elsewhere

[MurderWeasel]

((Sven Vee continued from Just keep breathin' and breathin' and breathin'))

Sven tumbled through the low-hanging branches of the tree, twigs and leaves scratching and scraping at him but causing no real harm, held at bay by his thick flannel shirt. His bags thumped against his side and back, and he felt the weight of something greater upon him, but he wasn't quite sure what. His right shoe was pinching his foot, like he'd been pressing it against the gas pedal for a very long time or else as if he'd walked quite a ways indeed. Most people's feet were not actually symmetrical. He'd read that somewhere. It made truly sizing shoes properly difficult, and most preconceptions about beauty a lie.

It was morning, now. He was not sure if he'd slept. His memories of his journey to this place were fragmentary and equal measures improbable and banal.

The guy at the lighthouse had said he planned to set out for the town come morning. Sven had thought that he wouldn't do so himself. Perhaps that had been foolish. Perhaps he should reconsider and seek out his erstwhile companion once more. They'd had something good going on, or at least they'd had something going on. They had found a place of refuge and quiet, for a time, but then it had been shattered and Sven had been cast adrift before things could fully degenerate.

It was better this way. His memories of that time (minutes? hours?) would remain positive, mostly. He would have to make a note not to return to that place, if he could help it.

He didn't know the boy's name, he realized all of a sudden, as the announcements rolled on and on as they had been for a little bit now and he picked himself off the ground and brushed the debris from his hands and jeans. That was probably for the best. No telling whether he was alive or dead, unless they happened to cross paths once more.

Sven patted the lightsaber still hanging at his belt, assuring himself it hadn't been lost. He didn't really know many of the names on the announcement, either, come to think of it. Oh, some of them tickled him in the abstract, syllables familiar from roll call and so on, bastardizations by substitute teachers in that world so far away from anything that meant anything to him, but he couldn't have painted their faces.

The exceptions were Yuko, whose sister he was acquainted with, and Dante, who had roomed with him. Yuko meant nothing to him, really, besides in that way where the ripples of her demise were easier to conceptualize, a visible disruption to the tranquil pond of the universe, except that it of course was actually an ever-churning pool of mud, ready at any moment to erupt into a geyser. Dante was that and more. Dante had tried to be nice. No, he had been nice. He had been good to Sven, and Sven had been unable to return the favor, and now that brought to mind Aurelien, who would be crushed, whose certain reaction was one Sven could not begin to empathize with but could visualize well indeed. And then, almost more troubling: Claudeson.

Yuki, Aurelien, and Claudeson were all right now, right this very moment, hearing and reacting and feeling these things, in different places elsewhere on this island, and Sven felt himself pulled between all of those locations, watching and listening and offering a steadying hand or a shoulder to cry on or a dark grin from the shadows, stretched everywhere at once but tethered to this one spot also, despite its utter lack of meaning. And yet, he could see nobody, had seen nobody in some time, would see nobody for a little while yet.

Now was not the time to sit idle. He shoved his way through the foliage, opening up a tunnel through a bush of thorns that led somewhere other than the other side.

((Sven Vee continued in Woody Harrelson wearing a red wig in the Stinger of Venom saying “There’s Going To Be Carnage”))