((Quincy Archer continued from
Guns for Show, Knives for a Pro))
In his restless dreams, he saw that town...
Rochester.
It was as he remembered from his youth. The cloudy sky, the chirping robins, the aroma of fresh-cut grass, and to top it off, the massive forms of the town's famous castle and cathedral, visible on the horizon. For the first time since he arrived on the island, Quincy smiled, not out of schadenfreude or irony, but from simple joy.
Now he was home. Now he could forget the last nine years. In fact, he could scarcely remember a thing already. All he knew was that he wanted very badly to show his dad his report card. A good report card meant a trip to the confectionery, where he could pick whatever sweeties he wanted to take home and enjoy for the summer. He always made sure to make it last, though; his dad taught him to savor what he got, and sometimes mentioned that if Quincy wasn't as active as he was, his mum wouldn't allow him to indulge himself so. Yes, mummy dearest always wanted her son to be the best he could be, but thanks to dad, he was eased into the role, like a pair of comfortable boots.
Quincy ran through the narrow streets, blurring past the scenery as he pushed himself to the door of his apartment. As he raced, he began to hear a faint voice, mostly obscured by static, but he could tell that it was a man's voice, jovial and celebratory. He'd never heard it before; did someone leave their radio on?
Finally he reached the front door and opened it, and as he stepped inside, the voice from the radio began to clear up. For some reason, the man was announcing various names, perhaps identifying the lucky winners to a contest.
"...ames Ellet, Will Sigurb*SKKK*son, Stephanie Evans, and *SKKKKRR* favorite femme fatale,
Melina Frost!"
Who were these people? Quincy's smile faded from his face as he climbed the stairs, curious about the program that had been left running. As he got closer to the third floor, where his family lived, the voice from the radio got clearer and clearer.
"Also joining the *SKKRRRCH* are
Darnell Butler, Keith Jackson, Brad Kavanagh, Matt Wittany, Isabelle Archer, Bill Ritch, John Sheppard, Kallie Majors, Terrie Brightwell, Alice Jones...oh, isn't this exciting?"
Now that he could hear the voice, he noticed that it wasn't quite in the attitude he assumed. It was still jolly and all, but now he noticed barbs underneath his words, as though the host concealed a thinly veiled hatred of his audience.
Wait. Why was his mother's name on that list?
"Ahem,
Julie Mikan, Dominica Shapiro, Kyrie Joseph, Denise Dupuis, Marnie Yaguchi, Rio Koizumi, and last but definitely not least, our very own red-headed rat, the no longer so resilient
Adam Dodd! I'm proud of you, children."
He reached the third floor. He slowly approached the door to room 313, his report card now forgotten and crumpled in his sweaty hand. Finally, he reached it, but against his better judgment, he remained a few feet in front of it, listening to the now crystal-clear sound of the radio, which had just started up again after a short pause on the host's part.
"All of the old danger zones are cleared, and have been replaced with
the Chapel, the Barracks, the Storehouse, the Lagoon, the Quarry, and the Graveyard. Also, these danger zones will not be cleared tomorrow, so I hope you were paying attention!"
Quincy's hand was almost to the door when the man's next words made his hand turn to ice.
"We've seen a lot of kills on the island today, but I'm going to award the best kill to
Quincy Archer, for performing the first ever matricide on our little program! Congratulations, you limey bastard! Head to
the Apartment Complex to receive your reward! Hell, you're almost there already, just walk right through that door!"
His hand turned to ice. Now he remembered. The island, the killing, the revolver, Hannah...
"Have a nice day, children!" The radio clicked off, and Quincy heard a succession of footsteps as someone else bounded up the stairs. He whirled around and-
"Dad?"
Duncan Archer hadn't changed at all. Same scraggly orange neck-beard, same turtleneck sweater, same everything. The only thing missing was his jovial attitude; he regarded Quincy not with warmth, but with fear and apprehension. He remained silent, staring at Quincy as though he were a dangerous animal.
"Dad, it's me, Quincy." Quincy's voice began to sound desperate for even a hint of recognition. He took a step toward Duncan, who immediately stepped down and back onto the stairs.
"What did you do to her?" he asked Quincy. He struggled to speak, his voice wracked with pain.
"What?" It took Quincy a second to realize what he meant. "No! It wasn't me! You can't trust a word he says, dad, he's just trying to get a rise out of us!"
"Don't lie to me, Quincy. I didn't raise a liar." Duncan sighed. "I've told you a million times by now, Quincy, you can't blame her for the divorce. I'm very disappointed in-"
"Are you listening to me?" Quincy yelled. "I! Didn't! Kill! Her!"
The door to apartment 313 flew open, slamming into the opposite wall and revealing the Archer family kitchen. The room was far darker than Quincy remembered it, with only a single flickering bulb illuminating the kitchen table.
Straddled on the table was the body of Isabelle archer, a woman in a salmon-colored dress, with her graying blond hair curled in a bun. Both her dress and her hair were splattered with blood; a large amount seemed to have erupted from her mouth and dripped in rivulets onto her screaming face and the table, and the dress was split down the middle, as was the flesh beneath it. Quincy could barely see something metallic sticking out from between her breasts... was it the tip of his new sword?
"What do you call that, then?" Duncan snarled.
"Alright, clever dick!" Quincy screamed, storming into the kitchen and reaching for the hilt of the sword, before realizing where it was likely buried. "Maybe I did want to kill her! But you know what? She deserves it! She came here and took me from my life so she could be a California jet-setter and have more money than God! The only thing she ever did for me is pressure me to do my studies! YOU were the one who taught me to believe in myself! YOU were the one who helped me get over those gits who made fun of my hair! YOU were the one who raised me!"
Quincy choked back a sob and wiped his eyes with the collar of his shirt. "It was all you..."
Duncan folded his arms and stared at Quincy again, now making him feel like a festering patch of urine on the bathroom floor. "Apparently I didn't teach you well enough. I let you out of my sight and you let yourself fall apart." He spat on the floor. "I've seen the way you treat others, Quincy. Do you honestly think that's what I wanted you to do? Or are you going to blame everything on Warren again?"
He walked into the kitchen and flipped on the light switch, revealing a massive series of mounted human heads covering the walls like a honeycomb, leaving only the occasional gap with no head, and only a plaque with a name that Quincy couldn't read. All the heads had undergone the full taxidermy treatment, preserving all of their physical features and none of the personality that made them human. Many of them looked like their heads were partially or entirely made of wax. All of them had eyes of glass, staring into the distance.
No, that wasn't right. They were staring at him.
He recognized all of the former SADD members: Neil, Warren, Dane, Dennis, Matthew, Dominica, and Hannah, along with Margaret and several other people he'd bumped into.
He counted the plaques without heads. There were less than three dozen left.
By the time his attention turned back to Duncan, he was staring down the barrel of the Colt Python.
"You can't blame Warren anymore, Quincy. He's dead."
He cocked the hammer back.
"And you deserve to die, too, Quincy!"
-----
The real Quincy opened his eyes in the middle of an ear-piercing scream. He got up and looked around, not that it did him any good. He fell asleep in a hollow underneath a tree, where no one could find him. It was pitch black, and the only light streamed through the hole he crawled in from. As he struggled to push his daypack and sword through the hole, he noticed something wildly different about the jungle.
"Bloody bleeding Christ..."
The floor, rather than being covered in plants and compost, was blanketed with a thick layer of ash. The trees had lost all of their leaves and bark and twisted their branches into grotesque shapes. The cloudless sky was now colored slate gray and occasionally dropped a new flake of ash onto the ground. A thick fog surrounded Quincy, preventing him from seeing more than a few yards into the distance.
He nervously grasped his sword and started walking through the ash, aimlessly wandering until he found another soul. It wasn't too long until he heard the scuffle of battle. Nervously, he approached the combatants, hiding behind the smooth, black trees, until he could see them more clearly.
-----
Another discrepancy I noticed is that the numbers given to the students in SOTF don't make any fucking sense. They're not arranged in alphabetical order, and there are significant gaps in the numbers for series one; Aaron Bourdon had the number 892 out of the boys when there were only 120 students of both sexes on the island. The only pattern I could detect was that there was a loose correlation with the numbers the students have and how soon they showed up on camera. But how would the terrorists know that the latter would happen?
That's all I have in terms of SOTF news for now. I'm too exasperated dealing with the bitch to research any more. I can't stand her anymore. She's never around, always with that friend of hers, leaving me to clean up after them and cook their meals. Fucking bitch. One of these days she'll drink herself to death and I'll just laugh and laugh and laugh...