Survival Of The Fittest

"No."

He still stared at Blaise.

"Speak the words."

The needle crept closer.

Their voice cracked. "Please."

"No. You chose this."

The needle did not jab into his eye. Too violent a word, 'jab.' Its entry was slow. In the surreal environment they had created you could describe it as leisurely. They almost did not believe it was happening, so slight was the resistance, so automatic the effort.

Then his eye began to bubble.

Julien saw everything in the corner of that eye dull, melt into a haze and finally fade to nothing as the needle went in. Then the rest of it started to set in.

He didn't scream this time, only able to make strangled gasping noises as he felt the fluid within start bubbling while his eyeball boiled away from the inside out. But he stared right into Blaise's eyes with the one he had left as it happened.

He held it for a minute, maybe two, before consciousness finally slipped out of his bloodied hands.

Was it irony? Tragedy? Poetry? Blaise didn't have the focus to find the right term for it, this mistake they could only barely recognize. Had they been fully committed to hurting him with a heart of stone and sadism their hand would have been steady. The needle would have pierced his eye in one motion. Straight through the iris and held fast until the damage was well beyond done. Cold eyes would have met his attempt to meet their gaze. If they felt anything at all it would not have shown on their face. Yes. Maybe that would have made it easier for him to hate them instead of this half measure they were trapped in. It would have hurt him less. In the figurative sense in that he could have steeled himself to silence instead of the investment he still had to drag them down with him. In the literal sense because, well.

Their hand shook.

When it shook the needle did not stay still, and the more it tore through the viscous blob his eye was deflating into the more effort it took not to jerk away, and the more effort it took to stay their hand the more it shook, and the more it tore, and the more it took, and the more it shook, and the more it tore, and

Their whole body spasmed in collapse over the back of the chair. It seized once, twice, then they lost count through the nausea. Their body could not reject what they had not consumed, but it tried. It tried until they curled up over his body without strength to cut off the mockery they knew was coming. But Julien was silent. His screaming stopped somewhere in the middle of their retching. Protests filled their limbs when they tried to move. Exertion and panic pulled equally duty running their breath ragged as they crawled into a slumped position across from him. Two fingers extended to his neck, and waited. There was a pulse. He was not dead. Dying, perhaps, but still with them.

They waited for him to open his eyes, fingers still to his neck. Beat by beat it became clear he would not come back soon on his own, and they were not finished yet.

Hands then knees wobbled underneath them in the crawl to his bag. They did not raise themself to look inside. They remembered by touch and memory where his medical kit was, and what was left inside. It came loose from their grip, cracked against the floor with contents spilling all over. They only needed one item anyway.

With another epipen in hand they staggered out the door.

He hadn't really been able to tell how much time passed before Blaise burned the other eye away and tore it to leaking shreds with their shaking hands. Only that it had felt far too long.

They were silent now, the both of them. Had been for some time. Thinking of something, anything, to say through the red-hot needles driven into his skull and the dizzying fatigue of blood loss had been just this side of impossible. A good thing they'd finally tapped that well of ideas dry, then, so he'd at least been able to do it in something like peace.

"You know, hating it when you hurt people you care about is normal. So is, ah... doing those things anyway. Sometimes. But if you're going to do it, the least you could do is... is to understand what it is that does to them, to accept that. You got that part, at least. But you can't wrap your head around why nothing you could ever do to me would give you what you want. I know why you do it, Blaise, and I love you anyway. Does it hurt, hearing that?"

Fluids they could no longer accurately tell apart dried on their hands. They sat still in place when the second round of screaming stopped and turned back to waiting. For what...response, or for the lack of one to take this out of their control. An idea that would keep escalating. Nothing came. It could be said that their inspiration mostly brought derivative repeats of what they had already done to him, but that was an easy out. It was not their creativity that had given out but their constitution. Branching ideas were an attempt to redirect from what they'd done though it was not the acts themselves that haunted them so much as the emptiness that filled them after it all. Hadn't they pushed through their disgust to do what they were meant to do? With no more torments to inflict maybe they had reached the rock bottom of depravity. They could not be any more monstrous. This torture was beyond reason. Beyond human. All that they set out to confirm they were, it was here in this room. Regardless of Julien's defiance that should bring them some stability, should it not?

He would hear them sniff back tears. They could not mask it. "I have never loved anything. I don't know how."

It hurt. They still found their feet but it hurt deep inside of places they had not touched in years. Did he know why it hurt so?

"But I have been loved."

Blaise. You were my first love. You know? You always will be.

I'd like to go. But I'll follow you anywhere.

Tears mixed with sweat to pour over dried blood on their face. He had to hear the footfalls, the way they choked on their own voice. Fabric on fabric as a strap slipped around their shoulders. He had to know what it meant when they stopped behind his chair. Yes, he knew. He knew as he had guessed ahead of them in some fashion or another since they met at the doorway. It was the same way he knew his words would hurt them, playing to the same end he had been all along. Well enough. He won.

"You're a fucking liar, Julien."

Megan, in all her naivety, knew better than to die loving Blaise.

Dante would not look down on them and take their hand again.

Julien was too smart to believe the things he said, and he had to know that they were too. The words would hurt them anyway. Because he could have. He could have loved them for what they were, and maybe they could have learned something close enough to love to keep him fulfilled.

Instead they were here with the barrel of a rifle pressed over a heart they were uncertain he still possessed.

They let him go.

"When have I ever lied to you, then, Blaise?"

He'd always figured his heart would be what got him killed with the way he wore it on his sleeve, but knowing he was right only ground the salt deeper into his wounds at the end. Fortunate for him that death came calling so quickly in the darkness, then.

B043 - Julien Leblanc: Deceased

Of all the people they had killed, Julien was the only one who had likely deserved it. The only other murderer, yes, but they would be shocked if that was the extent of his wrongs. It was not imaginable that he had attacked others. They could see him using violence or the threat of it to make his points. Julien was not a good person. No good person could have been so close, not perceived proximity but honestly close, to them without revulsion. They would never know what he had done here but they could imagine they would not be remembered so differently. Adjustments of scale. No more or less.

They also could not know what he thought when he heard their name each morning. Certainly not approval. Not disgust either. He spoke of their murders as if they were having a disagreement until the torture began, like there was some middle they may have met on with enough discussion. No, he did not approve but he was not surprised. He judged their actions and on some level understood them. Understood them to an extent that he could internalize their nature and still find something worth caring for not so distant from his own point of view. That did not mean that he loved them. Not loving them did not make him a liar.

The lies Julien told were to himself. Their extent, they could not say. He balanced them admirably, spoke of regrets in an otherwise pointless murder, gave love where he knew it would not be returned, who could know what else. Kernels of truth or something near enough. They swung to opposite purposes: Blaise lied to distance themself from reality, Julien lied to draw himself closer. Their methods were the same though.

Blaise did not linger long with the other bodies, not by choice. Fatigue held them only until they could struggle free. Purpose could be fabricated. Memories snuffed. His bag could be dragged outside for any inventory. The rope could be left behind. Escape would be simple enough but they did not take it. They curled up across from him on the floor to study the face they had ruined for an out. A gesture if some minute sort to give hidden meaning. He had been so inscrutable, one small detail they overlooked was enough to weave a whole counter-narrative with no chance for dispute.

They were not allowed even that far. All what was left of his expression told them was that Julien's lies were more resilient than theirs. He died believing every one of them.

Which meant they could have too, on another path. Blaise would never have been a good person. Different lies, though. Different choices. A different person. What made them the thing they were was not just the decisions they made. It was that at each turn they saw the better path. They recognized it as better. They chose ruin anyway.

It was not fair. Not fair by any definition that they rose from the floor when as a corpse he had more conviction for life than they ever possessed.

The odds were rarely fair.

There were a hundred or so more deserving dead behind them affirming that. Perhaps it was not dissimilar to Julien' s regrets they refused to hear.

Or perhaps guilt was simply a new lie to pretend they felt anything at all.

They didn't know anymore.

((Blaise D'Aramitz Continued Comfy in Nautica))