Survival Of The Fittest

((Continuada dal The Sands of Time))

One sound. One solitary sound. One little sound was one of the few things he had been thinking of since he left that forsaken shell that was once a house of God. The others being survival, his neck wound, how long he would have before that choker around said neck put him out of his misery, the cross-tipped priests' staff and any such combination of these.

Roland Thomas Kelly could not put even the tip of his tongue on how far he had walked, for how long. He remembered eating and drinking, but only sparingly, only enough to keep him going. For how much longer he would be going, or why he had even bothered to do so, he had absolutely no idea. All he could remember was that beeping that warned him that he should leave the church grounds. He saw others leaving, in different directions. Those were the ones that left in time.

Because as Roland left, he could hear someone crying from inside the church. Logic told him that there was only one person left inside, and suddenly his heart nearly seized. He continued to walk away, using his staff as a makeshift crutch. Each step burdened him with more guilt, the cross and his backpack growing ever heavier as he trudged on. Something...someone...was telling him...begging him to go back for her. But his survival instincts were in full control as he poured more effort into getting away.

Call you up in the middle of the night...
Like a firefly without a light...
You were there like a slow torch burning...
I was a key that could use a little turning...

Then as his own beeping stopped, he heard a small pow. It was probably no more intense than a child's pop-gun, or a simple snapper firework. But that sound reverberated inside his mind like he was within third-degree-burning range of an atomic bomb. Or within meters of the Twin Towers at 9/11. His heart seized, he gasped for breath, and held it for a few seconds. The deathly silence that resulted only served to intensify the sound.

For the first half-second, he was relieved it wasn't him. For the first few seconds after the impact, he felt like Rayford Steele. He acted like he didn't see it coming. After all, she had the chance to escape too, even if she was crying, right?! She could've just bolted out the front door in tears, and caught up with someone, buying her just more time? He tried to play in the fact that she could have died even if she had escaped, probably at the hands of whichever psycho was playing this crazy game.

Then he did something he would regret even until now. He looked up at the tip of the staff that had burdened him.

So tired that I couldn't even sleep...
So many secrets I couldn't keep...
Promised myself I wouldn't weep...
One more promise I couldn't keep...

The cross was detailed enough to have a scaled Jesus Christ molded onto it. It had a holy glow as he looked up to it with the sun, behind it and a layer of clouds. And He looked down on Roland with a gaze that only He would have given were he about to smite Sodom and Gomorrah. Roland had left a faithful to be slaughtered. He had betrayed her infinitely many times after the cock(-face in charge) had crowed. He had left her behind to be raptured by the devil, and who knew how much her soul would be suffering now...not necessarily in the deep bowels of Gehenna but in purgatory or heaven, worrying for her fellow human beings.

Oh God...I've failed...I've failed her...I've failed You...I've BETRAYED all of you...

It seems no one can help me now...
I'm in too deep, there's no way out...
This time I have really led myself astray...

There was no answer, save for the manifestation (metaphorical) blood on his hands. A mortal stain of negligence. Without a second thought, and with tears starting to stream from his eyes, he marched away from the house of God, trying to get away from the noise. But it didn't fade with distance or time or new scenery. It was plaguing him, and there was no tree to hang himself out of his misery by, let alone any rope to do so. And yet he found himself unable to manipulate his collar to facilitate such a demise.

Runaway train never going back,
Wrong way on a one way track,
Seems like I should be getting somewhere,
Somehow I'm neither here nor there....

Hell, it wasn't even just her. In the brief terms in between his obsession of his failing her, he remembered one other person whose soul he had betrayed. One soul that had already been worn, eroded, destroyed by the fact that Roland did nothing. This soul knew nothing now but vengeance and hatred, having seen the failing and deception that was love. That soul, and hers, were very likely on God's side seeking to bring karma around that came around. sevenfold. It was now only a matter of time.

And here was Roland Kelly, decaying but already dead inside. Dead but as yet living, wandering among the acrid gray ruins that reminded him eerily of America. An America he loved, once proud and tall and industrious (no pun intended), supposedly humbled by the events of 9/11 but continued to march on nonetheless. But now he was in the middle of that shell, and there was nothing, and not even he counted as substance. This was the very manifestation of what was inside all the beliefs he had held sway as he grew up.

And to be quite honest, it wasn't much to be proud of anymore.

Bought a ticket for a runaway train,
Like a madman laughin' at the rain,
Little out of touch, little insane,
Just easier than dealing with the pain...

((Imagine the Shadow of the Colossus soft glow effect among old industria. It's so emo...tional. XD))

Roland sat down by the corrugated wall of what was supposedly a foreman's shack, looking up at God's face, obscured behind the clouds, cross-tipped staff resting across his lap, backpack placed beside him. Whatever tears could still stream from his eyes glinted in the sunlight. It was a pitiful, pathetic sight for anyone, but only God knew this sheep deserved it for straying from the flock.

Please...God...I'm sorry...please...for everything...just...I'm sorry...just...I just want to know...if You're there... Roland's whimpering echoed his thoughts.

Lo and behold, a sign. A bright orange circle suddenly passing into his view from the right, sliding innocently toward the left. Roland caught it before it could slide out of his vision, and tracked it as it floated slowly toward the concrete a few meters away from him. As soon as it landed, his head jerked in the other direction, seeing where it came from. Nothing. Roland was suddenly drawn to stand up and head to where the circle landed, keeping the brass staff close to him.

He moved to pick it up...and was moved to tears. "A frisbee...a goddamned frisbee..." he sobbed... "This...is your sign?!"

((Continued from This is SO not what I had in mind))

By some random course of fate, Alice Nichols had fled the forest mid-conversation and what could have been a worthy ally, Matthew Lafferty. His tone of voice had frightened her, more so than his gun. So she had taken off, leaving her day pack behind and only carrying the neon frisbee. It had taken her ages to find some form of civilization, but after a lengthy journey north, the girl had ended up in some sort of industrial wasteland. Much of the place was made up of random buildings with no clear cause; however, the raven-haired female had eventually come across the supposed worst of the buildings: an abandoned slaughterhouse. At first glance, the place appeared just as blank and eerie as the rest of the buildings, but upon following her nose, Alice found out the hard way. The pungent odor of meat, probably rotten, was evident in the air, and every breath that the Russian/Chinese cross took in caused her to gag involuntarily. She was used to horrid fumes, but this wasn't like the calming, familiar scent of cigarettes. It was rather foreign and much, much worse. Curiosity fueled her motions, and soon she had found her way to the large steel of the slaughterhouse. Holding her breath half unconsciously, Alice lowered her right hand to the silver handle, and cringing slightly, swung the sliding door to the right. An empty room met her eyes, the space filled with stainless steel knives and the like. The smell that had seared her nostrils now attacked her full throttle, and Alice had to fight the urge to throw up on the spot. The raven-haired female's chocolate eyes welled up with tears, her lacrimal glands long since acting up. Blinking the watery annoyances away and sending them down her visibly paling cheeks, she stepped hesitantly inside the shady building.

The sunlight was shining brightly from the outside, and though it pierced the darkened room, there was an obvious need for more light. Looking around half-blindly, Alice finally rested her eyes on a light switch. Flipping it, the room immediately filled with bright fluorescent light. Thinking about the layout of the place, she noted that it was just like any slaughterhouse that she had ever heard about; not that she'd heard about a lot of them or anything. 'That'd be frickin' weird.' she thought. Either way, the place was somewhat interesting to the young Alice. There obviously should have been blades of all shapes and sizes placed on racks all over the place judging from the layout of the room and nothing stocking the shelves. Gray, white, and silver were the only visible colors; excluding the appearance of Alice, of course. The whole place was like a weird hospital; however, the obvious smell of decay penetrating the ajar door on the right erased any such comparison. 'I'm going to have to have something to protect myself should the time to fight come along, and this frisbee just isn't going to help me out. Besides, it's frickin' neon orange. It's like they want me to be seen easily. Fuckin' dicks. Wonder if they've left something... anything?' she pondered, idly placing her hand on one of the cold shelves. Nearly everything was gone from the room. 'So weird...'

The aforementioned door on the right side of the room was finally noticed by the girl. In an almost trance-like state, Alice found herself being led to the door. The same smell of decay was increasing in potency, almost knocking the girl off her feet. As her hand crept from her side towards the door, the dark-haired girl was jolted suddenly from her trance by the sound of a dull clucking, like wood on metal. Looking towards the open door, she held the frisbee closer to her body and crept quietly out. Hearing a voice somewhere nearby, Alice decided to use the orange disc as a sort of decoy. Tossing it with as much force as she could muster into the air, the girl prepared for the worst as the frisbee whirled its way over a couple of buildings nearly identical to the slaughterhouse. Just as she suspected, a voice exclaimed soon thereafter. She was now unarmed. 'Shit.' she thought, 'Now what?' Hoping that the person wouldn't come this way, Alice found herself walking quickly on her tip-toes back into the slaughterhouse. The air was still rank with whatever was rotting in that room, and the girl was sure that the person would soon be led to her by the smell.

((I keep imagining a lot of bloom lighting for this scene.))

Apparently, God's signs weren't limited to sight. For a few moments after his plea, Roland just stared at the bright orange plastic disc he held in his hand and basked in the utter irony. This was a game where everyone was fighting to the death with weapons that could induce so much harm...and it was likely that this innocent, harmless children's toy was assigned to someone. It wasn't that it wasn't feasible that someone would get something like this...the tension upon tension he felt was that it now belonged to someone who had already killed the person it was assigned to.

Then his olfactory nerves got God's treatment, a rank odor suddenly penetrating through his nostrils and up into his sinuses like acid. He just barely resisted the urge to vomit. It wasn't a classic skunk or sneaker stench...it was one of freshly-slaughtered and/or decaying meat. Meat that by all accounts probably wasn't that of an animal's.

Roland did a double-take and found himself staring into a dark vortex just across the "road," as the sound of a gust of wind blowing past him and very likely emanating from the doorway. With that doorway he could only guess was the source of that rancid scent.

Maybe...maybe I was the one who died...before I woke up at the Church...and this is the gateway to...to...

He gulped as everything seemed to click together. He hadn't been exactly the most faithful Christian when he was "alive," using his nominal faith as a way to help gain prestige among his future constituency. Now he was here as divine punishment, and the Christ on the scepter was only there to mock him as he trekked into a hell that predictably enough was not of fire and brimstone and demons with painful pointy objects as classic incarnations had suggested. Hell had light, and it was cold...but still distant and lonely from God's saving grace up above. The sun still shone through the clouds, light diffusing around him but not into him.

Abandon all hope...all ye who enter here.

And the man that was Roland Thomas Kelly had no choice but to accept it.

As he stepped into the vortex, frisbee in the left hand like a cheap shield and scepter in the other, wary of his surroundings, the resulting sight of blood and butchery that had clearly taken place before his arrival didn't seem to shock him anymore...at least not as much as what could have just caused it...

((Because Aphro left without leaving a note on the table, as a thunderstorm rolls in and I hear a taxi cab pulling away from my lonely kitchen table, I give you...the END. Of Alice, that is.))

It was cold and bone-chilling just having to look at all the blood and sinew that was splattered all over the place. Strangely enough, the floor was relatively clean, as if it had been prepared for something...very likely his arrival. There didn't seem to be anybody around here though, which was an even more distressing sign in itself. Distressing enough that Roland clang to the brass scepter like it was Linus' security blanket.

They're invisible...they're all around me...

He clang stiff and turned his head, still seeing nothing suddenly manifesting itself and coming at him. All was quiet and calm.

Save for the warm breath he could feel on the back of his neck.

As Roland did a double-take he quickly found himself staring into a recognizably feminine face. The basic features of that face were horrifyingly familiar, and for some reason it was understandable that the skin wasn't as pale as he remembered it to be. Closer inspection revealed the face was attached to a horrendously voluptuous female figure clad in everything that would have made a conservative WASP like Roland shudder.

But somehow, someway, Roland Thomas Kelly recognized that malformed persona standing in front of him. He quickly figured out why that thing in front of him was so scared - or looking scared. Which gave Roland a good reason to be very scared himself.

Damien!?

Damien had become the Harlot of Babylon. The Beast. And Roland knew that it was his own fault for summoning him. He knew as soon as he saw "Damien's" face that he would pay for his sins in blood and hellfire - as if Roland was the first one who had.

Roland started to move his scepter to try to hit "Damien" almost out of reflex, but the Harlot was quicker, and with a few swift moves he had landed with a whump on the ground. The back of Roland's head throbbed with pain, but it was nothing compared to the pressure that the scepter was placing on his neck - and his collar. The only thing keeping the scepter from crushing it was the resisting force Roland was giving.

It was then that Roland wanted to just let go and have Damien end it all. The pressure on the collar - and subsequent pressure on his scar - as well as the look on "Damien's" face was driving him to tears. He wanted to say something, but he couldn't if he couldn't breathe.

Danya's announcement was playing...but he didn't catch a single word. To Roland it felt like God was telling him - ironically - "I told you so."

Why am I still resisting...I deserve this...I...

His life flashed before his eyes. Or rather...the part of his life that involved the Gospel given by the pastor at the Denton Episcopalian only the Sunday before he was thrown into this mess.

It was the parable of the Prodigal Son. The one of the son who squandered his inheritance and returned to his father racked with guilt. But that son's Father welcomed him back with open arms. His vision blurred slightly as he scoffed at how some words could save him this late.

But as the tension built on his collar, Roland suddenly realized how much it clicked, albeit the final realization came slowly. At how Roland had squandered all he had going for him on his pursuit of glory at the expense of people like Damien. At how even though this had brought so much suffering on himself, it wasn't too late. He could return to his Father...

...he just had to take that first step.

After getting up, of course. That he was resisting with what he realized wasn't his full efforts was encouraging.

Roland screamed as he mustered all the strength he could find - and all he figured was given to him - and pushed the scepter off his neck. The stress was also warping his face...almost to the point where it looked more demonic than "Damien's." He couldn't just push it straight up though, and he started to raise one arm above the other to try to roll her off when the other end of the scepter touched the ground. "Damien" extended her legs to try to give traction, but Roland could raise and bend his to counter that.

Even though he pitied Damien for being weak before, Roland was now hoping that "Damien" was still weak. With an upward push of his left arm and a swipe of his leg, he reversed the situation. "Damien" hit the ground and let out a squeal of pain, but Roland had to act quickly before his nemesis could recover.

Roland brought his foot down upon the Harlot's gut, his face now brimming with anger.

"Damien" choked out in pain, allowing Roland to raise the scepter, point the cross-end down and jab it down at evil. Of course, even though he knew that was evil that (the effigy of) Christ would smite, Roland himself was too caught up in his own rage. Gravity's downward pull on the scepter almost made the blow effortless...if it didn't give him even more confidence.

By the time he'd caught up with himself - draining the burst of strength he had gained, he saw the cross-end of the sceptre impaling "Damien" through the jugular, just above the collar. He was standing over her, clearly triumphant, but he still didn't quite grasp what he'd done. He just stood there and looked down very wearily at the beast he had slain, as she choked and twitched before finally growing completely still. The silence she left behind was deafening.

Roland Thomas Kelly stared into her glazed eyes. He didn't flinch anymore as the aura of death seemed to be transmitted between "Damien's" eyes and his own.

G26 - Nichols, A - WASTED!

The deafening silence grew to an unbearable roar, then cut off into true silence. With a good yanking, Roland removed the scepter from her jugular, and a good spurt of blood followed. A bit of it stained his uniform, but it wasn't exactly going to cause him to suddenly writhe in agony after burning through his shirt onto his flesh...that was what demons did when sprinkled with holy water.

More silence.

Silence that was only broken by intermittent beeping.

Oh fuck.

Roland's hand clenched the scepter tight and his gaze turned toward the door from whence he came in. The stench of death continued to pervade up his nasal cavity...but that was no longer near the top of his mind. No longer also was the victory he had won over his demon.

"Damien" was dead...and if Roland didn't leave, he would be soon. But Roland didn't immediately bolt. He briefly remembered figuring out that he was already dead and had gone to be tortured by the damned. It discouraged him only as long as it took for that thought to register.

Because how could he be damned if he had been able to slay a demon with the help of Christ - or at least the effigy of Christ on the sturdy bloodied scepter that he wielded? How could he have been able to survive this long without suffering much physical harm? Hell couldn't do that.

This...must be purgatory then...

The beeps started to grow more rapid, and Roland realized he was just wasting time. If he failed to escape before the beeps got him, he would fail at his chance to achieve salvation for his sins.

He made for the door, his arm stretching and pulling taut as the scepter was a bit reluctant to follow. Eventually it did, and Roland hugged it close to him at an angle that he could slide it out the door with him. Once back in the daylight - and once his vision adjusted and he realized the beeps weren't stopping - he resumed the course he had when he entered, heading toward a large industrial fence about 50-75 meters from him.

Unfortunately, it was not approaching fast enough. The tweets had become one, long continuous beep. A flat-liner's beep. The beep of the dead...the beep of the damned. There was no turning back or slowing down now...and his legs were churning full speed almost unconsciously.

Roland screamed for his life as he made that final leap past the fence and with all of his last hope, out of the industrial area. He closed his eyes, and for the next split seconds he felt as if he were falling down a crevice toward a spot of comfortably deep water amidst a patch of jagged rocks. He could feel his hand letting go of the scepter, and for a moment he thought he was flying. He thought he had liberated himself his demons once and for all, and was now on his way to the pearly gates and out of this cold, grey purgatory. Never before had his mind and body been so clear, not counting the obvious injuries.

As Roland Thomas Kelly rolled in the air...he thought he was finally free.

He felt himself make impact with the cold, solid concrete, and heard a barrage of unintelligibly loud noises - the only thing each part had in common was that it sounded like an explosion of metal.

Then there was silence.

And then utter nothingness.

B57 - Kelly, R - DEAD

Roland saw those letters flash bright red in the darkness.

No...I didn't...It can't be...I killed Damien...God...this can't be...

"NOOOOOOOOOO!" he screamed as he woke up a few seconds later, sitting up like a rake just triggered by a cartoon character, and stared back in the direction from whence he came. Sweat trickled down his forehead, his eyes almost bugging out. He could feel a pain in his neck as if something was choking it.

It took him several seconds and many pained, deep, forceful breaths before he realized that those were signs that he were still alive. The loud barrage of noise he'd heard prior to his "death" happened to be the sceptre flying out of his hand and clanking to the ground, combining with the wind flowing against his messed-up flop-top and into his ears.

Roland lay down face up, gazing at the reddening sky. He hadn't angered God by what he did...or at least he didn't think He was offended.

"You see that...YOU SEE THAT!? I MADE IT!" his whispers grew quickly into a shout, a psychotic smile plastering itself across his face as tears came to his eyes. The collar had stopped beeping and it was still snug around his jugular and that scar from Kristey Burrowell's gash...but God had decided to spare him, at least for this one day. "Oh God...thank you...thank you..." The plaster smile wore off, leaving him in a state of tragic ecstasy.

For the next few hours, as the cold air began to blanket him, as he was drained of his strength from everything that had transpired in the preceding minutes, as the sun set, Roland cried. He silently prayed and reflected. Anything to give him solace from what he'd done. He still wouldn't go into heaven until he could find a way to get rid of that collar.

As soon as he managed to finally stand back up - with the night sky looming, he realized that in his rush to get out he'd forgotten to get his supplies back from the room where he'd slaughtered "Damien."

"God dammit."

((Continued Elsewhere.))