Survival Of The Fittest

At the Southern end of the town on the island was a collection of apartment buildings. They were graying and covered in graffiti, with bits of trash littering the walkways between the doors which, for the most part, no longer had numbers. The apartments on the first floor once had the luxury of direct access to courtyards that served to join the buildings together with community activities, occasionally perhaps cookouts.

Today the courtyard once again had the pleasure of knowing company for the first time in a very long while. And what company! Two boys who seemed to have dozed off lay among the picnic tables with dusty, checkered table clothes.

((Paris Ardennes Start))

"Ughhh"

Paris stirred, lifting his head to find he was in the sunshine, in an area guarded by delicate fencing and overrun with weeds and flowers run wild out of their planters. Just moments ago he was in complete terror, strapped down and helpless only to wake up quite peacefully. He sluggishly got to his feet.

Paris dragged himself to a table with his bag and rested his head in his hands. Slowly the realization of his situation was hitting him and his hands gripped his hair. Why was this happening to him? He was a good person. This didn't make any sense, it just couldn't be. This was impossible. What was the point in doing this to him? He didn't have anything to learn! He was good! HE WAS-

Not alone?

He heard a rustling of movement from the other side of the picnic table.

Sven Olsen didn't want to open his eyes.

He already knew he wasn't home in Seattle, no matter how much he wanted to pretend. His heart was racing as he attempted to forget about the circumstances leading up to his current situation, his breathing shallowing as he struggled to push it to the recesses of his mind. It all felt unreal, for a bit, up until that fucker pointed his gun into the audience. He could remember the fear like it had just happened a second ago. It was as if everyone else in the room vanished around him and Sven was the only one on the radar. There was no way he wasn't going to get shot point blank in the face, he thought. He'd die right then and there, handcuffed to some shitty chair in some dark room. But he didn't and he wasn't.

And so, Sven didn't want to open his eyes, because opening his eyes meant this was all real and there was no way this was real.

The haze of humidity and the distant but oppressive chirp of whatever obnoxious fucking insect in the air were all in his head. The gangly weeds jutting from the cracked concrete rubbing against his face were all in his head. The soft moan and rustling just a few feet from him was all in his head.

Sven's heart sank and his eyes shot open.

He was barely thinking, acting on impulse alone when he grabbed the nearest thing he could, a broken piece of a ceramic planter, and chucked it with all his might toward the direction he'd heard the moan.

Air wasn't coming easily, not past his heart clogging his throat. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think, and he was probably going to die.

Paris looked over to the other body, unsure if he was seeing it right. Surely he wasn't that lucky? The other boy woke up and hurled a piece of a planter at him, missing by a mile. Paris beamed.

"You suck!" he said happily at the toss.

He went and knelt down next to Sven who was obviously having some kind of episode. Paris had to temper his happiness at finding his friend enough to be concerned about his increasingly poor condition.

"Hey hey. Shhhhhh," he said rubbing Sven's shoulder. He looked around. It appeared they really were alone. "Okay, hold on bud."

Paris got back up to get to his bag and stumbled. He fell roughly on the bench and started digging through his duffle to find a paper bag with his lunch in it. Next to the sack lunch was something else, though. Paris put the sack on the table and carefully picked up a gun. He looked at it sternly for a moment, put it down on the table, and grabbed the bag.

Paris haphazardly threw the contents, a tuna sandwich, bag of chips and juice box, out of the bag and returned to Sven. "Here, breathe into this." There was a rustling from the bushes. Paris whipped his head around, but nothing was there. He patted Sven on the back gently and noticed his friend's bag. There was something long pushing against the material. Carefully he unzipped it and saw some kind of rifle.

Two guns. What did it mean? Why place him in this unfair, awful situation and then equip him with everything he needed to make it out? He very well could have gotten a boot and woken up next to psycho. Was it a test? He wracked his brain trying to make sense of it. He was brought out of his puzzlings when he remembered Sven.

"Feeling better?"

"I almost pissed myself, you fucker," Sven managed to say between ragged breaths before sturdying himself in his sitting position and moving his head between his knees. People said doing that helped with nausea or whatever, but he'd always used it to try and control his anxiety. If he just closed his eyes and blocked out the world, it seemed much less overwhelming. Above him, Paris rubbed his shoulders in an attempt to sooth him, but it only embarrassed him more. He didn't like being seen in the state he was in, even less so when the person tried to comfort him. The thought was appreciated, but it didn't make him feel like any less of a little bitch.

Four seconds in the game and he was already pussing out. Way to show up.

That said, there were worse things than waking up next to your best friend. It saved him the trouble of having to find him and gave him an ally straight from the get-go. He knew people would end up killing one another. They always did. He'd seen enough of Survival of the Fittest to know that people would always try to convince themselves that nobody would cave in only to die hours later. Fuck that. He was meant for better than dying on some fucking unnamed island in the middle of nowhere. There wasn't a chance in hell that he'd go out, not without a fight at least.

Paris called his attention from his hideaway between his knees, commanding him to breathe into a paper bag. Setting his ego aside, Sven did as he was told, hesitating only slightly once the scent reached his nostrils. It was unmistakably tuna, but something had very clearly gone wrong sometime between being made and finding it's way into his hands. It was better than nothing, though, and it did help. Not to mention he'd gone home with bar skanks that smelled worse.

Sven finally managed to take in his surroundings once he began calming down. They'd been placed in some garden or something between buildings. Earth jutted from the cracked concrete and the grass had seen better days, the longest of which seemed about knee-high. Several juniper bushes pocketed the complex and led way to jagged ivy growing up the pock marked buildings. It looked like what he imagined the earth would after the apocalypse. Not exactly the most reassuring scenery in the world, at any rate.

"I'm cool, yeah," Sven said, attempting to mask the shaking of his voice from finally regaining healthy breathing. He watched as Paris looked through his bag, everyone once in awhile sucking the air from his bag. He didn't really pay it any mind, especially considering he didn't have the energy to look through it himself. He'd been giving a pretty dangerous looking gun, from the looks of it and still couldn't gather the energy to care. It all still seemed pretty unreal, almost numbingly so.

A rustle from the bushes behind him called his attention, however, and quickly made him start caring.

"Did you hear that?"

Sven was calming down and Paris sighed in relief and sat back on his feet. It was going to be okay. Everything would be fine. He was even up enough to be joking around a bit. Paris gave him a rough, jovial slap on the back and a thumbs up.

"Nice to have you back with us, eyebrows."

Yeah, they were going to be okay. They just had to come up with some kind of game plan. They were armed to the teeth and had each other. For all Paris knew he could have woken up with a squirt gun next to a crazy person. It was almost like they were meant to survive. There was the tricky issue of the sole winner hanging over the good fortune of their circumstances, but Paris would think about that later.

Sven came to his senses enough to notice the rustling in the bush.

"I hear it too," he whispered, nodding and looking at the shadowy area. He put a finger to his mouth and carefully picked up the rifle he'd found in Sven's bag. Sven seemed to still be recovering and the rifle could at the very least be used to whack someone or something upside the head. Deftly, Paris tip-toed towards the bush.

((Iselle Ovalle-Vandermeer continued from Wendigo))

Iselle seethed as she struggled along, her bag digging into her back with each bump and uneven step. The stout walking stick had come in handy as she had picked her way down off the sloping sides of the woodlands as quickly as possible. The trees had thinned a while back, replaced with a thick tangle of shrubbery that had probably been maintained at one point. Now, however, it was a wild mass that pulled at her hair and scratched at her face.

Damn stupid Garrett and moron Joey for driving her from the area she had first. Leave it to idiotic males to act like testosterone-driven goons and be threatened by the first strong female they see. She hadn't said or done anything to them, but there was Garrett, up in her face, threatening her. Why was it males always felt entitled to threaten a girl? What about their defective logic made it acceptable for them to harass and intimidate? But when they got that turned back on them, they were the poor innocent victims. Why should she be the one forced to run and hide and cower?

A particularly stubborn branch snagged on her clothes, rustling the entire plant as she tried to pull free. With an irritated huff, Iselle wrenched her shirt clear, the momentum carrying her through a neighboring plant. A flicker of movement near the edge of her periphery caught her attention. As she turned towards the movement, she saw a man pointing a rifle at her.

Her grip on the walking stick tightened reflexively as she lashed out. The stick swung in a low arc, heading towards the man's midsection.

Sven didn't have much time to think as Iselle came charging from the bushes like a bat out of hell, her walking stick landing with an almost unnaturally loud thud against Paris' abdomen. He stumbled to his feet in an instant, nearly tripping over himself as his mind and heart raced in hellish unison, Paris' labored breathing echoing loudly in his ears and driving him forward. For a moment, he didn't know what he'd do or where he was running to, just that Iselle was dangerous and he had to help Paris.

He let his instincts do the rest, allowed them to pull him toward the picnic table where Paris' gun lay unattended, his strong hands not hesitating to curl around the handle, only vaguely realizing how much he was trembling as he whirled to face Iselle. His vision tunneled, his periphery melting away and nausea's firm hand gripping his innards. As far as he was concerned, it was just him and Iselle and the gun clenched too tightly in his hands.

Sven's faced twisted in desperation, his handsome features marred by bared teeth and flaring nostrils. The beginning of tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, threatening to flow at any second.

He didn't want this. Iselle was monster of a bitch, but he'd never thought about hurting her, What other choice did he have though? Just roll over and let some fucking cow with chip on her shoulder do him in? He was bigger than this stupid game, meant to go places. People like Iselle would just grow older and fatter and fall into obscurity with their fucking nine-to-five desk jobs. Not him. He'd made a few mistakes, had some prices to pay for it, but nothing that couldn't be fixed. He wasn't obligated to be anyone's dad or husband, none of that shit. He'd always figured once he was in college and away from the bullshit, everything would fall into place for him. That's why he couldn't lose.

He wasn't going to die fucking minutes after waking up in some fucked up game. That was laughable, fucking rich. He didn't lose, not him. He was a fucking all-star.

And he'd do what all-star's did: win.

His finger snaked around the trigger, forcefully pulling it three times with the intent of putting Iselle down, stop her where she stood.

Instead, the gun protested with a meek clicking and he'd realized all to late that the safety was on, and by the time he'd scrambled to disengage it, Iselle had already closed the gap between them.

Without even an opportunity to catch her breath, Iselle saw that there was a second man in front of her. She felt a flicker of relief when she realized it was Sven, Andi's lame-ass baby daddy. Thank God it was a guy she knew this time. If she could just explain and apologize for hitting his friend, this whole situation could be salvaged.

As she got a good look at him and saw that his normal good looks were distorted by his enraged and hateful expression, she realized that this entire situation had just gone from bad to worse.

Correction: It couldn't get any worse. Her eyes widened as Sven pointed his gun at her and pulled the trigger. The son of a bitch was going to shoot her in cold blood. She winced, body tensed in anticipation of the gun shot, and prayed that it would be quick.

But the shot never came.

Opening her eyes, she looked at Sven as he fumbled with the gun. Adrenaline coursing through her system, Iselle realized two things. One: she did not want to die. Not now and not like this.

Two: if she didn't run, Sven would kill her. Only his typical incompetence had saved her this far. She needed to incapacitate him long enough to get a safe distance away.

There was really only one thing she could do to save herself.

Relying on muscle memory, she shifted her grip on her walking stick and lashed out. Without remorse, Iselle swung for Sven's head. Once she nailed him, he would have a hard time pursuing her while she made her escape.

Her batting coach would have been proud of her for following through with the swing. The force of striking him sent stinging vibrations through the walking stick that made her hands hurt. But that was secondary to getting away.

Without waiting to see the outcome of her handiwork, Iselle picked an open direction and ran off as quickly as she could.

((Iselle Ovalle-Vandermeer continued in The Usual Suspects))

He was just being paranoid. The rustling was probably just a squirrel or a cat or wind or something. As it turns out it wasn't any of those things and paranoid or not, he wasn't perhaps the right levels of paranoid. Someone jumped out and he was hit in the stomach. He was sent backward and stumbled on a bit of rubble ending up in the bushes himself. Paris choked and struggled to restart his breathing which seemed to get knocked out of him with whatever it was that socked him.

He'd also managed to hit his head on the way down. He groaned and blinked, seeing bright splotches dance in his vision. Presently he managed to take a few deep breaths. Everything was gray for a moment and he grabbed, trying to find something to help him stand. Paris wheezed and some leaves and small branches snapped instead of helping him to his feet. On hands and knees he crawled out and saw his friend laid out and heard footsteps echoing. A girl had hit them.

"Sven?"

Sven Olsen was dead almost immediately on impact, fragments of his skull fracturing inside his brain and leaving a mess of matted hair, blood, and gore coating the side of his head.

He wasn't given much time for that introspection or life reflection like they always said happened right before you died, his eyes already dimming the minute he hit the ground like a marionette with its strings cut before hollowing all together. In the few seconds he had to live watching the retreating feet of Iselle Ovalle-Vandeermeer, Sven didn't think about Andi or Fiona or about the mistakes he made or how he could have changed, not that he was ever one to think he had anything to change to begin with.

His story was cut far too short for that.

Instead, his was a story of a boy who never saw the signs of becoming the man he'd grown up resenting. He was his father's child at the end of it all. So, as his flame flickered, Sven didn't lament being a poor father and boyfriend, he didn't worry what Andi's or Fiona's lives would be like without him. He thought about just one thing:

How much it sucked to lose.

It was rough going the first few breaths. He wasn't able to get much air in and his stomach ached where he'd been hit. Presently he was able to draw a little deeper. He coughed and groaned. Out of the bush scurried away some kind of little animal. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky. His hand flopped out to the side as he tried to recover.

He closed his eyes, but his hand felt another hand. Paris grabbed it quickly and turned his head to the side. Birds chirped and a gentle breeze blew through the courtyard in the warm sunshine. Paris was looking at the still partially open eyes of his best friend. He squeezed the hand tightly to response.

His heart suddenly ached an equal amount to where he'd been hit and his eyes welled up with tears.

"S-Sv-Sven?"

He started sobbing and slowly he got up into a sitting position over the body, still holding his hand. A brutal, sticky wound dripped from his head, down his face. "No....m-..."

There was a rush of memories. Picking up Sven from some bar because he was too drunk and giving him a chastising look, but he always said thanks for it and just punched him in the arm while Paris drove back towards the neighborhoods.

Paris's mother liked him. She knew that he had his issues, but they'd known each other forever and she...he could remember her near the fridge while he ate some toast for breakfast.

"You got in late last night."

"Had to pick up Sven," he half grumbled through is toast.

She smiled and her dark eyes exuded warmth. "He's a trouble maker. I'm glad you have each other. He'll figure it out one day. You'll see."

"Mmm..."

He had taken it for granted. They were lucky to have each other. What was he going to say now, though? It would just be to the body. His friend wasn't there anymore. That girl.....

He covered his mouth to muffle the sounds of his crying as his tears rolled over his hand. After he'd gotten himself under control enough he fell forward and embraced Sven.

"I'm sorry," he sniffed. "You know I love you." He raised his head and closed Sven's eyes.

((Paris Ardennes continued in Old Homes))