SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

((Mary-Ann Warren continued from Confiscate the Crown))

Mary-Ann walked with her bag dragging on the ground behind her. If you asked her where she was going, she wouldn't have been able to tell you. If you asked her why she kept going, she would have shrugged.

Sometimes during her walk she'd start to cry. The bad thoughts and events of the last few days would push the tears through and then she'd get worn down, go numb, and stop. The cycle of tears and memories went on for hours until she saw the shack in the distance. Bodies in front served as lawn ornaments. Mary-Ann hardly glanced down as she pushed through to the entrance of the hut. The inside was a wreck. She continued on until she found a half destroyed bed, soaked over in dried blood. Mary-Ann left her pack, put her gun on a night stand near the bed and laid down. She looked blankly up at the old, stained ceiling.


"I want to die, please," she said to no one in particular. It was flat. There was not an ounce of sorrow or pleading.

She shut her eyes and she shook like a leaf. She opened her mouth and gasped.

"It should never have been me," she said quietly. RJ was the stronger of the two. It should have been him here. Thea and Charlene. They were so full of fire and drive. They would have made it to the end for sure. She calculated at the last announcement. There couldn't have been more than 50 of them left. The people that were left were the toughest, the best. They were survivors. What was she? She was like whipped cream. Pretty and sweet, but worthless. She was fluff.

She was a friendly girl. She was quiet, but kind. This was no place for her. She should have been weeded out long ago. Hayley had known that. Hayley knew Mary-Ann wouldn't shoot even though Hayely was prepared to kill her without a second thought. She didn't even care. She thought it was so funny that Mary-Ann survived.

Everyone she'd met was dead. Her hand bunched up the disgusting sheets under her.

"I don't want to be alone," she choked. Mary-Ann turned and buried her face into the grimy mattress.

"I don't want to have to go through more of this. I can't. I can't go through another day. I've reached the end. I'm sorry I'm so ineffectual. They'll kill me. They'll kill me. When will they come to kill me?" she mumbled into the mattress.

Mary-Ann was hyperventilating. Soon she calmed down, breathing even. She was dizzy. Her hands stopped trembling and fell to her side. Her muscles relaxed. She was unconscious now and if someone was going to walk in and blow her to a million pieces, she hardly cared.

Mary-Ann lifted her head. She was in some sort of forest. Everything was red. Why was everything red? She pulled herself up and stumbled around. She pushed back the strange branches and slimy leaves in her way. What they were slimy with, she didn't know nor did she want to know.

Mary-Ann

She gasped and turned on her heels. She spun in circles. There was nothing near. Not even the wind was blowing. It occurred to her that she wasn't wearing clothes. That didn't really bother her for some reason. She kept walking in the direction she thought she heard her name from.

Suddenly the trees stopped and she was on a beach. At the end of the beach was a boat. She was free.

Mary-Ann ran frantically through the sand. It was knee deep, this sand. Whatever. The sand didn't matter. She was free to go home. And then suddenly she was stopped and fell backwards.

She put her hands up to the space in front of her and her hands were blocked as well. It was like a mirror maze, but the walls were clear plastic. She could see the thing she wanted. In a straight line the boat would be no more than twenty feet away. But she was trapped. She got up and tried as fast as she could to navigate the impossible maze. Nothing she did made a bit of difference. Time after time she hit the clear barriers.

When someone heartless hears a heartbeat they're jeaaallouuuusss

"No use!" she screamed.

She pitched herself forward and there was nothing in front of her. She was in the town square. R.J. caught her.

If you could have him back for a minute, just one, would you? One minute, but it comes with a heavy heavy price.

"One minute?" she exhaled. "Yes."

He smiled at her and she smiled back. They hugged. He was so warm and lovely. She was safe here. It was the safest place in the world. The minute was up. His nails dug into her arms. She looked up and the flesh was rotted and his smile was twisted and gaping.

Her hands shot out at his neck, squeezing with all her might. She could feel the bones and muscles crinkle and crack under her hold. A sick, but feminine cough came out of the thing. It almost sounded like a laugh. It brought a decayed hand up to hers, fastened tightly, so tightly, around it's neck. As if she were a cracker, it snapped off the index finger of her right hand.

Her eyes squeezed tight as the blood gushed from her severed finger. She opened her mouth to scream and she felt the scream, but she didn't hear it.



She opened her eyes and she was at the base of a temple in a toga. Mary-Ann swung around again, looking for something. The temple was red, like the trees. Pillars of fire surrounded her and the building. She bit her lip.


The thing laughed at her and she continued to squeeze it by the neck. It should have been dead by now. Her fingers sunk into the rotted flesh.


Mary-Ann hugged herself. She couldn't see anything past what the fire illuminated. There was only blackness. She crouched down. She didn't have it in her to move any more. There was a tingling, empty feeling all around her. Mary-Ann knew that if she could just find someone that the feeling would stop. She needed someone to lean on, someone's shoulder to rest her head on. She used to do that when she'd had a bad day. She would go home and her dad would always ask her how her day was and if he saw in her eyes that it hadn't been great, he'd sit down and she'd sit next to him and rest her head on his shoulder while he patted down her hair and she'd tell him what was wrong.

It broke her heart that she would never have that again. Her hand tugged at the toga. The sheet was stiff and filthy to the touch.

There was singing coming from the temple. Carefully she mounted the stone steps. Her shadow was cast in front of her from the flames in at the entrance.

Inside the stone swam and wavered like it wasn't stone at all. The choir wasn't singing. They were shrieking as they burned.

Darling.

It was the voice from the announcements. The man. Mary-Ann covered her ears and fell to her knees.

"Leave me alone!"

You're a good girl.

"Why are you doing this?" she hissed through clenched teeth.

You are an offering.

Mary-Ann couldn't block out the voice. Her hands were still clamped down on her ears but at the same time she felt herself still trying to choke the monster from the town square. She could still feel the half-caved in throat in her hands.

You will die as an offering.

Her eyes flew open. She was tangled in the sheets from the bed, the toga. She was wrapped in the bloody sheets of Rose Codreanu. She pulled her hands away, horrified. She must not have seen it . Dried blood and the smell of corpse was all over her hands. She didn't care who heard her.

She screamed.

((Peter Siu continued from Radio Nowhere))

As much as Peter liked to believe he'd been hardened by his time on the island, he was still a sucker for a screaming girl.

Maybe it was because he didn't have a new charge. Eiko had managed to get to an escape boat, assuming the boats didn't actually get attacked on their way out. Even if they were, there was no point in worrying about what it meant. Like how he could've been pushing Brendan onto a boat to die. So instead, he focused his thoughts toward the things he could do: kill the murderers, protect the innocents.

The good news of the morning was that Maxwell Lombardi was finally dead, Raidon named as the killer. Peter shouldn't be frustrated by this, but he was. Peter should have been the one to do it, not Raidon. All around the island, killers were killing each other. Granted, at this point, most of the people left were killers, but even yesterday, some of the people that had been killed had never taken another life: Morgan Leftowitz, Autumn O'Leary, Thea Kairos, Sunil Savarkar, Robert Barron. There were only so many people left on the island. Peter needed to do something that mattered.

Which was the long-winded reason as to why Peter's initial reaction to the scream was to find the girl and protect her. Honest.

The little hut was not far from the large field that Peter had woken up in on the first day. There were bodies, old and starting to decay, lying around the hut. He'd have to give them something resembling a proper burial later. First things first: he had a girl to save.

Of course, Peter had been expecting that there was something to save her from, which was why he burst through the doorway gun in hand. All he found was a girl on a bed. Well, two girls on a bed, but one was long dead. The other was curled up on the bed, cowering away from the corpse and covering her face. The situation was awkward enough without a gun, so Peter sheepishly laid the rifle on the ground and took some long slow strides toward the girl.

"Um, are you alright?" Peter said softly as he stepped closer. "I don't think she's going to hurt you, so there's probably nothing to be afraid of." Nothing to be afraid of unless she was another killer. But he'd cross that bridge when he got to it. Peter stopped a few feet from the bed, wary about frightening the girl any further.

"It's okay. Everything's going to be okay."

Mary-Ann ran out her screaming until is grated down on the bottom of her throat and dragged to a forced stop. Just then she heard the creak of the door. In her peripheral vision some dark shape moved. She tried to get up out of the bed but over extended, falling off, still tangled in bloody bed sheets.

She thrashed and wriggled until her head was visible from the heap on the floor. Mary-Ann looked up to see just how screwed she was. She expected a chain saw wielding psycho with half their face bloody and raw.

It was just a boy. She remembered his name was Peter, but there was no last name attached to it and her mind couldn't pull up any further information.

He spoke gently and he came to her unarmed. He wanted to help her. Suddenly she felt stupid for freaking out like she did.

"I-I know," she sputtered. The girl was long gone and no threat now.


"I...it just...there was..."

She needed to explain why she was so scared and why she didn't want him to help her. He needed to leave, but the words weren't coming out.

"Everyone's dead. Everyone I was with. Hayley Kelly shot my friends. She was going to shoot me, but she was- she ran out of bullets," she said at lightening speed.

She hugged herself and shivered, digging her nails into her arms and looked up at the boy with wide, frightened eyes.

"It's not okay. It's never going to be okay. I'm dead weight. I couldn't even shoot a girl who would have killed me if it weren't for dumb luck. I'm a millstone and if you stay with me you'll end up like the other people I was with. It's already over. I'm just waiting. I'm not brave enough to even end it myself. I'm holding on and it's pathetic. I can't stop hearing Hayley laugh at me when the gun clicked so empty."

Peter had been hoping that maybe his silly comment would elicit some laughs, or that his more gentle reassurance could cheer up the girl. Something to get away from the dreariness that the past while had been. It was a lot to hope for though. Probably too much. Or maybe Peter was just really bad at being funny or reassuring after so many days on the island.

The girl looked up at him. Mary-Ann Warren. Peter had been right: she wasn't a killer, or been involved in any of the murders so far. It was almost a miracle to find somebody that was worth protecting. Somebody that would deserve to win. No, somebody that would deserve to live.

But when the words came out, a cascade of words that seemed to run together, Peter knew this was no miracle. He could hear it in her words, in her voice: fear, weakness, despair. There wasn't anything here to save. There wasn't any life to her. She couldn't even laugh or smile or look forward after everything she'd gone through. She'd said it herself: she was worthless and just waiting for somebody to kill her.

Some part of him was screaming at him, saying that she needed to be protected. She was defenseless, lost, and afraid. He had the power to protect her. The will to protect her. He'd made that promise, to find somebody that deserved to keep living and to fight for that person's sake. If anyone was going to make it off the island, he was going to make damn sure that the person deserved to live.

Another part of him just calmly laid out the facts.

What was the point of protecting her? Why fight for her life if she didn't even want it herself?

He could already hear the objections: he had no right to judge, to decide if somebody deserved to live. In a vacuum, that was probably true. Everybody deserved to live. He had no more right to take that away than anybody else did. But that was idealistic, and the time for idealism had long past. In the end, there was only one person who would be left standing. Peter could try to protect everyone who deserved to live, all the way to the end. There were still a handful of them. But then they'd get to the end, and in the end, he couldn't save four or five people. Only one.

Only one would live. Only one would be able to keep walking forward past this game. Only one who would have to continue living.

What was the point of saving somebody if they'd given up on life?

Yet, he still wanted to protect her.

Peter quietly stepped back and picked up the gun he'd laid on the ground. His thumb clicked off the safety, but he didn't point the gun at Mary-Ann. Maybe she just needed some encouragement to find that reason to live.

"No. You're wrong. You don't want it to end." Peter wanted his voice to be stern, to be strong. It didn't matter that what he wanted to do was despicable, and the words threatened to choke him. It was just something that had to be done. "It's not over. You want to be able to stand up, get out there, and not be pathetic. You want to live." Peter's voice had escalated, almost shouting. He drew a deep breath, trying to steady his words.

"Because," he said wearily, "if you don't, God help me, I'll help you end it right now."

Mary-Ann was sobbing into the dirty sheets she'd fallen over with when she heard a click. It was familiar. It was the sound of the safety being flicked off. She swallowed and looked up, quiet and serious with her tear streaked face.

A wooden cross dangled from around his neck as he gesticulated and shouted at her. She was so tired and now she'd hit the point where anything she had left was drained by the emotional torrent she'd let out. It was comfortable now, and numb. It felt like there was cotton on her ears and someone had turned up the gray in the room.

"Peter...." she mouthed slowly.

"Peter....there was a Peter. On the announcements. More than once, I remember. Girls that you killed."

Her hands folded down and she dropped the dirty sheet. Mary-Ann had fallen on the opposite side of the bed from her gun on the night stand. She was open and vulnerable. There was not going to be any lucky break if he decided to end her.

"I want to live," she said steadily. "But I don't have any life left in me. I wasn't made to withstand this. I had a good life with people who loved me and friends and hobbies. I didn't have hardships. I was a sweet girl who couldn't tell a boy she liked him. Not brave enough even for that. With that sort of background of comfort and love, how could I ever have made it through this?"

Her eyes were trained on him, though they were still glazed and watery. Her dirty hair was stuck to her cheeks.

"God won't help you. He doesn't have anything to do with it. If you kill me, it's you who chose to do it and he's got no say."

She still had a little bit of fight in her. That was good. But it wasn't enough.

"You can do better, Mary-Ann. You might say that you want to live, but I don't see it." Peter shook his head in exasperation. "It's not easy. Sometimes things suck. That's just how life is. But we have to tough it out. It's the only way to keep going."

Maybe Peter could've ended up like her. Broken from failure. Dejected from loss. Overwhelmed by pain. It wasn't like he'd had a troubled life full of hardships. His parents had always supported him. They'd provided for his needs and taught him how to live a good life. He'd never really been bullied, and he'd always done well in school. Sure, he'd had to move to Minnesota, leaving his friends behind, but at least he could still talk to them and see them once a year. Sure he'd had to hike for hours through the rain or camp out on the snow, but there was always someone watching and safety nets. In the end, he had stepped up to the challenge. It wasn't about how hard it was, or how much everything sucked. It was just a matter of soldiering on. Looking forward and living on.

He could say any of this that was on his mind. Maybe it'd give her that extra little push to figure it out. But that was weakness. He couldn't afford to coddle her, to be her reason to live. The girl had to want it herself. She didn't deserve it otherwise.

"Yeah, I've killed some people. Didn't even mean to for one of them. I'm not proud of any of it. This is all I can do now. Keep living. Making it matter." He wanted so desperately to be able to save her. To save somebody. That was the only way to beat this game: crowning a winner that hadn't maimed and murdered their way to the top. "You don't look like you want to live. Like you deserve to live. Right now, you're as worthless as the words coming from your mouth."

There were tears in his eyes. Why? This was something that needed to be done. Whatever it came down to, there wasn't any more time to feel bad about the things he needed to say. Still, the tears were there, and Peter blinked them back. Again, he could feel his breath constricting in his chest. Why was it so hard to keep up the facade?

"Please. Show me you're worth saving. I don't want to have to do this."

He's insane. More than me. More than even Hayley maybe.

She stared up at him. He was trying to twist this into something where it was her choice and if she chose to die, she would die and it was out of his hands. He didn't want the blame. He wanted to think he'd done an act of mercy. She realized now that he meant to kill her and it didn't make a difference what she said to him. He was just waiting for the right moment to be absolved of blame and if they were trapped in this house long enough, the moment would come.

If she suddenly shouted to the heavens that she wanted to live more than anything else and would fight off anyone and spun all the things he wanted to hear, he'd assume it was a desperate last pitch of a broken girl and shoot her anyway. She had no more energy and even if she left the hut alive, she was certain she'd die right after. She had been wondering when they'd come to kill her and now she knew. If she was going to die, she was going to put her best face forward.

So she was going to go out her way. Mary-Ann wasn't going to let him have anything.

"You don't get to decide what I deserve," she said softly.

Now it was him who was tearing up. He was breathing hard and his hands were constricting.

"I don't want to have to do this," he choked.

She shakily stood up, though her gaze was solid.

"You don't have to do anything. You want to."

The gun was on the other side of the bed on the night stand. If she jumped across the bed and managed not to get shot, there was a chance.

Peter knew that tone of voice. Defiance. It was something that Peter himself was intimately familiar with. Like in every argument with his parents ever. It was just aggravating when people used that tone of voice to say things that weren't true.

At least she stood up though. That was a start. Now she just needed to stand up for herself. She'd need to once this was all over.

He took a deep breath to steady himself again, and blinked back the tears. "If I wanted to, you'd have been dead when I walked in. Or any time between then and now." He eyed Mary-Ann. She still looked a little bit shaky. Still, something was better than nothing. He let the gun fall to his side. There was still another thing he had to do.

"Whatever. i'm going to be outside to deal with those bodies. Stay here. We'll figure the rest out afterward."

Mary-Ann put one foot in front of the other. Heel to toe. Her steps bent and pushed against the wood floor, making it creek and groan under her delicate steps. She walked right up to Peter. Now the gun was just a few steps behind her.

She put a hand up to his cheek and ran her thumb just under his eye to wipe away and stray tears that might have made it past.

He's waiting.

At that moment she wished now more than ever that RJ was still with her. He would have known what to do. He would have had a plan and he could make her see it would be okay.

She gazed up into his eyes as though she was looking for something. Her eyebrows came up, knitting together and her lips trembled a bit.

"Go on, then," she whispered.

His gun had dropped to his side. He was turning to leave. Maybe she could grab the gun and crawl out the window. May-Ann was still so tired. The thought of having to escape the hut was daunting.

"I'll be here," she lied.

Peter was headed for the door. With his back turned, she edged towards her gun on the night stand. One step backwards, two steps backwards, three. The back of her leg hit the little table and she put her hand backwards. There it was.

Mary-Ann grabbed the gun off the table.

((GMing approved by Ruggahissy))

In the real world, there's a disconnect between "should" and "is". People always have this ideal that they want, that they strive for. But the truth of the matter is that no matter how much somebody might want it, and no matter how much they believe certain things "should" happen, there's nothing that can be done to change what "is".

Peter shouldn't have been ready for this. He shouldn't have considered the possibility. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right.

He heard the footsteps that weren't his. The slight thump of a person bumping into a piece of furniture. The quiet screech of metal scratching wood. There were only so many things that it could mean. No, there was only one thing it could've been. He'd seen the gun on the nightstand. Somewhere, in some corner of his mind, he'd planned for this contingency. The girl hadn't killed anyone, but that didn't mean she couldn't start now. Peter was going to make sure she wouldn't.

He spun around to face Mary-Ann. Saw the pistol in her hand. Brought up the barrel of his rifle. Pulled the trigger.

A flash and a crack. The gun jerked in his hand. The bullet sliced through the air and found a target. Wood snapped and splintered.

Again, a flash and a crack. This time, not from his own gun. Again, the bullet sliced through the air and found a target. Again, wood snapped and splintered.

Peter should've stopped to think. To talk. To use words and reason to stop everything from falling deeper into hell. Mary-Ann wasn't a killer. Not yet. There was still a chance to make things right.

Of course, there was still the fact that she had just tried to shoot at him. Tried to kill him.

He brought the gun up to bear again. It took but a moment to line up the sights at this distance. This time, he wouldn't miss.

There was no sharp crack this time. This time, it was a roar, each single crack joining with its companions in one horrific chorus. Each shot rattled through the gun and through his body. Power coursed through his body, through his weapon, and into the girl. Just for a second.

Peter released the power. The rifle fell still in his hands. Yet the roar continued, echoing in his ears. He took one long step, another long step, toward the fallen girl. There were a trio of crimson blossoms on her shirt. It would be a long and painful death. He bowed his head in reverence, invoking a silent prayer for the girl.

He looked up into her eyes. What was she feeling now? Hate? Fear? Peter couldn't tell. It probably wouldn't matter for much longer. "Sorry. I didn't want to do this." His voice was somber. "I wanted to save you. Save someone. But I can't save a killer. That's just how it is."

A flash and a crack. The gun jerked in his hand. The bullet sliced through the air and found its target. Blood sprayed across the ground.

She brought the gun out from behind her just as Peter turned to face her again. Maybe he wanted to say something before he left. Who knew? She was standing there with a gun for what seemed like forever, but couldn't have been more than a second when he took aim at her and fired. The shot shook the whole cabin and rang in her ears. Another shot came, just after the first.

Mary-Ann would never come to know that the second shot was from her. The reaction of the loud noise Peter had made caused to her squeeze the trigger when she flinched. Her shot lodged harmlessly into a wall at hip level.

There wasn't even enough time for her to let out the breath she'd been holding in when Peter let a volley of shots off. A few points on her torso stung intensely. The pain pulsed and grew out from the points of contact just like the blood. Mary-Ann whimpered. She looked down at the blood streaming from her wounds and out of instinct, she put her hands over two of the three holes, trying to keep the blood in. It wasn't enough. Her eyes watered and she sputtered garbled words that weren't English. It hurt so much she wanted to scream, but nothing was coming out. Mary-Ann gasped and slowly she crumpled to the floor, weak, dizzy and overwhelmed.

"Sh-shut the fuh-fuck up," she finally pushed out.

She was dying and she knew it. There was nothing left to lose now.

"I don't want your prayers. I hope you burn," she warbled. "I've never even been in a fight before and you're a murderer. Which one of us doesn't deserve to be saved?"

Hush. Close your eyes.

Tears spilled out the corner of her eyes. She was staring straight up at the ceiling on her back. She could hear his foot steps as he got closer to her. She swallowed and saw him come into her field of vision, standing above her.

She could hardly breathe with the pain. It wouldn't be long. She was done. This was just the last bit before the end. She'd said good bye to her family before she left on the trip. She gave her parents hugs and smiles. They would be proud of how she handled herself, given the situation. All of her friends were dead. RJ was dead. RJ....she was sad that she'd disappointed him by not going on to have that great life he wanted for her. Maybe the next time 'round, if there was such a thing. The only regret she had was the delusional child staring down with her. He was no one to judge her.

"You're a coward," she said as she cried. "It's you. You can't blame me or God. Take responsibility."


"'You're so twisted and sick you think you're the hero. You can't save anyone. I don't accept your apolo-"

Mary-Ann was aware of a the start of a very loud noise, very close to her. Her brain, blood and bone fragments painted the floor next to her in an arc. She stared with wide eyes and lay still in her dreamless sleep.

GIRL 108 MARY-ANN WARREN: DECEASED

((Placeholder. Again. Just in case the Groundskeeper's Hut gets DZ'd while I'm Away.))

((Peter Siu continued in Dead-End Scenario))