————————PART SEVEN————————
I’m standing in the hallway staring at the door.
I want to piss my pants.
I want to find some way to discreetly dispose of myself entirely.
I can’t do this. I can’t.
I can barely keep my eyes open. I feel like I’m staring at the sun.
I just got a text.
(You should be in character. If you need a second, take it outside, and then get your shit together. Once you open that door, it stays open, and you’re doing this.)
Please cry. Please. Please start crying.
Another.
(You already said yes, there’s no room left for you to say no.)
Alright, I’ll be honest with you, I really do feel so chronologically disoriented from my vacation to The Warehouse. How about we assume I was there for two days, and just double it to account for the pain and misery of four horrific days squished into two.
Sound like a plan? Dope.
Cody Camargo: Twenty-one days in.
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So, good news/bad news.
Bad news: I woke up again.
Good news: I don’t really feel like I’m going to vomit up jet fuel. Is that good news, or just news? Most people’s “good news” is not usually the absence of a severely obvious negative. Trust me, the fact that I woke up at all is bad news.
I think I feel better, marginally. Or at least as good as I can feel after having a lingering concussion, broken rib, falling down a sky-scraping escalator, being almost completely deprived of food and water for “two” days, living next to and practically in a septic tank for those same “two” days, being asphyxiated, being beaten within an inch of my life AGAIN, being trampled by an overachieving Staff member, whatever the actual-storybook-hell had happened inside of my stomach, and of course, a punch and kick in the face to welcome me back to this wonderful community.
Remember when I tried to stop saying the word “infinite”? I’m gonna do you a favor, and make it a bottom line that I’m in a pretty consistent physical misery of hellish proportions. That way, I can save you the gratuitous mention of it. Just let it be known that from here on out, until stated otherwise, I would much rather be dead.
Besides, I don’t want to complain too much. What would make it a fun visit to R&E if not the pain of everything I experienced before losing consciousness returning all in one instant?!
“…fffffuck mmmme…”
Preferably senseless.
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My notebook is gone (you know the blatant catch to that, but live in the moment with me). I can’t feel it under my shirt. I also can’t feel the weight of my phone in my pocket. I know I hadn’t dropped it on my way back, but even if I had, I don’t feel like I would care very much.
My arms are back in their respective holsters of rope and chair-limb. I might feel more dignified in medieval stocks than repeatedly winding up in this goddamn chair. I didn’t try to lift my head. I didn’t feel any need to see my concrete studio apartment again. The cold steel of the table was giving my head such a romantically gentle hug of relief. Lord knows goddamn well I deserved it.
I’m sure that quite soon, whichever one of them that feels the need to berate me will do so. I don’t think I could care less about that if I had literally been lobotomized while I was unconscious. I don’t care about what they want to do with me, or whether or not they want to kill me, or if they want to hurt me if I’m not being cooperative, or about being cooperative for anything other than helping them throw me to my own death. Right now, what I care about is taking a nap, until I hopefully fade back into a coma-like-blackout for the next fifty years or so.
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A hand slammed down on the table like an alarm clock. I sighed deeply and realized that a nap wasn’t possible.
They just keep getting friendlier.
I raised my head to see that the hyperbolic one with no Y chromosome & the giant samurai were staring at me.
(Quick annoying note that I feel I have to address:
From where I’m sitting, his name is Roman. I don’t expressly dislike that name, but I was having much more fun catcalling him with random aliases to take my childish anger out on a member of this group. I’m just gonna list all of the names that I would have liked to make fun of him with at some point or another. This is a referential monstrosity, so the whole list will just be bookended as such.
(RA)
1. Buff Kirito (his hair isn’t black)
2. Conan The Barbarian
3. ABC Lightning Eating Thunder Crapping XYZ
4. Samurai Jack
5. Tank Masaki (I like this one a lot)
6. Dante
7. Robert The Bruce Banner (I mean, Christ)
8. Beowulf
9. Ike (Fire Emblem, not Turner)
10. Ganondorf
11. All-Might
12. Kratos
13. Andre The Giant
14. The Liver King
15. Roman Reigns (I know I already made a Roman Reigns joke a lot earlier in this journal, but I wasn’t exactly privy to the fact that I would meet a guy named fucking “Roman”)
16. Stringbean (This is an ironic shame to throw away. Maybe I’ll still use it if the time is ever right)
(RA)
Cool, that’s out of my system).
I’m sure my hair-trigger ears would have heard the extremely loud door opening and closing, so I assumed they had already been standing over me for quite a while. I used this reasoning to agree with myself that they could be patient for a little longer. I’m worth the wait.
I slowly put my head back down on the table.
“I’m all good for now, guys,” I whispered. Thank you for asking, though.”
“Wake. Up. Now,” Her lovely voice stung through my ears.
“Suck. My-“
Before I could finish the sentence, I heard her bolting around the table. Roman ran to catch her by the wrist.
“Just a second,” He said.
I heard her groan in annoyance. I liked it a lot. After the room fell calm, my head was suddenly raised up by the hair.
“Ow! Get off of-….” I winced.
I could technically talk again, but exclaiming in any way was still a big nono. He pulled my torso up and tossed me to the back of the chair. I let my head slump limply down to my chest. He scoffed, as he grabbed it by the cheeks and forced me to come eye to eye with him.
“Hey, look at this,” He said.
In his other hand, he waved a bottle of water in front of me like I was a toddler looking at a stuffed animal. It worked. I probably looked like I was seeing a naked woman for the first time.
“Dooo you want it?” He taunted.
I really didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of gratitude. Let it be clear, I didn’t want to be breathing still, but as long as I was, I would’ve preferred to not be in misery. The sight of that water bottle was almost exciting me to a sexual degree.
“I think you need it,” He added.
What was I going to do, act like I was too tough for terminal dehydration? Well, I tried to anyway. My eyes rolled and drifted away from him down to the table.
“How do you have the energy to be so annoying-“ He said.
“-Just shove it down his throat if you think he needs it so bad-why are you giving him the choice-“ She snarked.
“-Can you just let me talk to him?!”
A little smile creeped onto my face. I looked slowly back at him as I let it bloom into my cheeks.
“Water’s boring… I’d rather have you spit in my mouth,” I hissed to him seductively.
He slammed the water down on the table and let my head drop down roughly. I chuckled rabidly as he paced away from me.
“Good talking, genius,” She said to him.
I lifted my head back up and looked towards her. I stared into her eyes as they fixed on me. They were still horrifying, but I felt incredibly free to let that chill run up my spine. I could enjoy looking at her all I wanted when I didn’t care if she beat me to death or not. It was so much fun. I felt like I had just taken a shot of adrenaline. She was wearing a tight black sweater that I let my eyes drift to the center of.
“What the hell are you looking at?!” She growled.
“I was just waiting for you to offer me your saliva instead,” I replied happily.
She genuinely reeled back a little, like her anger wasn’t enough to justify even being in my proximity. That was a familiar feeling. Doing it to her felt so… empowering.
“I’d let you give it to me anyway you want,” I added, letting my tongue peek out of my mouth.
Roman didn’t stop her as she stormed up to me and buried her fist into my rib.
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I couldn’t even scream, because I was just in such utter physical disbelief of the sensation I just experienced. I froze to the spot with my mouth agape, as a small creaking sound crawled from my throat.
“Fucking creep,” Roman said.
I managed to pry my eyes back up to her face. She still looked angry, but with a more potent disgust sprouting somewhere in the back of her head. She’d expected a timid, repenting dog with its tail between its legs after our last meeting.
“I dare you to say some shit like that again,” She spat. “You don’t have a sack to hold the balls for it.”
I assumed that was her attempt to out-sexual-harass me.
“Holding on to this bit for dear life-we get it, you’re uncooperative,” She continued. “It’s not cute, it’s not impressive. It’s embarrassing. You should be embarrassed.“
I tried to breathe through the shockwaves billowing around my side. I didn’t enjoy that punch at all, so don’t misconstrue what I’m about to say. Somehow in there, I really began to enjoy myself. Physically tormenting as it was quickly proving to be, being the little shit these two saw me as was unbelievably amusing.
Roman walked back up to the table.
“Is that enough attention for you to stop being a brat?” He asked me.
I spoke down to the table rather than to him.
“I think I’m almost there….. maybe if she tries hitting a little harder,” I said as I looked up to her. “Just because you pick a cheap spot, doesn’t mean you can punch like a bitch.”
She must have been too beside herself to bother rebuking that, as her hand went right to her waist instead.
“This is such a waste of time,” she said, as she slipped the beretta out from her belt.
I giggled.
“Heheh, can I get a good cop around this place or what?”
She looked to Roman.
“You have any objection to speeding this up?” She asked.
“Um…. I think I’ve got one more honest try left in me,” He replied.
They both looked slowly back to me.
“You wanna tell us what happened out there?” He asked me.
“Since you’re so nice….. I was out on a hunting trip. White-tails are grazing like a convention out there.”
She walked up to me and put the muzzle to my temple.
“How about now?” She asked him.
“Doesn’t sound like he actually wants a good cop.”
“No shit,” She said, looking back at my temple. “Be honest with me. Is this a joke to you because you’re bored, or are you asking for something?”
Perfect violet.
“Am I not entertaining you?” She said, “If you really want this, I promise that I am unbelievably liberated to make a tunnel in your skull.”
I hoped it wasn’t an empty threat, but I stopped enjoying myself quite quickly. She was really good at making me angry.
“Did someone tell you that you’re scary because you can threaten to kill something?”
“Excuse me?” She said,
I fully turned to her, pressing my forehead to the barrel myself.
“How often do you show that shit off to everyone here? You shouldn’t have it out like it’s nothing. A kid could steal it and shoot someone, or shoot themselves. Do you want a small child bleeding to death because you’re a self-obsessed maniac who wants everybody to think she’s so tough?”
I saw her other fist curling shakily.
“You’re such a fucking pussy,” I said.
She chuckled a little before quickly stifling it. That was a laugh of delirium.
“You should know about a child bleeding out,” She said.
——————
I felt a bizarre inability to move as a tumorous pit appeared in my stomach.
“Wha… what did you just say?” I asked. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Twelve year-old girl comes back incapacitated in buckets of blood, what do you think I mean-“
“-it’s…. not hers-why would it be hers-what are you saying?-“
“-just stop, I don’t want you to feel any obligation to tell me anything. If you don’t want the truth to come out of your mouth while you’re still alive, I’m not gonna grill you for it. If playing dumb is really that important to you-“
“-What truth-you said bleeding out. You said I should know about a child bleeding out-why are you saying that? The blood isn’t hers because she wasn’t bleeding! Why are you lying?!”
My heart had quickly kicked up the stick-shift. Her eyes widened as her finger reached the realization of that pulse. Her smile returned proudly.
“Lying? Is that what you think I’m doing? Is that how your little walnut brain protects itself? What am I lying about? I don’t think I ever made a statement about her current health……. is that maybe what you’re talking about?“
She was bluffing. She couldn’t have been that heartless about it, but even if she was joking…
“You’re actually psychotic...”
“Am I? Am I the one taunting parents with their child’s body on the deathbed? Reunited just so he can lose her a second time? Am I the one doing that?”
There was a sickening silence.
“See, there’s false hope, and then there’s a sick joke,” She said. “Can you guess which one ‘bringing a child twelve hours from death back to their already grieving father’ is?”
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I slipped so quickly. She leaned closer to me as she spoke with a conniving sarcasm.
“What’s the matter, Cody?” She said, “Why’d you stop having fun all of a sudden?”
She tapped the gun on my forehead a couple times before letting it swing down away from me.
“What’s going on in there?” She taunted.
Deathbed… how could that be true?
“Just…….” I whispered.
“Huh? Say it again?”
“….. just… tell me you’re lying… what…. what’s happening to her?”
She laughed in my face.
“Happening?! You don’t think it’s already happened?”
“HEY!” Roman yelled as we both looked towards him.
His face was still cold, but his stance was so apprehensive that you would think there was a bear in the room with us.
“I don’t… like this,” He said to her. “This isn’t speeding up anything, what are we doing here?”
She sighed and backed away from me slightly.
“Scared straight program wasn’t working. I wanted to try something more invasive.”
“You mean psychological?” He returned.
My head shot back to her, as I refused to let my brain process what it thought had just been implied. I slowly looked back at Roman. His eyes met mine.
“Elizabeth… Elizabeth is fine. She’s definitely malnourished, but she’s mostly just shaken up. Sa- our um, nurse says that a day and some change should be enou forsndbn sknmf doehdhf dkebdbj skakbfu pqoe choql xoan ddkn foagdb fkqucb aicbfu gn dbai cowbfg xmeowb aodb fhai cbei bfjf cmdo wjdbf fmfk qomnv bbaifm finno zbaif mov abfi fbaicm omgp pqmfh vria cklw hdk fmmffmm mf fmm fmmm mff fffm mmmmf mfm
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Roman kept talking for quite a long time. I think I remember it sounding like he was trying to reassure me. I had tuned him out within the first ten seconds as his voice became a blur.
I should have been a shaking mess, but I was dead-still. Even with all the jumbled calamity taking place in every molecule of my decaying body, every single piece of my make-up unanimously shifted their focus to the tick that has just sprouted in my head.
A little flake of my brain twisted in a way that it definitely was not supposed to. I’m not sure exactly where the line in a 21st-century human’s mind is that separates us from Neanderthals, but I felt something cross it. I felt an animalistic rage place its palms on my shoulders and whisper in my ear. It gently turned my chin to look at her.
To look at that disgusting pitiful lying manipulative careless cold unfeeling arrogant pompous bloodless little horsefly piece of-
“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?!”
The scream that went through me was a nice halfway to the sensation I had experienced from throwing up blood. That only fueled the ire.
“YOU PUT THAT BODY IN MY HEAD THEN LAUGH LIKE IT’S A JOKE-LET ME OUT OF THIS CHAIR-“
“-Hey! Stop it!” Roman yelled to me.
“ARE YOU TRYING TO GET ON MY LEVEL BECAUSE YOU THINK I’M OFF SOME KIND OF DEEP END?! ARE YOU JUST TESTING HOW FUCKING SPINELESS YOU CAN BE?!”
The sound of my voice was so unfamiliar to me that it was jump-scaring me every time I let it out. I was making a noise that begged me to stop speaking, let alone wailing.
“SOULLESS BITCH-I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WOULD DO THAT! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE THAT SICK-DO YOU THINK THAT LYING ABOUT A KID’S DEATH IS A NORMAL MANEUVER?! DO YOU THINK THAT’S CLEVER?! DO YOU THINK THAT’S A-“
My throat made a sound that couldn’t have possibly been human, as I began coughing hysterically. I hacked down into my lap with my eyes watering up. I couldn’t tell if I still had the ability to breathe with the entrance to my throat bubbling up like an allergic reaction. I wanted to keep screaming until I could never speak again. I wanted my last words to be in service of that disgust.
She did it. It was unbelievably impressive how easily she had reversed our roles. Congratulations, you killed my sense of humor. I just don’t understand why you had to use that bullshit to do it…
I was there for a minute. I had been in a world where I hadn’t done it, where I hadn’t saved her. Everything that had happened meant nothing. All the chaos and anger was just for me to fail… just for Elizabeth to be taken a second time. Even a second of that feeling was just like being down there in The Warehouse again.
Nick running away. Elizabeth motionless in my arms. Surrounded by a darkness full of a nightmare more powerful than I could ever imagine being able to fight.
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A hand appeared on my chin as my head was lifted up slowly. I looked up to Roman.
“Can you stop screaming? I don’t want to clean up a puddle of black bile again,” He said to me.
“You didn’t clean it up the first time,” She prodded.
Roman looked over at her angrily.
“I need you to step down a little, or I’m just gonna leave,” He said to her.
I heard her scoff, but say nothing in response. He turned back to me.
“You’re still pissing me the fuck off……. but I’m sorry she said that to you,” He said.
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He picked up the water again.
“Can you drink this…… please?”
I stared at him for a couple seconds, and looked over to the water. I looked away, but I slowly opened my mouth.
Roman sighed in relief as he opened the water and slowly grabbed my head again. He gently set the nozzle on my bottom lip. Slowly, he tipped the tiniest wave into my mouth.
Incredible is a stupid word in comparison to what it was. I won’t even try, it’s impossible. It is impossible to describe what it was like to have water enter my body for the first time in God knows how long.
You know how tolerance works for a person that barely ever ingests any kind of influential substance?
I coughed just from the water hitting my tongue. He pulled away the bottle so that I couldn’t spill it like a dumbass. He let me fight through the fit for a while. Even the couple of droplets that I retained in my mouth were a cold shower of relief.
I looked back up to him desperately, done with playing like I didn’t need the charity. He brought it back to my lip. As the next volley slid past my teeth, I let it roll to the back. I was horrified of trying to swallow. I wanted to just let my mouth absorb the liquid and pray that it decided to travel to the rest of my body. It felt like the struggle of urging your body to swallow a giant pill.
I winced as I gulped, finding I was correct to fear that it would feel like razor blades. Goddamn, it was the most delicious bottle of razor blades I had EVER tasted.
He slid me a bigger sip as I fought it down.
“Can you tell me if you’re gonna choke so it doesn’t end up on me?”
I swallowed the sip and squinted my eyes at him.
“How would I do that with my body tied up?”
“Just blink or something, asshole.”
The Girl stayed silent and watched us as we continued. It took us about ten patient minutes until the water bottle was finished.
He backed away from me as I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. Neither of them poked at me like I was expecting them to right away. I didn’t want to let go of the anger that was still lining my stomach, but I opened my eyes for a different reason as I turned to The Girl.
“She’s thirteen.”
She raised an eyebrow to me.
“What?” She said,
“You called her a twelve year-old…… she’s thirteen.”
The two of them looked at each other as I mumbled wordlessly to myself. My voice was damaged. It was tired now, but even when it was “healed”, I could feel that there would be something permanently different.
“What do you actually want from me….. why am I even still alive?” I asked them.
They ignored me, or looked like they did, as they kept staring at each other, silently debating. These people seemed to do that a lot.
“Listen,” Roman began as he turned back to me. “We just need to know what happened to Elizabeth….. how she’s alive…… how you found her…..”
“…. that’s it?” I questioned.
“…for now,” He said.
Anyone up for a drinking game? I’d say you should drink whenever someone here says something unbelievably cryptic, but I think it’s only playable if we do it every time they DON’T.
“Does it matter? She’s back, and she’s alive. Isn’t that all you should care about?”
“If that was all there was to worry about, we would have found her ourselves, moron,” The Girl said without looking at me.
She was still staring at Roman quite unhappily. I was extending a similar glare towards her.
“The way Robert talked to you didn’t make it sound like you tried very hard to ‘find her’ at all,” I snapped at her.
She shot a look of daggers over at me before Roman interjected.
“Dammit stop, you both are annoying the hell out of me,” He said as he leaned on the table. “Just tell us where you found her.”
I was so tired. Even after Roman had just embarrassingly nursed my throat back to relative health, I still didn’t want to help them. I didn’t know how Lizzie’s whereabouts over the time of her missing was “helping” them, but I just wanted to collapse.
I knew The Girl had already realized the way out I was hoping for. Unless I was collapsing dead myself, I doubted she would let it happen for me.
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“She was in a hole.”
“A hole?” He asked.
“Yeah, just… a dark hole.”
“Okay…. what…. kind of hole?”
“I just sai-… a dark one-“
“-no I-ugh… I heard you. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but… there aren't exactly a lot of holes in the ground around here. How was she… logistically… in a hole?”
“I don’t know… I know she ran away from here but… she just said that she woke up in it. I don’t think she’s remembering right. I think she fell and hurt her head or something-“
“-I would like it if you would only say things that you know, and not what you think,” The Girl interrupted.
Jesus actual Christ.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to be talking,” I spat back at her.
“Is that what you heard?” She said as she looked to Roman. “Do me a favor, stop talking for a while.”
He stood silently in obedience. She looked back at me.
“What the hell kind of hole are you talking about? Where was it?”
I twitched angrily. She was just that desperately eager to reassume her control over the room that she needed to talk to him like a dog. I could pretend I was getting bored. Let’s just see what being civil is like.
“In whatever the hell that nightmare of a ‘downstairs’ is.”
They both gave each other a worried look. I knew that it meant something significant to them. Good for them.
“Okay, I… I will be however cooperative you want if you two stop looking at each other like that. It’s so stupid,” I said.
She rolled her eyes.
“Slow down on the attitude,” She said. “Was the hole in the floor?”
“Where the genuine hell else would a goddamn hole be-“
“-Think before you fucking speak to me!”
I was thinking about it pretty thoroughly.
“It was like the Shawshank Redemption, dude. It was just a weird hole in the ground that looked like somebody dug it with their goddamn teeth or something. I don’t know how specific you need me to be about an absence of space in a solid surface-“
“-well hang on, so what does that mean? She dug herself a burrow and you just-“
“-nonono, she didn’t dig it, it was already there. How would she have dug it-“
“-you didn’t say it was already there-what did you expect me to think?”
“Already there or not, no one person could have dug a hole that size. It was more like a room than a hole.”
She put her face in her hand and blew into it. Her bangs hovered gracefully for a moment.
“Alright…” She said before removing her hand. “How big are you talking here?”
“I… do you want measurements?”
Roman stayed silent, but closed his eyes in tired aggravation for the both of them.
“You know…” I started before looking around. “Imagine this room was kind of a sphere instead of a square, then…. make it the tiniest bit bigger.”
“Bigger?” She said,
“Yeah, maybe a third bigger-“
“-a third of this room is not the tiniest bit-and why-… no, it wasn’t that big,” She demanded.
“It was. Also deep. The room didn’t start until like fifteen feet down a chute-“
“-There’s just no w-…. No. A person would never have had the time to make something like that down there. Not before getting distracted-“
“-You’re not even listening to me-there was more than one person, and I’m not saying those people made it I’m just saying she wasn’t alone-“
“-oh shit, yeah,” Roman finally interrupted. “What the hell, I…. the other one. The one that was out there with you two that night!”
Nick. I hadn’t even thought about his current situation.
“Who? What ‘other one’?” She asked.
“The other one-the….” He paused to think. “The guy you were with. He was there when we opened the gate, wasn’t he?”
They’re asking me? Aren’t they supposed to be The Royal Guard? Yeah, they are. Why are they both acting confused?
“No shit he was. He ran inside. I’m surprised he’s not sitting next to me. Did you guys somehow run out of chairs in a fucking IKE-“
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“He….. ran inside didn’t he?” I said. “I saw him…….. where is he?”
Roman stared at me.
“I… I don’t know. If he was anything like you two he surely would’ve come in begging for help but…. nobody’s seen any new person-“
“-that woman!” I said a little too loud as I winced. I coughed a little. “Kek…. The one you told me to give Lizzie to, she must’ve seen him-he ran right by her. She screamed, I remember.”
He just slowly shook his head.
“I’m not sure if she remembers.…. I’ll have to ask her but…. we would have talked to him by now.”
I stared down at the table. I had barely known Nick for long enough to say that I “know” Nick, but that didn’t change my concern for him, little shit that he was. I had seen him run inside, I know I did. Didn’t I? I guess I could have imagined it, but what else would he be doing? Waiting outside? Wouldn’t he have just-
“He’s not here,” The Girl suddenly said confidently. “I would’ve seen him.”
How long can she go without being an egomaniac?
“Also, I’m glad you’ve got at least a little brain up there to know that he wouldn’t have been any different from you,” She added. “You shouldn’t even be here right now. He certainly wouldn’t have stayed.”
“What? Why?” I questioned.
“Did we just meet? Because I goddamn say so, that’s why. Can we get back on topic?-“
“-No. Is that your way of saying that you don’t care if he’s dead-“
“-is that a rhetorical question? Of course I’m saying that. Why would I care-“
“-Stop,” Roman said to no one in particular.
She briefly paused as we stared each other down. I wasn’t looking away anymore.
“How many people were there?” She asked.
“Seven. Including Lizzie and Kan-“ I started before breaking composure. “Where’s the dog?!-“
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“-okay okay relax please… the dog is fine,” Roman said.
“Awww, the doggy,” She said sarcastically. “Do you wanna break the news to him, Caesar?”
I started jumping in the restraints before she could even finish her sentence. I wanted to scream again, but I opted to let my anger out on the rest of my aching body.
“Dammit dude, calm down-you’re gonna hurt yourself even more!” Roman yelled as he ran over and held me down in the chair.
“Let her say it. Let her say ‘it’s not staying’. ‘He’s not staying’ ‘they’re not staying’ ‘you’re not staying’. Fucking idiot-why don’t you write a mural on the outside wall that says ‘piss off’ to save people the time?”
She glared at me, but I saw the excitement in her eyes. It was the same excitement I had seen after I had punched her.
“You’re such an attention whore-we don’t have dog food. We have enough trouble taking care of humans,” She said.
“Just feed her anything who cares-
“-It’s an animal-we won’t know if it’s sick-we won’t know how to treat it if it is-“
“-I could, I took care of my dad’s dog with lethargy for two months-“
“-Oh please don’t add to my already infinite list of reasons to let you stay-“
“-oh my God-I’m not trying to negotiate for your stupid arts-and-crafts village-I’m telling you that anybody can take care of a dog-“
“-You’re not a veterinarian because your puppy was drowsy. That’s what domesticated animals do, they sleep-“
“-So what the hell is the problem with keeping one here-“
“-Because it’s not domesticated, it’s just a dog! It’s closer to a goddamn wolf-“
“-Tamaskans don’t have any wolf lineage-how could she be taken into an IKEA if she wasn’t domesticated?-“
“-It-doesn’t-have-a-fucking-collar-“
“-That doesn’t prove anything! If the jingle could’ve attracted the Staff, then somebody probably took it off-where is she right now?!”
“Dream on that I would ever tell you that-“
“-she’s with Lizzie isn’t she? Did you think about how Lizzie would feel if you threw Kanata out-“
“-She’s a kid, kids get over it-“
“-That one won’t-“
“-Shut up, you know nothing about her-“
“-And on that note, Kanata is a dog. So what do you think is gonna happen when you throw her out the front door? Because I’d say that she’s probably gonna sit there outside just waiting for it to open again until the day that she dies, which would probably be day one-“
“-SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME GODDAMIT!”
I sat silently for a moment as I watched her fire dancing erratically. Roman was silent, separated from the conversation at my side. She twitched slightly, but took a deep breath.
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“I need you to recognize that you’re not talking to Elijah anymore. I don’t know why he wants to feel so bad for you, but I’m fresh out of the fortitude to keep trying to understand. I cannot and will not exacerbate your effect on this place by being guilt-tripped about the well-being of a dog. I think your image of this ‘sanctuary’ has been greatly misrepresented, so I’ll just pull you out of The Twilight Zone here. Once someone is on the other side of that wall, they’re not our problem. There is no one person that’s worth two others. There is no life that’s worth even one other. No one is earning the ability to change my mind about that. This isn’t an organization for helping survivors, it’s just a box where survivors are. Not a family, not a team.”
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Two dots connected in my head. I was right before, Robert was definitely not the reason that Lizzie had such a harsh outlook on this place.
“No wonder Elizabeth is so pessimistic. What a callous bitch of a role model.”
She didn’t take a deep breath. She practically jumped forward to shove the gun into my mouth. I even heard Roman gasp.
“I really don’t know who the hell you think you are to talk to me like that,” She hissed. “Like you have any idea who I am-like you have any idea what I have to think about every day. You want me to feel like a bitch? You think you’re trailblazing by making me feel like I’m evil? Such a complex and original idea. Get over yourself.”
I gagged slightly as it brushed the back of my tongue. She leaned closer.
“You and that dog are no goddamn different,” She continued. “If anything, I’d rather feed the dog. The only thing I’m comfortable feeding you is sitting in your fucking mouth right now-“
Roman ran from beside me and grabbed her arm, pulling the pistol out of my mouth.
“STOP IT!” He screamed. “YOU’RE SCARING ME!”
She calmly looked up at him.
“Roman, get off of me,” She seethed. “Before I take the safety off.”
I started laughing.
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I wasn’t even delirious, I actually thought it was unbelievably hilarious. I laughed with my ramshackle excuse for a remaining voice. I laughed hard enough to almost piss myself. I laughed hard enough to re-threaten my injuries. I laughed like I was ready to die seconds later.
And I was.
They both were silent as I cackled.
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I calmed down and slowly looked up at her.
“She did it you know…. the blood. She killed a man.”
I saw Roman go sheet-white. The Girl stayed still, but I could see her flame being smothered.
“She bashed his skull in for minutes. She liked it, I could see it in her. She started doing it for safety and kept doing it for fun. She turned him into a fucking stain on the ground like it was nothing.”
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“You’re lying,” She said firmly.
I arched my back to stick my stomach out as much as I could.
“See this blood? Guess whose blood this is. Guess whose blood is all over her….. she did it right in front of me.”
She didn’t have anything to say. Big surprise. I did.
“‘No life is worth even one other….. I know… that’s why you’re just the same as me…. Just the same as me and the dog… sticking your neck out is dangerous, because nobody is worth it… I believe that…… I believe you…. but you don’t…… you want to… but you don’t……”
For just a second, I saw a different side of that purple.
“If you really believed that,” I said. “I would have had my brain leaking onto my shoulders five minutes ago.”
Roman shakily let go of her.
“Yes… I’m asking you,” I said. “You can still prove me wrong……. I want you to.”
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She slowly inched forward. I heard the click in her hand. I stared deep into her eyes. She brought it up, but wasn’t standing close enough for it to touch me.
Wasn’t standing close enough to obstruct our eye contact.
She never shook, never had the body language of even a morsel of self-doubt, but I could see it, because I was drowning in it. In her fiery eyes, always drowning.
An oily pink fire in the middle of the ocean.
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The room shook as the door opened. For a couple moments, only Roman looked towards it, as the two of us stayed locked. I broke contact first as I looked towards the doorway. Elijah was standing in it.
“Seems like as good a time as any,” He said.
She finally looked over to him.
“Get out. Now. Don’t even start talking,” She commanded.
He opened his mouth, but then looked up as if considering what he could’ve properly said in response to that.
“Elijah, I’m serious, leave!” She said,
He looked back down and sighed, as he stepped inside and leaned against the opposite wall, looking at us. I looked over to Roman to see his confusion, just long enough to look back and see Elizabeth standing in the doorway.
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I felt the air switch in the room. I don’t know if it was quick enough for Lizzie to not see, but The Girl dashed behind me, hiding the gun behind my back. She pressed it low to my spine as she spoke.
“Elijah, what are you doing?” The Girl said. “Get her the hell out of here,”
“….. can I talk?” He replied.
“I don’t want you to, I want you to take her and leave-what is going on?” She said,
Elijah’s eyes squinted with confusion as he whispered to himself.
“You can’t talk, but ‘what is going o-‘“ He murmured and groaned.
He looked down at her.
“Do you want to leave?” Elijah asked Lizzie.
Lizzie looked up at him and shook her head. I couldn’t read her expression. She was wearing different clothes, not covered in blood. Standing. Awake. Alive.
Elijah looked back to us.
“Elizabeth told Amelia that she wanted to talk to him,” He said to The Girl, motioning to me. “Amelia, and I, of course told her that you wouldn’t like that, and Lizzie told me that she is absolutely fine with running away again the second that nobody is looking.”
He looked up at the ceiling, but spoke to Lizzie.
“What was it you said? If you did it once, you can do it again? That sound about right?” He said.
I heard a small noise deep in The Girl’s throat from behind me.
“So, you know… I personally am not trying to poke the bear of how much of a bluff that is,” Elijah continued to us. “I regretted this long before stepping into the room, so I know we’ll probably be having WORDS afterwards, but… it felt unsafe to ignore.”
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“It’s okay, Lizzie,” Roman said.
I heard The Girl’s neck crane behind me. I couldn’t even imagine the look on her face. Roman shot The Girl an eyebrow, silently laying down suppressive fire to her anger.
“I’ll only…” Lizzie began as all four of us looked back to her. “I’ll only be a minute.”
She sounded just as diminished as she had in the hole, even without hiding her voice like she had back then.
“I remembered that you weren’t supposed to be let in… and that they would probably throw you right back out,” She said to me. “I wanted to make sure you were okay before that... I’m surprised you’re even still here.”
I didn’t know if I was allowed to respond. I didn’t totally care if I was or not, but I would’ve preferred if my brains were not blown out in front of Lizzie. I didn’t really think The Girl would have the balls to do that, but I didn’t want to risk being wrong there. Elijah spoke up for me as he looked to The Girl.
“I’m sure your business isn’t finished here, but can he get a verbal recess for a little?” Elijah said to her.
I wasn’t a fan of his word choice. I could hear her heel tapping behind me. Her knee was brushing my back. Her left hand appeared on my cheek, blocking my ear from Lizzie’s view as she leaned into it.
“I want this conversation over in 300 seconds,” She whispered. “Starting now… derail it and I’ll show her how ‘okay’ you’re going to be.”
Fucking “300 seconds”, shut up.
I cleared my spike-strip of a throat.
“Dude,” I began to Lizzie. “I’m surprised I’m still here too. Turns out they can’t get enough of me.”
Roman ticked. Lizzie let a gentle smile come on.
“Yeah,” I continued. “I’m just about okay.”
“You… don’t really sound like it,” She said as she tilted her head.
“Well, I just got my tonsils removed, so I’m not really supposed to be talking for a while.”
She switched her smile off.
“Can you… not tell jokes right now?” She said,
I looked to Roman, who was expressing the perfect facial personification of “That’s what I’m saying…”
“Uh, sorry,” I said, turning back to her. “I was trying to cut some tension in here before half-time…”
“Dude,” She groaned.
I listened.
“………. I’m glad you’re okay too,” I said.
“I’m not.”
Okay, Existential Dread II: This Time It’s-
“Yeah…. I kinda got that by now.”
She fidgeted, looking at the ground. She definitely didn’t know I was on a 300 second timer. She could’ve known that I was on a FIVE MINUTE TIMER, but she didn’t.
“Elizabeth, I would really like it if you didn’t run away again.”
She looked back up.
“To be honest, I would be pretty pissed to know you did that after my unbelievable effort to undo your previous getaway,” I said.
“…. didn’t I tell you not to call me that?” She said,
Didn’t you just let Elijah say it?
“Lizzie, what’s going on?”
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Alright come on, come on quicker answering please!
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“It just… doesn’t feel right,” She said,
“What doesn’t?”
“… being okay, I guess.”
I sighed.
“Didn’t we talk about this?”
“Is that supposed to just make me okay with it?”
No, and I can’t act like it is.
“I feel…” She started. “I feel worse than before. Before, I had thought I was only being dramatic, and just let myself be that way because I felt like it. Now… I agree with myself from before……. I don’t feel like I should… I don’t know…”
“Still be alive?”
Roman and Elijah both looked at me with somewhat angered disbelief.
“Not as the same brain I was… no. It feels like I should have… restarted somewhere else or something,” She said.
Elizabeth had felt It too. That feeling of anticlimax I had felt when being saved… it wasn’t exclusive to my sci-fi search and rescue. I had thought that a self-pitying discomfort was fairly earned when I had felt it, so I was also convinced that it must’ve been a unique emotion. Now though, I imagined Lizzie waking up in disarray days later. Maybe with Robert crying beside her, maybe an annoyingly medium crowd of people around her bed while she stared up at the ceiling. The same way I had stared up at the “sky” that night.
“That’s a pretty shit feeling, huh?”
She frowned.
“It’s not a feeling… it’s like… a really big want.”
“That’s a feeling still.”
“….. how would you know?”
I felt ready.
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“You know, Lizzie… I hate to get preachy with you, especially when we’ve already covered this ground and… I really am so incredibly tired of speaking,” I began. “I was thinking about what you said down there. About prolonging the inevitable……. and I feel like you’re probably okay to say this to…… I’ve never really been able to convince myself that life has a meaning. That’s not like a… pessimistic campaign, it’s just my mental example. It doesn’t make me sad or anything because… I just think it makes too much sense to be depressing. If I wanted to say it in a depressing way, I could tell you something like ‘existence is constantly killing itself’, or, ‘No one is supposed to be here, nothing is supposed to be here. There’s not even supposed to be a universe here’-etcetera yada. Um… a better way would be… it’s just a weird accident that keeps making smaller weird accidents. Sometimes a weird accident takes a couple days to kill, sometimes it takes like… seventy to a hundred years…… I don’t know how well you remember the world before you got trapped in here, but back there, it’s a constant display of life being something’s lingering mistake. Everyone is just alive like it means nothing. Everyday, all the time. People die everyday too, but that doesn’t mean that everyone dies. Until the world ends or something ridiculously cataclysmic like that, everyone will NEVER die. Everyone just keeps living more and more, and there’s more and more ‘Everyone’ doing it every day. Really… no one ever dies until it happens right next to you. Normal life is always ‘safe’, even though it keeps eventually killing us….. do I have to keep explaining like an asshole, or do you see where I’m going with this?”
She stared at me.
“Of course I don’t. You talk… really weird. Is that on purpose?”
Most of the time, I just forget that I’m not talking to myself.
“Also, I don’t think that’s the same,” She said. “This place is way more dangerous than the real world.”
“Yeah, duh. And yet you’ve still survived here for longer than the lifespan of most things in the entirety of time and space survive, period.”
She looked a little angry.
“That’s… exaggerating.”
“Bzzzz, wrong. You know that three days is a comically long life for a mayfly? There’s like one hundred thousand million billion of those things constantly living. You know how much minuscule little tardigrade bacteria is alive in space for such a stupid little time that it might as well have never existed? You know how many humans die before they’re even big enough to be called a fetus?”
She didn’t answer.
“Life is stupid. It’s dumb. It’s such a dumb perfect storm of stupid coincidence, it’s an actual joke that it constantly keeps happening….. it always ends though. You’re going to die, Lizzie, but I shouldn’t have to tell you that you still would have died if you had never ended up here…. that doesn’t mean that being alive is arrogant.”
She rubbed between her eyes.
“That doesn’t mean that you’re childish, or obnoxious, or stubborn for not letting an IKEA be the death of you.”
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“That… doesn’t make me feel any better.”
300 seconds had come and passed.
“I would be extremely surprised if it did. The thing is, there’s people that care about you here. I get that you understand the concept of death, and… sort of the concept of Hell……. But I don’t think you understand the concept of your life meaning something to someone. That’s something that a lot of people in the real world never experience….. you have that here.”
I felt like I was just talking to hear the sound of my own voice, as I heard an anger building in my tone. I had no idea if I was getting through to her.
“…… do you… think that that’s sad?” She said
“What?” I said, annoyed.
“….. someone having nobody who cares about them. Do you think that’s more sad than life not meaning anything? Why should I have to care about somebody caring about me if nothing means anything?”
Because nobody loves unless they’re sick…
Goddammit, leave.
I needed to rationally think about what I was saying to her.
“I think it’s a little sad… and I can’t properly tell you how sad it actually is since… it’s just an undeniable fact that I, at some point or another, had people in the world who cared about me. Even with that being true, I still found a way to be so-…… yeah, I think it’s definitely sad. You don’t have to care about anything if you don’t want to, but when I say that life has no meaning…. I don’t think that means the same thing as ‘nothing means anything’. I definitely don’t think it means that your feelings are meaningless. Same as all the people around you. So… if you act in a way that’s totally ignorant to how it will emotionally affect them, I don’t think that life having no meaning erases the fact of that being a serious dick move.”
She was tearing up. It was too late to be scared of hurting her, and she seemed all too eager for something to be the nail in her emotional coffin.
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“I don’t think you’re a bad person for running away, Lizzie. I’ve spent my whole life doing it…. that’s a perspective I can properly speak from….. I think I’m educated on it enough to tell you…. it never works. Moving on from something is healthy… running away from something is not. It’s…. just important to know the difference.”
She stared at me silently for almost a whole minute as nobody spoke.
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She giggled genuinely, wiping ghost tears from the corners of her eyes.
“heheh.. I… don’t get it at all. I have no idea what you even just said….. maybe I haven’t grown up enough to know what it means.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah… I don’t know if you can tell by the situation I’m in but… I really haven’t either.”
Her smile shrunk, but didn’t exactly leave.
“It’s not that I don’t care about anyone…”
“Yeah, I never say you didn’t-“
“-No, I know, it’s just… care is weird here… a lot of feelings are weird here. Not hard to feel, just weird.”
Lizzie was likely a lot more intelligent than the person she was currently having a conversation with.
“So, I’m… I’m not gonna be always happy just because of something you say,” She said. “I’m still really scared of myself doing something….. I just wanted to tell you.”
I would be borderline concerned if I had made any significant difference there. I just hope she figures it out on her own.
“I don’t think anybody expects you to be permanently happy……. and…. fear is okay… it’s a really useful tool sometimes, ya know?”
“… no. But if you say so...”
Well, yeah. I wouldn’t expect the little girl that traversed this hellscape out of spite to understand conventional fear.
She looked away from me, and this time, began to turn around. The pressure in the room was a couple footsteps away from breaking. She stopped a moment before taking her first one, and turned back to me.
“……. I don’t even know what your name is.”
I felt the gun press further into my back. I didn’t care.
“It’s Cody.”
She nodded silently and turned around, exiting my view out of the doorway. I had no ability to tell if I was proud of that interaction, but I was no longer afraid that “saving” Lizzie had been a mistake.
Elijah looked at me with a playful smirk as he walked towards the doorway to follow her.
“How come you told her your name the first time-“
“-Elijah-get the fuck out of here,” The Girl spat behind me.
He retained his smile as he exited the same as Lizzie, closing the door behind him.
Immediately after it shut, the gun disappeared from my back. I heard the safety click off, then heard the gun slip back into her belt as she returned to my front. She grabbed my throat in one hand and my hair in the other.
I kinda feel like she knew what she was doing there.
She fumed in my face until I decided I was feeling comedically revitalized.
“What? You thinking about which way you wanna knock me out this time?” I teased. “I think an elbow drop would be classy.”
She studied me for a little while longer before speaking.
“That Lizzie? You expect me to believe that that Lizzie turned someone into a stain?”
“I’m not expecting shit from you…… ‘you don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to’.”
She balled up her face in disgust.
“What? You didn’t like my speech? I thought it was pretty motivational. Maybe she’ll only harshly cripple people from now on.”
“You just told her that she’s going to die-“
“-She thought she already did, you imbecile.”
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She let go of me and walked towards the door. Roman’s eyes widened.
“Um, where are you going?” He asked sharply.
“We’re going to talk to Elijah,” She replied to him. “Get out.”
She opened the door and motioned from him to the open passage.
“What?” He said. “He’s just done? What happened to-”
“-you wanna stay and play cards with him or something? He’s not even close to done, but being in this room is a joke. I need a professional setting.”
Roman took an awkward step and then looked over to me.
“I don’t care,” I said. “I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care. Whatever you’re about to say, I don’t care. Let her keep saying whatever she wants, just leave.”
The Girl walked back over to me.
“You don’t tell him what to do-“
“-I KNOW!” I let myself scream. “YOU FUCKING DO! EVERYBODY KNOWS!”
She glared at me. Original.
“You know how fun you would be to torture?” She said,
Um, maybe she knew what she was doing there?
“That seems like a really lazy threat from you. Are you just leaving to go refill on material?”
She smiled sarcastically.
“Nope, you did it! I’m exhausted,” She said. “The next time I see you, I’m sure it will be a much more civil conversation.”
I squirmed a little as the “I don’t care” wolf began fighting with the “what does that mean” one.
“Can’t wait,” I finally said. “Maybe you’ll have your shit together enough to not let a sensitive ass bluff like that slip out of your cunt-mouth again.”
She instantly punched the astronomical shit out of me as I felt a hollow wrench in my gum.
I had laughed for a moment out of shock, but felt my tongue around my mouth. I found a gap where one of my right premolars used to be. I looked left to the ground and saw the bloody chunk of enamel there.
As far as my foot was in the grave, I still couldn’t really laugh at that.
I looked back up to her to see her rubbing her left fist, slightly wincing. She met eyes with me.
“I’ll have someone throw that out later, you can sit with it for a while. Give yourself a monologue about how to speak with some fucking decency.”
I didn’t feel clever enough to get the last word in as she turned around and began walking away. She turned to Roman on her way out without stopping.
“I will lock this door and leave whether you follow me or not,” She said.
She exited and stood by the door as Roman submitted to being The Golden Boy. He followed her trail silently to the door without giving me a second glance, and exited out of my view. The Girl shot me one last sickening smile and slammed the door to the room. A giant bang followed a second after, and I was met with silence and solitude.
My mouth was now bleeding out onto my chin. I turned and stared at my tooth on the floor. It was small, but I couldn’t heal that back to normal. That was a piece of my body on the ground that I could never reattach.
It made me… so incredibly sad.
I debated letting some anger surge through me, but instead realized I had just been given the gift I was previously wishing for.
I sucked up as much blood as I could, swallowing it to help lubricate my swollen throat, and rested my head back down on the table. It had taken a lot of trouble, but I finally had earned my nap. My thoughts of the past ten minutes trailed-off effortlessly to nothing as I drifted underwater.
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I heard the door open. I’m not sure how long I had been asleep for, but it was good to me. No pain reduction of course, but my brain swam warm and pruned in a pleasured satisfaction.
I didn’t speak or move as the door seemed to softly close. I didn’t even know that was possible. At this point, I was amused by their persistence, but not enough to continue playing the mouse. I wanted to fall back asleep in ignorance. Against my better judgment though, I opened my eyes.
The room seemed dark, so it must have been after 9:00 PM. A small orange flicker was dancing around the wall. I heard two gentle clanks as I quickly closed my eyes. Two separate items were set onto the table. After some shuffling and an extended silence, I peeked again. The glow on the wall had adopted the shadow of what I assumed was my head. I stayed silent, waiting to be bathed in some kind of annoyance.
Nothing came.
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I wanted another forty winks, but I was sort of expecting someone to wake me up, so I had slowly drifted back to anxious lucidity. Also, though I’m sure it would have been so yellow it was orange, I had to piss.
I slowly raised my head to see which episode of Seinfeld I was currently sitting in.
Elijah and his partner were sitting down against the opposite wall. Even knowing that someone would be in the room, I kind of jumped in my skin seeing the two. They didn’t notice me, as they were both huddled together, with a book that Elijah held in his hands. She held a small pen-flashlight to the pages, curled into his side as they both silently read.
It was… you know what it was, I’m not writing the word.
On the table, a plate of food had been placed on the left corner, with an aromatherapy candle on the right corner. Lilac, I think. I watched the flame dance gently for a moment.
“Is there some symbolism in the etch-a-sketch, or is it her selective autism?” Elijah whispered as I looked over.
She gently swatted his arm.
“Stop, it’s like her coping mechanism for…” She began before looking over to me and freezing.
Elijah followed her fear over to my side of the room.
“Holy shit, you look creepy as hell!” He said to me, smiling. “How long you been watchin’ us for?”
I wanted to ask him why he was here at night, but I refused to speak. His partner began to stand as she placed the pen in her pocket. I expected her to go immediately for the door, but instead, she walked up to the plate of food and pushed it closer to me.
“Elijah said I can’t give you a fork so…”
The meal consisted of two square waffles, topped with broccoli, mashed potatoes, and… I think they were fish-balls?
I noticed that Elijah’s partner was fairly short, maybe 5’2” at the tallest. He stood up behind her, closing the book and placing it down. He picked up a water bottle that had been sitting beside him and joined us at the table. He placed it down and put his hand on the girl’s hip.
“I’m not gonna intimately quench your thirst like Roman, I heard that was awkward as fuck,” He said. “Buuut, I got permission to untie one of your hands again……. from myself, so… don’t tell anyone.”
I stared at the two of them. I wasn’t going to waste my own time with the emotion that I so desperately wanted to feel. I can’t do this. I won’t do this. I pushed the plate out of my way with my forehead, and placed my head face down back on the table.
I heard Elijah blow a raspberry as the girl giggled.
“Alright, well,” Elijah began. “We’re gonna stay if you don’t mind. It’s always kind of warm in here for some reason. It’s like a cozy little reading nook.”
“That’s because your hot ass breath is always flooding the room,” She said to him.
I could hear the smile plastered to her voice. What?
“Probably but..” He began. “I can’t really smell anything after that infec-… sorry, cold you gave me…. never going raw on a first date again-“
“-fuuuucking ew dude,” She laughed through saying.
I heard them walking back to the wall and crouching down to the floor to adjust themselves.
Ever been trying to stay mad at the person, but they start trying to make you laugh? It’s bittersweet, but it just makes you want to be more mad. This was all bitter, no sweet. I had felt the sides of my lips getting tugged on against my will, and almost let myself scream. They’re being funny? Right now?! Yeah! Of course! Because everything is a joke, but only when it’s at my expense. When I want to be funny, everyone is confused about why I can’t take this seriously. Go to Hell. The reasons for me being mad at Elijah seemed to be multiplying like rabbits the more that I thought about it. Wasn’t he supposed to be the one that was my friend? Why did he keep making me so angry?
I… guess it was bittersweet.
I lifted my head up again to see that they were both just staring at me silently, waiting for me to do what I just did.
“Yeah, I’m the creepy one…” I said through the sandpaper.
Elijah smiled and hopped up like the clowny bastard I was beginning to suspect he was. He walked around to my back.
“Voice like an angel,” He said.
As I felt his hands on my left wrist, I was sad to observe that the plate seemed to be plastic, not ceramic. A millisecond long fantasy had taken place where my hand came free to immediately smash it and slice his throat with a shard. Instead, my hand came free, and I just let it hang sadly. He reappeared to my left. Restraint consoled me, as I felt that the novelty of spitting in people’s faces had become a bad look on me, even in the socially impudent state I had fallen into here.
“I told Margo about your Lizzie speech,” He said. “She said she would have been groaning up a storm if she was there with us…… Oh! By the way!”
He ran back over to his partner and threw a pair of jazz-hands down to her on the floor.
“This is Margo! I know you guys have met like two and a half times now, but you’ve never hung out.”
I would have settled for slicing my own throat. I probably wouldn’t have felt a difference.
Margo gave me a weak, sympathetic smile, seeming to know that I wasn’t very eager to “hang” with either of them.
“I wouldn’t have actually groaned,” She said. “Probably woulda just gotten second-hand embarrassment and politely excused myself. Public speaking is hard enough without hecklers.”
I looked between the two of them, horrifically antagonized, then silently took the water bottle from the table. I placed it on my leg and tried to remove the cap with just one hand. It quickly slipped and landed on the floor as I closed my eyes in frustration. I opened them again to already see Elijah standing in front of me with the bottle in his hand, opened.
Shitty excuse for an olive branch.
I snatched it, looking away from him as soon as I could. I slowly sipped the water bottle as he walked back over to Margo. It went down a lot easier than it had before, but it still felt like the worst case of strep in recorded human history.
I finished and set the empty bottle down. Elijah sat down, but the two stayed separated. If it was for my sake, it wasn’t making any difference. Margo and Elijah together in a room was something I could immediately understand to be my present enemy. The last thing I needed from this community was a wholesome dynamic. I’m tired of being attached.
I pulled the plate back in front of me. I was so in love with my resistance to opposition, yet turned into a beady-eyed little rodent whenever offered sustenance.
“You feel okay?” Elijah asked me.
I began chewing a waffle. The sudden whimper that involuntarily shivered out from me was probably a sufficient answer for him.
“I tried to give you the softest food we have right now…” Margo said.
“Shouldn’t you guys own a Nutribullet or something?”
“Sure! But, it’s 2 O’clock in the morning,” Elijah said. “Excessive noise after dark is collectively agreed to be not cricket.”
“What the hell?” Margo mumbled to herself, giving Elijah a weird side-eye.
“What’s it matter?” I said. “Thought it was safe here. Because of the walls…”
“It’s for us, not Staff,” Margo said. “It’s hard enough for people to sleep without random external noises to keep freaking them the fuck out.”
“You don’t need to tell him that,” Elijah said slyly. “Cody already knows about our ability to sleep at night.”
Strike one of one. Consider me out of the conversation.
“That was a joke by the way, Cody,” Elijah said.
“Everything you say is. I’m trying to eat.”
He bypassed that.
“Are you trying to ignore me because your throat is made of sawblades, or are you interested in pouting for a little longer?” He said.
I finished swallowing my first and last fish-ball (what a crime).
“I was expecting to see Her again.”
“Margo?”
“Who do you think he’s talking about, Elijah?”
“Ohhhh, Her Her. Right,” Elijah said. “Well… you two are gonna have a little break from each other. But you’ll see her overmorrow.”
“I’ll… what?”
“You’ll see her ove-“
“-Can you stop saying words you learned a day ago?” Margo snapped at him before looking to me. “You’ll see her the day after tomorrow.”
“The day… after tomorrow?”
“Okay,” She said to Elijah whilst staring right at me. “Try not to use big words with him-“
“-no, I just-…. shut up,” I said.
She smiled wide.
“Why am I seeing her the day after tomorrow?” I asked. “I don’t want to see her at all.”
White lie.
“Why am I staying that long?” I said.
“Well,” Elijah began. “Because we’re hoping you could stay…. a lot longer.”
Is there a gas-leak in this room?
“Like this? Why would I ever-… who’s we?”
Elijah paused for a second, sort of looking in Margo’s direction, but not directly at her. She had closed her eyes, and rested her head against the wall like she had a sudden headache.
“The Omen,” He said.
I heard Margo groaning as she opened her eyes.
“The Council,” She said to me. “The Council wants you to stay. Please pretend you didn’t hear Elijah speak just now-“
“Would you stop squandering me-I barely ever get to say it-“
“-You should never ‘get’ to say it-it’s the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever heard-“
“-That can’t be true, you work with Nikko-“
“-Hello!?” I said as they halted and turned. “The Council, is that who voted on me leaving last time?”
“Yep, that’s the one!” Elijah said. “It’s our mockery mechanism of government.”
“Democracy, obviously,” Margo said.
“Why would that be obvious?”
“I don’t know,” She said. “What else do you think it would be? Federalism?”
“After what I saw last night? Seems like you guys are stuck in a pretty permanent stage of anarchism.”
“Last night?” Elijah said. “That’s cute, try last last night”
Ugh.
Cody Camargo: Twenty-two days in.
“You have a fake codename for your homegrown democratic government?” I asked him. “Is it a group of people or a fucking mythical oracle?”
He squirmed a little, embarrassed.
“Am I not allowed to have fun? Why is my entertainment being demarcated?”
“Dude, stop,” Margo chimed.
“Whatever,” I said, going back to picking at my plate. “I’m not staying. I don’t need to wait overmorrow for that.”
“It’s a… date, not a… unit of measurement,” Elijah muttered.
I put down my scoop of mashed potatoes on my waffle corner fork.
“What would happen to you if you let me leave right now? Public execution?”
“That wouldn’t be a very left-leaning punishment,” Margo said.
“Yeah? So what does happen then? A stern talking to from the result of a much too serious bring your daughter to work day at the police headquarters?
“He’s pretty good,” Margo whispered to Elijah, smiling.
He ignored her.
“Cody, you’re not leaving. We have to put you through due process. This isn’t like the last time, I promise.”
“I don’t know, my body is telling me that it’s pretty similar so far. You wanna tell me how this is different?”
“Because this time, it’s your choice.”
“Sounds like a total lie, but I’ll play along. I choose to leave. Now. Right now please. Not over-tomorrow, now.”
“That’s not how it works. You have to come before The Council.”
“Gross,” Margo interjected before Elijah shot her an irritated glance.
She made an “oh shit” face, and quickly turned away, exiting the discussion.
“We need you to advocate for why it’s rational to make you a cog in this society,” Elijah said, looking back to me.
“Sure, sure. Wanna hear my rehearsal speech? ‘It’s not! Bye! I’ll start pissing my pants if you don’t escort me off the premises’.”
He stonewalled.
“Do you choose to be a coward because you’re too illiterate to properly express your feelings?” He said coldly.
I truly hadn’t been angry this entire time. I was annoyed for sure, but I felt like anger was becoming so stale of an emotion that it was hard to come by naturally. That is to say, that even after that statement, I still wasn’t entirely irate. I was more blown away by the sudden audacity that had seemed to come out of nowhere.
“Is this the real you? Is the nice, funny guy-thing an act for the sake of your own boredom?”
“Why are you trying to sabotage yourself? We’re offering you a chance to stay-“
“-You’re offering yourselves an opportunity to laugh at me begging.”
“No, Cody. That’s not what this is. We want you here, but we need you to want it too-“
“-‘want you here’-you have got a FUNNY way of showing it-“
“-that isn’t us. Everything you’ve seen isn’t us, and this is just as much an apology as it is an opportunity for you to know what we are-“
“-I don’t want an apology-“
“-WELL THEN WHAT DO YOU WANT-“
“-I WANTED YOU TO FUCKING LEAVE ME OUTSIDE!”
Elijah went silent. A look of dread had worked its way onto Margo’s face as she looked back and forth between us.
I took a deep breath. I wasn’t about to keep screaming. It wasn’t about the pain anymore, I didn’t want to let him be the reason for my emotions.
“I tried to convince myself that this is possible. I only had doubts because of how terrifying the idea of giving up was. I didn’t have a very long period of normalcy after I had first started trying to feel better, so maybe I just didn’t get the chance to try hard enough, but it really didn’t take much to knock some sense into me. This is a lost cause, and I don’t feel like running for my life on a treadmill.”
He stared at me blankly.
“I’m done, Elijah. I don’t want this.”
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Elijah stood up, with Margo quickly following. I think she had been preparing to hold him back.
“I’ll um…” He began calmly. “I’ll let you sleep on it.”
She noticeably distressed, taking the cue to open the door beside them. She walked to the doorway with the book, as he walked behind me. He re-tied my limb, and took the plate, bottle and candle from the table. He stared down at me.
“I’m never bored,” He said. “Just to let you know.”
Pompous fucker.
He turned and walked over, joining Margo at the door as she took the plate from him. He had just exited when my body cried out to me.
“Wait!” I called.
They both stopped and leaned their heads back in towards me. It felt so pathetic to say this after that argument.
“I… have to pee.”
Margo cringed.
“Oh, right. Um….” Elijah started.
He looked down at the empty bottle in his hand.
“Okay. I’ll see you later,” Margo said to him as she swiftly exited.
He looked back to me.
“You wouldn’t happen to remember where I put the cap for this, would you?”
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Sometime during my sleep, I just barely felt my head being lifted, and released onto a pillow between me and the table.
“Asshole,” Elijah’s voice whispered.
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(Second half in next submission)