Survival Of The Fittest

It didn't matter anyway. They both turned and left. Michael blinked out of existence for a moment, and came back with a question for her answer. The answer was not something she could give to him. At least, not the answer that she had been consciously considering. An answer was what she could give instead. Not the. An answer was that being directed calmed her, even though she resented it, because she could square away some of the responsibility for her actions. An answer was that she felt no attachment to the idea of murdering two more people if someone else didn't think they deserved it. An answer was that, for reasons entirely unrelated to Michael's presence, Violet was for the first time feeling hopeful about her position as hell's next tenant.

The answer she'd give would be none of those.

"Because I don't want to make you upset."

She turned and looked at Michael. It felt like looking into a mirror, for some reason. Despite everything, despite all indications otherwise, they were still themselves. They had suffered painful additions to their composition, both in cognition and perhaps in body, but underneath all the dirt and grime and pain they still had themselves underneath. Violet still cared about other people, and maybe it was easier to relate to someone who could in turn relate to her as a sinner. Violet still liked being near others. She still wanted to make someone laugh. She had written that off as a possibility, but the nature of the pendant spider's thread had changed. Smiling was enough.

Violet stuck out the tip of her tongue and hummed for a second.

"Guess you're all alone now, huh."

Violet told him the reason she hadn't shot was because she hadn't wanted to upset him.

He closed his eyes, inhaled a long, deep, inhalation; held down tears. He felt... guilty? He felt guilty.

Someone not murdering someone because they wanted to keep Michael from being sad made him feel guilty. The realization made him feel slightly less guilty. Scratch that, he didn't feel guilty at all now.

He felt... he wasn't sure what he felt. Warm. It was warm. It wasn't the Warm Feeling. It was tinged with something; acceptance, maybe. Floaty.

Okay. He felt okay. Good okay; not bad okay. Beryl Okay; not Camila Okay. At peace.

Slow exhalation. Eyes back open. Violet was looking at him now. He watched her stick out her tongue. He listened to her hum. The tune felt familiar, somehow. He made eye contact with her. She looked like she was thinking, maybe.

She was a double murderer. That was okay. Michael'd already made friends with two other double murderers. They weren't all that bad. Murderers were people too. There were no monsters; only people.

Well, no. Ted Bundy was a monster. Eric Harris was a monster. Quinn was a monster (probably).

Violet wasn't, though. He hoped she wasn't.

"Guess you're all alone now, huh," she said. He guessed that meant Lori and Claude were gone, then. All for the best. He wondered if Violet'd just been waiting for a chance to kill him while there was nobody else around.

He smiled, idly. "I guess I am alone. Everybody is, really."

The loneliest whales on earth.

He wondered if Violet was just a hallucination; if he'd finally completely lost his grip on reality. Maybe he'd lost it long before now. Maybe the S.S. Stepney had been a hallucination. Maybe The Owl had been a hallucination. Maybe Bearyl had been a hallucination. Maybe he'd gone into stimulant psychosis at the menagerie. Maybe he'd really collapsed in on himself at the beach.

It didn't matter. Either way; it was his reality. It was real to him.

He remembered the outline of Beryl's corpse. He remembered the two giant bloodstains soaked through the blanket. He remembered the trail of blood. He remembered all of her blood soaked into the forest floor. He remembered hearing Henry — in retrospect, he knew it was Henry's voice — calling out "Beryl" (or "Barrel", but probably "Beryl"). He remembered hearing the gunshot that had really killed Beryl. He remembered her face, from before Rome had been defined on the map. He imagined her smile.

He couldn't remember her smile. Only imagine it. The pain from that broke through the numb.

A lingering ache. A phantom limb.

That was it. She was a phantom limb.

Her death finally felt real.


He unconsciously lifted his hand and wiped away tears that did not exist. He was still smiling. No tears; no crying. He didn't want to upset Violet.

"Thanks for not shooting them, by the way," he said, looking away from Violet and out into the distance. He sat up a little bit. He felt a kind of mutual, unspoken understanding with her; like they both got it, whatever it was. "I dunno," he interrupted himself, "the thing about lying down; it's from a song. It's about giving in," he paused; spoke to the tune of the song. "When there's no way out, the only way out is to give in. How I love to, how I love to, how I love to give in..."

He trailed off.

"...Sometimes the deepest darkness is also the most enlightening. We both understand that, in a way."

They understood in different ways, he guessed; but they still both understood.

Violet sat with Michael and listened to him speak. The way his words cascaded out from his lips, like there was something moving beneath the surface that had been caught and stuck in place for a time. He took her assertion as truth. He thanked her for her mercy. He explained his earlier non sequitur and nearly burst into song, instead deciding to trail off and recite an axiom that he may or may not have just made up. Violet sat with Michael and listened to him speak, not entirely knowing what to say.

But she did think of something.

"You like music?" she asked, "what kinds?"

In her space she shifted, leaning forward and then back into herself. She didn't see much reason to leave Michael. He didn't seem like he'd kill her. Maybe she could afford to let her guard down, for the first time.

"I, uh, played the violin. But, I listened to a lot of, uh, indie stuff."

Small talk. A big, momentous thing in a place like this. Michael'd never really liked making small talk.

Now that he was on the island, he couldn't get enough.

It was nice. This was nice. He liked people. He liked living every moment like it could be his last.

Violent Violet played the violin, apparently. She liked listening to 'indie stuff'.

"Mmm," he paused, looking back at Violet. He nodded. "Indie stuff for me, too. I was in choir; been trying to find excuses to sing here," he looked up into a camera. "Most of the crazy shit I've said during the past four days, I stole from songs. Like, I just quoted a Bright Eyes song to Lori," back away from the camera and to Violet.

Violet had exploded the heads of two people. She had a gun, a crossbow, and a sword-thingy. She was wearing a spooky occult robe. She'd stepped out of the mist, like a ghost, and said some wacky shit about owls.

A wraith pinned to the mist.

Ha ha. Funny joke. Funny song reference. Let's pretend we don't exist. Let's pretend we're in Antarctica. Maybe I'll never die, I'll just keep growing younger with you, and you'll grow younger, too. Now it seems too lovely to be true; but I know the best things always do.

He tapped his fingers against the ground to the beat of the song. He was talking to a spooky head-exploding occult girl about hipster music. This was absurd. Everything was absurd.

Let's have bizarre celebrations. Let's forget who, forget what, forget where.

It was a song about dissociation. He was pretty much fully dissociated now, he figured. His mind had turned to fiction. That was good. That'd been one of his big goals. He felt satisfied. He didn't want this to end.

He never wanted this to end.

"Any artists in particular?"

"Bright Eyes is good," Violet said, nodding her head. She felt the weight of the crossbow strung around her neck fully now. In that moment she decided she didn't want it hanging from her anymore. Too much of an impediment to justify quick access. With one hand she pulled it up and off her head, setting it on the ground back and to the side of her.

Michael killed someone. Just one, but it was still a person that she had known, at some point.

Violet did it because it was necessary.

Kyle was going to be in pain for the rest of his existence, as short as it was going to be. She could end that. She needed to. So she did.

Layla was trying to rob her. Layla was going to kill her, and then couldn't go through with it. Violet shot her leg, and then her head. Her leg, so that she couldn't try it again, and then her head, because Violet wasn't just going to leave her like that, because she too was a friend, in a previous life.

Did Michael kill because he needed to?

Did Michael believe in hell?

"Just some basic stuff," Violet started, "like, uh, Radiohead, and the Pixies, and Car Seat Headrest, and Animal Collective. Neutral Milk Hotel is good. The Microphones. I don't know how many of these bands you've heard of. Sufjan Stevens. Uh. St. Vincent. Uh."

She coughed.

Too basic. Think. Something weird. Something Dana liked. Something more like her sister. Something that maybe she could understand now.

Madame Psychosis.

"Merzbow. Les Rallizes Denudes. Pale Cocoon. Boredoms. Boris. World's End Girlfriend. Shizuka. Midori.

"Stuff like that."

Michael watched as Violet placed her crossbow on the ground. That was a shame, he liked its aesthetic; but he understood the decision. He didn't grab for it. He saw no reason to.

Radiohead. Honestly, who didn't know Radiohead. Pixies. Michael'd been waiting for a good opportunity to sing Where Is My Mind?; it was a song he found rather relevant to his whole island experience. Car Seat Headrest. Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales. Animal Collective. Michael tended to follow the group members closer as individual acts than he did the collective. He'd been wanting to try and sing Little Fang by Avey Tare for a while now. Neutral Milk Hotel. How strange it was to be anything at all, yes. Jeff Mangum had fallen in love with Anne Frank like how Michael had fallen in love with Beryl. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, the album, to Michael felt parallel to his time here in a number of ways; mostly involving how nonsensical everything felt except for the big central theme of the album, which he thought was love, probably. The Microphones. I Want Wind To Blow. I Don't Know How Many Of These Bands You've Heard Of. That wasn't a band.

Yeah, Radiowho???????????????????? Thom Dorke???????????

One time, Michael'd been talking to someone about music, and they asked him what he listened to. He said hipster stuff. They asked for specific artists. He said alt-j. They said they'd never heard of them. Michael said exactly. Pow pow, it was witty. Then somebody laughed and told him they hadn't known he was funny, and it made him feel a little bit accomplished.

Sufjan Stevens. Michael'd been wanting to sing Casimir Pulaski Day and John Wayne Gacy, Jr. St. Vincent. Apocalypse Song.

Violet coughed.

Michael raised an eyebrow. There were less umms and uhhs in the list now. A sudden lack of hesitation in the way she spoke; Violet herself probably hadn't even noticed it. Michael knew it meant something; he wasn't sure what.

Merzbow. He'd heard the name in passing, maybe, at some point in the past. Les Rallizes Denudes. He didn't know French! Pale Cocoon. A lot of cocoons were pale, weren't they? He didn't know cocoons! Boredoms. He didn't have a quip for that one. Boris. Johnson? World's End Girlfriend. He was looking for one, wasn't he? Either that or a world's end boyfriend (or a world's end non-binaryfriend). Didn't matter to him. Maybe just a world's end regular friend. Shizuka. Japan? Midori. Wasn't that a kaiju? Stuff Like That. Not a musician, a conclusion to a list of musicians.

"Know all of 'em up to and including St. Vincent; none of 'em after. I usually tend to err on the side of artsy stuff, indie pop, and some folk stuff. Maybe some industrial sometimes. Usually pretty accessible. Alt-j. Metric. of Montreal. LCD Soundsystem. Nine Inch Nails. Grizzly Bear. Dr. Dog. The Shins. The Mountain Goats. TV on the Radio. Tune-Yards. Neutral Milk Hotel, Sufjan Stevens, and St. Vincent for me as well."

He paused, not quite sure how to continue the conversation. He'd let Violet talk about music some more, if she wanted. First though, he had feelings to express.

"Y'know, it's nice to actually not like, feel on-edge for once. This is nice, I think," he scratched the back of his head.

Violet recognized all but one of those bands and only actively disliked one. Metric was so... bland. Violet wasn't going to voice that opinion, because there was no real point to that, but she noted quietly her disapproval. Such general sad white boy taste. Violet was almost exactly the same, but that was just the pattern she fell into out of habit. She was open to weirder stuff, like maybe three of the bands she just listed from Dana's list. Midori was confusing but alright. World's End Girlfriend had a great album or two. Shizuka didn't really sound like anything else she had ever heard but in a good way. Dana really had great taste, in the end.

And Violet's face fell.

Dana was watching back home. That's right. Her audience was not purely cosmological. Dana was flesh and blood. She was watching this inane conversation and probably screaming at her screen in frustration. You killed two people. You can't have these discussions. Violet looked down at the ground and sighed softly. This realization couldn't change anything. She already did what she did. If she was going to change course, it would not be for the sake of her sister. Her sister probably hated her now.

"Those are good," Violet said, "those are all good."

She leaned back and looked up at the sky.

"Do you know," she started to ask, "the Sufjan Stevens song, 'John Wayne Gacy, Jr.'?"

Another sigh.

"I'm feeling a lot like that one right now."

"Those are good, those are all good," Violet said, though her face was downcast. Something was bothering her, Michael could tell. He hoped he hadn't said something to upset her. He hoped she wasn't lying about thinking he had good taste.

He watched as she looked up at the sky. He reflexively looked up at the sky too, like how one mirrored a yawn.

John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

Ah. That'd explain it.

He'd, like, just been thinking about it. He and Violet really were on the same wavelength, weren't they?

"The neighbors, they adored him for his humor and his conversation. Look underneath the house there, find the few living things, rotting fast in their sleep; oh, the dead," he said softly; did not sing.

A sharp inhalation.

"I'm feeling it too."

He choked. He was crying, maybe. Maybe it was the spray from the waterfall. Maybe both.

"If you want to talk about it, I'm here."

He didn't want to talk about it.

Michael spoke and did not sing. For a moment, Violet wanted to add on, add on the rest of the song, singing it. Her singing voice wasn't especially good. Not bad, but also just not something she really liked showing to people. This circumstance was a little different, though.

If she sang now, it might be the last time.

She couldn't imagine wanting to sing after this.

And she still could imagine an after, because, of course, there would be one.

Violet could not lose herself.

She could not afford it. Not even for a minute.

"No," she said with a start, "no, I shouldn't. I've already said too much."

Violet leaned her bag off her shoulder and took a hand off the gun to unzip it wide enough to stuff the crossbow inside. She kept an eye on Michael as she did so. No telling what he might do now that she rejected him, in a pathetic, lonely sort of way. Acknowledging that she hated what she was doing to him was going too far, so she did not. This was just a process. A necessity. Any unnecessary thing that could undermine that was useless. The fat had to be trimmed. The wheat had to be separated from the chaff. This was not essential to her survival, this small-talk. It was actively detrimental, as a matter of fact, because it prolonged Michael's existence as a competitor. It was feasibly necessary to kill anyone at this point, to avoid hell. Any death was justifiable. Any and all actions were necessary if they were put towards that goal.

But, still.

She stood and looked down at him.

"If you leave now, I won't shoot you when your back is turned. Promise."

Violet was smirking.

Violet didn't want to talk about it either.

Thank god.

He pushed it all back down.

He watched as she put the crossbow into her bag. He watched her as she watched him watch her. He understood. He wasn't crying.

She gave him a choice. Stay and die, or leave and get shot in the back probably. She was smiling. Michael didn't trust smiles anymore.

He stood up. It was Violet's choice if she shot him in the back or let him walk away. If he walked away, he knew where he would go. He'd make a return trip to the place where everything went wrong; the place where his mind had passed the point of no return. He wasn't exactly sure why he wanted to go there, but for some reason he did.

He figured he had maybe 50/50 odds of dying during the next minute.

"Like Land Locked Blues," he nodded his head. "Okay."

He started walking away, though he stopped before entering the forest. He turned his head back to Violet. "Y'know, us two, we might be the only people who ever really lived in this place," he lied. He looked back away and kept walking.

Violet never stopped him.

((Michael continued in 3WW (The Loop (For 12))))

But that didn't mean it wasn't on Violet's mind as she watched him walk away. How easy it would be to point and pull. How, all things considered, it was probably what she should do. Eliminate competition. Trim fat.

What stopped her wasn't even wholly the promise she had made. Violet had made promises before and broken them only minutes later. It was a classic prank. Promise you won't do something, and then do it in a stupid and silly way that you can say wasn't exactly what you had promised not to do. She could throw a knife into his back if she wanted to. Or, even better, call out to him and get him to turn around; she'd shoot Michael, but it wouldn't be while he was facing away from her. That was all that Violet said she wouldn't do, after all.

Violet wasn't thinking of herself when she kept her promise. She wasn't thinking of Michael, either.

She was thinking of Dana.

Nothing specific. Just her. Watching, or not watching. Whatever she was going through, in this exact moment, delayed. Seeing this, or never bothering to find out what happened. Awake. Asleep.

There were people out there, and they were living. There were people out there, and they were dying. All of them were in some kind of pain. Sutured balls of skin and muscle and memory. What made Violet special? What elevated Violet's survival above the survival of someone like Michael? Like Dana? What was it that Violet was living for? Fear? She was no longer afraid. She'd been through it already. There was nothing else to fear. Why did Violet deserve to walk out the other end of this alive? She thought of all of the others in her class, those living, those dead, those painful and those dreamless. Violet thought of all they had been both to her and to the world. The fingerprints they had left on the world.

Her eyes shut for a few moments. When they opened again, they did so slowly, like waking from a long and harrowing night.

Long steps. Deep breaths. Up a great big hill. Down and off a sharp drop.

"I'm just a little more human than all of them, I guess," Violet said.

Then, she picked up and left the waterfall behind.

[Violet Schmidt continued in i see u.]