I hope you will in your next time a cow on a trash farm

[ViolentMedic]

((Russell 'Fitz' Fitzroy continued from The Sun... :( .))

As Fitz finished his list following the Day 7 announcements and observed it briefly, tapping Daniel’s name lightly as he did so, he could smell rotting flesh.

He sat in the corner of a room, hidden from the door. Wedged behind some furniture. He’d remained there all night. If someone came in and explored well enough, they’d find him easily and he would be in a vulnerable place.

But there was a much more obvious corpse sitting in the closet. One that had been there since the game begun, when Janice slit her throat. Though the sheer cold slowed rot, Tana’s corpse was not looking pretty a week on, and the smell was putrid.

Yet Fitz had stayed here all night.

When he got up to leave, now that the morning had come, he reached down to grasp his olive jacket and pull it up to give it a sniff, before wrinkling his nose. Then he reached for the pocket and retrieved Mister Fluffernutter. He approached the body.

“I should introduce you,” he said. He held Mister Fluffernutter in front of Tana’s rotting face. “This is Tristana Blanco Osuna. She worked at a tourist trap. So did I, but a better one. We were both basically selling the same things… but ours was totally doing it better. Though she’d say otherwise. She likes ghosts. She’s probably having a grand time haunting the island right now.”

He paused, then spoke out of the corner of his mouth, pitching his voice into a faux-British accent that was different than his prior attempts. Consistency was not his strong point.

“’Nice to meet you, Tana! How’s the haunting?’”

He lowered the squirrel puppet and put him back in his jacket pocket, before he crouched in front of Tana, reaching down to rifle through his bag. After a moment, he pulled out the witch mask he’d taken from Cedar. It was still somewhat whole, though parts of it had been blown away by the sniper rifle. Recognisable, if shoddy.

“I wonder if you’ve moved on now. Since Janice is dead, you don’t have to wait for vengeance. But I think I’d be haunting the place for a long time after, just because. So I got you a present. ...Actually, I took it from my dead girlfriend’s belongings. If you see Cedar, tell her...”

He tailed off for a moment, thinking.

“You know… whatever I have to say is probably a drag, right? You guys are dead, so you don’t have to worry about it. I’ll say it myself, maybe. In the meantime, this’ll help your haunting.”

He reached out, and placed the mask as firmly as he could over Tana’s rotting face. His fingers paused before making contact with the dead flesh. The feeling was not the same as a living body, the give to the flesh wrong.

“Hope you like it,” Fitz said quietly.

As he spoke, he tugged the mask down further. His fingers came down enough to brush against the collar. He held his breath. He shifted the mask a little more, standing a little so his back blocked her face from anything behind him. Including any cameras peeking at the cupboard.

Slowly, he reached down and stuck his fingers carefully under the collar. Not far from where the throat had been slashed. He wriggled it up just a little so it lined up with the wound in her throat, so he could properly get his fingers behind it. Only long enough to feel the back, and get a briefly close look at it.

Nothing to show for it, though. The metal was smooth and featureless. It felt just as featureless, no bumps.

“You don’t deserve it,” he muttered, before letting go and straightening up. He turned and left the house.

-

Since abandoning Victor in the night, he had returned to his slow cycle of town. But today, he initially walked away.

He walked until he saw the lake. And then further, until the shoreline glimmered in the distance.

The shoreline was a danger zone. The mountains had not been released.

The noose was tightening.

He turned back towards town.

When he returned, he walked back into housing and towards the hunting lodge bar. The bar where Kitty Graves would have picked up her weapon.

It was slow progress over the day, even barring his brief wander away. He kept hearing the sounds of gunshots, or arguments, or fights. Never sure of the source, but each time he heard the sounds of anything at all, he’d find the nearest wall and press his back to it, and slide away from the noise until he was hidden. And he’d wait until he heard nothing at all.

In the end, he never saw a soul. Corpses in houses, and bloodstains on the street. But no souls.

Once the bar was in sight, he started checking each house. Starting with the closest, and moving away.

He found the body of Alex Avanesian quickly enough to confirm that finding him had always been an easy task. The announcement and the circumstances of his death had made it so.

Fitz stood in the doorway looking at the body for what might have been a full twenty minutes, just staring pensively at it. Finally, he dropped his bag. He kept his rifle in his grip.

He walked over to the crumpled body at the foot of the stairs, and crouched by it. Smashed glasses. Stab wound in the back, slit throat in the front. Bruises. Broken railing in his hand.

“You didn’t learn from attacking us, huh? Attacking Kitty… jeez.”

Fitz raised the butt of his gun and prodded Alex’s face. It did not get a response.

“You kill Cedar, kill Tenshi, cause Tully and Mildred… after causing all that, you could at least have had the fucking decency to learn from your lucky break. ...Jackass. Can’t expect much from someone wearing a Canon hoodie, I guess.”

He raised his head and stared at the ceiling.

“You there?” His eyes shifted and lingered near, but not quite on, one of the cameras. After a moment of staring upwards, he looked downwards again. “Nah, you’d haunt Kitty, probably. Try to push rocks on her or something. If I’m being haunted, it’s because I didn’t kill you myself. I made deathbed promises. Those are serious. Tully and Mildred are probably pissed.”

Fitz reached up to adjust his hat, but his hand stopped in front of his face. He could smell Tana still. He lowered his hand and instead held the gun again.

“I feel like you and I got unfinished business. I can’t kill you. But there’s a ghost out there that’ll be damn annoyed if I put the body in a silly position and, I dunno… whizz on it or something.”

He gave Alex another prod in the face with the butt of the gun.

“...No, that’s not classy. I’m better than that.”

Another poke.

“This is probably annoying you a bit, but it’s too mild. Maybe put the head on a spike. You think that’d help ward people off when I camp out?”

Fitz looked around for any signs of dropped weapons, but the effort was in vain.

“You couldn’t even keep your spear on you. Fucker.”

He stood up, then kicked the corpse halfheartedly in the gut. Though in practice, it was more of a nudge. Most of the words that had come out of his mouth had been mild. No anger. Anger required energy.

“I’m going to go find something sharp. Don’t move. Don’t think I have to worry about anyone getting emotional and burying you. Who woulda done that? Maybe members of the club, but oh right. You fucked that up, didn’t you?”

He shut the door behind him, pausing with his hand on the doorknob. He shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them again before letting go of the doorknob.

That night, he found somewhere less corpsy to sleep.

((Russell 'Fitz' Fitzroy continued in WALK THROUGH THE DOORS AND I'M GOOD.))