February 13th, 1962
Posted: Mon May 11, 2020 5:16 pm
((Blaise D’Aramiitz Continued From And Nothing Will Go Wrong!))
Starvation was a motivator that unlike the collars around their throats needed no explanation. A look in the bags told the story all its own. A couple of loaves of bread, some crackers, a handful of protein bars, and about as much water as one might drink in a day. Water could be refilled at any number of opportunities weighed worth the risk. The prospect of surviving days on such meager supplies though, it might not gall at first. The longer picture was not clear. Meals blurring together into mounds of cloying, stale mush coating the mouth until the taste lingered on every breath for hours, the memory of what it was to enjoy what you ate for any purpose further up the hierarchy of needs than subsistence, when memory of tastes and smells prepared to delight the senses rose became a torture split between agony, jealousy, outrage, despair that they would never be experienced again and the steady erosion of the things one could lean on to still feel human...from a certain perspective that could not conceive how much boredom went into survival, that might seem more pressing than when the food runs out.
Such feelings were luxuries. To grow to hate means of survival required time and abundance many of their classmates would not be allowed. The more common feeling, the one their captors surely relied upon as compulsion, was hunger. Hunger first pitted against boredom. Hours of more physical activity than most were comfortable with contrasted with hours more of waiting in what could be carved out as relative safety created a temptation to pass time snacking. Stress of all kinds created a void that could not be filled yet demanded the attempt in defiance of rationing, mounting in urgency until one of two outcomes came to head: surrender to it, or find there is nothing left to offer. The former inevitably lead to the latter, but the urge would not vanish. It would evolve. It would twist inside the gut and the mind until it became a sort of sentient if not sapient thing, an excess of the spirit made manifest in flesh, the urge to consume becoming so powerful that it began to consume itself. That is what it was to starve, no? To reach a point of desperation so drastic that the body turns to itself as prey, host and parasite in one mind unable to control either? Picture that madness paired with the knowledge that to relieve it, all you had to do was find others who had not fallen so far and take what was theirs. Yes, the leverage of scarcity could not have escaped their captors after so many iterations of their experiment. It was not so difficult to envision what one would be capable of in that state. Murder in the name of relief was among the simplest possibilities to cross the imagination.
Imagination, of course, because these were not the problems of Blaise D’Aramitz.
Five. No, six. No…they took nothing from Alexander or Princess. Parker's supplies came with them. Other bags were left abandoned for them to discover, often empty, less often without food, and on occasion filled with some amount of abandoned supplies; on their last pass through the village they had collected such a bag in a vandalized house seemingly untouched. Luck was disproportionately in their favor in this least useful of areas. Their appetites were excessive save for the most literal one, so while others starved their way to execution they were throwing out more food than they consumed. Two bags were more than enough for them, anything that could not be consolidated down they discarded in favor of whatever seemed freshest. Disposal depended on their mood. For the sake of thoroughness dumping them off a cliff or into the water was preferred. This worked well enough for food, but what they found themself discarding most often were water bottles. Over two dozen water bottles by now, perhaps three, there was no purpose in carrying so many. Two for cleaning, three or so for drinking, they needed no more. Those that had begun to smell they impaled and left behind them so no one else could find use for them.
That made the bottle they held in their hands as they stood atop the waterfall rather special. They had found it buried beneath their ropes when they were restraining Julien. How long it had been there they could not say, only that it was at least since they first cut the sections with Lorenzo in mind. A short time after they shot Joanne; perhaps it was one of hers? Stagnation greeted them under the cap. Had they remembered it when they were exchanging supplies in the village, it would not have survived. In theory all that had changed in the interim was a more interesting place to dump its remains after they punctured it.
They had not been in the village for some time.
It had been longer still since they maintained anything approaching standards.
The bottle was downed in one breath.
One hand still whole held it as near the edge of the waterfall as they could reach safely. An empty thing perched precarious and purposeless, not a consequence rushing to mind if tipped into the abyss. They held it outstretched this way and that to catch light between it and the spray of an ocean becoming a river becoming a lake long enough that they forgot it was an act that required conscious will until the ache in their arm could no longer be ignored, and they thought to let go. But it was already gone. It was gone and they were still staring. Still holding. Still letting time stretch on.
And on.
And on.
And on.
And on.
And on.
And it was only in this moment that had become hours that they realized they did not feel themself. That their arm had been down at their side shortly after yet lingered in the afterimage of their vision. That there was something wrong with their senses. That they were still but moving. That substance they never would have consented to had breached their body. That the waterfall was distant and also right under their feet. That Joanne had poisoned them. That they were teetering.
An empty thing perched precarious and purposeless, not a consequence rushing to mind if tipped into the abyss.
They went nowhere and fell all the same.
A hand that was not a hand caught their body that was not and pulled them steady.
“Pardon my forwardness there uh, s-, no, ma-, no, uh, what all you prefer, but I reckon it was about time we had ourselves a come to Jesus.”
Starvation was a motivator that unlike the collars around their throats needed no explanation. A look in the bags told the story all its own. A couple of loaves of bread, some crackers, a handful of protein bars, and about as much water as one might drink in a day. Water could be refilled at any number of opportunities weighed worth the risk. The prospect of surviving days on such meager supplies though, it might not gall at first. The longer picture was not clear. Meals blurring together into mounds of cloying, stale mush coating the mouth until the taste lingered on every breath for hours, the memory of what it was to enjoy what you ate for any purpose further up the hierarchy of needs than subsistence, when memory of tastes and smells prepared to delight the senses rose became a torture split between agony, jealousy, outrage, despair that they would never be experienced again and the steady erosion of the things one could lean on to still feel human...from a certain perspective that could not conceive how much boredom went into survival, that might seem more pressing than when the food runs out.
Such feelings were luxuries. To grow to hate means of survival required time and abundance many of their classmates would not be allowed. The more common feeling, the one their captors surely relied upon as compulsion, was hunger. Hunger first pitted against boredom. Hours of more physical activity than most were comfortable with contrasted with hours more of waiting in what could be carved out as relative safety created a temptation to pass time snacking. Stress of all kinds created a void that could not be filled yet demanded the attempt in defiance of rationing, mounting in urgency until one of two outcomes came to head: surrender to it, or find there is nothing left to offer. The former inevitably lead to the latter, but the urge would not vanish. It would evolve. It would twist inside the gut and the mind until it became a sort of sentient if not sapient thing, an excess of the spirit made manifest in flesh, the urge to consume becoming so powerful that it began to consume itself. That is what it was to starve, no? To reach a point of desperation so drastic that the body turns to itself as prey, host and parasite in one mind unable to control either? Picture that madness paired with the knowledge that to relieve it, all you had to do was find others who had not fallen so far and take what was theirs. Yes, the leverage of scarcity could not have escaped their captors after so many iterations of their experiment. It was not so difficult to envision what one would be capable of in that state. Murder in the name of relief was among the simplest possibilities to cross the imagination.
Imagination, of course, because these were not the problems of Blaise D’Aramitz.
Five. No, six. No…they took nothing from Alexander or Princess. Parker's supplies came with them. Other bags were left abandoned for them to discover, often empty, less often without food, and on occasion filled with some amount of abandoned supplies; on their last pass through the village they had collected such a bag in a vandalized house seemingly untouched. Luck was disproportionately in their favor in this least useful of areas. Their appetites were excessive save for the most literal one, so while others starved their way to execution they were throwing out more food than they consumed. Two bags were more than enough for them, anything that could not be consolidated down they discarded in favor of whatever seemed freshest. Disposal depended on their mood. For the sake of thoroughness dumping them off a cliff or into the water was preferred. This worked well enough for food, but what they found themself discarding most often were water bottles. Over two dozen water bottles by now, perhaps three, there was no purpose in carrying so many. Two for cleaning, three or so for drinking, they needed no more. Those that had begun to smell they impaled and left behind them so no one else could find use for them.
That made the bottle they held in their hands as they stood atop the waterfall rather special. They had found it buried beneath their ropes when they were restraining Julien. How long it had been there they could not say, only that it was at least since they first cut the sections with Lorenzo in mind. A short time after they shot Joanne; perhaps it was one of hers? Stagnation greeted them under the cap. Had they remembered it when they were exchanging supplies in the village, it would not have survived. In theory all that had changed in the interim was a more interesting place to dump its remains after they punctured it.
They had not been in the village for some time.
It had been longer still since they maintained anything approaching standards.
The bottle was downed in one breath.
One hand still whole held it as near the edge of the waterfall as they could reach safely. An empty thing perched precarious and purposeless, not a consequence rushing to mind if tipped into the abyss. They held it outstretched this way and that to catch light between it and the spray of an ocean becoming a river becoming a lake long enough that they forgot it was an act that required conscious will until the ache in their arm could no longer be ignored, and they thought to let go. But it was already gone. It was gone and they were still staring. Still holding. Still letting time stretch on.
And on.
And on.
And on.
And on.
And on.
And it was only in this moment that had become hours that they realized they did not feel themself. That their arm had been down at their side shortly after yet lingered in the afterimage of their vision. That there was something wrong with their senses. That they were still but moving. That substance they never would have consented to had breached their body. That the waterfall was distant and also right under their feet. That Joanne had poisoned them. That they were teetering.
An empty thing perched precarious and purposeless, not a consequence rushing to mind if tipped into the abyss.
They went nowhere and fell all the same.
A hand that was not a hand caught their body that was not and pulled them steady.
“Pardon my forwardness there uh, s-, no, ma-, no, uh, what all you prefer, but I reckon it was about time we had ourselves a come to Jesus.”