(Olivia del Rio continued from Talking About Fight Club.)
Olivia locked herself in the largest shower-stall on the end. Her eyes stared blankly toward the showerhead. The metal ceiling bulged out like an ogre's belly; rusted grooves in the misshapen metal dripped tainted water into the drain below. The light above her wasn't working. "I'm gonna catch tetanus in here," she groused. Her brain-to-mouth filter was long gone. The words fell out of her without a thought; as they bounced off the shower walls, she thought they belonged to another person entirely. I wonder if the audience caught that, she thought dimly. She decided she didn't give a damn.
With a grumbling groan, she kicked off her shoes and threw everything — top, shorts, lucky hoodie — into a misshapen pile on the ground. The stench of sweat filled her nostrils. Fuck tetanus. Liv needed a shower, and she was going to take one.
She yanked the temperature lever as close to the maximum as she could without scalding herself, as she always did when the girls' lacrosse team lost a match. Coping mechanism? Punishment for failure? What did it matter? This was her solace, where the whole world was liquid and the electricity raging inside her head would shut up and let her drift aimlessly through happier thoughts. Yet, no matter how determined she was to transform this old, rusted cruise ship shower into her personal sauna, Ritzy Daggers was there to taunt her:
Some of you must be feeling the heat right now, too. After all, if you don't finish what you start, sometimes you'll get little reminders—exactly what happened when Ivan Rodriguez hung up his flag, and Vasily Ivanov, near some other old friends.
At least after that, we got something MUCH more exciting! a final showdown between RJ Blackburn and Anthony Golden. Anthony seemed to be down for the count, but taking anything for granted can cost you, like it cost RJ an axe to the head!
Twice in twelve hours, that was how Olivia learned that two of her best friends had been viciously murdered: the tinny, obnoxious voice of a ratty old DJ, all sneering grins and twinkling green eyes. Cracking jokes. Sure, the previous announcers had done the exact same, but she had never felt quite so personally disgusted by all of it as she did in this moment, under a veil of rusty water. She thought back to those late nights with her parents, with Holly perched atop her shoulder. They'd watched the program, all of them. Mindlessly consumed the deaths of hundreds of high-schoolers just like her.
The TV was playing Vasily's hanging.
Fucking arsehole producer cunts, said the boy she kicked in the groin, the boy who went on to murder six people.
The TV was playing RJ with an axe in his skull.
The shower door was locked tight behind her, but for all she knew, someone would be coming to bust it down with that same bloody axe, Psycho-strings a-shrieking for the audience back home. Her Marion Crane moment. Really, if RJ had been by her side all along, he'd be drawing all sorts of horror movie comparisons. Capping them off with a pun or two for good measure. They'd sit on the docks, joke a bit, think about the meaning of life. She'd been hoping in vain for three days, scouring the docks aimlessly with Lucia by her side, and now... none of it was possible.
Olivia's stomach churned. Her mouth tasted like dried squid and vomit. Her teeth gnashed together, and she slammed her fist into the wall with all the force she could muster. Bad idea. Her hand was still recovering from firing Little Joe twice. From shooting Cory in the stomach, her guilty conscience nagged. She howled in pain. Blood — her blood — was trickling down the tile. "Suckass piece of shit!" she yelled at the top of her lungs.
Once, the world was liquid. Now, as she crumpled to the floor, it was nothing but cold, hard, and concrete.
Interlude 2: Electric Boogaloo
Oneshot-and-a-half, part 2: in which Olivia has a rare moment of introspection.
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carduinal-cyn
- Posts: 324
- Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2020 5:56 pm
- Team Affiliation: Emmy's Selkies
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carduinal-cyn
- Posts: 324
- Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2020 5:56 pm
- Team Affiliation: Emmy's Selkies
Olivia's heartbeat was thumping through her fists. There she lay, on her knees, inches from the drain. The showerhead continued to deluge her from above; wet hair hung in her face, dripping warm rust. Blood. Sweat. Tears. The tenets of hard work spilled out of her, mixed together with the rust, mingled with the drain-flies.
He's dead. He's fuckin' dead, Vas is dead too, everyone in this whole stupid school is gonna die and I can't even protect myself when the time comes 'cause I don't have any— aah, Jesus Christ, what would he say, what would he say...!
"Hey... you've lived four days, you know that? Not a lot of people do that on this show. You're almost ready for your Final Girl circuit!"
...That didn't help at all, brain. That's not even how he'd sound! Fuckin' hell... this is the kind of friend I am to him, huh. He's dead, and the only thing I can do is try and imagine him, cheering ME up...! No. No, I can't picture him anymore. I'll be crying all night.
RJ, if you're listening right now... let me be selfish, will you? I promise, I'm gonna go to your gravestone every year when this is over! But I can't think right now. Not about you. You're... you're my best friend in the whole world, but this is a competition, and I've gotta win... no. NEED to win. For us. For Vas, too, for Lucia when...
When it's her time... shit.
I'm really gonna have no one when she's gone, huh? Haven't even seen my "teammates", unless you count that stupid geek boy. Assholes. When I find 'em, I'm gonna give 'em a piece of my mind for leaving me out to dry like this, with a crossbow that's out of bullets... if I even live long enough to run into 'em.
...'Course I am, right? That's what I said before. "My name is Liv, 'cause that's what I'm gonna do"... god, that sounds so corny. Especially when I've needed a bodyguard this whole time, and the two of us haven't done shit this whole game...
No, no, stay calm. Stay calm, Olivia. You're thinking too much. Every time you fuck up in a game, it's 'cause you've been thinking instead of playing.
I need to stop thinking.
She'd laid there for ten minutes, dissociating.
Olivia's fingers burned as she groped along the floor for her daypack, which lay next to her sweat-soaked clothes. She fumbled with the zipper for a moment, but she managed to unzip it through the pain nonetheless. She rummaged through its contents; her hair dripped over everything inside. A sextant here, a map she'd never use there...
At last, the moment of truth. Her fist closed around the bottle of Captain Morgan and she was unscrewing it before regret had a chance to catch her. Foul, vanilla-scented rum glugged into her throat and down her chin. She downed the whole 50 milliliters in one go, and when she'd choked it down, she let the bottle roll away until it came to a rest at the far side of the stall. Olivia let out her most violent sigh. The showerhead was still roaring behind her, as if calling her back. As far as she was concerned, though, she'd traded one liquid world for another. After struggling to her feet, she silenced the warm, inviting rust-water with a twist of her uninjured wrist.
The familiar post-shower chill began to set in. Liv yanked the white towel from her pack; its edges soaked up water that hadn't drained quite yet as it broke free, and so she dried herself very hastily to avoid touching the patches of cold wetness. She tossed it aside once she was done, and it landed atop the bottle of rum with an audible rustle. The girl was clean now, to be sure, but she was certainly not decent yet. Squatting down, she began to search her rations for a change of clothes.
White.
Everything in the whole God-forsaken backpack was as white as a glass of milk: white tank top, white T-shirt, white sweatpants, white bikini. Despite herself, Olivia snorted. "Oh my god," she muttered to herself, incredulous. "It's all see-through. They're not expecting me to actually wear this, right?" She searched again; closer inspection revealed a flash of black and red, but when she pulled it out, it turned out to be a dress so faux-"edgy" that she decided she wouldn't be caught dead in it. Is this their idea of a Halloween prank? It's got wings, for God's sake!
What a shame! Liv thought as she slipped into the swimsuit. She sighed, resigned, as she stuck her now-bare sleeves back into her lucky hoodie. A costume edit like this was giving the fans exactly what they wanted: that lurid fusion of sex and violence. Perhaps, she supposed, the survivors might be a little too busy staring to fight her off properly. Wasn't Junji still with them, after all, wasn't poor Anthony Golden, whom she'd distracted with far less? Wasn't this the angle she'd leaned into on the yacht, before RJ had an axe sticking out of his—
Never mind all that. She'd confront the issues tomorrow.
And so, fuelled in part by a bottle of rum, Olivia packed up her dirty clothes and towel, tossed Captain Morgan out the nearest window, and staggered off to the deepest sleep she'd had in four days.
(Olivia del Rio continued in Alligator Arms.)
He's dead. He's fuckin' dead, Vas is dead too, everyone in this whole stupid school is gonna die and I can't even protect myself when the time comes 'cause I don't have any— aah, Jesus Christ, what would he say, what would he say...!
"Hey... you've lived four days, you know that? Not a lot of people do that on this show. You're almost ready for your Final Girl circuit!"
...That didn't help at all, brain. That's not even how he'd sound! Fuckin' hell... this is the kind of friend I am to him, huh. He's dead, and the only thing I can do is try and imagine him, cheering ME up...! No. No, I can't picture him anymore. I'll be crying all night.
RJ, if you're listening right now... let me be selfish, will you? I promise, I'm gonna go to your gravestone every year when this is over! But I can't think right now. Not about you. You're... you're my best friend in the whole world, but this is a competition, and I've gotta win... no. NEED to win. For us. For Vas, too, for Lucia when...
When it's her time... shit.
I'm really gonna have no one when she's gone, huh? Haven't even seen my "teammates", unless you count that stupid geek boy. Assholes. When I find 'em, I'm gonna give 'em a piece of my mind for leaving me out to dry like this, with a crossbow that's out of bullets... if I even live long enough to run into 'em.
...'Course I am, right? That's what I said before. "My name is Liv, 'cause that's what I'm gonna do"... god, that sounds so corny. Especially when I've needed a bodyguard this whole time, and the two of us haven't done shit this whole game...
No, no, stay calm. Stay calm, Olivia. You're thinking too much. Every time you fuck up in a game, it's 'cause you've been thinking instead of playing.
I need to stop thinking.
She'd laid there for ten minutes, dissociating.
Olivia's fingers burned as she groped along the floor for her daypack, which lay next to her sweat-soaked clothes. She fumbled with the zipper for a moment, but she managed to unzip it through the pain nonetheless. She rummaged through its contents; her hair dripped over everything inside. A sextant here, a map she'd never use there...
At last, the moment of truth. Her fist closed around the bottle of Captain Morgan and she was unscrewing it before regret had a chance to catch her. Foul, vanilla-scented rum glugged into her throat and down her chin. She downed the whole 50 milliliters in one go, and when she'd choked it down, she let the bottle roll away until it came to a rest at the far side of the stall. Olivia let out her most violent sigh. The showerhead was still roaring behind her, as if calling her back. As far as she was concerned, though, she'd traded one liquid world for another. After struggling to her feet, she silenced the warm, inviting rust-water with a twist of her uninjured wrist.
The familiar post-shower chill began to set in. Liv yanked the white towel from her pack; its edges soaked up water that hadn't drained quite yet as it broke free, and so she dried herself very hastily to avoid touching the patches of cold wetness. She tossed it aside once she was done, and it landed atop the bottle of rum with an audible rustle. The girl was clean now, to be sure, but she was certainly not decent yet. Squatting down, she began to search her rations for a change of clothes.
White.
Everything in the whole God-forsaken backpack was as white as a glass of milk: white tank top, white T-shirt, white sweatpants, white bikini. Despite herself, Olivia snorted. "Oh my god," she muttered to herself, incredulous. "It's all see-through. They're not expecting me to actually wear this, right?" She searched again; closer inspection revealed a flash of black and red, but when she pulled it out, it turned out to be a dress so faux-"edgy" that she decided she wouldn't be caught dead in it. Is this their idea of a Halloween prank? It's got wings, for God's sake!
What a shame! Liv thought as she slipped into the swimsuit. She sighed, resigned, as she stuck her now-bare sleeves back into her lucky hoodie. A costume edit like this was giving the fans exactly what they wanted: that lurid fusion of sex and violence. Perhaps, she supposed, the survivors might be a little too busy staring to fight her off properly. Wasn't Junji still with them, after all, wasn't poor Anthony Golden, whom she'd distracted with far less? Wasn't this the angle she'd leaned into on the yacht, before RJ had an axe sticking out of his—
Never mind all that. She'd confront the issues tomorrow.
And so, fuelled in part by a bottle of rum, Olivia packed up her dirty clothes and towel, tossed Captain Morgan out the nearest window, and staggered off to the deepest sleep she'd had in four days.
(Olivia del Rio continued in Alligator Arms.)