Survival Of The Fittest

Once again, Meena’s grip began to waver. The gun lowered from her sight, and her eyes were wide. The reader (Meena) turned the page and the author (Meena) revealed a monster (Meena). For a moment, she could be a half-bodied horrified witness to her own crime.

Why was she upset? That’s what she wanted to see, wanted the world to see. Look what happened when you gave her an inkling of ability to follow up on her thoughts. Millie wasn’t dead yet, she was still twitching, and she had to know now that Meena wasn’t fucking around. She could stop. She could walk away.

But she wasn’t done. It still felt like this action was just one of many animal impulses that she’d regret later. A fluke of brain chemicals. Millie could maybe relate. She could probably guess. She would guess wrong. The impulse was the reality because there would be no difference when the announcements rolled.

In for a penny, in for a pound. In for one shot, in for five. The announcements would make her out to be a monster and they would be right and it was disgusting and it was exhilarating. If she couldn’t commit to this now, she was truly worthless. No more human than the twitching, near-dead goats.

So she steadied her aim, narrowed her eyes, and fired again.

And again, and again, and again.

The second shot went through her skull, between her temple and her eye. The third did, too, right above the brow. She didn't live to feel the fourth.

She wanted to come up with a lot of last thoughts. About how death fundamentally didn’t make sense. About the conservation of energy. About the stupid goats. About how she was a nasty person right down to the end. About the people in her little black squres who she was starting to love and the mother she was starting to hate and the forests and the seas and the things that she could never save.

Instead, there was just pain. Just some kind of agony that was too far removed from her mind for her to comprehend. Parts of her just weren't there, weren't working anymore, areas of the brain replaced by hollowness and fraying neurons. The body tried to survive, as bodies usually do, even against the owner’s will. Platelets working, fibrin around the wounds, heart beating far too fast, far too frantic, but eventually, they fail, as bodies always did. In some damaged, punched-through part of Millie's brain, something tried to make a connection. It failed.

The birds turned their direction to the cold sea and flew away from the noise. The microorganisms feasted. The goats rotted, minute by minute.

Her meat sloughed off, but the animals remained.

Meena remained.

Humans, after all, were animals, and anger and love and all the ephemeral feelings that ruined her life and all her choices were nothing but chemicals in the brain that she ultimately had precious little control over. Millie might as well have been gored by the goats, for all of Meena's efforts.

The gun, finally unloaded, trembled with her hands.

...Meena didn't regret it. She wouldn't allow herself to regret anything! Maybe it was that Millie probably would have killed someone or that Meena already knew she was going down the path of radicalization back home or any fucking thing that turned normal people into worse people and honestly? If Meena didn't deserve to live, what did that say about everyone else?! Even the nice people of their school weren't actually good. Meena almost admired the people who refused to pretend to be kind.

Millie pretended to be good. She didn't pretend to be nice but she pretended she was doing something for the environment or for women and all she did-

Her last words started playing in her mind. They were stuck there, like an annoyingly catchy song. Everything was encapsulated in those words - she claimed to want to help. And all she did-

Tears started rolling down Meena's face but she wasn't sad. She always got this way when she was sufficiently enraged, hyperventilating, grasping, and okay maybe she was a little sad but honestly? Sadness always resulted in anger, and anger always resulted in sadness. Meena couldn't actually recall any difference between those chemical reactions, ever truly experiencing them separately. Maybe everyone was lying about them being two different emotions.

Sometimes, Meena tried to break things when she raged. It never worked. She once failed to tip over a chair. She never tried to break glass because of all the sharp mess it'd cause. Maybe that was her problem, being weak in body and mind. She'd break people too if less inhibited her. At least, she idly wished she could.

Funny how much a gun allowed her to ignore her weakness, in a way, as if granting her the claws of a tiger, or the goring-horns of a goat.

Maybe SOTF really was the best thing that could have ever happened to her. What was there to be angry about, other than the fact that getting everything she thought she wanted failed to grant... Peace? Catharsis? A sense of accomplishment? Power?

She would reach for another bullet if she was beyond her humanity enough to think of anything else than what she did. Instead, she fell to her knees shrieking, and brought the barrel of the gun down on Millie's corpse. Her flesh was unexpectedly soft, expectedly bloody. She kept screaming and beating the gun against Millie, or what was left of her, as if daring the mountain to come down on them all.

It was a simple matter to follow the gunshots.

[Ren Vu continued from Soul Gem]

Meena had been fast on the mountain, faster than Ren could ever have been, for Meena welcomed death and Ren did not. Wanted death, considered death, flirted with death--perhaps, at times. But they would be of no use to their friends when they were dead, and for that reason they could not afford to welcome death. They could never have kept up. They were always going to lose Meena.

It could not be more obvious that Meena wanted Ren to lose her, that following her was horribly selfish and probably made them a terrible friend. But what was one to do, when the mere act of insisting on a friendship made one a bad friend? Ren would rather be a bad friend to Meena than no friend at all. That was cold of them, and they had once again felt the twinge of an abstract kind of self-loathing--but that kind of feeling was easily brushed aside, and Ren's feelings wouldn't matter when they were dead. Which didn't actually make any sense at all--were they not acting on feeling, even now? Why go to so much effort to protect someone who wanted to die, when you were both trapped on an island where (almost) everyone had to die anyways? Pragmatically, ethically, it didn't make sense; but that was never going to change Ren's mind.

And so they had followed, and although they had lost, they had continued, their chase turning to a brisk search. It was much harder to follow a trail of footprints in the forest, and Ren was no good at distinguishing the traces of passing humans from other disturbances--but still they had continued, even when success had seemed increasingly unlikely. And if a small part of them was hopeful that Meena had evaded them after all, that the choice of giving up on their pointless, self-serving mission had been made for them, then they ignored it. The fear that that was the last they would ever see of Meena had a much stronger grip on their chest, anyways.

The sound of the first gunshot was a knife to the brain. Ren froze, short-circuited, the scenarios spinning in their head--then the second gunshot came, which at least meant it wasn't suicide, probably. Ren shuddered--'botched shotgun suicide' could probably make a good case for being the worst scenario their brain had managed to conjure yet--and set off at a run. It wasn't a full-tilt run, though their body screamed to go faster (it would be no good if Meena was in a fight and Ren was noticed and picked off). They didn't call Meena's name, though they desperately wanted to (same reason, and Ren suspected that Meena would only hide herself if she heard her name spoken with their voice). Three, four, five gunshots, all the same sound, all at regular intervals, and then the shooting stopped, and did not start up again, and that meant, it meant that--

Ren arrived to the scene to be greeted with the sight of Meena, wailing and whaling away at the corpse--half buried in snow and stone--of an unrecognizable girl. A wasteland. Boulders and shattered trees and the broken bodies of goats.

Confusion flitted through Ren's brain--anger and worry, too--but above all, there was relief. Relief, again.

Ren wheezed, catching their breath, and stumbled forward, doubled over and trembling all over. Meena didn't notice, or seemed not to.

When they spoke, the words that left their mouths were: "Meena--you're safe. Who? What happened?"

hey ren i think i found one of our classmates on tumblr
unfortunately it turns out she went down the radfem hole so

A world away in time and space, Meena and Ren would have bonded over laughing at someone else from a place of safe superiority, a sacred friendship rite of talking shit in DMs. There was a study, once. People tend to bond best not by discussing things they both like, but by complaining about things they both hate, or something like that. (In hindsight, Millie wasn't... that far down the pipeline? She couldn't remember if either of them brought that up.) Weird how much the little people in her confiscated phone still had a hold over her, especially the ones she didn't like.

But that basis for a friendship was as fake as anything else, as fake as the laughing fits and compulsions to scroll through their conversations when she woke up at 3 AM with existential dread. When the feeling passed, when the chemicals in the brain petered out, Meena was left grumbling into the yawning chasm it left behind, like a hole in the pit of her stomach. Like ash in the mouth.

She knew Ren was watching. She still grumbled, growled, and those noises turned into one more garbled shout as she smacked Millie's nigh-unrecognizable face one more time with the gun.

"Muh-Mm..." she coughed, throat sore. "Millie..."

Meena's shoulders shook with each sob, less out of regret more out of... more out of what?! It couldn't be regret! She never liked Millie! She did in fact, think of saying something along the lines of wishing she'd up and die when talking about her with Ren, and she kept her mouth shut then because she was weak like that but that's what she wanted, really. And that's what she got, in the end.

Ren, for their part, had never wished for Millie's death.

Disliked her, sure. They'd thought she probably needed to go outside and touch grass, said as much when Meena had sent them the link. Truth be told, talking shit about their classmates had never been to Ren's taste--they worried too much about what other people were saying about them when their back was turned to find the activity very enjoyable, even when the classmate in question deserved to be dragged. But they also couldn't fault Meena for wanting to tear into Millie a little, and wasn't giving someone the space to vent a part of emotionally supporting them? Wasn't it fair to make fun of someone who held harmful beliefs? They remembered feeling glad that Meena had shown them the blog, glad for the trust she had shown them. And yet.

Ren's eyes shifted from Meena, to Millie, to Meena, back to Millie. There was too much to worry about to think about feeling guilty.

In any case, Millie's leg had been shattered; Ren could see the bone. Meena hadn't done that. And Millie was half buried--from the looks of it, she had been caught by an avalanche. Ren still hadn't figured out what exactly Meena had done, here.

Ren straightened themself back up.

"I see. Did she ask you to kill her?"

Meena paused, still hunched over the corpse. Her breathing, and the motion of her shoulders with it, had become more regular. Like every feeling, this too would pass, but it lingered more than anything else would. The rage/sorrow (no difference) held more volume and shape, like it was the only real thing in a dream.

"...no..." she whispered, back still turned to Ren. "Sh-shot... five times."

There was no other way to describe what happened. Meena didn't want to explain it any other way, either.

Ren stared at Meena blankly. Meena, who had just killed someone in cold blood (unless Millie had a weapon that Ren had missed?). Meena, who had point-blank refused the easy explanation they had--in a moment of blatant wishful thinking--carelessly offered.

Why?

The question reverberated in the air, even though Ren did not ask it aloud. They weren't sure if even Meena knew the answer, and if she did, Ren wasn't sure they wanted to hear her say it.

Because I felt like it. Because she deserved it. Because she pissed me off. Because I hate her. Because I ran away from you for the very purpose of being able to do something like this. Because giving a doomed, dying girl a mercy kill and then beating the shit out of her dead unfeeling body is one of the more ethical ways to take your anger out on someone.

No, it was no good; if Ren didn't ask Meena for an explanation, their brain would supply one anyways. Whatever the actual reason, it was unlikely to be worse than Ren's imagination--and even if it was, ignorant bliss (if it could be called that) was a luxury they couldn't afford. They had to know. If they were to protect Meena, if they were to protect others from Meena, they had to know why.

"Because...?"

Meena must have looked silent and still through Ren's eyes. Maybe she even looked guilt-riddled. Ren was always stupid like that - always in Meena's corner, allegedly, even as they knew precisely who Meena was (and if by some chance of selective blindness and deafness they didn't, they could probably guess now). They were a liar, who lied to themselves and others, Meena knew this.

She looked further down, at her hands. Contrary to popular expectation, the blood did show on her red coat - dark stains against a formerly candy hue. It might have been warm at some point, but now the cold stung against the blood on her hands more than her bare, dryer skin.

Gaze cast down, face hidden away from Ren's, Meena mouthed the words, I don't know.

There was no response, and Meena was refusing to look at them.

Ren took a deep, shuddering breath. Alright. That was okay; they had anticipated this. They felt faint suddenly, weak all over, ready to collapse as the adrenaline began to leave their body. Meena not speaking wasn't ideal, obviously, and the fact that she had just killed someone was...something they were going to have to spend a long time grappling with, probably. But she was alive. She was safe. To the adrenaline coursing through their veins, that was what mattered. The rest, they at least stood a chance of puzzling out.

Ren waited a few more seconds, in case Meena changed her mind and decided to say something.

"Okay. So you don't know, or you don't want to tell me. That's okay. Let's, um...did she suffer? After the first shot, I mean."

"Probably." Meena's voice had finally steadied, and she'd wipe the tear-stains off her face if her hands weren't bloodied right now. For now, she straightened herself up, and looked up at the sky. The mountain loomed overhead.

Her answer was honest, at least. Maybe suffer was a bit of a strong word for it, but it wasn't really wrong either, if Meena's own (admittedly limited, fiction-focused) knowledge of gunshot wounds was any good.

Pondering this gave Meena something to think about other than- yeah. It was a nice thing to do for her, which is why she didn't trust it. Ren had an end game here. She waited for them to reveal it.

Ren frowned. It wasn't the answer that they had been hoping to hear, but it at least confirmed that Meena was being honest with them. And it wasn't the answer they had been hoping not to hear, either.

"Why aren't you sure?"

20 questions, Ren? Really?

"Happened... too fast." Meena guessed she was being honest in superficial ways that wouldn't come back to bite her, probably.

Actually, could you even call that honesty? There had to be kind of sacrifice, some sense of going-out-of-your-way, to make an act a virtuous one. Even Meena's honesty felt hollow, fake, shallow-

"Okay."

That made sense; the shots had been fired in fairly quick succession. So...Meena hadn't been trying to make Millie suffer, but she hadn't been trying to keep it particularly clean, either, which meant--

"Did Millie say anything to you, before you shot her?"

See what she was just talking about? Being honest about this question was not free. Nothing about Ren's friendship came for free. They might say it did, they might even believe it did, but Meena didn't believe it. If she thought about it, she'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since they started properly talking. To be honest, she was still waiting now.

"She told me... to get out. Before the, uh, avalanche..." The truth, then. Maybe that truth would get Ren to finally see their "help" for what it really was. "And- and called me a cunt while she was at it."