All The World's A Stage

[Grim Wolf]

(Daria Bhatia concluding from there only exist slaves to emotions)

The air was thick with corpse rot.

She'd known it would be. Knew it couldn't be any other way, laws of biology and chemistry being what they were. But there's always a part of you that hopes it's gonna be like the movies. You know it's not—you know it from experience, you've made movies and know the difference between the grit and grime it takes to make a thing and the polished illusion the audience sees. You know Stephanie died. And there's not much for dead bodies to do but decompose.

So the door closes behind you. You stay standing a moment longer, wobbling unsteadily on your feet and leaning heavily on your bloodstained bat. Nothing hurts the way it did before, and that scares you more than almost anything else. For all your fear, you didn't know dying would feel like this.

You manage to stay standing for nearly a minute—long enough to make sure Willow can't hear you anymore. Then you sink slowly back against the door, and you start to sob.

It's not loud. It's not violent (each sob jars your wounds, in dazed gusts of dizzy pain, so you have to keep it down if you don't want to start screaming). Tears streak down your eyes, tracking through the caked blood on your face. Once you sat in this room and screamed and raged and wept, unsure who you were supposed to be or what you were supposed to do. Once you fought back tears, and swore to seek justice for a fallen friend. Always had a little bit of a cowgirl streak to you, Daria Bhatia. Always wanted to swagger through your surroundings, a little larger than life.

But there will be no justice for Stephanie—at least, not by your hands. And there is no need to scream and beg and tear your clothes as the shadow draws down at last. You can cry. You've earned that.

So, for a little while, Daria Bhatia cries, as the blood leaks from her, as her life leaks from her. With every moment, the world hurts a little less. With every moment, it slips a little farther away, into a murky distance. No, that's not right; it's Daria who's slipping away, falling down, down, down...

She's not on the Island, but in Indore; she's 13 years old, trying to stay as far away from the room where her great grandmother's corpse is rotting as she can, trying not to let anyone know what she's doing. She can't stand it—not the smell of it, or the weeping whispers all around, or the sight of utter stillness on the faces of the dead.

Soon you'll be just like that, Daria. Soon your stink will fill this house: soon your family will clutch at each other, grieving; soon your face will be frozen, never to move again.

Daria take a deep breath (in, out), and feels a crack of cold, distant pain against her side, a clenched fist of burning coal squeezing gently in her belly. They are like feelings glimpsed beneath a curtain of deep, clear water. She cannot deny their reality, but there is something surreal (ethereal) about them. They are not proper pain.

She can move with them. Drifting along like she's dead man floating on the surface of water, or as though she's had a drink or two and can dance tipsily wherever she pleases. And she needs to move. She's not quite ready to die yet.

Another breath (in, out), and another pulse of subdued pain, and Daria hooks a hand on the doorknob and gradually, reluctantly pulls herself upright again, leaning heavily against the door for support. She closes her eyes (in, out) and pushes herself away from the door.

She almost falls over, catching herself narrowly on the bloodstained bat she's still using as a makeshift cane. She wobbles for a moment, steadies herself, and begins to make her slow, limping way through the little house where she spent days feeling like she could make the world make sense.

But the world always makes sense. It's just not necessarily a sense that you'll like.

She stops to lean against a wall, her head spinning with something more than vertigo. Her head is unsteady on her shoulders; her mind is unsteady in its memories, spilling back to before and after the funeral in Indore, to before and after the Island.

There is no “after.”

The bullet in her belly hurts

 It's like they set loose something on the island, something we'd think was our friends just to... just to see what would happen to us

But it was worse than that, Carrie. These aren't things that look like our friends. They are our friends. Blaise killed Steph, and a lot more besides. Erika shot me, then she stabbed me, and I wasn't her first. Quinn kept killing until someone killed her. And Carrie, you-

Shallow breath (in, out), then lurching down the hall again. Having trouble walking: every step shook something out of her, so each step felt harder than the last.

God, another miserable circle. She'd woken up here, walked back here, left her dead here, come to die here. Round and round and round, until you can't go round no more.

"Ain't an easy path for any of us, I reckon."

No, Connor, it sure fucking wasn't. Spoiled little shit that you were, you didn't deserve to get gunned down. You deserved better. We deserved better.

"You people. You⁠—Things. You never mattered. Not to me."

Yeah, well, the reason you thought that is you were a fucking monster, Quinn.

Like that doesn't prove her point.

No, it's not...that's not...

Amelia tried to kill you.

She was scared.

And Blaise? Erika? Quinn?

That's not the same!

“We have to save ourselves from ourselves."

Daria stumbled to a halt, as the fire in her belly burned a little hotter, a little deeper. With her hand pressed over the clumsily-bandaged wound, sticky with her blood, Daria buried her head against the wall, fresh tears in her eyes.

Chris. Oh, Chris. I shouldn't have left you. I should have been there for you. You were there for me, on the beach. And I let you go. I let you die. Why?

If I''d stuck with you, maybe you'd still be alive.

Maybe [/i]I'd still be alive.

A short, sharp gasp (in, out) and Daria pushed herself off the wall, limping with a little extra vigor. The smell of rot was thicker now, terribly thick, and Daria had to slow down to swallow back bile, her head swimming, swimming, floating away, everything dark and hazy and distant again, like she was looking down on a stage from a great distance.

I don't want to die.

You've had that thought before, you boring, basic bitch. Not gonna keep an audience if you just keep playing the old hits.

Not gonna keep an audience when I'm dead, either.

Says who? Beethoven, Mozart, Bach still get played; Marilyn Monroe's still an icon; Jesus and Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt each got their legacy. Show don't end just because you're not on the stage.

Is that a fucking metaphor?

Just the facts, ma'am. You knew it when you started this. You could either play to live or play to beat them.

I didn't beat them.

You never played their game.

That's not winning.

It's not losing, either.

The swelling stink of Stephanie's corpse is terribly heavy, and Daria has to stop just outside the bedroom, rocking back and forth unsteadily. It is less a choice and more a failure that propels Daria into the bedroom again: her unsteady swaying almost sends her toppling forward, and she shoulders the door open as she fights to right herself.

She catches herself. Her trembling neck turns her dizzy head by slow, infinitesimal inches towards the adjoining bathroom.

Nothing happens. Stephanie's ghost does not wail in judgment or damnation. The smell isn't even that much worse. She's just a little closer to the corpse. A little closer to the place where Stephanie died.

Where I let her die.

You didn't make Blaise kill.

I didn't stop her.

You were trying to save Steph.

And I let my guard down. And I let Blaise go. And I talked all that shit about justice. Like it mattered.

It matters.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Get outta here with that misogynistic bullshit!

Quinn thought so. Steph thought so. Aliya thought so. Blaise thought so. Tony though so. Erika thought so. Will still thinks so. You haven't changed anyone's mind. You haven't saved anyone, convinced anyone, beaten anyone. You keep spinning round and round and round, a top that's slowly winding down. Good for nothing more than helping some people kill time before time killed them.

this isn't half-bad I should be writing this down

Daria limps into the bathroom, and looks as the corpse wrapped in a thin, stained bedsheet. The human shape beneath is still recognizable, even if it's bloated in some places and sunken in others. Neither revelation nor despair overwhelm you. It's just another corpse, and you've seen plenty of those the last few days.

Just another corpse. Like you will be.

Daria turns away from her, staggers to the bed, sinks slowly down upon it. The bloodstained bat leans next to her, and Daria brushes the sludge-like blood from her hand onto one side of the mattress, her eyes glassy. Every breath (in, out) rattles a little, wheezing and whistling, as though she's a failing bellows that can't hold any more air.

What are you looking for, Daria?

Same thing you've been looking for since you woke up in a panic, with death in your eyes and in your head and ticking like a crocodile coiled around your neck.

Daria's hand twitches up, but does not quite reach for her collar. She's far too tired for that now. She knows the band of metal still clings to her throat, with all the lethal malice that had driven so many of her friends to murder. Almost a magic ring, this evil thing, to turn so many kids to killers.

“I don't...get it.”

Daria stares down at her too-far, bloodstained hand, lying flaccid on the bloodstained bed. She shakes her head so shadows spiral, and lifts half-blind eyes up to the camera right across from her. Once, a long time ago, she'd made some solemn oath of justice of that camera, and to the dead woman lying behind her.

“What's it...for, Danyuh?” Daria asks. You...build these bombs. Take us from our homes. Give us weapons. Tell us you'll kill us, if we don't kill us. Such a stupid...”

She trails off, swaying like a snake on the bed, her eyes scrunched tight.

“It seems...so obvious,” Daria whispers. “Such a stupid...why would anyone ever...” She draws another rattling breath. “But...it works. Quinn....Blaise...Ace...Erika...”

“Even Carrie. Even Chris. Even me.”

She looked down at her hands—at the hands that had smashed a bat into Erika's chest, and wrapped tight around her throat. At the hands that, for all her oaths and all her anger, were too-ready to kill another student. A girl she'd known and liked, in another, far-off life.

“But what's...the point?” Daria asked. “Why...why are me and...and everyone I know...why did you...put us here?”

Tears in her voice, and Daria takes a moment to swallow them down again. A steadying breath (in, out) that does nothing to steady her. The world is so hazy now.

“How do you...live...with yourselves?”

Daria's hands clench around her knees, and she pushes herself upright, ignoring the embers coiling in her belly, ignoring the ragged pulse of the knife in her side, so she can lift her glaring eyes to the camera again. “All the...bulllshit I've heard...the last few days. All the bullshit I've...said. We're just...kids. None of us...wanted this. Of course we can't...figure it out.”

“But you?” She laughs, gasps at the pain it caused her, laughed harder. “This...stupid voice, and your stupid jokes, and all your stupid friends who keep this whole stupid game fucking rolling, how do you...”

She trails off, breathing in short, sharp gasps (in, pain, out, pain, in, pain, out, pain). The camera is the only thing she can see now: the rest is darkness.

“They couldn't,” Daria whispers. “None of'em. Carrie wanted it to be...monsters wearing our skin...Quinn wanted to pretend you weren't....making her...Blaise wanted it to be...an excuse...Erika wanted it to be...obvious...even Willow wants to think it...doesn't matter. None of them can...live with it. I can't live with it. How can you?”

It's hard to stay sitting up now. Her arms tremble with the effort.

“Well. Maybe you can't.”

Daria closed her eyes, takes another deep breath (in, out), deep enough to stir dull flares from her wounds. She clings to that pain, uses its fire to brighten her darkening world.

“Don't know...what you do. How you...lie. Like we lied. To each other. To yourselves. Maybe you can't...lie. Maybe you can just...cope. For now.”

Another deep breath (in, out), but the pain is still more muffled. Time's winding down and spinning out.

Nothing new. It's always been like that.

“Or maybe you can,” Daria whispers, and looks up at the camera, and this time she's not glaring, she's not staring, she's not trying to pierce your soul or lock eyes, she's not trying to look a certain way or inspire a certain feeling, it's just Daria, nakedly Daria, all the pain of her wounds and the grief of the game (Carrie, Tony, Steph, Chris), all her guilt for those she could not save and could not avenge and could not deliver justice to, all her exhaustion at hurling herself time and time again into the path of this insane game to try and find some meaning in it.

Just Daria, dying for the camera.

“And if you can I...I pity you, and everyone who knows you,” Daria said. “Because if you can live with this, I don't...I don't think you're human anymore.”

Not a bad last line. Time to die.

Nah.

Not much choice there, Daria. That's been your argument from Day One.

Don't misquote me. Might not have any say about dying. Still gotta say in how. And I don't want to die, but if these fuckers want me dead, they're gonna do it themselves.

A clumsy, distant hand trails off her knee, fumbles for the handle of the bat. She places it feebly against the floor, pushes herself upright on creaking arms and legs. She can still stand. Just barely.

“I hope someone finds you. Makes you pay.”

She hobbles closer to the camera.

“But honestly...I think just...being you...must be bad enough.”

Deep breath (in, out, dying embers of a dying girl brace up against the darkness just long enough, locked knees steady her as the bat raises to one side, both hands clutching at the handle like she's praying).

The bat swings. The camera bursts with a satisfying crackle of shattered electronics, tinkling glass, and crunching plastic. The force of the blow, on Daria's unsteady feet, sends her spinning. She stumbles, arms pinwheeling wildly, trying not to fall. The bloodstained bat drops from numb fingers, rolls out of sight and out of mind.

Daria finally looses her balance, falls forward and just barely catches herself on a doorframe. Everything is buried in darkness, misty and hollow, but from the corner of her eye Daria catches the sight of Stephanie's sheet-wrapped body in the tub. She can't smell the rot anymore: it almost looks like her friend's just sleeping.

Daria takes a deep breath.

(In)

“Hate to let you down, Steph,” Daria said, grinning at her friend's corpse and hoping she'll have a chance to see her soon. “But you had to know I was...gonna go out with with a-”

Bang




(Out)

G056 Daria Bhatia: Eliminated