darkness

[MurderWeasel]

Before Yvette could reply, the distorted voice of one of their captors poured from around them, more suffocating and distressing than the insects could ever be. The woman spoke on and on, and Yvette held Jenelle tightly while listening.

She hated how easy it was to slip right back into place, her fingers pressing tightly into the shorter girl's back. It was like things had never changed, or maybe like they should've been in the first place if Yvette had figured out what she was actually looking for and then communicated that. She didn't feel good, but she felt slightly better than she otherwise would, and she clung to that more than anything.

After the words, there was comparative quiet. By now, most of the bugs had finished traversing the room. There were a few stragglers, roaches scrambling and flies buzzing and bumping off the walls, but they were mostly away from the people. The meat was more or less still. She could ignore everyone's breathing. The flashlight was pointing straight down at the ground, but Yvette couldn't see what it was casting its light on, if anything. Her eyes were closed.

She didn't want to think at all. She didn't want to deal with any of this. A bunch of her friends had skipped the trip. There wasn't really anything special about potatoes, but Yvette had always liked excuses to spend a day doing something new, and had figured it had to be more interesting than class.

How had she ever thought she could be the one to hold this together? One hint that somebody else would shoulder the burden, and Yvette was more than willing to hand it over.

"I do," she whispered to Jenelle, "but I'm worried about the others."

[Lilith]

"Who cares about them?"

It was almost a flirt. She didn't.

"I don't."

People already knew that.

[Kermit]

A disembodied voice sighed somewhere in the darkness.

Astrid's flashlight turned back on, fifteen feet further down the hall leading from the room than the last time it could be seen. Its beam was directed half on Jenelle and half on Yvette.

"Jenelle. You're awfully invested in not caring, for someone who doesn't care." She stated.

[Yonagoda]

''Maybe she just cares about not caring,'' Melodie spoke up, ''Like, you know, how people try not to get attached to stuff they know they'll lose.''

What she meant to say was, 'Astrid, not everybody is as complicated as you are. Kindly shut the fuck up. Before Jenelle fucking dies or kill us or both.'

What she meant to express was, 'Astrid, stop picking fights like you're a therapist getting their patient to admit to something.'

What she came off as was probably 'Hey both of you suck my dick Im smarter than you two'

Actually no.

Wait.

Yeah no.

She'd just talking to fill up space again, because she felt awfully non-existant for the past few moments. The meat wasnht still anymore, it was kind of just wibbling and wobbling. She sighed. Melodie sighs a lot. She shrugs a lot, too, and nods a lot. She just tries to appear more there than she is sometimes, like she was trying to prove that she was involved and real- she had to react to everything, had to be in as many people's memories and stories as she could if she got the chance to.

''I think if we try to leave we'll just die, but, like, faster by the way,'' her shaky voice supplied. ''I won't be surprised if someone already tried.''

It's like that... something... O-whatever-am's razor. But like the opposite. If there's an obvious way of getting out, it's probably the most guarded. Right?

[MurderWeasel]

Yvette didn't say anything right away, but when the light hit her it was visible as a bright pink glow even through her closed eyelids, and so she snapped them open and looked into the beam. This dusty old room didn't look any better than it had the first time, but Astrid had at least backed her way down the hall. The girl was finally giving up, which made Yvette more sad than relieved, and that surprised her.

The other two girls weren't wrong about Jenelle, either, while being as wrong as they possibly could be at the same time. They were correct that Jenelle put on airs, that she played up her lack of care, but they would be horribly disappointed if they thought that pointing that out would do anything other than lock her into her decisions. With their insight, they could've massaged the situation and maybe worked it all out, but how could Yvette hope for that when she'd been barely managing to keep calm trying to mediate between Astrid and Melodie? Why would they suddenly develop a sense for diplomacy?

She really wanted this to stop. She wanted everything to calm down so she could give up on being the responsible one, and she wanted to sit down and talk with Jenelle, and with Astrid, and with Melodie, but each individually, with all the time in the world and without a bomb ticking down.

When Yvette spoke, she only figured out what she was saying halfway through.

"I care," she whispered to Jenelle's ear, "but I think I want to go with you more."

[Lilith]

"I know you do." It was a soft and faint whisper.

Jenelle pulled away. Yves was one of the few people she could touch. She wanted to remember that feeling. Engrave it in her brain.

"Austin told me to me to live." She said. "But I'm not that selfish. And I'm not smart enough for the rest."

It was a response to Melodie without responding to Melodie. She wanted to a address the Meat Moss. She grossed her out. It was purulent and gross. Like the bugs. Or the Owl. She had a pimple growing on the inside of her ear, and it was somehow less gross than Meat Moss.

Nasty piece of work.

"I'm doing it in another room."

[Yonagoda]

They're not listening. Or, they were listening, but only with their ears and Melodie felt like she wasnht making any sense to them. And they're talking, but it felt like it was only with their mouths, and it didn't make any sense.

It was like watching a train wreck as somebody who's never seen a train before- there was a beauty in the flinging metal, but she understood, without really understanding it at all, that something bad would happen, that no matter what these two would die. She didn't understand why, at all, but she knew.

They're the calm before the storm.

She's going to be the wreckage the gale winds swept up.

[Kermit]

The trickle of blood coming down from Astrid's nose had, by now, dried.

Standing still, she knocked the side of her boot against a wooden crate full of test tubes. It made a sound like a room full of people toasting glasses.

"Yvette, you know the scene in The Neverending Story where the horse drowns itself?" She said.

"Don't fucking throw yourself away trying to help someone who won't let you actually save them. You deserve better than that."

[MurderWeasel]

Yvette listened to what was said, as she stayed there with her arms still wrapped around Jenelle. She tried her best to pay attention to the gaps, too, to figure out what implications she might be missing, but there was just so much that had been going on and where everyone stood and what they wanted was changing so quickly, or else Yvette just didn't actually understand what any of them had ever been driving at.

"Thanks," was what she finally said, over Jenelle's shoulder to Astrid.

She didn't add "You too." She didn't think she needed to.

Her grip on Jenelle finally loosened, and she pulled away enough to properly turn and look at Melodie, letting the flashlight light up the quivering meat all around the girl.

"If you want to, to come along, then you can," she said. "And if you're just going to stay here then, then if I can I'll check on you. Or send help."

A glance back to Astrid. Back to Melodie.

"Stay safe."

Yvette's free hand searched for Jenelle's.

[Lilith]

"Why are you such a bitch Astrid? I mean I get it: you like LCD Soundsystem. It rotted your brain off. Your brain stem fell out and your thoughts are all scrambled! Sorry girl! Now, I'm gonna' go kill myself in the other room which is way more goth than your mall goth looking ass will ever fucking achieve, you embarrassing excuse of a Robert Smith stan. He would literally tear out your spine if he ever caught sight of you, which thank God he won't because you're gonna' die like a fucking bug in a cult compound. Stupid bitch."

She grabbed Yves' hand.

"By the way Melodie, I always thought you had nice hair."

She walked away back into the hallway. Fucking bugs.

[Yonagoda]

"Um... Thank you. I, uh, dyed it myself. And I, um- I'll stay here. Outside. With Astrid. If I hear an explosion..."

She'll run and pray.

"I'll check in on you."

She looked at Astrid with an emotion that superficially resembled pity, the same way an Old Navy mannequin superficially resembled a person. It wasn't an It-sucks-that-she-said-this-to-you pity, but an you're-going-to-listen-to-them-probably-die-with-me kind of pity.

[Kermit]

Astrid's brows narrowed very slightly.

"OH THAT REMINDS ME: HEY YVETTE, BLANCMANGE WAS GOOD. I LIKED BLIND VISION. FUCK YOU JENELLE YOU FUCKING WHITE TRASH METHHEAD BITCH YOU STOLE MY GODDAMN FUCKING CLOTHES YOU SMELL LIKE A MEATMOSS ROOM AND I ALWAYS THOUGHT IT WAS HILARIOUS THAT SOMEONE LIKE YOU LITERALLY DESTROYS EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH." She spat, extending her arm, pointing her flashlight at Jenelle's face and strobing the beam off and on and off and on and off.

[MurderWeasel]

Sometimes, when it went like this, Yvette felt like she was almost invisible, and like her voice was so tiny that no matter how loud she screamed nobody could hear her.

Probably the biggest relief that had come from her breakup with Jenelle was not having to explain or apologize for the girl to other friends. This was how Jenelle worked: she output anger and insults and aggression, because that meant when she received the same in kind it was something she had chosen. She was in control of it, and if she happened to get something else instead, like kindness or understanding, then that was a bonus surprise. If you expected nothing but dismissal, it was hard to be too disappointed when that was all you got.

Knowing this helped with interacting with Jenelle, but most of the class didn't bother to even try to reach that sort of comprehension. They just saw Jenelle as so different that the gulf could never be spanned. Yvette had always suspected that even the others she spent so much time with, Crispin and Moose and Alan, didn't quite get Jenelle. They just appreciated her defense mechanism because it worked with their way of doing things.

And of course, even if someone else did understand, it was hard to put any of it into practice. Jenelle was very good at getting the reactions she wanted.

Yvette's grip was very tight around Jenelle's hand. She wished she didn't like everybody here quite a lot. She wished she wasn't in a position to be leveraged as a weapon against each of the others.

"I'm glad you liked it," she said to Astrid, because that was the only part she felt equipped to acknowledge.

Then she took a step towards the hallway, gently tugging on Jenelle.

[Lilith]

Jenelle cackled, her head lolling back to both avoid the flickering lights and to echo her laugh in the underground.

"Is that the best you can do? Scream and wail? Tell me I smoke meth? You say that when you surround yourself with goths with daddy issues that we both know fried their brain on molly and crack." She took a jab, both physical and metaphorical toward Astrid with her index.

"I'm glad you'll be joining them soon, so they can figure out what they do with you, you fucking clown." Jenelle smiled. "You'll never be what you think are. You'll never come anywhere close. You'll never, ever ever be as detached as you think you are because you're a fake. A phony. You're a sham Astrid. You're not as good at manipulating people as you think you are. You just surrounded yourself with stupid fucks who likes to get pushed around, losers without any purpose. You don't have anything else other than your stupid social status that you can't even keep relevant when you're about to die."

Jenelle put her hand on her hip. "By the way, my sister put rhinestones on your rags. She made it pastel goth."

[Yonagoda]

Melodie felt almost like Astrid and Jenelle might actually kill each other and she and Yvette are just going to watch. She was kind of acting automatically when she chose to not look at either of the girls, pretending like there's nobody but the bugs and the meat here. That insults they traded almost seemed to hurt Melodie herself than each other.

It made her feel selfish, kind of. Like, oh, of course they're arguing to insult you because you're so important. Like, can't you (Jenelle) just go and get yourself killed already and get it over with? What's the holdup? Do you want your last moments to be calling someone a fucking clown? Is hurting other people so important to you as a person that you just can't go without it?

And Astrid, too. Telling Yvette that Jenelle doesn't care about her, like she actually knows what's going on with the two, like she actually has any fucking say in what they can and cannot do, like she isn't just confined by being herself, but she had to be and control and move around other people on the board too. As if everybody in this room isn't guided by invisible walls. Nothing Astrid says or do could affect what Yvette wanted to say or do, in a way, couldn't she just understand that? People can't actually hurt each other like that. There's a layer they need to get through first

Anyways, her hands weren't clean of sin- she sort of enjoyed making people uncomfortable. But not angry. Never angry. And she felt like when more than two people are angry in a room together, then something's going to break down. She felt angry, too, at herself.

It suddenly came to her that she could, technically, blanket and suffocate at least two out of three other people in this room if she could. It was the same feeling when she was cutting vegetables next to her mom and she felt really awkward. Like one of her neighbors who owned a gun, and she knew where it is because she stumbled upon it when she was twelve. It's like being Noah and walking down the hallways knowing you could be a school shooter. It's like Cyrus looking right at her. It's like killing a character for emotional impact. It's like Melodie being herself, all the time.