SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

HF: Hey Bobby.

[silence]

HF: I wonder if.

[silence]

HF: Gods it’s selfish. I know. Just like, indulge me for a sec. I wonder if this’s how you woulda felt.

[cap screwing]

[swallowing]

HF: Like, if I figured out how to do it.

[sighing]

HF: I hope you don’t have a fucking clue what I’m talking about.

[silence]

HF: Axe had this friend. He, he was there for most of it, I think. He was there when...yeah. They seemed close. I didn’t know him great, just through Axe and Forrest. I almost did it for him though.

[swallowing]

HF: I pointed the fucking thing, at least. And if I hadn’t then.

[shuffling]

HF: Then his girlfriend would still be alive.

[coughing]

[swallowing]

HF: He shot her. Dunno why. Doesn’t matter I guess.

[silence]

HF: I’ve been thinking. Like, is she dead ‘cuz of me? If I didn’t draw, like, if I let him die, would he be dead cuz of me?

[silence]

HF: Every way I figure it I fucked up somehow.

[laughter]

[silence]

[swallowing]

HF: What I’m getting at, I guess, I dunno, everything can be your fault if you try hard enough Bobby. Everything looks bad in hindsight. You can’t change it. You just…

[silence]

HF: You try to do your best with what comes next.

[swallowing]

HF: I made a lot of mistakes out here Bobby. I got to choose to make them, though, right? The big ones, I made a decision yeah?

[silence]

HF: I think that means something.

[silence]

HF: I spent a long time not making decisions about you and, and Mom, and now this is

[sniffling]

HF: This is the closest we get, yeah?

[coughing]

HF: It’s enough. I don’t want you to think, if you’ve gone through all this I mean, I’m grateful. I love you.

[silence]

HF: I coulda done better.

[silence]

HF: I coulda done worse.

[shuffling]

HF: I wish I’d picked one.

[swallowing]

HF: Maybe you can do something with that, man.

---

[shuffling]

[coughing]

HF: Have you called him yet?

[fabric rustling]

HF: I’m not trying to ride your a-I mean, I think you’ve done it Mama. Shouldn’t have been a question.

[cap screwing]

[swallowing]

HF: It’s not the same, I don’t, I don’t wanna belittle what you did by pretending it could be, but I walked out. Few days ago. Left...you don’t know him. He was my boyfriend. Axel. Axel Fontaine. I left him sleeping with our friends and I

[choking]

HF: I just wasn’t really planning on coming back. I did. I couldn’t stay away, not here, but I don’t think I coulda walked out at all if I wasn’t sure he was strong enough without me. Understand? That he’d be okay on his own. He didn’t need me.

[silence]

[swallowing]

HF: Dad’s a strong guy.

[swallowing]

HF: Could you have done it if he wasn’t?

[silence]

HF: It makes it easier, right? Knowing he’ll get on without you, so you only gotta worry about yourself?

[footsteps]

[footsteps]

[footsteps]

HF: I don’t wanna project. Could be I’m more selfish than you. I never.

[silence]

[heavy breathing]

[sniffling]

HF: I never thought he’d go first.

[sniffling]

[coughing]

[swallowing]

HF: Did you think you’d make it this far? I, I dunno why I’m asking. Keep it in mind I guess, for when…

[silence]

HF: I love you Momma.

---

[clicking]

HF: I think it’s okay.

[clicking]

HF: I think, I mean, I know it doesn’t feel like it but…

[swallowing]

HF: I think it’s okay Lloyd. I think I’m okay. I think…

[silence]

[deep breathing]

HF: I’m fine in the fire…

[silence]

HF: I feed on the friction…

[silence]

HF: I’m right where I should be…

[silence]

HF: Don’t try and fix me…

HF: I’m fine in the fire.

HF: I feed on the friction!

HF: I’m right where I should be!

HF: Don’t try and

[crack]

[thud]

((Lori Martin continued from




When you kill what you are meant to, there is no remorse.

Lori peered over the top of the rifle. The crack had cut through the sounds of the wildlife and made everything silent. She blinked a few times and let the tip of the gun fall, facing but not quite touching the ground.

She'd heard the singing coming from the forest.

Hel was lying face down on the ground. Lori didn't want to touch them.

In the seconds before she pulled the trigger she had thought -- No. She hadn't thought. She had just kind of felt. That was the way she was a lot of the time. There weren't concrete words that went through her head, but rather intense blankets of emotion. Anger, resentment, regret.

The feeling of "I'll show you," surfed by on the swell of anger. Who was going to be remembered? Who was going to be worth something? Whose name were people never going to forget again? And who were people going to think twice about before starting fights with?

Her.

She let the feelings crash over her and guided by those, she raised the gun and pulled the trigger. Lori looked at a nearby camera which made a small mechanical whirring noise. No one would buy this as anything but murder. There was no plausible deniability to be spun for the viewing audience. The self-improvement, good guy route had sailed on the wave of her impulse.

Fuck it.

"Suck it, Hel," Lori muttered after quickly looking around. She picked up the weapons and the free bag of supplies -- putting the gun in the bag -- and started walking back towards Val, who she left when she heard someone singing.

She turned the corner, and her eyes widened.

"LORI, UMMM -"

((Valerija Bogdanovic continued from When You Kill What You Are Meant To, There is No Remorse))

The past day-and-a-bit had been slow. Lori's company wasn't particularly pleasant, but she had a loaded gun and mental, um, pliability, so Val could sacrifice her own short-term personal comfort for the greater good. During the night, she'd been tempted to try and steal Lori's rifle, but the girl had slept practically wrapped around her bag, like an angry squirrel protecting its nut hoard. Sometimes, she would just start thrashing around, as if she was dreaming about being attacked by bees.

Val didn't get much sleep that night.

Things got worse in the morning, after the announcement of Claude's death, which left them with no proverbial wild goose to chase. Val remembered, back with Jessica and Camille, stumbling upon the aftermath of an encounter between Tyrell and Claude. The two had had history, it seemed.

Anyways, speaking of Jessica, she was the reason Val decided to follow after Lori after the latter had abruptly made an excuse to wander off into the woods by herself. The girl seemed vaguely unhappy, and potentially suicidal. It would be a waste if she just walked away and shot herself somewhere Val couldn't find her and her gun! Her suspicions were only confirmed after the sound of Lori's gun rang out, and she honed in on the source of the noise.

So imagine her surprise, when instead of a dead Lori, she stumbled upon a Lori who was very much alive and slightly spattered with blood!

"- WHAT," she paused, craning her neck to try to see who exactly had just been shot. She could kind of see the figure's legs and maybe a shoulder, but the rest was currently obscured behind Lori's big, blocky torso.

Perhaps Val had grossly underestimated the girl's competence. Maybe she'd killed a killer.

"Who?" she asked, letting her voice soften.

Lori stood up straight when she heard a voice behind her and whipped around. It was Val, who she told she needed a moment not too long ago. After hearing the announcement, Lori decided to have a moment alone.

Claudeson was dead. It served him right that he died after leaving her. She liked to imagine that nearly the instant he left her sight he'd gotten got. Less pleasant was the news about Madison. That was her best friend in the entire class. She was sure that Madison was looking for her and it was understandable that things had gotten to her. Still, it stung to be left alone.

She wasn't quite sure what emotion she felt hearing about what had happened, but whatever it was, it was made worse when she saw Hel. The despair, anger and resentment took over from there.

"Val I --"

She looked at Val, then back at the corpse, then at Val. Should she lie? Tell her Hel attacked her? No... why should she lie?

"It's Hel. Well, it was."

Her right hand held the rifle. With her left she grabbed Val's hand.

"But it doesn't matter, right? Hel insulted the both of us and she was going to be an obstacle eventually, right? The plan... I was just... it had to be done, right?"

Oh.

Oh no!

Val's eyelid twitched. Her gun was in her right pocket, since she was right-handed. Lori's big angry hand was currently crushing her right hand. She wasn't sure if she could grab the gun with her left in a manner that would catch Lori by surprise.

There was no way for her to bluff her way out without agreeing with Lori.

But she couldn't agree. Not without losing her moral and ethical integrity; not without compromising her principle that killing could be a means to an end but should never be the end in of itself.

Was Hel an obstacle? In a way, yes. But were their goals necessarily mutually exclusive with Val's? No! That was the big mistake she'd made when she killed Camille! She could admit that. Extraneous murder was bad!

Lori was a danger. Not just a liability, but an active detriment to the cause.

Hel'd had a gun, she remembered. She guessed wherever it was, it was with Lori now.

She stared into Lori's eyes, body as still as a statue. She was acutely aware of an uncomfortable amount of weight being placed on her injured leg.

"Please let go, Lori," she said, trying to keep her voice calm and steady. "And... please, can you give me the gun?"

"Val, no" she pleaded, squeeing Val's hand tighter. She was starting to feel a tight pain behind her eyes.

"You have to understand. Please understand. It just kind of happened but I'm -- I don't want you to be upset about it."

She wouldn't let go.

"Just tell me what to do to make it right, ok? We can talk this out, the two of us. I'm sorry."

Lori was still and quiet for a moment looking at the other girl.

"No," she said in response to the request. The wind quietly rustling the leaves around them was especially loud.

It was as if her knee was being rended apart.

"Lori please-" she managed to half-grunt before her leg gave out from beneath her, sending her falling into the other girl.

Val pitched forward and in surprised, Lori tried to catch her. The girl was tall, nothing like the tiny fliers she routinely chucked into the air and then caught seconds before they broke their stupid, fragile necks. Lori and Val hit the ground with Lori acting as the cushion, falling as safely as she could given she was surprised. The bag she'd been holding had dropped to the ground and the zipper she hadn't fully closed jolted open a bit, allowing a few recently gathered items to fall out.

She moaned a little and let out a dull, "ow." Lori pushed herself half up. Her rifle was still in the grasp of her right hand.

"Val? Are you OK -- ?"

Val barely had time to process rolling off of Lori and hitting the ground before noticing the characteristic clickity-clack of a gun bouncing across dirt. Hel's gun falling from the bag Lori had dropped. Her mind tunneled in on it, and then generally disregarded Lori's existence entirely.

She dragged herself along the ground towards it. Her knee tore along the ground, leaving a red streak. She'd deal with it later. The gun was more important. She grabbed it in her hand. Ogled it. It was an old gun, it looked like.

Vaguely, she remembered seeing something exactly like it in a museum.

Same exhibit as the pickelhaube.

Lori spoke up. Shoot, that was right. Lori was there, and Lori had just shot Hel, and Lori was an active detriment, and Lori was just generally not what Val or the world really needed at this specific moment, and Val had a shooty gun.

She flipped herself over, and aimed in Lori's direction, and pulled the trigger, and

and this time there was no explosion.

Her eyes widened, locked with Lori's. All she felt was an overwhelming sense of Oh No with a little bit of Whoops too.

She'd maybe always just kind of assumed the only thing a person needed to do in order to fire a gun was pull the trigger.

Lori stared kind of frozen and dumbstruck as Val got off her and literally dragged herself to the fallen supplies. A water bottle had also fallen and rolled along the ground until it bumped gently into Lori's right hand. She sat all the way up and pulled the rifle up close, determined not to let go of it.

"Can we talk about --"

Val turned, pointed the gun at her and Lori's breath caught in her chest. Her heart stopped. Her blood stopped flowing. The moment immediately proceeding the deafening and hollow "click" from the gun stretched out for hours.

Finally Lori raised her eyes from the gun and their eyes met.

Lori: How could you?

Val: Whoops

The slowed time suddenly sped back up, past normal and into fast forward. Lori lowered the barrel of her gun and fired in one interrupted motion. The action was a reflex; it was her brain telling her to quickly deal with a deadly threat. It was to her benefit that her instinctual lizard brain was more intuitive than her conscious one, though she wouldn't realize her fortune.

A red circle bloomed on Val's torso and its red fingers grew and stretched.

Lori scrambled forward towards her.

"Why did you do that?!" she yelled, spittle flying as her eyes welled.

The bullet got Val in the liver.

She fell back to the ground. Tried not to scream. Succeeded, mostly. It didn't hurt that bad, she told herself. She wasn't afraid to die, she told herself.

This was how her dad had felt, bleeding to death on the floor of the bakery, she told herself.

Her composure almost broke with the last thought. She distracted herself from it the first chance she found. The pistol was in her hand still, maybe. She wasn't 100% sure. Her thumb pressed the hammer down. Her other hand was trying to keep her blood in.

Lori was above her now, yelling and crying and asking Val why. Lori wouldn't understand why. Lori had no integrity and no principles. She did not have beliefs, she had reactions.

Val stared up at her. Blinking would be wasteful.

Weakly, she lifted her left hand, blood bubbling out from the hole blown through her torso. She raised it, softly pressed her blood-slicked palm into Lori's cheek, then let it fall to the ground. She'd meant to punch the girl in the face.

Lucidity was fading. Like she was half-asleep. She could tell.

"Lori. Gnušam te," she muttered, eyes focusing on the sky behind Lori's face.

This wasn't right. She was supposed to die for something. She was supposed to be a martyr. She was supposed to make some kind of difference.

She was still breathing. There was still time.

She still had a gun.

Val fell and Lori tried awkwardly to hold her up. The other girl gently put a hand to Lori's cheek and let it fall, probably from lack of strength, streaking Lori's face with blood. Lori put her hand over the girl's wound as if trying to keep the blood in herself. It only made sense in the way a panicked brain did. She kind of whispered something to Lori, but it was in a language she didn't understand and looked at her with glassy eyes.

"Um, me too," she said, not knowing what the sentiment meant.

She lifted her hand and it was a pool of blood now.

"Oh God, you're dying. Oh boy -- oh, oh you're dying," she sputtered trying to look around. Lori put Val back down. "That's -- we can fix," she said turning to the partly open bag on the ground and dragging it forward to look for first-aid supplies.

"Don't die, it's -- fuck. You're dying," she said, sighing shakily.

She weakly contemplated shooting Lori in the face.

She'd figured out why the gun hadn't fired; hopefully amended it. It would work this time.

She couldn't feel her legs. She had thirty seconds left, maybe, she guessed.

Lori was doing something, somewhere. Lori was... paying attention to Lori was a waste of blood. Didn't matter what Lori was doing.

Shooting Lori now wouldn't... it wouldn't mean anything. Wouldn't change anything. It would convey a message, but...

...but there were better ways to convey that message. Ways with more impact.

And an idea flickered into Val's brain.

If Lori killed her, her death wouldn't mean anything.

If she killed herself, maybe it would mean something, in some erudite, symbolic way. Like, death on her own terms. Looking Lori and the terrorists in the eye and telling them 'No'. An act of revolutionary suicide.

Normally, she would have hated her death being only a symbolic gesture, but... in her dying mind, it made complete sense.

She was hit by a sudden, renewed wave of strength. The fire returned to her eyes. She jerked the gun up to her neck, pressing the end of the barrel against her collar. She wanted to say something, to have last words, but... she couldn't think anymore. Had to act. Had to do it now before it was too late.

She looked up at the sky. Focused on the sun. Stared into it. Pulled the trigger.

Two explosions.

G054: VALERIJA BOGDANOVIC: DECEASED

Val pointed the gun at her collar. It was the same collar that they were all forced to wear. Lori backed away quickly, which was long enough to get a few paces back in the moment of Val's hesitation. She must have waited for her to get out of range. She shot her collar which triggered the explosive inside the device, which exploded inward and turned her neck into gore.

Lori couldn't hear like before. In the aftermath of the explosion, the sound of the birds and the leaves rustling was muted. Val....

Lori looked on at the body of the other girl.

"You...." she said softly.

Val must have killed herself so that Lori wouldn't be on the announcements for her death. If anyone was left on the island who loved Val, they wouldn't go after Lori for her sake. She must have changed her mind about trying to hurt her when she approached her last moments.

She sighed and wiped her eyes.

"I can't believe you helped me. Y-- you really...."

Lori gathered her things while sniffling and picked up all of the fallen supplies.

"Sorry," she said quietly as she left the small clearing.

But then, she though, she wouldn't have done something like that to cover for her killer. Lori would have wanted everyone to know and for vengeance to be done.

But she knew no one would want to avenge her.

((Lori Martin continued elsewhere))