’ were there, but she couldn’t say them. Nor could she give just enough to make Melodie think that…

That it was an honest mistake.

Nora gasped and breathed for a few seconds, then–

She heard a car on the gravel.

Nora turned her head. A Jeep had passed them, but was turning back around. She felt her skin crawl. Maybe it was their abductors, coming to take them back. Maybe they’d be executed on the spot, or thrown back into the compound.

The car then pulled up next to them. Nora curled into herself, expecting the worst.

Then, a window rolled down, letting out a gust of air conditioning. A second later, a pig’s head with salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a bun poked out.

“Excuse me,” she called out, an older twang to her voice. “Are you lost?"

[Yonagoda]

"Uh," she said, "Technically?"

It was like the outside world suddenly existed again.

"Can you... can you help us? I need..."

The words are hard to force out.

"They're killing us out here," she said, "It's not safe. They're going to- You need to get us out of here. Please."

[KamiKaze]

The pig woman looked them over.

Ruth had seen and heard everything– or so she thought. She was a little girl during The Emergence, and she saw how bodies twisted and contorted into new shapes– including her own. She’d lived through the nation going through wars, odd unprecedented news headings, everything.

But what she heard about what had happened, and to see two girls on the side of the road in the middle of the desert, begging to be taken out of there? Even now, she still found herself shocked and horrified.

She gripped the steering wheel. She thought about it being her own children and grandchildren.

“Get in,” she said, urgency in her voice. “People are on the lookout, and there’s plenty of room.”

The girl in the green dress– Nora– looked at the other one.

[Yonagoda]

''I... thank you,'' said the taller girl, the bleeding one.

Ruth unlocked her car doors, and was suddenly a little self-conscious of her backseat, where her oldest grandkids left candy wrappers and crumbs stuffed in the tiny spaces between seats.

The girls weren't that much older.

How many of them were there? Waiting to be found?

One of the girls stepped in, smearing blood across the backseats, and Ruth felt like she was going to be sick.

[KamiKaze]

Nora saw the blood, and cringed a bit. She guessed that was from Melodie. Even now, Nora was a stickler about cleanliness, even if...

...

Did she deserve this?

She wasn't certain.

But hesitantly, she followed suit. After closing the door, she closed her eyes. The air conditioning felt like a blizzard had just hit. She breathed and realized something. She snapped open her eyes.

"Uh... do you have something to cover my face?"

Another breath.

((Continued in aftermath))