who is the lamb and who is the knife?

[Fenris]

It was supposed to be a scream, what came out of her throat, but the only sound she could make was a wet gurgle.

She thought the world had stopped spinning. She thought they were all alone.

Myles fell and she knew, he collapsed onto her broken chest and forced a mouthful of blood to stream down her chin, she coughed, helplessly, her hands on him, looking for—what? Something. Always something. She was ice and copper and crimson and she didn't care anymore, she'd had worse. She'd had worse. Myles. She couldn't see, she couldn't tell, she had to move him. She could help. There were supplies. Somewhere outside the spotlight. She could. She could help.

She had to help.

Just let her broken heart beat a minute longer.

She struggled, limply, and nothing happened. She touched him and felt only blood, she had to do something, she didn't know where he was hit, what could she do, she needed—god—something—there wasn't time—

Let there be time, please, she couldn't say goodbye, not now, she couldn't say anything at all, I love you a million times in wordless breaths, please, it wasn't fair, she wasn't ready—

She was so afraid. Her everything lay dying on top of her.

Ivy moved her fingers slowly down his arm. His and hers intertwined.

She thought the world had stopped spinning.

One more familiar moment, hand in hand. One more time.

Before everything came to an end.



[G041] IVY LANGLEY: DECEASED

[backslash]

Myles could still see her. It took all of the strength he had left just to turn his head, and his vision was blurry all over again and going gray, but he could still see her. And God, she was still beautiful in a way. Bandages, dirt, blood, and all. They didn't deserve this.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't cinematic, or beautiful, or anything. Everything was burning. He would have kept screaming, if he could have, but all that came out was a gurgle to echo Ivy.

It didn't make him feel better. It didn't ease any of his pain. Things weren't supposed to happen like this; he was supposed to have more time, and he was going to let her down easy, eventually, someday, and it wouldn't have hurt. Just like Declyn. They hadn't given him enough time to come around to accepting it yet, no matter how much he had thought of it and then pushed the thoughts back down again. Nobody ever gave him the chances he deserved.

There was no fade to black. No credits to cut to. No music to make you feel better, no narration, no closure. No audience but Ace, who had cheated his way through again, and Garren. No nothing. Just Myles, choking on the floor, watching Ivy's face as her gaze lost focus but stayed fixed on him all the same. He felt her breath shudder underneath him, and then- nothing.

Just like that.

He couldn't even feel properly horrified, now. It hurt too much to do anything but cry.

Ivy's fingers still laced between his. Her grip didn't loosen. Together forever.

B007 MYLES ROUX: DECEASED

[Pippi]

Once upon a time, someone much, much smarter than Garren wrote down the phrase ‘Everything happens so much’.

It was something he hadn’t truly understood or appreciated at first. Just a weird string of words that some dumb funnyman Twitter account had posted before smoking another blunt. But then a couple of months later, he’d been stuck in his room, a mountain of homework to his right, the text he needed to study for a test the following day in front of him, Leo arguing with his girlfriend in the room next door, and all the symptoms of the flu descending on his brain, and all of a sudden, he’d understood.

Everything happened, all at once, without stopping. And that was exactly what had happened, in front of his very eyes.

Myles was dead. Ivy was dead. He didn’t need to investigate any further to know that was true, he’d seen it all unfold in real time. He’d watched them jerk back like they’d been punched, watched them fall, watched them scramble for each other as they bled and they screamed and they eventually stopped moving, stopped breathing, stopped everything. The ringing, piercing screaming in his mind was back, and he couldn’t stop looking at them as they lay there, even as they turned from Ivy and Myles to nothing but bodies with bloody gashes in them, and even as Tirzah and Aoi’s bodies started filling up the room around them, and the vice around his neck grew tighter and tighter.

He could hear his harried, rapid breathing, feel it too, along with the cold sweat on his brow and his fingers digging into the armrest of the sofa. He’d moved into the room, just before everything had happened, not wanting to leave his allies behind, but unable to do anything with no weapon, no strength, no power, but to shrink behind the couch in case a bullet flew his way.

There was a shotgun on the floor near the sofa, the one Myles had swiped from Ace last night. And now it had found its way into Garren’s shaking hands, fingers coiling around the grip and the trigger.

And now it swung, and aimed, and pointed directly at Ace.

“Out…” Garren managed, near breathless. “Get… get the fu-fuck out.”

[Buko]

Motherfucker! Get the fuck away from her! You don’t get to fuckin’ feel bad! Your feelings don’t fuckin’ count no more, dick—not out here, not when it comes to fuckin’ her.

It was like staring in a mirror. Except he was Justin and Garren was him. Shit had happened so fast and when it happened—it just didn’t stop. He couldn’t handle that pain. He couldn’t wander into that darkness and come out of it okay and strong. What was going on? What was he trying to do? Live or die? Some strange combination of the two?

He was just trying to move forward. He hadn’t been thinking. He was just trying to be hard. He hadn’t meant to do anything. He just was trying to act tough. He just was trying to win—something. He probably would’ve left, soon after Myles backed down and he spoke with Ivy. He would’ve came to his senses and dealt with his frustrations and walk away…but he didn’t! He had been stuck in the moment and the moment had drug him down like quicksand.

He had thought when the chips were down, when shit really mattered--it would bring out the best version of him. But now he was finding, beyond a shadow of a doubt--it was the opposite. He wasn't built for this shit. Not the way he wanted to be.

No shame in not being built for it. Some people just aren't and this is pretty fucked.

He stared at Garren, down two shotgun barrels, back against the wall. He looked towards Ivy and Myles, dead on the ground, blood pooling around them. He felt his own pain, sharp and powerful in his shoulder. He didn’t know where it ended or began. His heart beat fast with adrenaline. Blood leaked down and coated his body…it wasn’t stopping.

“He shot me dude!”

He spat like it was obvious. Like he was saying Jordan was better than Lebron or whatever stupid shit he would argue with Wyatt during lunch. He didn’t know why he was on this hill, but it was the hill he was on. He had to figure, out here, right now, it was the hill he was ready to die on. The only direction he knew was forward. His world had always been solved ten yards at a time.

“I can’t just get up and walk away from this shit,” he said pleading, “That ain’t who I am.”

[Pippi]

“I don’t fucking give a -”

Garren faltered, and his words disappeared into nothingness before they could even reach his lips. He stopped, and he stared, and he felt like he was about to pass out, as he tried to desperately hold the shotgun level and steady and pointed at Ace.

Because the worst thing about what he was saying was that he was totally right.

Myles had shot first. And second, too, in his blind, bloodstained panic when Ivy grabbed his arm. And he had pressed a gun into Ace’s back, and he had tried to force the other boy to leave when there was nothing but danger outside these four walls, and he had pushed, and prodded, until they had both been at breaking point.

But maybe Ace should have gotten the hint that he wasn’t 100% welcome here and left quietly. But maybe Myles should have communicated that in a less shitty, less Myles way. But maybe Ace should have left his second gun hidden, unseen, his secret straw for the camel’s back. But maybe, but maybe, but maybe.

He could keep on going forever, this cycle of blame. It would never stop. Every action could be lit up in such a way that it became the catalyst for everything that had gone wrong this morning, he could easily pin the blame on himself for letting Ace into the house in the first place. He didn’t have to do that though, because none of this should have ever happened, none of them should ever have been forced to go through this gauntlet, none of them should ever have wound up in a room full of guns and stress and bad decisions. At its most base level, nobody here was to blame.

“I don’t… I don’t…”

He didn’t aim the shotgun away from Ace’s torso, though, even with his hands coating themselves with sweat, finger slipping on and off the trigger. He wanted to shoot him. Or, rather, he wished he wanted to shoot him, because he just wanted a simple fucking solution to get out of this godforsaken nightmare, and maybe, maybe getting rid of the last problematic element in the room woud be the solution he needed.

Or maybe it would be just one more ghost to haunt him at the sight of every bloodstain and broken body.

“Look… look, I just saw the two people, the only two people, who’ve stuck with me for more than a day, that, that stopped me from dying of fucking starvation, I just saw them both die in front of my fucking eyes, so I’m not… I can’t do this right now, okay?”

Garren quivered, a hair’s breadth away from dropping the shotgun to the ground.

“Please…”

[Buko]

“Alright, alright…,” he said with an unease, “I understand that,” he breathed and gasped and grasped his shoulder, “I was with Ivy for the first three days…I know how she is. I know she was good people. We took care of each other for a long time, that's why I wanted to stay...”

He didn’t like this rollercoaster he was always on from flexing hard to faltering and soft. He felt the sharpness of pain still in his body from his wound. He worked his way up. Leaning up against that doorway and using it as support. There was no strap for the BR18. It hung limply in one hand. He could barely hold it up much less point it.

“I wasn’t tryin’ to do this, y'know...?” he said more to himself than to Garren, “This wasn’t my idea! I knocked on the fuckin’ door! I didn’t come here lookin’ to cause no shit--I came here lookin' to spend the night!” he was pleading, “Like, c’mon man..like, man, c’mon!”

He took a breath, he stared down at those bodies. Ivy. She looked so small, so frail…she always did. That confidence that she had in her was gone, that spark had completely devolved. He half expected her to hop up though. Hop up and do a back-handspring.

“Let me make patch myself up…,” he begged, “Try and clean up this mess I made and give her a bit of respect…”

Green eyes met green eyes and tried their best to convey a sameness in spirit.

He let his fingers give, the BR18 fell to the floor—it was fortunate that it had been emptied into Myles. He wouldn't have wanted it to go off accidentally and hurt someone. Heaven forbid.

“This shit already went too far,” he looked away now, “I took it there,” he looked back, “You don’t gotta take it further.”

[Pippi]

Once more, there was a standoff in this room, in this house, two boys with guns, armed and ready to pull the trigger at the slightest provocation. And once more, it was Ace who dropped his weapon first, the gun clattering to the ground and making Garren jump. Luck, for once, was on his side, the coin flip landing right way up at the same time the gun stopped moving. His finger had jolted, twitched inwards, a split second after it had slipped out of the trigger.

He could still move it back there, though. He could still just… blow Ace away, get rid of every last remnant of what had just happened, leave him by himself to curl up and scream and cry or do whatever the fuck felt right when it was just him and the wandering ghosts surrounding him.

Garren kept the shotgun in his shaky grasp for one long, drawn out second, before it too tumbled out of his hands, bouncing head over heels against the floorboards before coming to rest a few feet away. He couldn’t follow in Myles’ footsteps, he couldn’t let this escalate again, because more bloodshed would only cause more pain, not solve anything. There’d be three corpses instead of two, there’d be a bounty on Garren’s head, there’d be one less person on this island that could put in a good word for him.

And he didn’t even have to dig too deep to figure out that he just… really didn’t wanna shoot anyone anyway. Not least someone who had just wanted some safety and shelter.

“Okay,” Garren said, nodding listlessly at Ace. He took a step back, stepping to the side once again. He bumped against the couch, and his legs immediately gave way, making him collapse onto it, sat down, slumped over, gazing at a spot on the floor. He felt tired, all of a sudden. So goddamn tired.

“Okay,” he said again.

[Buko]

“Okay.”

He nodded weakly towards Garren. He felt his heart slow down and the tension in the room deflate--but only so much. The presence of those two bodies couldn’t be denied. The suddenness of the moment kept Ace prisoner. He looked ahead and at Garren and then he stared at that couch so long he thought he would develop X-Ray vision. He didn’t turn to look towards his own handiwork again. He didn’t want to think about it. Not now. He knew would have the rest of his life for reflection and regret.

"Okay."

He picked up the BR-18 with his arm that didn’t have the bullet wound. He backed up slowly and surely into the bedroom where he had spent the night before. He closed the door. He took a breath and then he began to look around with a franticness.

He rolled the strap of his bag off his body; it was slick and wet with blood. The adrenaline was fading and instead he was feeling a sharp, burning and throbbing pain in his shoulder and back. He pulled out the antiseptic wipes and got to work. Wiping the wound down. He felt a hole on the front and another hole in the back—the bullet had gone all the way through. That was supposed to be a good thing, right? Or was it the opposite? He didn’t know. He never paid attention to anything but blitzes and read-pass-options.

He knew he was bleeding far too much and his main goal was stopping that, ASAP. He tried his best to clean his wound. He knew he needed water to do so and he knew his supplies were limited.

His eyes found Ivy’s bags almost by instinct.

He stared at them for a second, then another, then he looked towards the door and he thought of Garren. And the shotgun. Then the bodies. Would he be mad at Ace going through Ivy’s stuff? Probably. But what was theft to murder? If he had killed—why stop at robbing?

He gripped his shoulder and hissed as he hoisted up the bag and emptied its contents onto the bed. A paltry amount of food. Some water. A med-kit. Two guns and ammo. Pistols. He stared at them for a few long seconds. Then he looked towards the door and thought of Garren. And his shotgun. Well, now his shotgun.

He grabbed a bottle of water and poured it onto his shoulder and back. He wiped the wound down and then tried his best to hold gauze in place as he wrapped bandages around his shoulder. He used a lot of bandages. He wrapped it tight. It was hard to lift his arm there was so much pressure he put on it. All his strength. Five minutes. Maybe ten. It was a meticulous job done by hasty hands and imperfect all the same.

He took a sip of water, he choked down another ibuprofen—this time to be safe. He stared at the pistols and the ammo. He thought of Garren and his shotgun.

He took the weapons and he tossed them in his bag. The rest of her food and water too. It was a fucked up inheritance.

He still wasn't thinking when he did what he did next--going towards her other bag and emptying that out onto the bed as well. He didn’t know what he had expected to find—more weapons? Another treasure trove of supplies? He knew better. He had traveled with Ivy for far too long. He knew what was in that second bag: everything she had brought with her on the bus essentially. Make up. Dresses. Toothpaste and toothbrush (wait, wasn’t that his?). Little things that reminded him of the little person on the other side of the door.

He might as well have killed her himself, right? There was more bodies to his name than the ones he had killed with his own hand. He knew that. He felt that. He had provoked Myles. He had intruded and interloped on their set up. He had forced his way into Ivy’s arms and bed just because…he could? He felt he deserved it? That was a slippery slope and he knew it. He also knew that in spite of his self-flagellation. In spite of his guilt…

What he really felt was relief. He was here for a real reason. Because he got hit like they got hit…but he was still fuckin’ breathing.

Rap lyric for everything.

He turned away from the stuff he had emptied onto the bed. Little reminders of Ivy. He had known her for years it had seemed but had only really seen her in the last few days. Those days had felt like years themselves. His face soured. He thought of those moments leading to her and Myles’ deaths—specifics still lost in a haze of rage and excitement, clouded by confusion and his confounding need for catharsis. He was far too sensitive for this situation and little instances would bring out his sentimentality with little prompting.

But this instance wasn’t little and what he felt wasn’t sensitivity. What he felt was a coldness.

He felt sick when confronted again with that feeling in his heart.

He felt nauseous because of how easy that coldness was swallowed.

He picked up the emptied BR-18. He hoisted up his bag, filled with the ill-gotten pistols and stolen supplies. He had taken all he could from Meilin and she had given up her life in the name of his. He had taken this weapon from Angie and left her to fend for herself, his best friend's sister. Ivy had given him the entirety of her being: physically and emotionally. It had left her fighting with her best friend and dead on the ground. Of course Ace couldn't stay with her and Myles and Garren. He knew that. But he had wanted to stay and he had wanted for that to be enough. To do something just because he wanted to, that wasn't so bad, was it?

He exited the bedroom, his eyes focused on the front door. He made a beeline towards it. He didn't look at the bodies.

“Y'know, I’m just gonna go...,"

He couldn’t look at the bodies. He didn’t look at Garren. He didn’t think of anything but forward.

“Sorry.”

He repeated himself more for his sake than for Garren’s. His limbs felt cracked and splintered, his lips were crusted shut, his squinting eyes stung him. And still he moved forward.

It was sad that just doing that had stopped counting as a win.

"Thanks for letting me leave."

He stumbled and staggered out the front door. He never looked back.
[ Ace Beats Continued In: The Original Kings of Comedy ]

[Pippi]

The world moved around Garren as he sat listlessly on the sofa. He could hear the sounds of footsteps in the other room, of Ace rummaging through the bags left behind, of other human movement in this little wooden cabin in the middle of the ocean. He didn’t stir, didn’t move a muscle. His vision was focused on one corner of the room, trying his goddamn hardest to ignore the magnetic pull back towards Ivy and Myles.

It would have been almost nice for his mind to just be blank, totally void of all emotion, but of course not, no, nothing could be that fucking easy. It was filled with that ringing again, of images of the two of them lying there, of Tirzah, of Aoi. Of the conversation he and Myles had shared. Of the smile Ivy had given him when they’d all woken up that morning.

He was lucid enough, though, to jolt upright as Ace re-entered, glancing up at the other boy as he quickly moved through the room, stopping just as he reached the front door. Garren’s eyes burned into his back. He could feel how heavy his eyelids were, the dark rings surrounding his eyes. He nodded, even though Ace couldn’t see him. He didn’t say anything more as the boy left.

He kept staring out the open door for a long time after Ace left. He didn’t wish for anything, no suffering or misfortune to fall on the dude. He just wondered what would happen to him now.

Garren stood up, eventually, every muscle in his body feeling like it hadn’t been put to use for decades. The shotgun came with him as he made his way into the other room, his hands still growing adjusted to the weight of it, the shape of the trigger and the grip. Part of him didn’t want to ever get used to it, another part of him couldn’t help but go ‘oh shit, fucking shotgun, that’s cool as hell.’

All of him, though, knew he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. You had to take what you were given out here. Even if you didn’t plan on using it, it meant you removed it from the options of someone who would.

The room had, somehow, become even more of a mess since the last time Garren had been in it. Ivy’s bags were lying, crumpled, on the bed, and he didn’t need to take a closer look at them to know that they were both empty. The rest of the bed was littered with Ivy’s - non-vital, he noticed - belongings. Clothes, makeup, hairbrush, a ring - the usual stuff, stuff that he’d only ever gotten close to when he’d needed to ask Stefanie something. There was… was that toothpaste and a toothbrush? Yeah, it was, he realised as he stepped close. He suddenly felt the fuzz on his tongue, and the stuffy feeling in his mouth, like permanent morning breath.

There was something else, among the clothing and accessories, and Garren realised, as he scooped it up to investigate, it was a little roll of photos, all of Ivy and Myles together. Half of them were of the two sitting together, smiling, laughing, just hanging out, the other half were of them pulling dumb faces, tongues stuck out, that sorta thing. The last one showed Ivy resting her head on Myles’ shoulder, her eyes closed, looking peaceful even through the laminated print. There was a smile on Myles’ face as he looked down at her, one that Garren had never seen before, one that showed nothing but care and affection, one that came as naturally as breathing to him.

He looked at the camera roll for a while longer, before folding it up and slipping it into his pocket. It didn’t matter one damn bit about who started the argument, and who shot who, and whose fault it was. They were just kids. They were… fuck, that was all it was, they were just goddamn kids, dude.

He grabbed the toothbrush and toothpaste, quickly heading back into the other room to pick up his own bag, and the gun and knife lying next to Myles body, before scooping everything else onto the bed back into Ivy’s bag and dumping them both onto the floor. A rummage through the room gave him a small laundry list of new supplies; a small selection of food and water, the contents of around one and a quarter medkits, ammunition, a knife that he recognised from his dalliances with CoD as a ballistic knife, and some anime-ass looking serrated sword thing. All of it went into his bag, rusted metal alarm attachment clanking and scraping as he zipped it all up.

Now for the important part.

It took Garren a solid five minutes of staring at Myles and Ivy’s hands, laced together, before he could bring himself to touch them, to break apart their hold of each other. It felt all sorts of wrong, defiling a grave before it had even been dug. But it felt even worse to just leave them… lying here, on a dusty floor.

He scooped Myles up first, getting the heavier of the two - not by much, of course - out of the way first. His knees buckled as he stumbled towards the bedroom. Every step made him feel like he was about to collapse and never get back up again. It might have taken minutes. Might have taken an hour. Maybe hours. He got to the bed eventually, laying Myles down on the far side, head resting on the pillow. A quick breather, a small moment to catch his breath. Then he returned for Ivy.

It was easier, carrying her, but not by much. His back still felt like it was on the verge of snapping like a twig, as she slipped out of his arms and onto the bed beside Myles. Gently, he took hold of her hand, placing it atop Myles, as they slumbered next to each other.

Then he collapsed to the ground and his vision went black.

It took a minute or so for him to regain consciousness, jerking awake, breathing heavily, slumped by the side of the bed. He remained like that for a little while longer, until the ringing dispersed, and his breathing went back to normal. Part of him considered just… staying where he was, until the sky turned orange again and he had some manner of clarity.

He got up, slipped his bag over his shoulders, and made for the front door. You didn’t sleep in a haunted house. That was fuckin’ obvious. No matter how much apparent safety it provided from the outside.

Garren took a few deep breaths as he stepped outside. Alone again. Better supplied, now, but hollower. Starvation had felt pretty fucking awful. This felt worse.

He picked a direction and trudged away from the house, uncertain whether or not there were ghosts following after him.

((Garren Mortimer continued in Look at the Cleanse, look at the moves!))