Land of Make Believe

[laZardo*]

((Damien continued from Maison d'abattage))

((Roland continued from Lonely Street of Dreams - Expressway, Damien continued from Maison d'Abbatage - Ind'l District

Nota bene: Due to Nealosi's disappearance and the clear time constraints, I'll be keeping the details of Franco's death fairly vague.

EDIT: Fixed due to Danya's announcement nearly causing a TIME PARADOX.))

Stars in your eyes little one,
Where do you go to dream,
To a place we all know:
The land of make believe...

Perhaps it was his stomach rumbling, but Roland found it hard to stay on his feet as he strayed into a part of the world he'd never been to before. The flora around this place showed only the faintest signs of withering, but other than that the place was almost like Eden, minus the angel with the flaming sword and snake and tree of knowledge...but with a rather noxious odor.

As he entered the garden, the first fauna to greet him was the swarm of maggots and other vermin feasting off the corpse of what appeared to be a beautiful and somewhat-familiar blonde woman impaled with a sword.

Shadows tapping at your window,
Ghostly voices whisper,
Will you come and play...
Not for all the tea in China,
Or the corn in Carolina,
Never, never ever...

Roland was already used to violent deaths that the sight didn't scare him, but the odors of death went for his throat and stomach instead, and within seconds he defiled the beauty of a batch of wildflowers with his own vomit. As he wiped it off his mouth with his dirty sleeve and opened his bag for some water, he then came to the gritty realization that he had officially run out of bread and water, and there would not be any manna from heaven if he wasn't on earth itself. He stumbled as fast as he could away from the corpse, stopping when he found a bench to sit on.

As soon as he got some of his bearings together and it seemed there was now a large, billowing cloud of smoke arising from what seemed like nigh half a mile away.

"Heh...hell hath no surprises, but this place sure does."

And speaking of surprises, Roland felt a nudge on his side. He realized that he was sharing the bench with someone, and out of the corner of his eye the person looked to be smaller than he was. He wasn't too perturbed until he turned to face the newcomer...which was when the person softly seethed in pain.

Roland's eyes widened briefly as he recognized exactly who was sitting beside him at this very moment. The long black hair, the decidedly feminine clothing, and the androgynous face that despite its smile was clearly wracked and weary with the pain of the boy as well as others.

Roland took a deep breath and tried to steel his face. But there was no denying that he was now face-to-face with the real Damien Carter-Madison himself.

Something nasty in your garden's waiting,
Patiently 'til it can have your heart...
Try to go but it won't let you,
Don't you know it's out to get you,
Running, keep on running...

Yet there were no quakings of the earth, no trumpets heralding, bowls pouring or seals breaking to judgements. There were no epic gothic choirs or Hollywood-grade special effects. There were no tentacles or fangs (save perhaps for Damien's canines) or large, leathery wings, accompanied by evil demonic roars. There weren't even any horns, unless some of the loose bangs of Damien's hair counted as such. The person beside him was Damien, plain and simple albeit dressed like a girl and with the back of his jacket reddened from being pierced by the barbed-wire baseball bat slung around his back. But then again, given what he'd seen, that really was somehow expected.

Here Roland was in Purgatory, hunting for Damien all this time, the source of his sins with the utmost veracity prior to his enlightenment. And for a brief yet moving moment a few hours back, he thought he had killed him. And yet as he saw the weary little androgyne on the bench beside him, he didn't seem to have any ill will at all. Had Damien not been his worst enemy, he would have reached out and just held Damien close in a hug.

By the contrary, Damien actually seemed jolted as he looked up into Roland's mutilated maw. The teeth that were showing through the burned flesh definitely gave Damien the impression that Roland had not only done a lot of killing, he had also done so with savage enjoyment. This made it surprising to him as he had come to the garden to relax and recoup his thoughts before re-engaging Franco...only to find someone else on his list there. Somehow...that was half-expected.

Well, now we both have something in common...

For the next few minutes, Roland and Damien sat beside each other, not saying anything and letting the breezes blow past. Both of them equally expected the other to draw some kind of blade or pain-inducing object and kill them with extreme prejudice. But that didn't happen. Instead, something else broke the silence...a soft chuckle from Roland.

"Funny thing happened...I passed this house earlier and there were two naked dead guys on the bed."
"That's fucked up..."
"One of them was freakishly fat. Portly fellow."
"Really?" Damien was definitely interested...he hadn't seen a certain fat fellow in a long time, and that fellow appeared to have been looking for someone.

Looks like he found who he was looking for.

"...what was his name?"
"I don't remember. I think I saw his daypack on the way out...something like 'Rosenberg, P.'"

P for...Oh yes...

Damien took out his notebook. Four names remained...Roland's, Franco's, Peter's and Renee's. Without another word, he also took out his pen three. Roland noticed them both, particularly Franco Sebberts.

"Franco...I remember him."
"Yeah...me too. Just met him, in fact...of course, he's not at the top of the list right now."

Roland gulped. But it wasn't out of fear that he was currently listed above Franco's. In fact, he looked down the list toward another crossed-out name, one written in particularly bigger letters than the rest but not as thoroughly crossed out, and realized that Kristey Burrowell must have been that blonde corpse that he found as he walked in*. That is, if they were corpses at all.

((*It's Venus Gwendolyn's. Zed is smiling in heaven. - Ed.))

He didn't know if he should actually be grateful that the woman who had nearly beheaded him those weeks before the game started was actually dead...but then again, nobody was really "alive" up here. Still, the thought that he was one of two names left on Damien's little list of death caused him to shudder.

"You killed...Kristey?"
"Yeah...it was no biggie. Lots of fun though!" Damien said the last sentence cheerfully. "Let's see...well, it looks like you're next!"

Roland's fingers snuck into his bag and wrapped themselves around the last remaining flashbang as if it were a life raft in a raging flood. The cool plastic and steel were practically beckoning for Roland to detonate the canister and put a fitting end to this quest for salvation. And yet, Roland didn't act immediately. Instead he had a completely different response. Instead of drawing the grenade and pulling the pin and spoon, he looked up into the sky. As if to pray. Whatever he did must have worked though, as Damien didn't immediately slit his throat with the combat knife he had stashed in his pocket.

"You know...I never saw you at the party," Damien began.
"I know. I didn't want to go."
"You didn't? Yeah right."
"No. I didn't. I was tired of just sitting back and watching you get hurt...but I could- no...I didn't want to do anything until it was too late, and I ended up here."
"Eh. It was all my mom's fault. Dirty whore."

Roland didn't honestly know how to react. Damien was actually blaming his mother? Still, that didn't ease the burden of responsibility from his shoulders much. If anything, Roland was still guilty as hell - no pun intended - of the sin of knowing negligence.

"Damien...I'm sorry." Roland sounded almost tearful...but he had no more tears to shed, in this world or the last. All that was left was his sincerity.

Damien smiled and turned away. "I'm still going to have to kill you though," he replied jovially, as if Roland's apology didn't matter. And to Roland, it didn't matter if it did.

Damien nonchalantly clipped the pen to his notebook, and slipped a quivering hand into the black #6 bag that he had slung around his shoulder, and like Roland's, he didn't withdraw it yet. Roland gulped and forced a smile as he slowly stood up. Damien also did the same, though his smile clearly wasn't forced. In fact, Damien's smile seemed like it was his natural expression.

Your world is turning from night to day,
Your dream is burning far, far away...

For the first time since left the defiled house of God - probably only an instant in the real world - Roland was shit-scared. He could feel his legs start to give out on him. He too had found what he had been looking for, and it wasn't what he expected. He had felt like he had forgiven himself...and that Damien would have forgiven him here. Somehow, half-expectedly, that wasn't the case.

"So...let's finish this. Only one of us is going to walk out, right?"
"Sure!"
"Yeah...yeah...one of us-"

Roland didn't finish his sentence as he swiftly drew out his empty Derringer and pointed it into Damien's chest. As his hand exited the bag, he knew there was no turning back, and for an instant he was sure that God was guiding him. This was it, the last moment before paradise greeted him.

However, he was suddenly and fatally fixated on the revolver that Damien had just drawn. Its nozzle hovered around the right of center of his field of vision.

Both of them pulled the trigger, and Roland heard a gunshot.

Oh God-

One of his last thoughts emanating from his mind was that he regretted thinking that Damien would have been cowed by his derringer. Of course, that was not an instantaneous affair the moment Damien drew the much more formidable revolver and he found himself staring into the infinitely black vortex of its nozzle.

Roland's face seemed frozen in the usual deathly shock as he hit the ground, blood trickling from his mouth and nose, body sprawling across the grass as he collapsed allowing portions of his brain and what was left of his left eye to tumble out from the quarter of his head that was exploded from the Magnum bullet's close range.

However, there was a look in his right eye that threw off the same ghastly death face that seemed to pervade the other corpses on the island. If anybody chanced to look closely into it, they might have noticed it.

It was a look of enlightenment and closure. As the consciousness of Roland Thomas Kelly finally dissipated, he remembered a song he heard when he was younger...

Into the blue, you and I,
To the circus in the sky,
Captain Kidd's on the sand,
With the treasure close at hand...
In the land of make believe...

B57 - KELLY, R - WASTED!

The echo of the revolver's loud bang lasted longer than the rumble of the collapsing factory that Damien had narrowly escaped from. It lasted past Damien walking over to Roland's mutilated corpse, jokingly thinking about Two-Face from the Batman comic books, and looking closely to make sure it wasn't moving anymore. It lasted into Danya laughing out loud over the intercoms that were posted all over the garden, though he was thankfully standing in one of the "softer" spots. It lasted into Damien listening to every word and name, confirming that Peter Rosenthal and Roland Thomas Kelly had died, and - disappointingly, Franco had perished in the collapse of the slaughterhouse along with the two "intruders," thus fulfilling the building's purpose.

Of course, even if this were a trick, he would have to take his mother's lackey's word for it. After all, all the rest had been confirmed, including Garry Dodd. He briefly wondered what Adam would have been thinking* to know some little bitch-boy had killed a relative of his.

((*Damien watched V1 avidly, so he knows Adam won, and figures Garry for a relative due to their last names.))

The echo had started to fade out as Damien made his way back to the bench, where his worn, dirty and bloodied notebook rested, pen clipped to the cover as if out of some sliver of a resemblance of neatness.

Damien's hand trembled as he crossed out not one, not two, but three names from his list. His eyes widened as the pen sliced through each letter of each name, but it wasn't because he was crossing each ones out.

Rather, it was because the only name left on the list was that of Reneé Valenti. It was a name he started to encircle with the pen, several times over, until there was a thick ring around it which took attention away from the long-since-removed name of Kristey Burrowell.

Damien's lips extended and curled into a toothy grin as his pen went round and round. The stains on his teeth seemed to make his canines even more pronounced than before, especially since his saliva hadn't washed out all the blood from his encounter with Franco. Nicole's game was crumbling from underneath her. He could just imagine the sort of suffering that she was going through realizing that her plan for her ultimate self-glorification was now more risk than reward, and it helped enhance his schadenfreude.

And without another moment's hesitation, he broke into a weary yet still psychotic cackle for a few seconds, after which he growled quite audibly...

"Reneé...you're...next..."

Whether or not Franco's death was a trick, he knew Nicole was outright lying when Danya said that Roland was the "only remaining bully" on the island. Damien made a mental note to figure out the former later on, as his collar had started to beep as he slid the notebook back into his bag. Without another word, he picked up his revolver and shield and made his way out. Some of the shallower cuts on his back were starting to heal, but the blood loss had started to really slow his pace.

Still, Damien hoped that everyone at home would watch him take down Nicole's plot...and if he was going to die, he was going to do it last and with his own mother watching.

Of course, Nicole was currently asleep. And Reneé had stopped watching as soon as her name was mentioned. She had curled up in the bathroom of her apartment with a knife in hand, looking quite disheveled although in her bra and panties, as if Damien were to burst in at any moment with his pistol and combat knife and leave nothing for the police to recognize, and her parents would have one hell of a time trying to coax her out.

Run for the sun little one,
You're an outlaw once again,
Time to change,
Superman will be with us while he can...
In the LAND OF MAKE BELIEVE...

((Continued in Poet of the Fall))