Goodnight

[VoltTurtle]

((Madeline Wilcox continued from Dominoes...))

---

Madeline Wilcox was not going to survive.

Maddie began to get more and more ill as the day progressed.

She wandered around the gated community in a haze after her encounter with Mara. She couldn't think very clearly. She didn't see anyone.

Eventually, she got too weak to run.

Eventually, she got too weak to walk.

Eventually, all she could do is sit down next to a wall inside one of the community's houses.

She had a fever. Her head hurt. Her abdomen hurt. Breathing was difficult. She took painkillers to relieve some of the pain to no avail. In her haze she sat there for what felt to her like hours, waiting for the illness to go away, when in reality it was likely just a few minutes.

Then, a moment of clarity. She unzipped her jacket, lifted her shirt, and slowly unwrapped her bandages, too afraid to find out what she knew what was coming next.

The area around her wound was swollen and the wound itself was oozing. It had gotten infected.

The symptoms clicked. She had sepsis. She had no chance unless she got medical attention.

Suddenly, a wave of regret overcame her. She had doomed herself by not seeking out clean water to clean the wound with immediately, even if she didn't quite know how to clean deep wounds she should have at least tried.

She had doomed herself by helping and staying with Joe.

She had made a mistake. She had made a terrible mistake, and now she was going to die for it.

She didn't know what to do. She didn't know what to think or how to react.

She didn't want to die. She really, really did not want to die.

And then, she cried. She cried the most pitiful, defeated cry she had ever cried. Her life was over. Everything she struggled for, her life, her hopes, her dreams, they would all just become nothing in the end. She was meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

They didn't matter. She didn't matter. Nothing mattered. She continued to cry.

She reflected. In hindsight, everything she did on the island was just her attempts at making sure that she mattered. She wanted to survive because she wanted her life to eventually mean something. The struggles she went through with depression, with being a transgender youth, they had to mean something, she had to be important, right?

But it was all for naught, both then and now. She was inevitably going to die, off the island or on the island. She would eventually cease to exist in the end, return to the oblivion from whence she came. She would eventually cease to matter, one way or another, her life never truly having real meaning in the first place.

Everyone would forget about her. Everyone would forget about everyone on the island. The world would keep on spinning, not even knowing what happened to the students of Aurora High School. Not knowing who they were, what they did, what their stories were. Just knowing some names and a few statistics.

She knew that it was all pointless. She knew that she also didn't have a lot of time left to dwell on the matter. All she had to do left was die, and preferably as painlessly as possible. She weakly picked up the gun-knife from where it lie on the floor of the house next to her. She weakly took a musket ball out of the bag.

The last one. Poetic. Not like that would matter in the end either.

She loaded the gun-knife. The weapon she had used to kill two people. The weapon she had stolen. The source of all of her crimes.

Karmic that it would bring her end.

She lifted the gun-knife to the bottom of her chin, holding it with both hands. The top of the cold, unforgiving blade pressed up against her lips and chin.

She continued to cry. Even now, knowing she was already dead, knowing that she was pointless, she still wanted to live, to cling on to another few minutes of painful, uncaring life. She felt like she still had something left to do. She felt like she needed to make amends.

"I-I'm..." She held back her tears. "I'm sorry mom. I'm sorry dad. I'm sorry Nina. I'm sorry Veronica. I'm sorry Alex and Yasmin. I'm sorry RJ. I'm so, so sorry."

She pulled the trigger.

With a loud pop, and the thud of a body hitting the ground, everything that made Madeline who she was ceased to be. She re-entered oblivion, never to think or feel anything ever again, only to ultimately be forgotten in the end.

G005: Madeline Wilcox: Deceased