Survival Of The Fittest

The hysterical laughter almost came back. Salem felt it welling up, but it stuck in his throat. All that came out was a wheeze.

"You really think everyone else dropped everything at the first hint, huh," he said, and his voice was bitter and wobbly in a way that he'd have absolutely died over anyone else hearing before now. "Time didn't stop moving, Jules."

Salem closed his eyes. "Who cares what my sister would want? My sister's dead." The words felt like dead things flopping onto the ground from his lips.

"I didn't do this for her. I did it for me." It didn't matter if Julia believed him. That was the closest to honesty she was going to get. Maybe it was the closest thing to the truth that Salem could understand, too.

He stepped back, pulling from her grasp. "It doesn't matter anymore, anyway. You really wanna do me a favor, you can just pass something on."

Learning that California was allegedly dead was a painful punch in the stomach. Julia didn't know her very well, and had no idea whether Salem was even mouthing truths or just inciting falsehoods. She wasn't on any announcement, so had either died earlier today and Salem had been unfortunate enough to stumble upon her body or... It didn't bear thinking about. The cognitive, gut-wrenching pain that his words instilled felt genuine, but Julia was thrown for a loop.

"S-Salem..."

She didn't know what to say or do. The wind totally taken out of her lungs, plunging her into a daze. She didn’t want to pass on a message, Julia was desperate to find a way to give him a reason to keep fighting.

"S-Salem. P-please don't..."

She didn't break eye contact with his closed eyes. "D-don't do this."

There it was. Some of that tightly-wound tension in his back and shoulders eased.

Salem had done this to himself, he guessed, by being the go-to meme guy when you needed one. He'd spent so long making sure nothing passed his lips that wasn't mummified in seven layers of irony, and he'd understood that he'd need to hit hard and hit where it hurt if anyone was going to see that he wasn't fucking around anymore. He'd known that when you stripped it all away, nobody would like the real Salem, just as much as he didn't like most of them. He might as well have depicted himself as three cynical raccoons stacked on top of each other in a trenchcoat, spouting anime references to try and make the world a little less of a drag.

That broken note in Julia's voice was a victory, even if it was a Pyrrhic one.

When he opened his eyes to look her in the face again, his expression was relaxed. "Jules, I just want you to know that..." He paused and took a deep breath so that his voice would remain steady.

"That I don't regret any of it."

Salem bared his teeth, unsure if he was smiling or grimacing. He worked to make it a smile. "Okay? Don't ever tell anybody that I ever said sorry for anything."

"And don't look at me like that - you won!" One was the loneliest number, but won was the most pointless victory. They were all nothing, nobody, aimless survivors in a sea of the dead. Raft of the fucking Medusa, baybee.

Salem laughed, and the sound was carefree. "You should be happy."

"Smile!"

And he pulled the trigger.

And the crowd reeled back in horror, and his blood splattered across the burning stage lights, and every camera was rolling, streaming, broadcasting SALEM FOX BLOWS HIS FUCKING BRAINS OUT IN FRONT OF AUDIENCE !!NOT CLICKBAIT!! 1080P across every screen.

And it was over. And he knew. And he was asleep at last.

S079 SALEM FOX: DECEASED

Smile for the photograph, he said.

With the flash of a camera, one painfully loud bang, and it was all done.

A shower of blood, skin, flesh. All of it came crashing down her like a cascading waterfall, the beauty of the falls replaced by the gore of a half-destroyed face still standing tall before her. The substance, gooey fragments of flesh, coated in warm blood, spluttered across her face, painting her red like a Shōzō Shimamoto gallery.

Julia stumbled two steps backwards as she raised her frost-bitten fingers to wipe her eyes. Unfortunately, the wiping had done no good, nausea rushing through her veins as the desecration of Salem Fox tragically tumbled to the ground beneath her sneakers.

The pitch black darkness was caving in around her.

And that was all she could remember.

Julia had collapsed to the ground, as lifeless as the remnants of Salem.

[S119 - Julia Guercio - continued in hope is smashable, realism is not.]