Minus Something

[MethodicalSlacker]

"Hello? Anybody in here?"

[Lili Williams continued from Ready For The House.]

The walk over had been, as the walks over had usually been, uneventful. The hallways creaked, as they usually did, and overall Lili couldn't help but feel somewhat annoyed at the sound it made. She knew how ridiculous it was to feel annoyance, of all things, in a building where many people had died, her friends included, and all she could feel was annoyance, annoyance at the carpet bunching up under her feet, annoyance at the tightness of her shoes on those same feet, and annoyance at herself for having that same feeling of annoyance. It was even an annoying word to think, let alone say. The sound of it echoed through her skull, thrown from chorus to chorus of imaginary thought voices, as if they were playing monkey in the middle and using silence as the ball.

She pushed open the door to the cafeteria. The room was in some state of disarray, but fortunately there were no corpses to be found. Lili breathed a sigh of relief. In addition, the place looked decidedly lived in. Smelled like it too.

Lili walked over to the nearest upright table and put her stuff down. She'd started to catch Kizzy's exhaustion. Like a contact low, if such a thing were possible. Her first inclination was that it wasn't, and she was just getting tired.

Her second thought was that she actually was catching it. It had been a long day, after all. Weakens the immune system.

Annoyances. Annoyances. Annoyances.

Sitting down on the table next to her gear, Lili watched the door with eyes peeled for the first sight of danger. If, for some reason, the tower didn't work out, maybe the group could use this place as their safe space. Only one entrance, and it wasn't all that far from the door to the building either. If the layout of the room was any indication, someone had already tried boarding themselves up in here. They didn't die of boredom, or, if they did, they had the courtesy to do it somewhere else.

"Poster time?" she asked, glancing over at Kizzy.

[General Goose]

((Kiziah Saraki continued from A Time to Love.))

Kizi hadn't really been the best partner as they walked. She had settled to scraping the bag across the floor, grunting and panting as her chief forms of communication, hoping that she wasn't unknowingly doing damage to her back or anything like that. She was in this for the long haul, after all. She hadn't been paying much attention to her surroundings, implicitly trusting Lili to be the vanguard, the watcher.

When she looked up, as Lili opened the doors to the cafeteria, Kizi could not help but notice that the...quality of the building had dramatically improved. The architecture had more integrity. Any mess and chaos was fresher, rather than emblematic of a more intractable long-term succumbing to nature. Things looked more salvageable here. More civilised. Maybe there was a hint of confirmation bias at play here, but damn, this boded well. Had some sort of symbolic resonance with her.

She dragged the bag over to the nearest table, following Lili, the shotgun falling loose and almost landing on her foot. She pulled her foot back with a yelp, narrowly missing the din of the shotgun hitting the floor. Kizi had refused offers of help. Probably not the smartest move, but, well, she'd been too exhausted dragging the bag to really think logically. A kind of catch-22. Can't think logically when carrying such a heavy bag, can't realise that without being able to think logically. Kizi picked up the shotgun, resting it delicately on the table, before sitting down, letting out a sigh of relief.

"Okay. Yeah. Posters."

"So..." She was speaking slowly, every other word punctuated with a cacophony of irregular breaths. "So, yeah. Two ways. That I can see us doing this. One is a longer...more, like, a manifesto thing. Like, we say what we're doing. What we believe in. All that. Or, we can just do...a kind of. Quick thing. Like, 'we're not playing, we're making a safe place', lay out the rules." She blinked. If they laid out the rules, they might as well write the manifesto.

"Oh, I don't know. The point is, we have to mention the 'safe place' aspect. Not the mutual suicide thing Penelope mentioned. If it comes to that..." Kizi swallowed. "Fine. Well, no. Not fine. But, okay, better than the alternative. But people won't sign up for that sort of thing. We have to keep the hope of dragging this game out alive."

[MethodicalSlacker]

Lili weighed the options in her head. The first sounded like a lot of work, and since the others weren't here yet it probably wasn't the best idea to write out a manifesto so soon. Plus, there was a good chance that people wouldn't even read the damn thing - that they'd see it on their walks and wandering and just move past. However - and this was a fairly decent sized 'however' - those that did show up would be those who hopefully read the whole thing and found themselves agreeing so much that they could hardly contain their excitement! Could she really turn those people, those genuine seekers away?

The second poster plan was efficient, but it lacked the element of honesty that the other idea required of applicants. People wouldn't have much to go off of, considering the circumstances, and they'd attract more halfheartedly confused people than anything else. People with dumb questions. She'd never have to know those questions if she just turned them away, of course, but that wasn't entirely up to her.

In the end, she found herself caught in the middle between the two options.

"Well yeah, we definitely can't mention Plan B," she said, putting a finger to her lips, "But like, I dunno, which one of those choices is the better one? And what if people think we're luring them into a trap?" Lili paused for a moment. "Yeah, if anyone's gonna think we're just trickin' them, then the longer poster might be better, if only 'cause nobody goes to that much effort for a trick, unless they're like, super dedicated, or something, y'know?"

[General Goose]

Lili's analysis was good. Very good. Kizi found herself with her hands over her mouth, eyes staring idly at the floor, just listening intently to her weighing up the options. It was far more rigorous and methodical than her own off-the-cuff intuition-reliant guesswork, and Kizi felt that their collective chances were already being improved dramatically just by talking things out. Just by discussing the options. Just by approaching some kind of truth.

"Yeah." She ran her hand through her hair when Lili's thoughts reached a natural conclusion, when she silently passed the baton of conversation onto her. "My current instinct...is some sort of middle ground?" She clicked her tongue. Kizi was well-aware that that sort of middle-of-the-roadism was indecisive. Vague. Imprecise. She leaned back, trying to think of the words to substantiate it. To give it meaning. She shifted her eyes up to the ceiling, hoping that the change in scenery would kickstart some latent thinking.

"Yeah. Maybe if it's a kind of...we just lay out our plan. What we're doing. A few bullet-points. No need to overelaborate on it. We're gonna draw things out. Establish a safe zone. A few simple bullet-points should suffice. Or a numbered list. Either works." Kizi furrowed her brow. "Alphabetising the list wouldn't work. Actually, numbers will probably be the best bet. Has a sort of chronological clarity, a sort of..." Kizi realised what she was saying. "Sorry. Getting ahead of myself. Yeah. We'll say we'll be taking over..." She pulled out her map.

"Two adjacent subareas in different areas. Because so far they've only danger-zoned areas together. Exception being the library and..." Her thoughts turned more to the danger zone mechanic. "We'll need, like, to draw up a backup list every day. Distribute it to the people in the community. Get things going that way."

She stopped herself from talking any more. She was getting mired in details. Trying to control her thoughts, suppress her doubts, with a fast pace of tackling the minutiae. But she had to think about the big picture at least a bit. Wiping a sole tear of exhaustion from the corner of her eye with the side of her hand, she spoke with more vulnerability. "I wish we'd started earlier. I really wish we had."

[MethodicalSlacker]

"Maybe it would've been better to start earlier, but there's nothing we can do about that now, okay?" Lili mused, "Let's just focus on the now, and the future. The past is set in stone."

Annoyances.

"For starters, we need somethin' eye-catching, that takes center stage. Maybe a kind of insignia, or symbol to show our intentions. Peace sign, maybe?"

The part about the numbered list was giving Lili a few ideas. Her mind was practically swimming in ideas at this point. Ideas pouring out her ears, stray thoughts coating her in brain juice, like those moments before she ran into B-

Well, maybe he'd show up now, and she could talk all about it then.

"We could have, like, a ten commandments type deal, with some simple rules, but stated all in that 'Thou shalt not kill' style, show that we've got a little bit of good humor left in our bodies, hmm? And yeah, now that you mention it, maybe having the zone inside would be best; all of the asylum's groupings aren't too far apart, and if worst comes to worst and they declare the whole thing off limits, then it shouldn't be all too hard for us to make our way out so long as we stay on the first floor."

Somewhere upstairs, a floorboard creaked. Lili tensed up for a moment before turning back to the task at hand.

"So we could get a middle ground, a medium length numbered list, topped off with a recognizable sign, and once we get those set in stone, then it just comes down to copying them out a few times over, yeah."

She bobbed her head up and down, subtly, to music that wasn't there.

[General Goose]

"Okay. Yes. Forget about the past. Well, don't forget about it. That wasn't what you were saying. But, yeah. Future, focus. On it. Yeah." It was a disjointed mess, but it helped get her thoughts in order. They should remember the past. Learn from it. Be motivated by it. But no time for regrets. That would jeopardise everything.

The commandments thing and the symbol idea were good. Was a wee bit grandiose, maybe. Or had the risk of descending into that kind of thinking, at the very least. They had to be wary of that trap. Couldn't let this be mutated into a vehicle for their own preservation, after all. Couldn't let this become a personality cult sort of thing. Kizi nodded, though. She was sure Lili was in a similar mind to her on that front. No point in insulting her integrity by bringing it up.

"Yeah. So, maybe we can kind of, like, integrate our plan into the rules?" Kizi stood up, beginning to pace a little bit. Still within jumping distance of her gun, so she could throw herself at it if some intruder came in with disastrous intentions. Her senses were largely on a break, and she was hoping Lili would be on guard for any subtle indications of threat. "So, the first few items could be about what we're gonna do, then the sort of rules we'd live by, and then the end goal?"

She stood at the end of the table, scratching her head. She needed a shower. But, no time to worry about that. "And if...if we do get everyone together...and I mean everyone...what then?" Penelope's plan seemed like the logical answer. But fuck. It felt unsatisfying. Maybe they were getting ahead of themselves. And it would, at the end of the day, be a good problem to have. But still.

[MethodicalSlacker]

"That seems like a good way to order it," Lili replied, "Introduce our idea, build on it, and take it to its artfully logical conclusion." Now, she was grooving. She was in the zone. Improv free jazz, her flute being her brain, fluttering around in dancing circles with Kizzy, bouncing off of her awkwardness, meshing with her insight, all building towards a peaceful conclusion, serene and pleasant. She was excited now. Not annoyed, excited.

And then the question was asked.

"What then?"

Lili didn't think that Penelope had wanted them to kill themselves on the spot when they all showed up. At the very least, that's not how it had sounded to her. They were waiting for the collars. A long waiting game, until everything went kablam and they all died, hopefully simultaneously so nobody had to sit and watch their friends' heads get blown off.

Waiting game.

"Party," Lili said, "It could be this big fucking party, at the end of our lives, at the end of our worlds, y'know?"

She stood up on the table and threw her hands out dramatically. If there ever was a time for spectacle, this was it.

"We have food, they have food, and lots of water, and who knows what else they have? We could fuck around, have fun, unload baggage, do whatever the hell we want, because it sure as fuck isn't what they want. They want us to be at each other's throats, dying, bleeding, but what they don't expect is for us to be normal teenagers and throw the best fucking party of our lives. No regrets! No hangups! No hangovers! We're all gonna die, so why not do it as ourselves?"

A wild, crazy smile spread across her face. She wasn't smiling out of sweetness, or to look nice, or to be polite or reassuring but out of genuine excitement for the first time in what felt like ages, even if those ages had been just a few days ago. Lili did a small hop off of the table, and stood facing toward Kizzy.

"How's that sound?"

[General Goose]

Their emotions seemed to be on entirely different trajectories. Kizi's early rush of hope had been tempered by some obstinate doubts, some newly unearthed insecurities, by the increasingly poignant burden of the reasonable and the viable. Lili seemed to be just catching up to Kizi's earlier emotional state, of a somewhat heady enthusiasm, and Kizi hoped for everyone's sake that she wasn't doomed to follow Kizi into this more brooding mire of self-doubt and anxiety. Kizi's 'what then' had crystallised in her own head as the vanguard of those doubts. A nagging, vexing voice. Chipping away at her early confidence.

If they got everyone together, if they succeeded against all hopes?

Settle for Penelope's plan by proxy? Just with added partying flair? She couldn't speak for others, but Kizi was in no mood for partying. Granted, it was not her personality. She was no great reveller by nature. But she had had a relatively easy island experience. The more traumatised, the more scarred, they would possibly find that suggestion mad. Insane, even.

She kept these thoughts to herself. They were uncharitably phrased. Lili had done nothing to deserve a sharp tongue or a scornful glare. Nothing whatsoever. Lili was on Kizi's side.

Kizi watched, smiling, unable to mirror her beaming, unable to share Lili's newfound radiance. She tried. She really did. She leaned back, made sure to watch Lili's whole performance, even nodded at points. That much was genuine. It was a worthy goal. Probably a more realistic goal. And again, the moral victory would be won. The terrorists would be defeated. In principle, if nothing else.

"Yeah. That'd be great. Definitely the best way to go out, but..."

"Well, people might not agree to that. They might...y'know, try and fight. Or break everything apart. Try and save themselves. Maybe corrupt the community. Just...well, the terrorists want one death a day. What happens if we get to that point, of everyone being together, and nobody wants to fight or die, and everyone just begins killing one person a day? That'd be really messed up." If it meant survival for even a dozen, certainly, it may be better than the alternative. But that's just eleven more people forced to live with an unconscionable burden. "I wouldn't be okay with that. I know you wouldn't. But..."

She buried her head in her hands. "I can't help but think that if we expand slowly at first - which is what will happen, I'm not saying we should be unambitious in our goals or anything - we can drag this out even longer. Increase the chances of survival. But if we do expand quickly, if it is a couple of days and then bam, we're done, I'm not sure...I'm not sure it can hold together." The words of doubt felt toxic and foreign on her tongue. But she couldn't keep them in.

"Let's just...if we're the final two, we wait. Okay?"

[MethodicalSlacker]

"Well, sure, they might not agree to a full blown party," Lili said, backpedaling a little (both in her words and on her feet), "But maybe what I meant was...more of a relaxed space. I mean, I don't get invited to many parties, so I don't know what came up in your mind when I said that, but I was just thinking a lighthearted space where we can kind of relax, and maybe have a little fun to pass the time, I guess."

Her enthusiasm had been slightly curbed. She wasn't going to back down completely as far as her ideas went, but Kizzy's rational words had taken her head out of the clouds and put her feet back on the ground.

"If we're aiming for slower growth, then maybe only put out three posters instead of five. Simple as that, really, pick slightly less traversed places to put 'em, and bam, a more intimate setting blossoms and blooms. And we're not gonna let ritual sacrifice slide just to drag this out longer. Trust me. These guys who put us here ain't gods, just wackjobs with a little too much time and money, got me? I'm not gonna hurt anybody, because it's what they want, and because I don't want to. If others can't take that much control over their own fate, and take to picking each other off, then they get ousted."

Voted off the island, so to speak. Except they're still on the island, and they're not being voted off but physically removed, and-

"I wouldn't kill you. I wouldn't hurt anyone."

Words started to spill out of her brain.

"So if somehow we're the last two left, then we'll have that party, okay? Just the two of us, here, looking out over the ocean and Spiderland and all, and we'll be the real winners."

Another beat of silence, and Lili turned her gaze downward.

"I mean, I hope it doesn't come down to that..."

[General Goose]

Kizi realised she may have been a bit too brusque. Maybe a little bit too dismissive. Lili's enthusiasm was deflated almost immediately, and Kizi felt incredibly guilty for that. "Yeah. That'd sound nice." She felt apologetic, wanted to do what she could to help recover Lili's exuberant and boisterous energy. Someone acting so theatrical, so inspirational, so gloriously hammy...that was an element of comedy that she realised she missed the moment she ensured its absence. "And, hey, if it becomes a rowdy party with booze and whatever, I wouldn't complain." She chuckled. Again, not her style, but then again, none of this was.

"Yeah, I don't think we need to...consciously aim for slower growth. Even if we blanket the island in posters..." She shrugged. "Yeah, it'll be intimate at first. Just it could be too successful for its own good. Just a..." She chuckled, nervously, hoping to bring back some of that levity. "Just something to keep in mind, y'know? Something to be cognizant of."

"And sure. That'd be nice. And if more people join in...that'd be nice." She smiled, and offered her open arms for a hug.

"...what's Spiderland?"

[MethodicalSlacker]

Lili froze up.

"Uh..."

Shit. Shit, fuck, no, fucking shit fuck no, I didn't just say that, no, no way, fuck no.

"It's just..." she said, hesitating. Kizzy's arms stayed open, waiting for a hug. Lili didn't know how she could move forward, the few steps that were separating the two of them stretching into miles upon miles of barren wasteland.

"Never mind that."

Lili looked down at her shoes. Not hers. Someone else's. Kizzy didn't know that.

"I'm just..."

Without looking up, Lili staggered forward into Kizzy's arms and embraced her.

"Don't worry about it, me, nothing, no."

[General Goose]

Kizi didn't really get what sort of reaction she was getting from Lili. She dropped her arms, eventually, a motion slightly tinged with regret. She'd missed hugs, but one obviously was not immediately forthcoming. Maybe she'd triggered some kind of arachnophobic reaction? Or Lili had let slip some random nickname or figment of her imagination or obscure injoke or something?

Her better judgement was distracted at that point. So Kizi asked further.

Just as her arms began to drop, Lili stumbled into them, and Kizi instinctively put her arms back up, pulling Lili into a tight embrace.

"Well, is it like, a part of the island with a tonne of spiders in? Because, I mean, I'm not arachnophobic, really, and if you are, that's fine, but if we need to venture back there, I can kind of be the one to go in and - yeah." That seemed like a smart and considerate offer.

Oh. It probably was something worse than that.

"Or is it...I mean, you can talk to me. Or not. Your choice."

[MethodicalSlacker]

Spiders? Like, actual spiders? Is that what it sounded like?

Lili couldn't help but laugh a little. She patted Kizzy on the back softly.

"No, no, it's not...not that."

She stepped back, letting go of Kizzy and sitting back down on top of the table. Looked down, and to the left, at a spot on the ground that looked just a little bit darker than the surrounding space.

"I call this place Spiderland," Lili explained, pointing at her face, "In my head. I hated thinking the island this and the island that. Makes me feel stupid saying it now, but, hey, it's something, that I did, to rationalize this place with myself, I guess, or something, I dunno."

She looked back up and shrugged, sticking her tongue out, but she couldn't help but feel the slightest bit empty inside.

[General Goose]

"Oh. Oh." Kizi's face lit up with realisation. Her eyes opened, wider than normal, and she nodded, taking it in, a satisfied smile appearing on her face. That was an amazing insight into Lili's thinking, in so many ways. Made her all the more awesome. Yup. It was a shame they hadn't been friends before all this because-nope. Nope. No regrets. Future. Think about that. Because their friendship was looking pretty awesome in the long term.

"That's...actually pretty smart. Makes it sound less...foreboding." She chuckled. Genuinely, this time. "I mean, it says a lot about how bad our situation is that a land of spiders seems pretty palatable in comparison, but...well, they're pretty awesome creatures, in fairness. I saw this spider once, and sadly I don't have Google Image to show you but it was awesome. It was metallic blue. Like, a really bright blue. It was awesome. Just a beautiful sight. And there's this other spider, in the Sahara I think, who like, rolls away from danger. Like, cartwheels away from it. Oh, and jumping spiders wear little droplets of water on their head."

She shook her head, trying to recalibrate her thoughts. "Sorry. Pretty awful anecdote without, y'know, an ability to back it up. It's kinda pointless saying, hey, this is awesome, if I can't show it to you." She looked down, staring at the same patch of floor Lili's eyes had been drawn to. "Yeah. It works pretty well. Sorry about asking, I might have, been, like, prying into something traumatic there or anything but-"

Kizi smiled again. It was good to think about this sort of thing. "You know, my first thought when you mentioned Spiderland was that, maybe in that announcement thing at the beginning, they'd tried to scare us to stay on the island by saying all the surrounding islands were covered in spiders, and I'd simply forgotten about that. Really dumb thought, I know." She clicked her tongue. "Spiderland. I like that. Have you, like, copyrighted it or something? Because I might want to plagiarise it." She smiled. It was good to joke again.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Lili laughed.

"Always dug spiders. Awesome little guys, finding a way to keep on trucking and scare the shit out of us humans when they're just so goddamn tiny, and sometimes fuzzy, like they're cute or something."

Lili laughed some more. It really was a cool name. Too bad it wasn't her own. Kizzy ran with it, though. Made some funny jokes. She rocked back and forth on her hands, feeling the emptiness inside replaced by a comforting warmth that stirred her soul to move again. She could very well lie and say that the name was entirely her own, take credit for other people's inventions - no way for Kizzy to fact check it, right?

...no.

"It's not my name, that I made up, though. It's actually the name of an album I like. I'm really into music, but usually pretty obscure and out there stuff. Spiderland isn't, like, super weird, but it's really raw and it really grabs you by the throat with some really heavy guitar riffs and spoken word sections and poems that break up the heavy bits, because funnily enough the singer can't really sing, he just kinda shouts in this angsty kinda wail, but it works because it matches the music just so well. So, I'm not original enough to come up with my own name. Not quite."

She wasn't sure if it was more appropriate to say that she was into music. She hadn't heard anything remotely musical for a week now, and it wasn't clear if she ever would.

Oh well.

"What kind of stuff do you listen to?"