Survival Of The Fittest

"Well, unless you shoved it up your butt or used it to poke a bunch of corpses for some reason, maybe related to the first, then yes, yes I want that light-saber."

Lucas was getting a little impatient. He'd thanked Sven for his birthday wishes by way of a thumbs up, and then he'd been kept from his present. A plastic light-saber like that could be a useful bludgeon. Hold it by the 'blade' end and swing the handle at someone, and you could break their nose and leave them dazed for a while. Hit them behind the ears and throw off their balance. It was also useful for a lot of other things, too, like if Lucas found a way to attach a real pointy thing to it then it would make a decent actual sword. Better than the Minecraft thing at least.

He wondered how long Sven was going to take. Lucas was tired of the rain. The sound. The metallic smell. The smell of his own body odor, faintly garlic-y and unshowered, was a little bad. Maybe after Sven fucked off he'd take off his shirt and just stand for a bit, get a little cleaner. At the very least mush around the grime on his body a little. Let some of the slime slide off. He was overselling his filthiness. He was the dirtiest piece of shit out there. This revenge trip was something that he barely had his heart in, an over-hyped Disney cruise to oblivion. He knew he barely stood a chance. Maybe he could catch her off-guard but that was counting on his ability to connect sword with skin, to swing true and dig within to find a will he'd never had in his waking life. This was all but nightmarish. He had found some happiness here in a potato chip bag and that had been ripped away from him. It didn't matter if he died here in this dream; he didn't have much motivation when he was awake in the first place. Whose life was he throwing away?

Not his own. He was a dead man walking, haunting this island. Avenging Desiree was just his lingering soul's final wish. The key to peaceful rest. Once that was done with, he wouldn't linger long. A quick fade out was what he envisioned, like the end of a song where they just kept playing and the tape kept rolling but they had to trim it down because they needed to get it into people's homes. Unfinished stories for unfinished people. Lucas had a few drafts on his computer at home he'd never complete, novels that would never see the light of day, but he was never going to finish them anyway. This was something he intended to finish. In his death, or hers. This was the draft that he could publish. It was being published right now. He had no choice in the matter. The swing of his arc was in full motion.

He was only responsible for the little details. Like this one.

"Should I walk around over there, or are you gonna throw that at me, or are you gonna come around, or what, how are we making this happen, dude."

Lucas clapped his hands together and then brought his arms out wide. It wasn't a question.

"None of that, no," Sven replied so quietly he probably wasn't heard over the crash of water onto rocks far below.

The boy was becoming pricklier, aggravated and tense, and that made Sven feel a lot better about this. It was fitting, though part of his mind asked him quietly: cause or effect? He'd resolved to do as was requested of him in any event, and so he would. Birthday wishes, and so on.

So now, the only question that remained was how. How to convey a plastic tube across the river without it becoming lost in the waters, which neither of them wanted though it might well be the best possible conclusion to this meeting? Sven could directly ford the river, but on the other hand, no. He could throw it, but he'd gotten rocks maybe two thirds of the way across at best. He hadn't been throwing his hardest there, but rocks were smaller, denser, and far more aerodynamic than was the lightsaber. He could walk upstream until he found a narrow spot to ford, but the amount of time that would take was indeterminate. Now that the boy was being so overt about his desire, his need, Sven felt himself being drawn in. He was ready to be rid of the thing; he didn't have time to bushwhack his way along the bank for however long it took.

That left one option: his initial plan to traverse rocks amenable to the purpose in a bastardized combination of the safe-crossing and fording possibilities. It would be riskier than the latter but also far speedier than the former, and as he looked now he could see a spot not too far upstream. Call it fifty feet, though that was more wild guess than any sort of sensory milestone. He would not have to cross the entire river, either, just make it far enough for his throw to be a more reliable option.

"Hold on," he called, louder now. "I'll go over there—" He jerked his head towards the spot. "—and throw it when I'm halfway across."

There was this dim thought that he would be incredibly exposed during the traversal process, should someone decide to shoot at him or anything of the sort, but he set such concerns aside. If it happened, there were still worse ways to get shot.

Slowly and stiffly, Sven raised himself to his feet and trudged in the direction he'd indicated. Once at the spot he'd spied, he took a few seconds more to contemplate the rocks. They were wide and flat, which was good, and mossy and wet from the spray of the river and the rain and the ambient humidity, which was not. He took a tentative step onto the first stone, maybe the size of two desks from school pushed up against each other. It was firm and solid, the top actually a somewhat grainy texture that let his shoes easily find tread. He inched his way along it, then stepped to the next landing point, a slow shifting of his weight carrying him across.

Everywhere he could see, the river crashed, the spray splashing around both sides of the rocks he walked upon. The guy who was the beneficiary of this adventure had entirely vanished from Sven's consciousness. He was centered, mind and body, and he was entirely devoted to seeing this mission through. Stone by stone, he progressed, closer and closer to the far side.

At one point, he was forced to take a hop of faith, and upon landing he stumbled as the stone trembled, and he thought he would fall and be swept away. He lowered his center of mass, let his fingers scramble against the sides of the rock, and it settled and did not come free and did not dump him to his doom. There would be no avoiding passing this way on his return trip. He would have to keep that in mind.

One more rock, two, three. Sven stood now beyond the halfway point, stood in the river like he was walking on water, and he slipped the lightsaber from his belt once again. He took a deep breath, ran his fingers over the plastic, closed his eye.

Then, he opened it.

He flicked his wrist, conjuring the telescoping plastic blade.

For just a moment, he stared, imagining he could see his reflection in the brilliant crimson plastic.

The moment passed. He shifted his grip, holding the toy by its blade, the lighter end, then drew back horizontally and threw with a flick, sending it spinning like a Frisbee over the water. His gaze traced the motion, his breath held.

He needn't have worried. He probably could've managed the toss from a point halfway to where he'd come. The lightsaber spun in a neat arc before slamming into a short, scrubby bush, blade first. It sunk into the densely-packed branches, all the way to the hilt, which was wider and less tapered and so aborted the momentum. It stuck out, silver against green, like a significantly less impressive sword in the stone.

Sven's exhale approximated a sigh. The relief that washed over him was far greater than he'd expected, was enough even to blast away the lingering hints of guilt. He nodded.

"Happy birthday," he called again, "and good luck on your hunt."

Around him, the river thundered.

Well, that didn't fit. He was hoping for something blue, green, or even purple—there were purple light-sabers in Star Wars, right?—to shoot out from the hilt, not red. Red was the bad guy's color. That really didn't jive with the rest of how Lucas wanted to portray what he was doing. He wasn't a villain. By any rational person's account, he was the good guy in this story. Sure, he could be a little misguided from time to time, and yeah he could make some pretty terrible judgement calls, but even his mistakes were not so as to be construed as malice. He was seeking revenge for the slaying of an innocent. That was as heroic as one could get.

Still, it wasn't like he was going to refuse it. It was already sitting in the bush, after all. A perfectly good light-saber, just as he wanted. Lucas wiped the slight surprise off his face and walked over, picking it out of the foliage. It was a little damp, which was to be expected. He retracted the red blade and used the clip on the side to put it on his belt. Then, he turned back around and surveyed the waters. Sven looked perfectly cursed, just sort of standing there. With enough blur and noise and a low enough resolution, this was prime meme material, this picture. He wondered if that was the way the people at home were seeing this. Lucas hadn't had a good enough look at any of the cameras to know if they were shooting in high definition or not, and he hadn't seen any footage himself beside what they showed before they dropped them off on the island, but in truthfulness the past few days had been so much of a blur that it had a knock on effect to the rest of his memories as well, it felt like, blurring everything together in a primordial soup of cognitive detritus, dust particles floating in his mind. A romantic image, but overspoken. Lucas knew he was just frazzled.

He hated to leave Sven out there. Well, no he didn't. But the point was that leaving him out there looked bad. Just getting his shit together and leaving would be rude. Or it would look that way, anyhow. Not the sort of thing a heroic figure would do, right?

Lucas looked at the light-saber clipped to his waistband.

Eh.

He hadn't really ever cared enough about what people thought of him to actually change himself.

"Thanks," he said, waving back at Sven, "see you some other time, maybe."

And with that, Lucas gathered his shit together, and,

y'know,

just sort of left.

[Lucas Diaz continued in Zero Sum.]

"May the Force be with you," Sven said, and giggled. The boy and the lightsaber vanished. He felt better already. The river splashed around him, and he realized he actually had no idea how wide it was. There were a lot of things he didn't—couldn't—know. But he knew he was giddy with what had just transpired.

In a moment, everything had gone off-script. It had turned from what he had expected to something else, something new and exciting and lighter. He could do anything he wanted, be anything he wanted, even himself.

He just had to get back to shore. But that, too, could happen when and how he felt.

There was just one little thing prickling at his mind, this feeling like he was still forgetting something rather important. But what? He closed his eyes, ran through the steps he'd taken since he arrived here, rewound like he'd done in that hotel room back when the world had been fake and he'd been looking for his glasses.

Oh, of course. How silly.

((Sven Vee continued from Woody Harrelson wearing a red wig in the Stinger of Venom saying “There’s Going To Be Carnage”))

Just like that, Sven caught up with himself.

Then he was gone.

((Sven Vee continued in There Is No Passion, There Is Serenity))