Deep inside of a parallel universe
It's getting harder and harder
To tell what came first
Adam blinked once at the boy sitting in front of him. Every single impulse in his body was screaming at him at once. Every single hair on the back of his neck was raised, almost like a wild animal looking at a predator, knowing full well what was coming. Teeth clenched as he listened to the person who just moments before had berated him for the way that he'd 'played the game' talking about killing as though he were speaking about a stroll in the park that he'd just taken, Adam tried to keep the emotion that was beginning to surface in spurts down below.
This shit just isn't adding up. Like, AT ALL. First he's going on about how killing is so wrong, and he's all up in my fucking face about it, and now he says that he's got people to kill?
A sour look came upon Adam's face as he looked at the boy sitting in front of him, replacing the stoic grimace that he'd been wearing for the past several moments. He knew that of anyone, he was the last person to admonish when it came to killing, but...Adam could not shake the feeling that there was something seriously wrong in this situation.
Under water where thoughts can breathe Easily
Far away you were made in a sea
Just like me
"So...so, hold up. Mister...I'm gonna go and avoid everyone, Mister...I haven't killed anyone yet, because I don't plan on it...Mister...what the hell's wrong with you for killing to survive, you're all of a sudden vowing that you're going to go and kill a couple of people, just because - get this: you have to?"
Adam held up his hands and sarcastically shook his head a little bit.
"Well, let's just fuckin' bug out and call it even then, huh? The FUCK is wrong with you, man? You like toying with people, huh? What the hell gives you the right to come and judge me over the way that I've decided to conduct myself in this hell-hole, huh? Fuck sakes, man! I've done what I've had to do in order to fuckin' survive! So while you've been out hiding like a fuckin' pussy in the bushes - if that's even what you've been doing, because, Betsy, I've been SERIOUSLY havin' doubts. To be completely honest with you, I'm beginning to wonder if half of what you've told me up until this point hasn't been...what the French call...le BULLSHIT. You have fucking NO right to judge me."
Adam spit in the dirt, and the look on his face darkened.
"No right at all."
Christ I'm a sidewinder I'm a
California King
I swear it's everywhere
It's everything
Adam felt himself getting angrier and angrier. He assumed it might have been the lack of food, perhaps the fact that he hadn't drank much water for the day. Even the lack of sleep, maybe. Perhaps it was the fact that in the past nine days, he'd watched most of his close friends die painful deaths. Could've been the fact that he'd ended the lives of eight people. Whatever it was, Adam felt something snap inside of him at that very moment. It was at that very moment, as he stood, nearly yelling at the boy that he knew as Andrew, that everything started to come together. Voice coming down a little, Adam smiled a little at Andrew, as he felt his mental agility settling back down into place. Something that told the other boy this was that Adam began to guesture quite a bit, something he did when he was feeling pissed, yet in control of a situation.
"Now...I don't really know...Andrew...if you've really been listening a fuckin' word I've even been saying. Like, hell, I don't even know if your name is really Andrew. Or if you're even from...wherever the fuck you said you were from. I don't really care, at this point. For all I know, you could be Cody fucking Jensen and having a big laugh at my expense. And if that happens to be true - I will kill you. Bank it."
Taking a momentary pause, Adam scratched the back of his neck with the shotgun that he had picked up sometime during his last rant.
Man, I don't even remember doing that.
Staring straight up into the sky
Oh my my a solar system that fits
In your eye Microcosm
You could die but your never dead spider web
Take a look at the stars in
Your head fields of space kid
"Buddy. I have, in the past nine days, while you've been hiding out masturbating yourself furiously because you figured, 'oh gee, I'd better do it while I still can, before my nuts get blown off by some psychopathic ninth grader', I've seen a lot of shit, that I never figured I would ever have to see. Not in this lifetime, not in the next, not even in my wildest fucking dreams. I have listened to my best friend die, and then discovered his corpse a day or so later. I have surrounded myself with people that I thought that I could trust, people that I swore to protect at all costs, and then; over the next few days, watched them all die in various unpleasant ways. I have, for the first time, found a girl who returned my affections, and then stumbled upon to her corpse, next to the raped body of another friend. I have pushed a button and watched my finger be the direct cause of people's lives being ended. Yes. This...finger. And this one, for that matter. I've probably said the word 'fuck' more times in the last nine days than I have in the last nine years, probably more times than I've ever said it, since I learned the word, back on the playground in Toronto in grade one. If I end up living through this, I will undoubtedly be paying the therapy bills from now until the day that I fucking die. So while you've been doing...whatever the hell you decided to do...I've been fighting for my goddamn life. And ya' know what? I've been a pretty damn good job of it. There's what, almost a hundred people dead? So I've outlived at least one hundred people, and I've pretty much been shot at, oh, it averages out to about, I dunno, one every two hours, every day for the last nine days?"
Adam stopped to take a breath, glanced around to ensure that the area was still relatively empty (excluding the corpses) and continued on.
Christ I'm a sidewinder I'm a
California King
I swear it's everywhere
It's everything
"So while I've been actually out there - FIGHTING, for my life. Not hiding. Not watching shit pass me by, but actually, honest-to-god, fighting to survive, you've been sitting in the bushes, pulling your pecker."
Stopping for a second, he cocked his head, shrugged a little, and continued on, as though he'd thought of something.
"Truth be told, I don't even know if you're telling the truth - every bone in my body is screaming at me that you're lying to me, except for my funny bone, and frankly, my funny bone's a jackass, so his opinion just doesn't count."
Holding up a hand, Adam calmed himself a little.
"But...for the sake of argument, we'll say that you ARE telling the truth. You say that you're going to go out there and kill three people. Just like that. Easy as fuckin' pie. Well, y'know what, Andy? I don't know if you truly realize the true impact that killing someone actually has on a person. Look at me. I've killed eight people. Yeah, after the eighth, I just kinda sighed and wondered why I seem to be such a crazy magnet, but gee golly, I've gotta tell ya, the first time that I killed someone, I felt like someone'd taken a buzzsaw and split me from head to toe. T'be honest, if I hadn't been with people I cared about - damnit, people that I
loved, I truly would've taken the gun, stuck it in my own mouth, and popped my own head clean off. Jeez, I killed the motherfucker in SELF DEFENSE, and I still felt that way, I shit you not. And y'know what? If you don't feel like that the first time that you kill someone, that makes you one thing, and that thing gets screamed very loud, very clear: that makes you a fucking sociopath.
So don't you EVER...talk about killing someone like it's the easiest thing in the world - because I've got news for ya, brother...it ain't."
Christ I'm a sidewinder I'm a
California King
I swear it's everywhere
It's everything
Looking at Andrew, head to toe, and shaking his head in dismay at the bloody visage staring him back in the face, Adam bit the inside of his cheek. There were things that he'd been holding in for days, things that he'd probably be better off telling a therapist. Fact was, though, since he figured that he might be dead within hours anyways, now was as good a time as any.
"You can sit there and talk a big game, Andrew. But y'know what? You don't know. It's all just words, until you live it. I...I have fucking lived it, man. So y'know what? Go ahead, kill those three people. An' then come back and find me, and we'll have a talk, you can tell me just how great you're doing."
Psychic changes are born in your heart
Entertain
A nervous breakthrough that makes us the
same
Bless your heart girl
Kill the pressure it's raining on
Salty Cheeks
When you hear the beloved song
I am with you
Adam held the shotgun in front of him, crossed across his chest as though he were using it as a lifeline. In a sense, it was. Sighing a little, Adam glanced around again, and nodded.
"I'm gonna take my leave of you now, Andrew. Gonna let you go and fight your war. Going to try and hopefully avoid getting shot at for at least a day, that'd be kind of nice. So...really, until we meet again, Andrew."
Adam turned to walk away, but then held a finger up and turned back to him, a sad look in his eyes.
"Oh, yeah...don't follow me. If...if you follow me, I'll kill you. And, yes...I'm quite aware that I was just going on about the horrors of murder, but...there's one thing that I kind of neglected to mention...it's that, Andrew...it's the worst feeling in the world the first time around. After the third time, it still sucks, feels like you've been hit with a bad flu. After the fifth, you don't cry anymore and just feel like shit. Then everything after six, you just kind of sigh a little, and just wonder when it's all going to end. Point is...I won't hesitate, because this game has made me into a killer. It's really all that you can do to try and make sure that it doesn't get you, in the end."
Christ I'm a sidewinder I'm a
California King
I swear it's everywhere
It's everything
"An', man...doesn't that fuckin' blow?"
Holding the shotgun in front of him, and scooping up his bag from the ground from which it was sitting, Adam Dodd began to walk away from the boy sitting on the rock, the boy who he knew as Andrew, not caring, for the moment, anyway, who the kid was. All he knew was that he needed to get away from there, and get a read on how the rest of the game was going to wind down. In his mind, he'd realized that if there were about twenty students left, the danger zones would begin to increase in numbers, and the amount of safe havens would start to shoot down. Odds were, the game wouldn't last another two days.
And with any luck, at the end of the two days, Adam Dodd planned to be the last man standing, no matter what the cost.
Christ I'm a sidewinder I'm a
California King
I swear it's everywhere
It's everything
((Continued in: A Link to the Past))