ooh wee a dead body

[Applesintime]

((Alex Avanesian continued from : after story))

He hadn't intended to spend much time back here. There was one thing he was looking for and one thing only; his glasses. Tully had knocked them off during the fight, and while Alex had another pair nestled in his bag (and currently on his face), being down to one pair that could be broken in another fight would effectively kill him. So, if he was lucky, and Alex thought he was, the pair he'd lost would be somewhere, both unbroken and unlooted.

Stepping into the research lab, after a quick glance around to make sure nobody was lying in wait, Alex felt his mouth.

He didn't like the gaps he felt when he pressed on his lip, that absence. What once was a tooth now was... actually, where did his teeth go? Did someone take them? What could you even do with someone's teeth here? All that was forgotten once he made his way to Tully and spied a glasses leg poking out. Clearing some of the glass so he wouldn't get some in his knee, Alex knelt down and gently shifted and tugged until the glasses came free.

A lens was cracked, but it was better than nothing.

Alex tucked it into his bag, staring down at Tully for a second. He'd never seen a dead body in real life before, not until right now. He'd been so cold. The smell of that... fishy stuff lingered in the air, now mixed with death. Didn't make much difference, considering how bad it smelt anyway. How would this place smell in a few days, a week? Would the cold of this place preserve these bodies like the caveman frozen in the ice that they dug up somewhere, or would they rot the same as every other body that SOTF had created?

It didn't matter. Alex burnt the sight of a dead man into his brain, nestling the sight in with every other dead body he'd seen on the footage. Crafting theories about how they weren't actually dead, how they were robots or whatever, a fifth actual theory and the other four-fifths shitposting and joking around with friends. You see death, destruction and school-wide abductions every day, yet when it comes to you it seems so unfamiliar and at the same time, like stepping into a house you've lived in your whole life.

Glancing up at the cameras, Alex wondered who would be following his journey.

One way or the other, it ends in the cameras shutting off over a dead body.

Exhaling, Alex got up, ready to head out, but then he caught sight of the one he'd killed. The first one he'd killed. Cedar Dalisay.

Cedar Dalisay.

He found himself shuffling over to her body, kneeling down and examining her much in the same way a gardener would examine their favourite flowers.

If not for the gaping chasm in her stomach giving a clear view of organs that shut down a day ago, you could fool yourself into thinking she was sleeping, Alex thought. He knew that this was irrational. There was no point in examining Cedar Dalisay's body any longer and leaving himself open to someone attacking him. But no matter what Alex told himself, he couldn't pull himself away from the body. How many more would he create? Who would they be? It could have - this could have been Evie if he'd aimed right. But she'd shifted, he'd failed, and all he'd taken from it was the taste of blood.

In a way, it was fascinating. This used to be a person, with thoughts, dreams, desires, everything he had. And now it was an empty house. Nobody's home. The lights are off. And he did that. Anyone could do that. Just as long as they had the willpower and the drive to take someone's life in favour of your own. But that's what Survival of the Fittest was. Showing who had that drive - who would show up on that announcement in the morning - and who didn't - who would also show up, just in a different context.

Alex had lingered enough.

It was time to make more Cedar Dalisays and Tully Talbotts.

((Alex Avanesian continued in @tracendanya You litte F**ker You made a shit of piece with your trash SOTTF it’s F**King Bad this trash game))