Survival Of The Fittest

So here’s a q: you ever fuck up?

Wait, no, that was a bad q. Better q: you ever get fucked up?

((Yong Yi Yu: Pregame Start))

Cause, like, that was how Penny was feeling right now. And, like, if you knew what it’s like to get fucked up then you could fill in the blanks. Save Penny the brainpower her ass really didn’t have right now to try and figure out how she was meant to describe this. The way someone had tied a rope around her head and started trying to garotte it. The way the floor kinda topped and turved every time you tried to put a foot down. The way you didn’t know whether the loss of balance was actually a thing or whether you were just overthinking it into existence. Lotta people talked about getting fucked up in their songs. Not a lot of, like, detail though. They just kinda said ‘oh shit, we popped, we get fucked up’ and you were supposed to fill the blanks. Sketch out your past experience, and, uh…

Yeah.

Penny was doin’ that.

Right now. In a way never before seen. See, like, it’d been a long fuckin’ while since the last outing like this given all the stuff about COVID, but usually when Penny went out to a party whe had a plan. Or, well, like, a cushion. She’d have a gal pal drive her home or a gal pal’s house to crash and, like, unless things went really well and she found a dude to go home with she wouldn’t wake up in some random house with no idea of how she got there. Safety. PSA-type shit. Get fucked up and lose yourself responsibly.

So, like, related to that, good news: she recognized this place. She had not waken up in creepyland. Somewhere, somehow, Penny had been responsible.

Bad news: this wasn’t her friend’s place. This was the party place. The music was gone. The people were nowhere to be seen. And, unless things had really gone haywire, that was sunlight coming through the window. Not 5 AM inkling stuff either. Full blown daylight. 10 AM. If she glanced out any harder she’d have to start training a guide dog.

So she figured she’d, uh, look at the stuff that wasn’t the sunlight. Get some spacial detail up in here. Look at the unmade bed she’d apparently slept on top of. The bedside table to her left. The kinda-see-through closet (nothing really interesting — like, formal clothes for the dudes who didn’t have the money to be more interesting than a tuxedo) also to her left. The chest of drawers and the TV on top to her left but also on the other end of the room. The door to the left in-between all the other things to her left. The empty space between the bed and the wall on the right where she was going to get her ass off and-

stand up-

stand-

wobble-

feel the invisible dude behind her keep trying to close that fiber wire around her head-

man the ground was really going at it today maybe she’d actually had too much abort abort-

-fall back on her ass. Make a big loud creak on the bed on impact. Stay there. Kinda just, uh…

Uh…

Man. First time out in a decade. She… really needed to learn how to not go ham again.

So, uh.

So to be fair Erika never really planned to actually participate in the party. She was just trying to take pictures of people's houses like a creep.

Or a serial killer.

Or just a really, really stupid artist.

Which she was. The artist part, anyways.

Erika's... she's barely actually been in a party. Or, actually, she's never truly been in one. It's all been proximity and no interaction. You usually don't see parents tell their kids to go to wild teen parties where there's alcohol and drugs, but... well, but mom was also getting worried about her social life ("But Erika, you need to know how to build connections") and she's probably worked on enough (3) posters for D.A.R.E telling other kids to not drink weed and smoke vodka and eat heroin and she's relatively trustworthy?

She shouldn't be.

Erika's not trustworthy at all.

You can't even trust her to remember her bag existed when she left the house after taking about 7 group photos for other kids and then tucking (stealing) approximately five bags of gummy bears into the bag. Maybe six. She couldn't remember.

(She sort of pictured someone- redhead, freckled, shorter than her and wearing a crop top, rolling her eyes. Something like "God, why do people bring backpacks to parties? You didn't even have anything good." Her voice would be nasally, but not quite shrill. A colorful kind of color palette. All round shapes and curly hair and big blue eyes on pale skin, tying together a friendly design- meant as some sort of contrast to the character-in-her-head's actual personality.)

There wasn't anything in it other than a blank notebook, 5 bags of gummy bears, and a 20 dollar bill, and-

and the bag is probably less important than the girl in the room right now.

YYY just stumbled and fell on her ass. Drunk? Probably. She didn't know. All she knew was that she sort of just heard the thumping of her body hitting something and mistook it for the thumping of something less concerning. The door creaked open.

A split second before that, she saw something like, uh.

[+] this

Well, she couldn't really capture the sunlight hitting the ground, or the way Penny's bright hair reflected underneath said sunlight, but... but her mind didn't give her more than a few milliseconds to think about how she could have captured and fictionalized this situation because she's actually in this situation, and she's playing a part, and if there's anything Erika absolutely was not good at it was this.

"Um, sorry. Wrong room. Sorry. But, uh, have you seen a backpack, uh... brown, canvas? Or,"

"Oh, wait. You're probably drunk."

"Do you need help? A glass of water?"

And there was ANTS.

She was

right there

hanging off the ceiling

Looked like it, anyway. Was, like… okay. So you know when you’re a kid and you do handstands and everything goes upside down and it looks like all the other kids watching should really be, like, getting gravitied and falling into the sky? Erika kinda looked like that. She was upside down. She was, like, four feet above the floor. She was defying all the shit Ms. Becker went on about. Looked like a god in girl flesh, the way the sunlight was illuminating her from behind. Like, okay. Penny (let’s be real) was more of an artist than she was an artist. All the album covers she could think of making were just like the Ariana or the Sawayama ones: kinda just glorified selfies you weren’t meant to think of for long. But, like, Erika? Right there? In the doorframe? Didn’t have to be very drunk to think that was a painting for a second.

But it wasn’t. Paintings didn’t talk. And most paintings didn’t hurt Penny’s brain to look at more of a second. Which was, tbf, more on Penny than it was on the painting. You know how sometimes you were laying down on your bed and you kind of let your head fall off the side and stare at the wall. This was that, except Penny’s head was on the mattress so she kind of had to crick her neck and push her head into the blankets to look at the painting. It’d been, like, completely okay. For a second. Then her brain tried to move with her head and then everything looked like it was the wrong way up and then the wrong way sideways and then the wrong way down. She had to stop doing that. Look up at the ceiling ceiling and not the floor ceiling. Let the blood in her head slosh all the way back to where it’d been before.

She’d heard Erika talk. Which was cool. Least she had her sense of hearing. She’d also heard her little groan as she put her head back in the right place. Which was also cool. Least she had her sense of speak. Maybe…

Maybe…

“Haven't. Sorry. Just… woke up, I think. I can, uh, help though. Just- let me-”

Okay. Three, two… alley oop…

…

...Okay. Cool. She was up. She was standing again.

She was up.

She was up…

…

She was down. Back on the bed. Back looking at Erika. And also Erika. And also Erika. And also Erika. And also Erika. The blood in her head was making a lot of Erikas. Kinda… felt…

“Get… that water, maybe. Yeah.”

“Mm-kay.”

[+] her fingers itched to draw the girl in front of her

[

Penny was aesthetic- a living proof, really, of something something consumerism something. About art that’s more brand than art. Penny’s hair was more of her brand. Or, maybe, Penny's constant need to surround herself with name brands is her own brand, which... was kind of sad. It’s kind of a shame that it had to be defiled. Was it insecurity? Or the allure of social acceptance that fast fashion companies promise? Did Penny even need anymore social acceptance?

Whatever.

“I’ll go get your water.”

(So, Erika didn’t know where the cups were.)

So, Erika found where the cups were after opening about ten different cupboards. She- she ought to just grab one and go, but… but she wondered if Penny had any preferences with cups?

She seemed like the kind to buy one of those cat paw mugs. One of the Starbucks (Tee-Em) ones.

There weren’t any cat paw mugs, but she did find an orange mug that sort of suited her. Penny, she meant. Not Erika. Erika sort of preferred her cups plain.

Would Penny accept faucet water?

Probably. At this point Penny would accept any water. Faucet water it is.

This whole endeavor probably took less than a minute, but she still felt a bit late, somehow, when she returned, mug in hand. Erika wasn't really sure whether or not to hand it to her or to place it on somewhere, so she did the must subservient thing (and also the action with the lesser risk of splashing water everywhere) and just held it up in front of the poor girl for her to take it. Poor as in unfortunate. Not financially. God, Penny's family could probably buy Erika's as slaves or something.

''There you go.''

Okay. Okay. Penny had managed to brainpower… two little things while ANTS was out the room.

First off: ANTS was Erika (which, y’know, she'd already gone on about, but might as well say it louder. for the cool kids). Erika was, uh, not exactly the kinda girl Penny was expecting t’be at a party the morning after. She was more like… the dude in that one meme. The kinda girl who stood in the corner watching everybody else who decided to come but now that they did had a figure out that they didn’t really like being there at all. Which was, like, fine. Lifestyle wasn’t for everyone — ‘specially not wallflower types. Penny had tried to talk to her once or twice before the big C came and kinda cut all the people she’d talked to once or twice out of her life and the impression she got was that she’d rather Penny not talk to her. ‘d rather nobody talk to her. Wasn't really anything personell, it was just, y'know, she was the kinda person who had boundaries. And was also the kinda person who'd rather nobody else step near her boundaries. Which was cool. Penny had gotten it back then. No clue what she was like post 2020, but hey, Erika had been the one to start the conversation. She'd come so far. Penny was so proud.

The second thing Penny had brainpowered out was everything that had happened last night. Or, like, everything she could remember from last night. Which was nothing. She remembered, like, seeing a dude she knew who was in college now post an open invite for a post-quarantine getdown on Zuckerland, asking ‘round to see which of the usual crew would be down, having to find someone to take her home after, getting a lift here, and then, uh…

This.

Nothing after that. Or, uh, between that and this. She was gonna have to fill in all the blanks. Maybe later. Right now, even rolling over on this bed was dangerous in Jigsaw’s world — like, wasn’t really all that hard, but it took a bit more girlpower than it should’ve to just, like, get her legs on the bed, flip over, make it so that when ANTS came back into the room and gave Pen Pen the water it wouldn’t feel so hand and foot.

And, like, that happened. Erika came back into the room and gave Penny the water. Penny gave back a “thanks, you a real lifesaver” as she chugged it. One gulp. Didn’t, uh, really do anything immediate, but it was probs same like with alcohol — didn’t exactly hit you until after you’d gotten hit. She put the mug (orange, almost like her hair, which was a pretty good reminder to redye it into something less glaring) down on the bed. Looked at E. Kinda, like, stared for a second. Made sure she could keep it at one E and not five.

“Okay, uh…”

Also, like, made sure she was okay with maybe a little bit more than just gettin’ some water, if she was down to help. If she was down to have Penny help with, like, the bag stuff.

“How okay are you with, like, touch? I can walk, and I can try and find your… thing, but I might, uh, need to hang off your shoulder for a second. Least ‘till the floor stops tilting.”

Truth was, Erika was kind of unsure about whether or not she's touch starved, or if anyone ever puts a pinky on her she would die immediately and kill everyone within a five foot radius.

It sort of also was weird because Erika wasn't at a very comfortable height for shoulder-hanging for most people She had like 6 inches on Penny and she thought that the best way to do it (for the other girl, anyways) was for YYY (Yong… something, she couldn't remember right now) to just wrap her arms around her torso and there is no way she'd let that happen.

Except…

She probably would.

Penny kind of brought this upon herself, though, by getting drunk, but Erika brought this upon herself too. Not that it stopped her from fetching the mug. It's kind of a bad social move to refuse to help someone, right? Yeah. Let them both revel in the consequences of their actions. Their shitty, shitty actions. Thank god for Covid to act as a drug when real drugs can't. Well, they can, but Erika was a Good Girl who got straight Bs and had never even heard of sex or looked at beer or been close in any proximity to the concept of ma-ri-juana, and... yeah.

So she sort of braced herself for about 150 pounds of Girl to hang off of her.

''Yeah, just, like, don't squeeze me or anything like that.''

There was that one meme she saw, that one, about how to talk to short people, one where the wrong was the taller person bending down and then the right was just looking down? And then people started to make increasingly absurd edits until it has taken away the original point of the whole entire thing and turned the entire meme into a big contest of how nonsensical your funny internet pictures can get instead of a light hearted joke about short people?

[+] maybe this one

[+] or this one

[+] or this one probably

Yeah, but for shoulder-hanging or something like that.

Or a piggyback ride, but, let's be honest, anyone piggyback riding on her would kill the two instantly.

(Jesus christ, Penny was literally, what, 5'6, 5'7? That's not short. At all. But to be honest you might as well slap a skin suit made of White Girl Epidermis and call her Tall Girl because wow. OK. This just sort of made her feel big all over again.)

What was she supposed to do? Hold out a hand? Lean down a bit to optimize her shoulder height for latching on to?

She did the former.

“Alright, lemme..."

Girl grabbed arm of other girl. Arm. Not hand — Penny went for like, the upper half of the wrist. Erika was probably okay with the touchy-feely stuff but, like, hands were weird. Wayyyyyyyyyyy more than casual touching. Like, Penny didn’t even do that with the gal pals, and, like, Erika wasn’t a gal pal. Not yet. So she grabbed the wrist. Allie-ooped and did it again. There was a second where Penny almost went too far and almost threw the both of them to the floor but then the other arm grabbed Erika’s shoulder and the third time became the charm. She just… stood there, waited for the floor to stop being like a yacht, and…

“Lemme just…”

Moved the arm on Erika’s shoulder to Erika’s neck. Moved the arm on Erika’s neck to the other shoulder. Stepped forward, couple of times, until…

“Okay. We good.”

The position was right. Erika was standing. Penny was also standing. Kind of. All 140 pounds of Girl was localized in her right arm, around Erika’s shoulder and hooking into her neck. Kinda uncomfortable — felt a little like at any moment Erika was gonna get fuckin’ chokeslammed — but hey, she was up. Maaaaaybe not as good as that bed, thinking about it, but better than the floor. Or tryin’ to stand alone.

“Leggo…”

Brown backpack. Brown backpack. Like, absolutely no chance Penny was gonna catch that thing with these eyes, but… eh. Erika helped a friend in need. Penny kinda had to pay that back. Honour shit, y’know?

Penny was heavy. She didn't really say it as an insult because every human on earth have some weight to them, you know, the bones and muscles and organs and all but it's a lot more clear how much someone weighs when they're leaning on you, and

and wow, Penny's kinda real heavy. Like a weight dragging her down. Could be an allegory for something.

uh.

She's going through some instant regret right now.

''Leggo? huh?''

Did she mean 'let go?'

''You, uh, doing OK? Better?''

So, like, this was kinda reminding Penny of… The Breakfast Club? She’s All That? Clueless? T.G.I.F? Carrie? whatever she watched in that social studies class. That one movie where the popular girl was like ‘hey girl who is outcast from the high school c l i q u e let me fix all the shit in your life by giving you makeup and a sweet dress’ and like the whole point was that the weird girl was popular the whole time and that she just had to stop being a dweeb and see that. This was like that. Erika was the dweeb, though, like, more socially than fashionably. She had style — casual, bit edgy, maybe could try a bit harder but hey, that deer skull shirt she had was cool and not part of a goth outfit so she was already better than a couple people here — but, like, maybe she could touch up a bit on the dialect. The l i n g o.

“Yeah, leggo. We gotta get your bag.”

Which Penny was down for. They’d be connected for the next bit. Kinda needed something to talk about when looking for the bag.

“Take me, like, the next room. Let’s see if I’m not, like- uh, this, there.”

Oh, ok, good. Um, she guessed she’s just gonna be a glorified crutch for now?

“K,” she said, instead of a coherent sentence because she was kind of incapable of that.

It was kind of difficult to figure out what people say sometimes, you know? Like, when somebody just goes “yeah, like that” or something and then you have no idea what “that” means? But then you’re too shy to ask questions so you just pretend you know, but then all those unasked questions pile up and you become more and more anxious that they’ll eventually figure out you have no idea what you’re even doing?

Yeah.

Like that.

Like how Erika had no idea what “like- uh, this, there” meant. What’s this? What’s there? Does the “like” mean anything or is it just a filler word? Does any word mean what it was supposed to mean? Is language just a scam? Can Erika ever stop overthinking?

No.

“Let’s, uh, go,” she said, taking the first step forward.

“Yaaaaaaaas, kween,” Penny said. “Drag me.”

And she did. Get dragged. Twitter dot com tier. Well, like, Penny helped — not like they coulda really moved if Erika was the only one trying to musclepower. Erika was kinda not doing great ‘cause she had a buncha pounds of Girl holding her down and Penny was kinda not doing great ‘cause something had fucked her last night but with their powers combined they were doing decently. Enough to get out of the room. Enough to enter the hallway. See the stairs down to their left. The other rooms all dotted around the front and back and right and left. The big window to the right which was way too bright for 10 AM, geez.

But also the stairs down to the left.

The stairs down to the left.

The stairs down.

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh Pen Pen wasn’t gonna get out of here that quick.

“So, like…”

Her head slowly tilted up from the ground to Erika. From the floorboards to the other pair of eyes.

“We maybe wanna check the upstairs first?”

How… how was she supposed to respond to that? She didn’t really like being called queen or kween or any sort of compliment like that. Was Penny being sarcastic? Was she making a joke about dragging? Was this her way of telling Erika to maybe loosen up and let her walk by herself more?

Well, maybe not the second option because, well, Erika wasn’t dragging as much as supporting. Walking at about the same pace as Penny, maybe, which was probably real slow, because they’re both kind of holding on to each other and they have to match and oh god the sun.

The sun.

It’s so bright. Jesus fuck. Wow. She didn’t want to use the lord’s name in vain or whateverthefuck grandma says but seriously, that hurted. It felt kind of the same as when she was in a car and dad was driving her home from afterschool art club and then the sun just suddenly blinded them, like-



Like that. Real painful.

She squinted and then looked at the stairs.

“I, uh, I don’t really think I went upstairs? I think it’s downstairs. But… people might have messed with it, so, uh, yeah, sure. Let’s go up. Stay on this floor. Whatever suits you.”

Oh, uh

maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan Penny was actually getting in the way huh

‘cause, y’know, Penny had been like ‘hey so you want some help with gettin’ your bag?’ since Erika was gonna be tossing her around anyway and it was the Cool Human Being thing to do to try and help out the person helping you out but, uh, whoops, looked like the girl drunk off her ass (or, well, hungover off her ass, whatever)? Kinda not really MVP when you’re scouring for somethin’. Or, like, scavenging a place. Either/or way Penny was, uh, not doin’ Erika much of a favour trying to do her a favour. Even if she was, like, doing the real solid by letting her be somewhere not the other bedroom. Just felt bad, man. Made her wanna pout a little. Gave her the not good vibes having a first real convo with someone be… this. Them kinda having to drag her around and do things for her. Didn’t really feel right.

“Uh… okay, if you wanna go down maybe we… check that room there?” She gave a little fingergun to the door in front of them. “Then if, like, it’s not there you can just plonk me down and you can check the downstairs. Good plan?”

(she kinda wondered why she even went upstairs in the first place if she really wanted to look downstairs but thattttttt was none of Penny’s business. just kinda had to hope she actually was lookin’ for a backpack and not, like, anything a little less than what Penny was wearing. she was one of the modern art types. you could never be too careful)

The two went forward, anyway, into… a room that wasn’t a guest room. No clue who it was but there was enough there to tell it was, like, a place somebody had been in rather than, like, the kinda genericness of the guest room she’d woke up in. The bed in the middle had a green sheet on top — little zig-zaggy things poking out that you could ruffle your hand over. There were a couple posters on the behind it. A couple DVDs beneath the TV opposite. Kinda almost looked like that guest room but it was, like, different. Someone actually slept in it more than every couple six months. The clothes on the floor told that. The papers on the desk.

That, uh, little thing right there in the corner of Penny’s eye that Erika, uh, could maybe go without seeing. Maybe. She kinda seemed a little pure.

“So, um… you take that side,” Penny said, giving a point to the part of the room without the thing, “and I take the side a bit closer to the door?”

OK, she was- she was just trying to look for somebody to help her (kind of a rare occurrence) but the realization that she’ll have to drag this girl downstairs with her was sort of making this whole thing feel less easy than she thought.

That, and also navigating other people’s homes seems a lot less easy when they’re clearly occupied?

“Good idea, yeah.”

Penny seemed like she’s experienced with this whole drunk-off-her-ass thing. Erika didn’t really know why people would willingly subjugate themselves to that- you drink disgusting ferment juice and for what? Getting your rocks off for half an hour and then puke? Being cool? She didn’t know. Maybe Penny knew. Penny felt like a party girl. The cool kind that didn’t really care about the things that Erika did.

She didn’t really know whether it was her guiding Penny to the room or Penny guiding her to the room or if their brainwaves just sort of connected, but she wasn’t going to complain. The room looked like the type that she’d draw, anyways. Warm. Inviting. There was a soul to it.

Nope, don't dwell on the room itself. She was looking for the bag and the bag first. Her fingers sifted through the cloth on the bed and she nodded half-heartedly.

“Sure.”

Not sure why she’d let someone else take charge in this, but, well. She was kind of the doormat-ey type anyways.

As Penny turned, she took out her phone, swiping up to the photo app and took a single, slightly blurry photograph, capturing the bed, the clothes, and a bit of the Penny right besides her.

That's enough stalling. She started looking.

Okay. So. Here’s all the shit Penny did over the next, like, minute or so.

1. Flashed a peace sign from her left hand as Erika’s camera swung a little bit her way. Pretty sure that it didn’t go far enough to show that, but… eh. Was the thought that counted.
2. Separated from ANTS as Erika moved over to the other end of the room. Kinda felt all 140 pounds of Girl snap back to her all at once. It was mostly okay. Mostly. She had to-
3. -move over to the bed, though. Drop her hands on the blanket. Drop her knees to the floor beneath. Spent a couple seconds, like, looking at her head. Feeling what was inside. Making sure she was sober enough to, like, be sober. Not hungover enough to still be a wreck.
4. Finished the mental mic check. One, two, one, two, everything ready to go. Everything ready enough to go.
5. Scooched over from the corner of the bed closest to the door to the other vertical end. Saw the bedside table, like, right in front of her face. Saw the clock perched on top; 10:09 AM. Saw all the stuff in the boxes under the bed to her right — like, photo albums, old books, even a little bit of crochet. Saw the, uh, thing she saw. To her left. The thing she didn’t want Erika to see.
6. Gave it the sight test. Rubber circle. Little… yellowed, slightly torn bag connected to it.
7. Gave it the touch test. Brought it over to her. Latex. Not, uh, wet, on this side.
8. Gave it the smell test.
9. Didn’t give it the taste test. Kinda just put the condom under one of the boxes of books. They were large, brown — no words on the spine. Penny was kinda hoping that nobody’d move it for, uh, least a year. Maybe two.
10. Did a quick looksee ‘round the area for Erika’s thing. Could not see anything. Or like, couldn’t see anything that looked like a backpack.
11. Put her hands up onto the bed. Pushed her body up so that she was standing on her feet. Took, like, a couple seconds to make sure she wasn’t going to lose her balance. Tip over. Pour out.
12. Finished the mental sound check.
13. Called over to Erika. ”Doesn’t look like anything here.”