★ - Page 2

#16

“Yeah. I get you.” Tim shocked himself a bit when he interrupted. An after the fact kind of thing- a ‘whoops, didn’t mean to be an asshole just then but it kind of just happened’ moment.

What was the word people supposed to mean and who were the people Verity was speaking on behalf of though? She could’ve saved the time and referred to the one person she was actually talking about by name.

“Sorry.”

Tim didn’t want to actually give voice to his thoughts that had a more harsh, critical… defensive? Defensive tone. He just didn’t want an argument. No practical reason, just… he hated arguments sometimes. When it was convenient for him to. People always told him he was wrong. He always defended himself and it never worked anyways.

“I… Yeah, right. It was just words.” Just like all of this was. Vibrations that happened to funnel into people’s earholes that could be taken back and rendered void if everyone agreed they could be. “I won’t hold you to them.” He probably needed to be taking back his words a little more quickly right now.

His gaze wandered away, the same way it always did when he hoped the conversation would end.

“We should just… I don’t know. Get out of here. Or maybe pretend we didn’t see each other. Go and die alone, y’know. Our birthrights.” Did he mean that? He didn’t know. But it didn’t actually mean anything anyways, even if he had ever meant to say it.

#17

She breathed again. She breathed again. Why was she mad? Why was she mad? Why was she mad? He’d made an insinuation out of one fucking thing she’d said on a night she wasn’t even sure was in 9th or 10th grade and now she was angry. There was a chain of logic there. There was a chain of logic there. There was a chain of logic there but all she could see were the dots she hadn’t connected yet. Timothy said thing. Verity did not agree with thing. Verity suddenly leapt to getting mad like she was playing against a Bones and she’d been put into a combo that went forever and that she couldn’t escape from? Why? Why? Why couldn’t she be like she was when she was looking at the ocean? Why couldn’t she just go back to that point where she’d been continuously pummeled by the waves and unable to muster the effort of being able to think things through? Why was she like this? Why did her brain have a mind of its own?

“I’m sorry. I don’t-”

Her hands went up from the railing to her hair and they started tugging. Her eyes looked at Timothy and then stopped looking at Timothy and then started looking at Timothy and then started looking not at Timothy. Her body just did things. Moved on its own. There was a brain in her head and a mind inside it but it was everywhere and nowhere and-

“Help-”

She saw him move. He didn’t move, but she saw it anyway. She suddenly unlocked psychic powers and could see that he was about to go. Leave her behind to deal with this on her own. That she was in this game. That she was on TV. That she’d be remembered forever. That all her dreams had just come true.

Her body moved. Her mouth opened her mouth. Made sounds. Spoke words. Made something come out of her eyes.

“Please-”

Breath.

Breath.

“Stay.”

The wave was going. The wave was going. Dissipating. It had hit the shore and was heading back into the ocean.

“Don’t- go. Not by yourself. Let’s- go-.”

#18

Reminded him of something that had happened at the start of the current version. Maybe Verity might have also been reminded… in a better state of mind… if she hadn’t been experiencing it from a first person point of view.

It had been a thread Tim had almost joined with Adelaide, which is why he remembered that TOb and Nukies- the arbitrary designations given to words on a screen that belonged to other people- had run something along the lines of ‘alliance forms because boy and girl (the guy being the one to break down hyperventilating once per paragraph, in this case) get tangled up by convenient mental breakdown. It had been solid and was still brought up occasionally on the Discord as a good early game couple. Verity herself had mentioned it at some point.

Yeah Tim doubted anything even vaguely reminiscent of coupling up was going to happen in this facsimile of a moment that Tim had already lived out by reading it. It was like… all those carefully considered bits of diction- the word choice, the intimacy and depth of the character narrative, none of it really seemed to exist when it was actually happening? Reality wasn’t a bunch of beautiful utterances of prosody. It kind of just… happened. Verity’s mouth flapped open and shut and words came out too fast for Tim to process almost, unlike in writing where everything seemed easily understood when it was good for the design of the scene.

It would have been really good, here and now, if Tim could put together his thoughts in a timely fashion, but of course he simply could not. No amount of good writing could sell his weaknesses when they were on this side of the computer screen he hunched in front of and masturbated at every odd-numbered day of the year.

Tim glanced her way, noting how she seemed to be nebulous, to be on the precipice of falling into the ocean if nothing more happened and he stood there and watched her slowly erode away. He put his hands on the railing to fail to steady himself- still crumbling as they had been a minute ago. He watched the sky, trying to keep his body language relaxed as he was conscious of how she was watching him. Waiting. He was waiting for himself too. His thoughts went many different directions, many lost to sea by dint of the soft breeze that he might have enjoyed in a different time and place.

He still kind of did. He wondered what that said about him, that the gravity of the situation still somehow didn’t pull him to earth like it was supposed to.

“I will. Don’t worry.” Platitudes worked, right? Even if they didn't, well, that's what he was going with. Tim tightened the strap of his bag around his shoulder. Felt like it was time to actually do something productive, and that at least was a welcome distraction from the empty-headed wishing he could feel less terrible about his empty head.

“Check the maps, check our supplies.” He recognized where her bag had fallen, off to one side. Closer to him than her somehow? Maybe she’d ignored it, hadn’t noticed it was drifting a bit closer to the edge of the boat than was safe. He went for it, hand outstretched to tuck fabric into palm.

“I dunno if we can get this done,” he cautioned in the voice closest to cheer he’d managed since waking up minutes prior with a smile on his face he hadn’t known the meaning of.

“But we can-”

#19

And then Verity shouted.

And then Verity moved.

And then Verity was very suddenly grabbing hold of the bag, pulling it towards her, trying to yank it out of Timothy’s hands.

#20

And then Tim responded, after the momentum had almost sent a Tim-shaped missile into Verity and after that hypothetical chain of events had almost ended in two deaths before the first hour was even up.

“Verity what the-?!”

He needed- to just say- to stop holding on- to let Verity scream herself to sanity- he needed. He. Needed. To. Stop.

Let it go. This. Was. Pointless. All the fucking grunting and the yelling.

Tim didn’t know why he was holding on, nor why he was also starting to shout. He didn’t know what he was shouting. He didn’t know who that person was, the one on either side of Verity’s bag that was being fought over for some reason, who that person was who was red-faced and spitting and had way less muscle than they should’ve had if they’d been bothering to practice good health.

“Calm- the fuck-!”

#21

It was like getting here had awakened all the superpowers Verity always thought she had. First she had seen the future. Next she teleported. One moment she was where she’d been standing and then the next she was at her bag and then the next she was pulling it. Away from Timothy. She didn’t know why her body was doing this. She didn’t know why or how she’d lept like that but now she’d made her choice. Now she had no choice. It was her and Timothy trying to get a hold of Verity’s bag and she wasn’t going to lose. It wasn’t even a competition it wasn’t even something she needed to be afraid of but her head wasn’t going to lose. Wasn’t going to give up the bag. Wasn’t going to let him take it and go and leave her alone because that had to be the logic. That had to be why she was doing this. Why she was panicking. Why-

Why they were doing this?

Why they were pulling at the bag?

Why was she doing this?

Why was she freaking out?

No. No. Couldn’t do that. Couldn’t freak out. Couldn’t push her friends away because she was scared of things. Because she was her. No. Had to stop. Had to stop this. Before one of them got hurt.

So she did that.

She stopped.

She let go of the bag. Went from a hundred to zero. Watched Timothy pull.

Watched him fly.

#22

Nelly Furtado echoing in his skull as his feet sailed parallel to earth, wanting for it in an adrenaline-toked infinite gulf of time. He flew. He watched her and she watched him and he flew. He couldn’t read her face, her body still shaped into the elbows forward that had sent him careening.

He felt the thrill of wondering when he’d sail off the ship. But apparently she’d just sent him down the… three or so steps, that led up to this part of the railing-protected deck. His dread climactic, much like the moment when he smacked into earth. By the knee, as he tried desperately to twist around to catch himself with his hands instead of the back of his head. He touched down onto dusty earth.

Bone splintered, he screamed. The camera observed dispassionately as he swallowed grains of soil through his pain.

#23

It was like he was a slingshot. It was like he wasn’t a slingshot. She didn’t know how it happened. All she’d done was let go and then he just… sailed off. Had she pushed? Had her arms pushed? Her memory told her no but the sight in front of her, of the elastic snapping and shrinking right down to its unstretched size told her that she did. That she had to. That there was no other way this could have happened. She knew he’d been pulling, same as her. She knew that when she let go that maybe he would have had a hard time to readjust but to go off like that? Go so far backwards? How did that even work? How could that have happened? This had to be a dream. This had to be a dream or maybe some sort of cartoon where nothing worked the way the world actually worked. She just let go. She just let go. She just let go and she didn’t push but somehow he was still going back. Away from her.

Down the stairs.

Twisting and reeling and about to hit the floor and-

Screaming.

Verity’s eyes were closed. Her eyes were actually open but they were closed. She wasn’t looking. There was a camera and there was a set of stairs and there was a guy there but she wasn’t looking at any of that. She was outside. Nowhere. Not looking. Not going past the surface level of the images in front of her because-

He screamed again.

She looked.

(holy shit)

Saw his body.

Saw his leg.

Saw his knee.

(nice job)

“I didn’t-” Her mouth opened. Made sounds. There were no thoughts. Just ideas that appeared right in her head and then went straight from her nerves to her voicebox from her throat to her mouth. “I didn’t- I swear- I’m sorry-”

#24

He couldn’t see the white of the bone through the runniness bleed but he could feel where it had spilled out into his muscles and viscera- bits of shrapnel. He didn’t know it was possible to bleed this much. The human body was just a packet of ketchup, overfull, waiting to burst.

Tim only quieted some, enough that his screaming could be called crying if you wiggled with the word.

He stared at her, through eyes squinted almost shut, his way of having something to bite on to shut out the pain because his actual mouth was useless in that regard. Or any. Another unsteady wrack of his lungs.

The burning shame, nagging. That he was being lamer about it than other people normally filmed in the act of dying. Dying. Maybe that's what he was doing. Ceasing to live. The blood was still coming out. Enough ketchup drizzled over the deck through the neck of his ripped open jeans that the sodding soil below was ready to serve.

“Fine-...” Had to force it out, through grit teeth. “Doesn’t… look good. Fuck.” Deep breaths. Didn’t get far enough into his lungs.

“But I’ll live. I’ll-...”

#25

(will he?)

(will he really?)

She didn’t know. She didn’t know. It was obvious he would. The thing she’d done had only hurt his knee and even if the knee was a pretty bad place to get hit it wasn’t fatal. It wasn’t your femoral artery. It wasn’t your jugular it wasn’t your heart it wasn’t your lungs it wasn’t your brain and Timothy was going to live. Timothy was obviously going to live. She didn’t know why she was thinking otherwise. She didn’t know why her brain was thinking she’d just killed him. Maybe it was because of all the things that’d happened before it. Maybe it was because the act of simply letting go of her bag had caused him to slingshot and fall down the stairs. Maybe it was because the act of letting go of her bag had fucked up his knee. Completely- no, no, she couldn’t have done that. He’d just fallen down some stairs. How was there blood? Why was he screaming? Why did it look like he was about to die?

(because of you)

Why did she think he was going to die?

(because you just killed him)

(not now)

(but it’s clear how long he’ll last)

(you said it earlier, at least one of you or him is going to be dead by the end of this)

(no inbetweens)

(no compromises)

(you’ve just made sure it’s him)

No. No. He wasn’t going to die. It was just his leg. His leg wasn’t fatal. Not very fatal. She could do something. She could do something. She could

(make sure)

(make sure it’s not you as well)

“No. You won’t. You’re not gonna die. Let me help. I can help. I. I.”

#26

He appreciated the vote of confidence. He guessed.

He felt okay. Not in the not being in lethally inescapable agony sense, no, that was still bearing down onto him like the weight of the whole world and his stupid battleship-size shoulders were still somehow being useless and inert.

“Wait I will die or I won’t die.” He’d intended it to come out as a form of bantz, saucy and sauve in tone but his teeth were still pressed together so tight he could barely even get air through them let alone words. His trying for movie script dialogue came out more along the lines of ‘aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’ with some extra syllables here and there.

He was actually afraid of getting up. As if that would make it worse.

“I can-”

It was, like. He wanted to start to try to claw off the floor by putting weight onto one foot. Didn’t even have to be the one on the now bad leg, did it? He could do something. But the specter of pain somehow worse than this held him off. A future image of himself, a deeply unsettling one, of a Timothy that tried to get up and hurt more and died a little faster.

“Or maybe not.” It all left him heavy as stone. Sitting there, waiting. “Help me a bit, if you can. We can get a move on.”

Talking quick and curt sentences at least, cut through a bit of the omnipresent frontal lobe static of ‘it hurts it hurts ithurtsithurtsithurts’.

#27

“Let’s do-”

(let’s do what?)

(let’s inbetween?)

(let’s compromise?)

(let’s delay the inevitable?)

(you’re smarter than that)

(you’re smarter than this)

“Let’s… go. Somewhere.” She tried to look around. Tried to look somewhere that wasn’t his body. His leg. His knee. “If… if this is what I think it is, then… then there should be some places where people live nearby. We can... put you there. Hide you. Keep you safe until-”

(until what?)

“Until your team comes, maybe.”

#28

(And yes of course, he’d forgotten about the whole team thing again.)

It did seem like a good mentality to have for survival, arbitrarily forgetting things.

“Like a house or something? Yeah.”

His next breath was noticeably heavier than the previous. A bit more effort had to be put into rounding out his lungs so air would actually go on and ‘git.

Foreboding moment, where his body refused to be reasonable. At some point he supposed he’d taken it for granted that he could count on it. Now it was just a thing he happened to be tethered to: a lead brick of a breath, a pile of splinters he called legs. He held one hand up. It trembled as he hoped Verity would grab onto it. Consciously, he somehow still had the energy to think of how awkward this looked out-of-context.

#29

“More like… a bunk bed, but…”

Okay. This was normal. This was calm. This wasn’t normal and calm at all but it was comparative. This was it. This was Survival of the Fittest. This was the best Verity was ever going to get to maybe being normal and calm. There was no idea that maybe one day school would end. There was no idea that maybe someday somebody or something was going to come down from high and save her. No. This wasn’t Miami anymore. This wasn’t normal. This wasn’t calm. Timothy’s knee was gone and there was blood and it was all because she’d let go of her bag. It was just like all the things she’d ever thought about this game. That it had to begin at some point. That she couldn’t just sit down and pretend it wasn’t happening and do nothing and die. No. She was here. She was on this ship. The Verity Stewart in Miami who did nothing and was very sad about it had to die. A new Verity had to take her place. There was a life worth keeping somewhere in this soul. She had to find it. She had to keep it. For her sake. Maybe for her sake.

And now she knew what she had to do. And now she knew how she was going to do it.

However many minutes before the game actually began, Verity Stewart had woken up.

((SS01: Begin))

“I’ll… hoist you. Give you a shoulder to hold. An extra set of legs or, um, something. I’ll take you there. I… might be able to find it?”

#30

“We still have the maps…”

The idea occurred to him faster than he could act on it, but he managed to eventually catch up. His hand, which was far less destroyed utterly by a dramatically romantic interlude with the earth below him, rifed into his bag and… The motion faltered. His hand was buried in clothes and dresses he reluctantly (?) refused to wear. A bit short on energy. A bit short on breath.

His vision swam as he forced his lungs to work. Hard and deep, drinking down oxygen like it was a college party keg.

“... Later,” he gasped. “We’ll do it later. Just get a move on now. While we’re still alone.”

Why was she helping him, though? Fuck he was such a tool. He’d accused her and now she was going out of her way to prove him wrong without so much as a little bit of saltiness on her part, much as she’d deserve to evoke all the NaCl in all the salt mines ever dug.

And he was still thinking these thoughts, of course, while he had the energy for none of them. Good prioritization on his part.

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