Webster's Dictionary

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((Travis Webster continued from A Human Work))

Travis walked out of the school, laughing and giddy. He laughed so hard his head felt light and he experienced a small shade of what it was when he was high, giggling at everything and nothing. It echoed in the school grounds. He'd taken some time to search the rest of the high school for anything useful, or any foes. Nothing had turned up.

Owen was dead. Dead dead dead. Good, fucker had it coming. He was the reason Aileen was dead. If only he'd just let him in the first fucking time he'd asked when he needed that place to recuperate.

Now he was literally laughing last, but he wasn't entirely sure why. Maybe it was to cover up that hollow feelings where there should have been triumph. Maybe it was to distract himself from how he felt now.

How did he feel?

Travis leaned against a door frame and flexed his fingers, curling them into a fist and stretching them back out a few times. They were stiff, fat, swollen and hot with not much sensation. His whole hand was like that. Ever since Edgar had shredded his hand with a scalpel, he'd begun feeling progressively worse, hauling up in a school bus to try and sleep the fever out. But he'd had no rest, and it was getting worse.

For awhile when the adrenaline was pumping he felt superhuman. He was an action star when all those giants were shooting at little old him and when he ran right into another deadly situation with Owen. However, now it was catching up to him. The fever burned him from head to toe and he was faintly aware of red lines on his arm. It was like he'd fallen asleep at a house party with his shoes on; international code for others to draw on the hapless shoe-wearer.

Travis was stumbling outside in the school grounds. He never properly cleaned the wound, changed the bandages or even looked after it. That's something Joe would have nagged him about until he just sighed and did it himself, but now.....now there was no Joe. Travis walked onto the too-tall-grass that hadn't been cut in years. A few steps in the weeds tangled around his legs and he fell to the ground.

Against all odds, Joe was alive, or would be until someone like Hansel or Tyler found him. He was a killer too now. A certain part of him was smug. Mr. Goodie-two-shoes is a murderer. Yet another part of him was sad that some fundamental part of his closest friend was so completely ruined.

Travis looked up at the sky with a corner of the building in his fuzzy view. "Joe can fuck himself," he thought out loud. "Some friend. He betrayed me," he said quietly in his fever state.  Maybe Travis had betrayed Joe just as much. He wanted so badly to be a monster because monsters were survivors. He drove that wedge in their friendship. Monsters don't have friends.

He felt his face glow with heat, but it didn't bother him much. Travis hugged his shotgun close and smiled. Who needed people when he had firepower. He didn't need anyone so long as he survived. His glassy eyes opened one more time and thought he saw the vague shape of his former best friend.

"We'll eat pancake oreos in Hell, you asshole..." he said dreamily. He was sorry for nothing and regretted his actions even less. Travis closed his eyes and went so deeply unconscious he didn't hear the beeping of his collar or feel a thing when it detonated. His last thought were of junk food, Joe and how he wouldn't apologize for anything he'd done in his life.


TRAVIS WEBSTER: DECEASED