Gravity

[Pippi]

There was still a smile on Aidan’s face, and Lucia hated every inch of it. Lucia knew about ‘putting a brave face on’, or whatever the phrase was, but this... this was something else. Maybe the smiles and reassurance that everything would turn out alright would have been comforting on the first day, after they’d just woken up. But Aidan had seen someone get shot right before his eyes, someone he had some sort of connection to, however slight, and yet he was still acting all positive.

“A-alright. I think... I believe I can trust you.”

No she couldn’t. Not in a million years. But she had to go along with the plan. It was her best chance of survival at this point in time.

Laura had already picked up Lucia’s bag, and was on her way to the changing rooms. Lucia took one more glance at Aidan, before hurrying after the other girl. The gun was still in her hand, but pointed straight down at the floor. She didn’t want to take any chances. She knew nothing about the mechanics of the gun aside from how to fire it. If there was a safety, she had no idea where or how to turn it on and off.

Lucia quickly caught up to Laura in the changing rooms. She’d kind of hoped that she would have been left to her own devices; she didn’t really feel comfortable changing in front of either Laura or Aidan. However, she guessed that they trusted her as much as she trusted them. It made sense for her to be escorted, even if it was only to the changing room. She could only hope that Laura turned her back or something.

As Lucia took the bag from Laura, she realised there was one thing she could do nothing about, and that was the camera staring at her from one corner of the room. Behind the unblinking, uncaring lens, there were countless eyes staring at her, watching her every move. Lucia didn’t care about what the editors would do to her, but she did care that people were able to see every wrong move she made.

Lucia quickly opened her bag and started hurriedly sorting through it. She would just have to get this over and done with. She put the food and first aid kit to one side, although keeping a mental note of their presence; they would definitely be useful later. Instead, she searched for clothing. There was a tank top in the same colour as the bandana round her arm and a t-shirt with the Coke Zero logo emblazoned across the front, which Lucia also put to one side. She didn’t need to change her top just yet, after all, and the more clothing she could keep on, the better.

Lucia’s hopes were raised when she found a navy-blue skirt tucked underneath the t-shirt, but that quickly drained as soon as she pulled it out of the bag. It was much, much shorter than the skirt she was currently wearing, and definitely not the sort of thing she’d have worn anyway. On top of that, she was already feeling cold in her own clothing. Wearing that would cause her freeze, possibly literally.

Praying that the skirt wasn’t the only lower item of clothing in the bag, Lucia carried on searching. Predictably, the thing she was searching for was right at the bottom of the bag; a pair of grey track pants. Lucia much preferred wearing skirts, but right now, beggars couldn’t be choosers. She took a quick glance at the camera, before placing her Jericho next to her bag, slipping her shoes off and removing her skirt, face bright red as she hurriedly pulled the track pants on.

There. It was done. No doubt thousands of teenage boys across America had recorded that moment through any means possible. Lucia quickly picked her weapon back up, before turning to face Laura.

“Okay. I... think I am ready to leave, now.”

[Shangela*]

Aidan felt guilty sending Laura off alone with Lucia. Laura was his only “friend” here, and Aidan was sending her off with a known two-time killer. As soon as his internal monologue called her a friend, he immediately recoiled. Sure she was listening to him for now, but how could she really be his “friend?” They were complete strangers. That was a fact. Aidan could tell himself all he wanted that they were on the same team, but he didn’t know that. He could tell himself that they bonded because they both refused to kill anyone else in the sake of trite television, but he didn’t quite know how true that was either. For what Aidan didn’t know, he could pad with a delicate semblance of script. The problem was that Aidan was drastically starting to feel the pages running out.

The two girls walked off, and Aidan’s hand instinctively reached out at Laura. Don’t go. A voice that never spoke called out. He commanded them like little minions in his army, but as their figures rounded the corner, Aidan got a fresh reminder of how loneliness felt.

He wasn’t actually alone though. No matter how scary the prospect of being alone seemed, he wasn’t really. Millions of Americans were watching him. Sure not every minute. Aidan could afford to pick his nose, pee on a bush, or scratch his lower back, and the editors would cut hopefully cut most of that out, but every minute there was someone watching him. Someone who knew exactly what was behind every corner that Aidan rounded. Someone who knew exactly what every little rattling sound that sent violent shivers down Aidan’s back, was. Someone knew Aidan’s immediate future, and it wasn’t him.

He hated it. His whole vision for his fabulously grand life was at a dramatic end. He could see himself now; dressed head to toe in a gray Armani suit. Would it be gray? No, it had to be. Gray matched his eyes and fair complexion well. Black was too garish, anyways. He would be riding in a black limousine, though. White leather interior, with a small partition for a bar built in the side. He’d be hand in hand with his fiancée. Someone he’d met when he did a brief stint in New York as an actor. His man could be the breadwinning theater-turned big screen extraordinaire. Aidan loved to think fifteen years in the future, but he couldn’t even guarantee fifteen minutes.

Well, this was a start. The girls were gone. It was just him, and the flirtation of the rifle. Every little line lead up to this moment. Aidan hoped it would have felt more poetic. He hugged the rifle to his chest like a Christmas present. In a smug sense, he felt victorious. He wanted protection further than his charm and persona could offer, and now he got it. He went through hell, and came out the other side. His ordeals were far from over, of course, but at least he now had a fair shot.

With no one in sight, Aidan tracked down and tore through the girl’s bag. There was nothing personal in the bag itself. With it’s previous owner long dead, it had no ties to any semblance of individuality, save for a few wrappers. Rations, water bottles, and the first aid kid went flying off. Aidan ravenously parsed through her bag, pulling out any spare magazines for the gun. Aidan could find three of them, adding to the additional one on the rifle itself. A manual came with it, on the very slim chance that Aidan would find a second of downtime to read it. He greedily snatched that up too.

Minutes passed and there was no sign of movement. Lucia hadn’t gone back on her word, and Laura hadn’t been shot. While they were occupied, Aidan was left exclusively alone with the body. Yeah, that’s what she was, a body. Aidan hadn’t known her past a few awkward pleasantries. He tried to be her friend, tried to save her, but the circumstances of the world didn’t work out. It was her fault, really. She scared Lucia by coming over running with a gun. She asked for it.

Aidan could keep telling himself that, but the girl’s dead eyes bored directly into him. He could feel the collective judgment project through her pallid face. He promised the same sense of camaraderie to her as he did Lucia. Lucia deserved his facetious empathy a whole lot less than this girl did. All he could do was dig through her things and parse apart whatever he felt like taking. He could keep telling himself that she deserved it, but she wasn’t Gene, for example. She didn’t actively threaten them. She was just as scared as they all were, and she died for her panic. It wasn’t fair. America was probably thinking that as they watched Aidan paw through her items like a bandit.

“Stop looking at me.” Aidan murmured to the body. He clearly wasn’t talking to her, but he may as well have. “STOP FUCKING LOOKING AT ME.”

With a swift tap of the toe of his boat shoe, he craned the girl’s face away from him. He couldn’t stand her judgment. He tried. He was still trying. Escape was a lofty dream, but it was now a promise that he’d made. He wasn’t smarter than sixty-five seasons worth of producers had been. How could he hope to outsmart them at their own game?

It was a good thing that Aidan now had this rifle. It was even hard for him to delude himself into thinking that he knew what he was doing.

----

The redheaded corpse was heavy. As rigorously as Aidan worked out, even he wasn’t prepared for all of this dead weight. That was a sobering thought, dead weight. What was once a person was just one-hundred-fifty-pounds of sheer, unflexible, unwilling weight. Aidan could bench just under that weight without a spotter easily, but he was finding himself struggling with her. At first, he’d tried to carry her in his arms, but she was still coated in dried, browning blood. Vanity was a love that still hadn’t died in him.

Aidan settled on dragging her, using her ankles as handles to drag the poor girl’s body across. Aidan tried not to look at her, securing her behind him as he pulled. If Aidan had been better at diffusing the situation, he might have saved her too. He wanted to cry for her, or to at least give her one last writ of humanity, but he couldn’t find any. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. It was just too painful to.

Aidan watched the room drag on away from him as he sluggishly made his way to the supply closet. Past the rows of spare basketballs, and a little towards the left of the stacked baseball plates, Aidan came across a very familiar comfort. The pristine white lacrosse net was a beautiful reminder of back home. Beautiful, and heartbreaking at the same time.

Lacrosse was the only thing his father was guaranteed to see. Every time Davison qualified to play in some state tourney, his father would drop all his business in Vegas and come see him play. It didn’t matter if he was in the middle of negotiating licensing rights for the contestant’s likenesses, or if he was striking a deal to turn the gambling system into a fancy phone app, his dad was always there. Aidan was far from the best player on the team. He was tall, but his run was always a little awkward. He was strong, but he was always a little too nice to use his full brutality.

But when his dad was watching, he always scored well. He always made his dad proud. Most Improved, Freshman year. MVP, Sophomore year. All thanks to his dad’s presence. Aidan wanted what all boys wanted; his father’s pride.

“Great game. I love you, kiddo.”

Aidan decided on a suitable location for the girl’s body. If he propped her behind the basketballs, she was just out of the camera’s vision. He felt that her parents didn’t deserve to see her slowly decay. She might have been a killer, but no body deserved that indignity. Aidan thought that everyone deserved a beautiful funeral. If there was a god, he’d decide how he’d ugly you up when you got upstairs.

It was just Aidan, the camera, and the poorly lit supply closet now. Laura and Lucia were distant flirtations in the back of his head.

“Dad.” Aidan started weak.

Dad. I’m so fucking scared. I have no fucking idea what I’m doing here, okay? People want to be cast on this show so badly; to prove what they’ve got is exactly what every wannabe star could dream of. I-I thought this was my dream. To be world renowned and famous one day. I wanted to do something to make you and Mom proud. I wanted to be somebody, to be worth something. A whole lot of something.

You know we’d always have those little strategy sessions about how to survive here. I miss that. I miss you being there, telling me what to do. To the cameras I’m this big, smart, confident actor with this dazzling display of wit and cunning. But I’m not that guy. I never have been. I can’t fake it any more, Dad. I don’t know what to do. I can’t keep lying to everyone. Eventually they’re all gonna know I’m a fraud. I need you here. You’re supposed to tell me what to do. How to act. How to get everything I want out of life. You promised me you’d teach me.

I don’t want anything else other than to live. I’d be a hobo and still be happy.  I just don’t want to die, Daddy. Please, help me.

“I’m going to make you proud. You, Mom, Alyssa. Everyone’s gonna be watching me when I get on that helicopter home.” As soon as he spoke, disguised in a pseudo-confident pitch, he snapped his head away from the camera. America didn’t need to see the look of terror and uncertainty that was plastered across his face.

[Shangela*]

Aidan wasn’t satisfied with how he’d moved the girl’s body. The streak of blood still betrayed Aidan’s attempts to sanitize the situation. No matter how much they attempted to hide it, or blissfully ignore it, the fact was very, very clear that someone had died in this room moments ago. So recently, that Aidan felt the lingering heat on her flesh. Hiding her away wouldn’t undo her murder, but they wouldn’t have to relive it every time their vision glanced down to the floor.

Lucia had changed from her previous attire to something significantly less ratchet looking. Sure the track pants were hardly a fashionable choice, but they weren’t acrid with vomit, and they did seem warmer than the skirt they’d abducted her in.  

“Perfect!” Aidan exclaimed with a forced enthusiasm. “Now that we’re all a bit comfortable, I think we should talk about our game plan.”

He waited until the two girls were within a muted whispering distance before he continued. “I know how we’re gonna get out of here. It’s something that hasn’t been done yet, so they’re not expecting it.” How far was Aidan going to carry this bluff?

“Tomorrow we’ll get started on it. Trust me.” Aidan finished whispering. A conspicuous group of teenagers huddled in a wide open gymnasium was slightly more suspicious than Coco Chanel’s newfound taste in chiffon. They needed to keep this as mummed as possible.

“For tonight, I think we should stay here. They said that no expense was spared here, but I beg to differ. There’s quite a lack of comfortable bedding here.” Aidan scanned the room, locking eyes on a full stack of gymnastic mats. They were hard, and unforgiving, but were marginally better than sleeping directly on the floor. “We can sleep on those. Now what about watch shifts?”

Aidan buzzed with plans, and the girls seemed complacent enough in his agreement. Aidan found himself surprisingly tired, so when someone else volunteered for the first shift, he was surprisingly relieved. Sleep didn’t come easy. Of course he’d tossed around in mutual discomfort from the mat, as well as the uncertainty of his friends fates, but eventually sleep must have overtaken him. He certainly couldn’t recall any sleep when a hand jostled him awake for his final shift.

Aidan found the situation of guarding two sleeping teenage girls refreshingly hilarious. Surely some lecherous shut-in was muttering to himself some awful obscenities about what they’d do in the situation at hand. Aidan preferred them awake. The more of their voices he heard, the less of his own he was subjected to.

Just before the announcements rolled, the girls woke up and readied themselves. Breakfast wasn’t exactly luxurious. Between three people, they could split Gene’s half of the rations, and would only need to dip a little into their own stores. It wasn’t exactly steak au pouvre, but it would do for now.
Aidan intentionally crammed his mouth full of saltines as Ritzy Daggers continued her little drivel. He didn’t like her very much when they’d first met, and now he absolutely hated her.

The expected names popped up; Jewel Evans was trying to be this season’s Karen Ruiz. He should have figured that's the angle she was playing, after the first three kills. And of course Lucia’s name came up. They were all expecting to hear it that morning, even if no one said anything. Lucia stirred uncomfortably in her seat at the mention of her name being connected to a “double kill.”

“It’s okay.” Aidan tried to offer her a supportive hand to place on her shoulder.

Aidan almost missed the most jarring announcement. Gene Steward, that slimy little bastard, had gone and killed a girl. Aidan’s glance decidedly changed direction from Lucia to Laura. “We… We couldn’t have stopped him.” Again, Aidan offered an empty condolence. They very well could have stopped him, but Aidan couldn’t bear to do it.

If the situation ever offered itself again, Aidan doubted that he’d have any more humane mercy to offer.

“Let’s go. I think we can come back here and consider this as a more permanent base. Right now we need supplies.” Aidan abruptly stood up. The announcements weren’t as encouraging or “fun” as Ritzy Daggers tried to make them. They were terrible reminders of what was happening all around them. They did serve a useful purpose as far as Aidan was concerned. They made him determined to get out of here.

((CS5 - Aidan Adelman continued in The Jellies Experience))

[Impereld*]

She didn't exactly want to spend the night where a girl had just been murdered- no, had died. Thinking of Lucia as a murderer wasn't going to be beneficial. But the body was gone now. It didn't undo what had happened, didn't take away the memories of what had happened, but it was enough for now. It was more then she would've expected.

Aidan maintained they were going to escape, that he had a plan. She didn't know if he was telling the truth or not, but if he wasn't, he couldn't exactly come out and say it, could he? Not with Lucia around. And as long as they were moving on, well, that was good enough for her. And at least their little motley group had weapons now, even if she didn't get one. Hopefully she'd get one before too long, one way or another.

Seemed like she'd need one, according to the announcements. There were still killers about. Some killers weren't surprises; she knew about Lucia, of course, and Jewel seemed well on her way to ten kills. And of course Gene had killed. If anything, that was worse than Lucia. If she hadn't had the good luck to run into Aidan, would she be dead already? Would he have followed her and ended it then and there. Maybe Aidan was right. Maybe they couldn't have stopped him. Still didn't stop her from feeling like shit, though.

Too much to think about for now. She needed to move on. They wanted to move on.  At least they might find somewhere not so stained with blood.

((Laura Mason continued in Kill Your Heroes))

[Pippi]

Lucia didn’t get much sleep. Not that she’d been expecting to, though.

Sleeping on the mats was preferable to sleeping on the bare floor itself, but Lucia quickly grew uncomfortable and cold without any sheets or pillows or anything. Comfort was the least of her worries, however. There were far, far too many things on her mind for sleep to even have a chance of affecting her.

There was going to be an announcement as soon as she woke up, and everyone on the island would know that Lucia del Pirlo had murdered a second person. People wouldn’t see her as the quiet, polite artist from school; they’d see her as a threat. There were probably people scared of her on the resort. Even if people from the other school didn’t know her and didn’t know what she looked like, there were ways of finding that out. After all, for one reason or another, some people from Davison didn’t like her. How strange it was that she was now travelling with one of said people.

And yet, that was another thing keeping Lucia from sleeping. Aidan and Laura were travelling with a known killer, something that would only bring more harm, than good, surely. Was there anything stopping them from cutting their losses? They could continue their escape plan without her. The only thing that might dissuade them was the fact their names would turn up on the announcement the next morning, but what if they were willing to take that risk?

Lucia spent most of the night in utter discomfort, and the rest with her eyes flying open at any sound of movement from next to her. It was incredibly fortunate she didn’t shoot either of her companions when she was informed it was her turn to keep watch.

Finally, the morning came, and all three of them were still alive. That was something, at least, some formation of trust between them all. How disturbing it was, Lucia pondered over her meagre breakfast of bread and saltines, that she could only trust people if they didn’t literally stab her in the back. But it WAS the only way; the only way if Lucia wanted to make sure she stayed alive out here.

Lucia was ready to go as soon as Aidan gave the word. They were only aiming to leave the building for a short while, but some time away from there would do her good. The announcement had only reminded her of the body that had once been lying a few feet away from them. She had missed Aidan’s reaction to the rest of the announcement. There would be no way to completely run away from the thoughts swirling in her head, but maybe moving away from the source of some of them would help.

Lucia couldn’t completely trust Aidan and Laura, even if they hadn’t decided to get rid of her during the night. Lucia was still uncertain about how well the escape plan would go, especially given that Aidan had said no-one had ever attempted something like it.

But she’d finally found something, no matter how small it was. You had to crawl before you could walk, as her father would say.

((Lucia del Pirlo continued in The Jellies Experience))