Survival Of The Fittest

With Drew's hand around her arm, Camilla was pulled over to the buffet, Theo following alongside them. It was... what she expected, she supposed. Kinda tacky, kinda felt like she was too old for this. But Camilla had been too old for this since she was ten. That was when adults started calling her an old soul, anyway.

The food didn't look terrible, but it also didn't look terribly appealing. It had been a while since she had pizza of any kind, though. Back on the trip, she thought about ordering pizza, wings, probably some drinks too and perhaps potato wedges, and sharing it with her hotel roommates, but felt squeamish about spending the money on top of treating herself to sushi the evening before.

If only she knew it wouldn't matter.

But yeah. There was pizza, including that weird kind of cinnamon roll pizza where like... it's sugar-coated cake-bread stuff for the crust and it's coated with icing and cinnamon and- okay, that sort of stuff was a guilty pleasure for her. Cinnamon was probably her second favourite flavour, behind butterscotch. Her eyes focused on that plate for a moment, before wandering some more. They rested on a tv screen mounted on the wall in the corner of the room, showing...

...

Camilla knew she deserved her own death. But seeing Diego cry over her like did was like a punch to the gut.

She averted her eyes and looked back to Drew and Theo. "Have you guys already been to this uh... buffet-place?" she asked. "Eaten anything from it?"

The colors blended together, melted, faded in and out while shadows passed in the distance as the taste of store bought birthday cake lingered on his tongue. Declyn felt safe. Under this one specific table with a scratch on its left leg, piece of cake in his bare hand, nothing could hurt him. Unless the cake would somehow betray him.

What he found strange was that the colors managed to blend with the noises and appealing sounds, into an orbit that allowed you to think of absolutely nothing except this cake is damn good.

An orbit of nothingness was nice for a change. His busy mind appreciated it. Had his time machine worked after all?

Sitting there crossed leg, Declyn picked at the confetti on his hand like a chameleon eating its prey. He leaned with his side against the wall when he noticed, heard to be precise, more figures approaching the area and his corner specifically. Not like he could claim the whole table to himself but it wasn't the only one holding multi tier trays of grease and sugar. But once he recognized the voices, it didn't matter any longer.

Declyn's head perked up. He stayed put, stayed put for now, and wanted to listen. Just listen for a moment.

Drew didn't feel like looking at the TV again as he felt like he had seen enough heartbreak and just undeserving chaos in general. He had seen so many deaths and killers and he was trying to not get a bigger hole in his hurting heart just by seeing how there were not many people left now. He just wanted to have a normal, non-violent time with two of his closest friends and yes, he knew that there might be some tension between Theo and Camilla. He knew they didn't think that he would notice and he was being selfish by taking advantage of it. He felt a tinge of guilt inside him but he brushed it to the side and now he just had to be himself without crying like a baby and without being so cowardly.

"Hm..."

Drew was staring at the cheesy pizza with hungry eyes and he gazed at Camilla with a kind smile. He was glad that she was trying for them and he knew that they would have to talk about everything. He wanted everyone to be honest to each other.... Even if he was hiding from his own faults himself. He just wanted to make sure that everyone else was going to be okay and he didn't want them to be stuck in a big wedge. It didn't feel right to him.

"Well, I have tried some of the strawberry sponge before. It's very sweet and just tasty in general." He said, pointing over to one of the tables that had like only half of the cake left now and he then tapped his right foot against the carpeted floor softly. "I did have some red grapes too. W-Wanted to be a bit healthy too. Ha, ha..."

Now he was just sounding like a dork, wasn't he?

Of all the things that Cecil has done to cope with the moments when he has lost control in his life and lets the simmering anxiety in his gut to drown him alive, stress-eating has never been one of them. It never seemed like an option, not when he was continuously deluding himself that everything was fine so he must feel fine, and he shouldn’t give in to the urge of putting another unhealthy habit on top of his pile of other tried and true unhealthy habits.

Lingering by the arcade and its games made him remember a recent memory with his family that he should’ve looked on with only fondness in his heart, but worry and guilt would mercilessly flash by at the thought of them, especially at the fact that he was helpless to do anything about it now. Burying himself under the ball pit was tempting, but he felt too restless right now to dutifully play his part of being literally dead to the world.

Thus, the buffet room was to be his place of solace. Unfortunately, the content being played on the television sets placed around in that room would undoubtedly kill most people’s appetite. But it wasn’t like he was eating because he was hungry, anyway.

The moment he processed what he was watching in that room, he had proceeded to unthinkingly snatch as many desserts that he could carry on his arms to eat to fill the time and emptiness inside him and quickly walked out. He bit, tasted, chewed and swallowed as he endlessly paced around the available space, his head pointedly on the ground and purposely denying himself to recognize the other people as his classmates, lest he empty out the food he had been contentedly savoring in his mouth and to his stomach.

It was undignified and cowardly, but he found himself refusing to care, because he was already dead anyway, dammit.

And there went his last cookie.

He was now craving something salty to balance out the sweetness. Without breaking his stride, his feet led him back to the buffet.

There were people, of course, and the damn TV sets, so he resolutely avoided his gaze away from both of them as he approached the table and scanned his options, hoping the people nearby would pay him no heed. He wasn’t ready to handle it. For now.

Cecil liked to think he was allowed not to be ready at this point.

But as he zeroed in towards the pizza, he couldn’t help but hear the voices in the conversation nearest to him. Familiar voices. Specifically that one voice that always sounded like it was on the verge of sudden babbling. The one that asked him to go to prom and awkwardly but sweetly laughed when they did. Also the same one that cried in absolute pain and despair in both the first and last time he heard him on the island.

His hand was already on a slice and he should’ve just easily slipped out of that room quickly. Instead, Cecil impulsively looked up and found the boy he never really tried to find, even now in the afterlife. His first mistake on that island.

He froze, stupidly staring at Drew.

He left me. And I let him. And Declyn killed him.

Cecil shoved the slice of pizza to his mouth.

Theo trailed behind them quietly, as he was used to doing. He simply watched them, occasionally letting his eyes focus on some familiar facet of their gait or their expression and letting his mouth turn upwards from the sheer pleasure of being with them. He had forgotten what it was like, just being there, with no looming threats or private griefs to worry about. The normality of it was reassuring. He still wanted to speak to them, but he didn’t want to do anything to break the fragile calm that had settled upon them. It could wait, surely. For a few more minutes. Maybe a few more hours. Perhaps forever. Not all truths didn’t need to be recognized, after all.

But what he was doing didn’t matter anyways. He knew from the moment Camilla saw Diego on the screen that that ever-mournful guilt would cloud her eyes once more, and that that would be the end, or maybe just a hiatus, for their little peace. He vaguely muttered something about him joining them eventually. What else could he say?

He smiled mildly as she approached the buffet table. Maybe it didn’t have to end quite so soon. Although, having Camilla throw up from eating so soon after such a traumatising experience probably would, and very decisively too. He looked skeptically at the sugary pizza. “Maybe try not to eat anything too big, though. We wouldn’t want you to get sick just after finding you again, would we?” He nodded at the drinks machines. “I think you should stick with liquids first.”

Then someone new entered the scene, and decided to kick things off by staring at them in what was possibly the most indiscreet way possible. It was Cecil, he thought; he tried to recall what he had been like at school. The only words that came up were “studious” and “diligent”. Certainly nothing that suggested a reason for him to approach them. He coughed loudly. “Hi, Cecil. Would you mind moving? We were just about to discuss something.” He wondered if he should have specified without you. His tone would simply have to suffice.

Camilla's gaze followed Drew's finger. Her eyes widened and she quietly gasped in delight, seeing the strawberry sponge cake on the table. It wasn't chocolate or butterscotch, but it had been so long since she had any cake like it. It looked so light and fluffy, just like how Auntie made it.

She clasped her hands together and, her mouth still agape, was about to cry out cake! like a kid in... A cake store? Theo's reminder of the consequences of having too many sugary, filling foods immediately deflated her mood though. Her shoulders dropped, and she glanced at Theo, her lips curling into a slight pout.

"But... Cake..." she quietly protested.

She just died. By God, let her eat cake. It would hardly be the worst thing she'd done to her body.

But with a resigned sigh, and a tilt of the head, she conceded, "Though... Yeah, getting something to drink does-"

She stopped, and turned to the person Theo was talking to. He was familiar.

The light returned to her eyes, and a smile returned to her face.

"Oh, Cecil! Long time no see," She greeted. Her smile vanished for a moment, when she remembered what Cecil's appearance here meant. Did she miss his death on the announcements?

She quickly brushed that useless thought aside when a question popped into her head. "Have you seen Declyn here, by any chance?"

Camilla figured Cecil would also be looking for Declyn. The buffet seemed like a place he'd like, really.

Declyn would have jumped out at any other instance but something was keeping him nailed down to the floor under this holy table. Perhaps it was the fact that he didn’t want to be caught sticky-handed in his current feral state. But Declyn, why don’t you eat cake like a normal person? Well, have you seen this place? It was insanity and happiness at the same time and he wanted to take advantage of it. Yet it didn’t take away the shame now that he wasn’t completely by himself anymore.

His mind began to calculate a way to the restroom, picturing himself as a lizard moving from table to table, but it was straight up too risky and involved more embarrassment if caught. Now, this shouldn’t even matter since they were his best friends but his mind was stuck right now and the more he waited the more awkward it became. Declyn pulled a face at himself and shuffled on his knees with a hunched back. Another pair of legs arrived, this time dangerously close to him. It was no other than the next person he was going to look for after seeing the others: Cecil. So in a way, odds were in his favor but his own actions made the situation more difficult than it had to be.

He smiled, hard, more so when he heard Camilla say his name. She wanted cake? Down here was the best place to have it. He decided he wanted them to join him, instead of him joining them. It felt like the safest way.

Licking his lips, he inched closer to the dangerous edge, poking the dangerously close ankle that belonged to Cecil before crawling back to the safe corner at high speed.