Desire For Execution

[Namira]

((Connie continued from Salted Field))

"Aw dude are you for real?"

The words sprang unbidden from Connie's mouth.

At this point, she didn't know if she was having a genuine reaction, or the reaction she'd built up for herself. When had the line got so blurred? Was there even a difference any more?

Ellis slumped in a chair, very much dead. Dark tracks of blood had gouted down his neck and chest and onto the floor, the side of his throat yawning open and red raw. Connie didn't have to be a forensic expert to deduce that he'd killed himself. The blade was even still in his hand, and Connie wasn't about to start entertaining the paranoia that somebody set that up on purpose. A little late in the day to start rigging murder mysteries.

She'd known from the start that those kinds of false trails had an early expiration date.

A shiver down Connie's spine. Once again, she couldn't tell whether or not it was the good kind. More than ten days ago, she'd spun that little yarn, and everyone else involved—even the person she'd claimed was dead—was long gone. Just like Ellis.

What made him do it? What was the final straw? Kathleen already died a couple days ago—Connie didn't feel much about that, and didn't know how to feel about that lack—and he hadn't done it then. "So what? What pushes someone to slash their own throat?"

Connie realised she'd taken an involuntary step closer to him. She realised half a heartbeat later that she'd started speaking out loud, interrogating a dead boy.

Suddenly she felt very, very alone, the weight of days upon days of little to no company crashing down on her shoulders. Her isolation, that'd been by design. She didn't want anyone else around, would have got in the way of what she was trying to do. Kelsey had come the closest to reeling her in, making her settle, making her... divert. By the time Kathleen and Ellis came along, Connie was stewing in so much frustration and resentment that she'd walled herself off. Ironic, that she'd spent more time with those two than anyone, and had less than nothing to say to them. She'd just wanted them gone. When they left, it was see you never, and on to finally enacting one of her schemes. Which died in its cradle thanks to a danger zone.

Was it worth it? Was any of this worth it? No more than a handful of them left, and Connie had... been a festering malcontent with nothing better to do than stir up trouble. Not even meaningful trouble. Mild inconveniences that she kidded herself warranted so much as a blip on the radar. At best, a single beep of the collar, a cuff to the yapping dog. She had a death sentence, and she'd whittled her final days down with pointless plotting, squandered the chances of finding meaning in human connection. Who out there was sparing a thought for her? Which of those others even knew she was alive, knew she was here?

She was exactly the ghost she'd promised herself she wouldn't become.

Connie's smile was a bloodless rictus.

Too late now. She was deep in this pit of her own making, but she wasn't pathetic enough to try to claw back a semblance of something real. In fact, she refused. Being someone's reason, or cheering them up, or... or anything like that, after all this time? Sickeningly hypocritical. So insincere Connie almost laughed.

No, no last second change of course. She'd charted this route a long time ago, and while there were opportunities along the way to take a new direction, the point of no return was far behind her.

Connie stood there, staring at Ellis's corpse. It felt like she should say something pithy or clever. She turned up blank.

Words eventually emerged. "Sorry I wasn't better company." A long hesitation. "Sorry you're dead, I guess."

Bundling up the loose and most importantly dry linen that was the entire reason Connie had been venturing around residences in the first place, she stuffed the sheets into her backpack. After a moment's consideration, she went and picked up the folded jacket from the bed. Ellis was wearing it the other day, but he'd clearly made a point of setting it to one side before ending himself. Connie wasn't sure she could say she deserved to have something of his; she wasn't even sure that she'd have his blessing to take it.

But she was here, and he was dead, and could no longer object.

Connie headed out. Paused in the doorway.

"...Later."

((Connie continued in HEAT UP))