Survival Of The Fittest

She saw red.

Everything was red. From the sky, to the grass under her feet, to the trees that surrounded her, and even the bushes next to them. All she could see was shades of red, with the only outlier being, well, herself.

She didn’t remember how she got here. She didn’t remember much of anything before here. She knew she existed before being here, but she didn’t know much else, other than some basic things. She thought about them as she started walking.

Her name was Tana, though her full name was Tristana Rosario Blanco Osuna. She lived in a town, smaller than a city, that was famous. She liked spooky things, like ghosts and monsters. She worked at a place, she couldn’t remember what kind though. Was it a gift shop, or some museum of local history? Oh, the latter! Definitely the latter, because that was why the town was famous! Some historical thing-something spooky, and that’s why she worked there, something about ghosts or-WITCHES! The town was famous for witches! She worked in a museum that told people about that! She lived a life she loved with her mom and her dad and…

Tana stopped in her tracks. Right. Just them, had been just them for a while now. There had been Tío Pedro and Abuelo Diego, but they had died years and years ago. They were probably ghosts now, but still, with how long ago she’d last seen them, she missed them. She missed their faces. She missed their voices. She missed Pedro’s penchant for going on rants about ghost shows and the way Abuelo always smelled like smoke and…

And…it was a lot like the smell Tana could sniff right now…

Without a second thought, Tana ran. Following the scent. Maybe it was wrong, maybe it was something or someone different, but if there was a chance, just the smallest possibility-

She moved a crimson bush to the side, and she saw them. Just as they were the last time. Not a speck of injury on Pedro, not so much as a labored breath coming from Diego.

For a moment, they all just stared. No one able to say a word at the sight before them. Then, one broke the silence.

In a voice she hadn’t heard directly in years, Diego spoke.

“Tana? Is…is it really y-”

---

Pain.

That was the first thing that registered in Tana’s mind as her eyes shot open. Her neck hurt and it hurt bad.

It wasn’t the only thing to focus on, though. There was warmth as well. Really, really warm, and really, really sticky.

Warm and sticky and flowing and pain, pain, PAIN…

Her vision was blurring and her eyelids were starting to get heavy, but Tana could see one thing before the dark took over.

A figure was in front of her. Leaned over her, since she felt like she was laying down. Somewhere comfy. Comfy enough to die in, apparently.

They had blonde hair, and a bigger figure. Not big like her, big like athletic. Probably taller than her. Tanned skin and blue clothes.

That was all she could get as Tana couldn’t hold back her heavy, heavy eyelids any longer.

There were no extra lives for her. No resetting and restarting.

((S100 Janice Cresner: Start))

She didn't want Tana to wake up, it was supposed to be quick and painless. When Tana opened her eyes, Janice got scared, afraid of Tana somehow being able to hurt Janice or shame her for what she did. It was an irrational fear, because there was nothing Tana could do. She never had a chance.

Janice decided to put the crimson-red ulu knife into the left-hand pocket of her coat. Tana was dead, lying on the bed she never woke up from. It was an eerie sight. There she was, lying there on her bed she had been put on, the blood flowing from her neck unto the bedsheets. She looked so peaceful. If she did suffer, she didn't suffer for a long time. Sure, the cut could've been cleaner, but Janice didn't have the strength to cut through her spine.

She was still feeling weak and dizzy. Whatever drugs those bastards gave them, they were strong and she could still feel the effects. Despite the adrenaline she got from stealing a knife from a sleeping girl and diving a knife into the girl's neck, she felt like this all could be a dream. Maybe it was. Maybe she was still sleeping.

No. She was awake.

And others probably were awake as well. Janice looked around the room, wondering if anybody nearby could have witnessed the murder. It looked like she was on the second floor, but there could be others in the house. She should probably leave the crime scene. There was no point staying here. There was no point looking back, what's done is done. She had to ignore the feeling of guilt if she wants to survive this event.

Janice did Tana a favor, that's what happened. Tana died in peace. Tana doesn't have to suffer trying to compete with the others. How long would've Tana lasted, anyway? Probably not for much longer. It's Tana, after all. Tana was weak. She wouldn't have been able to deal with the stress. She would have cried. She would have suffered. She continued staring at Tana, almost hypnotised, it still felt unreal.

This could've been her in that place. Janice felt her goosebumps. Janice was lucky she happened to have woken up earlier than Tana. Would Tana have done the same thing? Maybe Janice would be dead right now if the biochemical processes inside her body would've acted differently. Janice was one of the lucky ones and she had to be grateful for that. Ironic, considering how unlucky she was with getting picked for SOTF and all.

Maybe Tana was going to kill her first. Maybe Tana would've grabbed the ulu knife herself and stabbed Janice on the spot and she'd be on the floor bleeding to death. Tana would've done the same thing if she saw Janice sleeping. Janice was too dangerous for Tana, Tana would've tried to kill her. Now that she thought about it, Tana's hobbies were quite the red flag, weren't they? She was probably a psycho anyway, she would've enjoyed this sick game. Tana would've loved to murder people.

She was overthinking. The scenarios she was imagining were not helpful at all. She would never know the answer to the question of what Tana would've done to her if she had woken up. Maybe it's for the better. She needs to turn off her brain. It doesn't matter.

She shouldn't think about Tana anymore. Ban Tana from her brain. Move on, move on quickly. She unfixed her vision from Tana to the rest of the room. Then, she decided to check out if other people have woken up yet. Maybe there were people in other rooms or the lower floor. She shouted through the door.

"Hello? Is there anybody here? I'm not playing the game."

She grabbed Tana's bag and slung it over her shoulder, carrying her own bag with both of her free hands. Janice has murdered a person and now her head hurt. Janice still felt the adrenaline of ending someone's life. Despite that, she still longed for a drag. Damn, what she'd give for a coffee right now.

Oh, like fuck was she was about to believe THAT SHIT.

[[Jezzie Stark, S104, begins the biggest show of her life]]

All Jezzie had wanted to do was go skiing, maybe impress some people with her skills or clothes, then go home. Yeah, maybe she had never actually skied before, but how hard could it have really been? Especially when you have two poles to help you steer! It would've been great, it could've been perfect even! And what happened instead?

She watched two of her teachers die and got put in Survival of the Fittest, AKA Murder Island.

Fuck-fuuuuuuuck, don't think about that, don't think about that. She had enough to deal with when staring through door slats at a murderer that could very well try to kill her too, she didn't have the luxury to grieve one of her favorite teachers getting his neck blown up by shit that was now on her and everyone else in this hell hole.

The knife in the bag wasn't that big, but it would be good enough. Just one good stab to the neck or maybe chest and it was bye bye Janice. The thought made her sick, but if it was that or ending up like that girl on the bed, she'd take getting some blood on her hands over ending up in a body bag.

So she stood silently, blade raised above her head, stock still but ready to strike.

But until then, unless she absolutely had to? Jezzie was not coming out of the god damn closet.

A distant echo of knocking.

"Friendly reminder to vote. Big Dick for president!"

A closer rumble of knocking.

"Friendly reminder to vote. Big Dick for president!"

Closer still, the sound of knocking.

"Friendly reminder to vote. Big Dick for president!"

- More like SaLAME Fox -

Salem heard a shout from the second floor of the neighboring house. He then promptly lost the game. Fuck.

"Is that you? Janice?" Salem knew as much as he had to the names of all the people who had or did attend local parties. Voices, faces, the occasional hazarded guess at a cup size if it was particularly impressive. Janice was pretty smart, he'd heard she was a possible in for MIT. That was why he had carefully avoided talking with her much the past few years. Smart people cramped his style. Especially himself, he was a particularly major cause of himself being uncool.

For all he knew he'd mistaken the voice anyways. He tried to divine his fate through the grime of the one window he could see from street level but it was too dark inside to make out anything, and the angle was all wrong. He took cheerful steps over to the next house, all the while aware that he'd shouted loud enough that every house on that street had some pin on his location, the full Google Maps satellite view of his plump ass. He occasionally glanced at the dark, lifeless facades of the other houses as he passed by. His easygoing smile was his riposte to a chill that hadn't left his spine since he'd woken, the permanent sense of foreboding and dread that kept his adrenaline right at the surface of his skin. Exhausting, really.

But he pushed open the unlocked door of the house he'd heard the voice emanate from with some amount of carelessness, the precise amount he preferred to use. The door swung open, gently slammed into a wall.

"You up there?" He peered up the stairwell. At the top of his duffel bag was the gun he was on the fence about using: if he'd need to, why he would need to, if he had used the correct mechanism to engage the safety, all unknowns. "It's Salem. What's this about a game?" His own smile echoed off the stripped to the bone walls of the house around him. "Rapper from the 90s, right?" Man he sounded like a bitch.

He began to climb the stairs at a casual pace. He was generally aware of the camera panning to follow his movements, hard to hear anything else in the silence between his attempts to hear himself except for that persistent mechanical whirr. He hoped it was getting his good side before it was too much bloodied and or dead-ed.

Nobody responded. Coast clear. She could escape now.

But then someone did respond. They recognised her voice, but she didn't recognise theirs. Who could it be? Their identity was a mystery until the intruder made himself know by name. Salem? Did she know a Salem?

Oh right, Salem. That Salem.

Okay, fine. She could deal with this, she'd come downstairs and-

She heard footsteps coming up.

Wait, he's going upstairs. That wasn't good.

"Wait! Don't come in," she said in a panic. She searched for a way to lock the door, but there wasn't a way.

"I'm changing!"

To be fair, changing her clothes would've been a good idea. She looked down to look at her coat and there were some blood stains from the mess Tana's neck made. She could probably wash it off, if she'd find water. The coat wasn't super bloodied or anything. But it didn't look natural either.

If she remembered correctly, there was a spare windbreaker in her bag. She didn't find a weapon for herself, just some equipment she had assumed everyone has received, which seemed pretty weird and unfair to her. Maybe they did a mistake. Wouldn't surprise her, considering they had abducted hundreds of people. Maybe they did run out of weapons.

She uncoated herself and stuck the coat into her bag, bringing out the windbreaker.

...what. The absolute FUCK. Was he doing?

So close-so close to Janice leaving and having a chance to get the Hell out and find someone that isn't a psycho killer. Only for someone to answer the murderer's shouting. Salem Fox, the boy with the same name as their town and who probably should've stayed there, if this situation was saying anything about his survival instincts.

And god, he was coming upstairs?! How the fuck was she supposed to handle this shit!? Because she couldn't just sit around, wait for Salem to get his throat sliced open, and leave once Janice thought the coast was clear? It may've been the easy option, but it was just as much the messed up option. Jezzie had already seen three people die now, a fourth was not needed.

Her heart felt like it beat like a drum when Janice said she was changing. The knife stayed above her head, prepared to come down if the blonde decided it was a good idea to look around the house for spare clothes.

As terrifying as it was, it may at least give her one opportunity. And like Hell was she about to throw away anything good that could happen to her right now.

"Ah yeah, no worries then."

Salem froze in place, half jog for a moment in time before he dropped the act. He glanced up and backwards at the camera in a cartoonish instant, winked and pointed a finger at the spot under which was approximately two pounds (heavy for his noodle girl arms) worth of firepower that was probably going to accidentally discharge into his stomach. Brought the finger to his lips. Shhh. He probably wasn't going to use it. On the fence about that, really.

It was a long story, but told short, he was pretty sure it wasn't inherently wrong to murder someone, not anymore it wasn't. Just depended on the circumstances. And his mood. And his ability to stomach the thought. Putting a round through the door he was a few steps shy of barging through didn't exactly sit easy in his gut- Taco Bell was a more familiar and sedate comfort even when it went out at a faster speed than it went in.

What was still wrong regardless of being this far away from society for some indiscernible reason (what had happened to global satellites? Google was probably sending one of their street view cars down the street outside that very moment and still nobody was finding and saving them) was that barging in on someone without consent was just wrong. He waited, opting out of further dumbass small talk as he considered what happened when that door opened.

Well okay, a little more. He did have a reputation of idiocy to uphold.

"So... death island. That's fun. Got any killing plans for later? Maybe we could make it a double date?"

She slung the clean windbreaker over her shoulders. It was still cold outside judging by looking outside the window. She decided to take out the bloodied ulu knife out of her ruined coat and place it inside the windbreaker, just in case Salem tried anything funny. Speaking of, Salem was making very weird comments that made her very worried for her own safety. Killing plans, double date.

"Can you please wait downstairs? I'll come down in a couple of minutes. Guard the entrance for me, would you?"

She considered saying something like that she was naked, but thought that would've been a very dumb thing to say, especially if he intended to kill someone who was unarmed. She needed to buy time somehow. Chair. She needed a chair to lock the door.

"We can talk later. Just, just give me a couple of minutes. I need to change my clothes. When I woke up, I...I...pee-...it's embarassing. Don't tell anyone, okay?"

God, that was stupid. Salem will probably find this very amusing. Just to be safe, she locked the door with a chair.

Fuck, how could she get out of here? She almost considered jumping from the window, but breaking her legs or arms would definitely mean that she'd die on this island, she needed to be uninjured to have a chance of surviving.

Then, there was the option of hiding the corpse.

There was a bathroom. She could hide her in the bathtub. But then, she'd have to drag the corpse across the room and it'd bloody the floor. Plus, Salem could still just go in the bathroom and find Tana.

Then, her eyes found the perfect hiding spot.

Janice quickly changed jackets again, wearing the already bloodied coat once more. With it, she could catch the blood drops and dried blood from the wound. She went to the corpse that used to be Tana and dragged her to the nearest closet. Nothing dripped to the floor, the blood was dried, the neck stopped spilling blood long ago, only her coat got messier. She opened one door of the closet, let the corpse drop in and closed it again. Then she spectated the room again. Yeah, the bedsheets were still bloodied. She quickly rushed to remove the bedsheets from the mattress, opened the closet again, quickly threw the bedsheets and and bloodied pillows in and closed it for the second time.

The mattress still has blood spots. Fuck.

And it smelled weird. She opened the windows, hoping the smell of corpse would go away. To fasten the process, she took out her deodorant from her bag and sprayed the room with it. Yeah, that would work with her lie she told Salem.

Okay, okay, the mattress. What's she gonna do? She couldn't throw it inside the closet, or like outside the window. She wasn't even sure if she'd be able to carry it anywhere. She had to cover it somehow. There was a bed where she wake up from. She could use the sheets of that to cover it. Good idea.

She rushed to the secondary bedroom, quickly removed the bedsheets and the pillows. Covered the bloodied mattress with the clean bedsheets, and put the pillows on top of the bed.

Janice looked around the room.

Okay. Okay. It still smelled weird, but the crime scene looked cleaned up, for the most part. There might be some blood somewhere but it didn't look visible to Janice, and she didn't have time to check every corner of the bed for points of blood. Now all she had to do was to put her windbreaker on. The coat was useless now, it was so much covered in blood that running around with it would be like running around with a target on her back. So she discarded it the same way she discarded Tana. She opened the closet, threw the coat onto the bedsheets and Tana, and closed it for the final time.

Jesus Christ. He was either on something, being a dumbass on purpose, or he was officially the biggest idiot on this island. THIS WAS NOT TIME TO JOKE ABOUT SHIT, THEY ARE LITERALLY IN SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST, AND THREE PEOPLE WERE ALREADY DEAD! Yeah, Salem may not know about bed girl-TANA, her name is, er, was, Tana-but it still wasn't an excuse when FUCKING EVERYONE SAW THE TEACHERS DIE!

Janice was making up excuses to keep Salem out, asking for a guard while she changed and claiming she pissed herself. Jezzie didn't even hear the guy's response, her attention still on Janice, and heart sinking as the chair was moved to keep the door closed. Another obstacle, this one somehow feeling the most disparaging. At least before she had a chance of sneaking out when the other girl was distracted, and now that seemed like something too good to hope for. God, could things get any worse?

The murderer in the other room seemed to answer, as it felt like she looked straight at Jezzie the moment that thought went through her brain.

Any and all bravado she felt one second was gone the next as Janice started moving. Fuck, she was spotted, a killer saw her and knew she witnessed the murder, it was only day one here in Hell and she was going to have to fight for her life, weird pizza cutter knife versus tiny knife that weighed barely anything, how the FUCK was she supposed to get out of this-

FUCK SHE WAS BRINGING TANA JESUS H. CHRIST-

Jezzie threw herself against one of the closet walls as silently as she could. Not even a second later, one of the doors opened, and Tana got dropped right in front of her. The door closed again, but not for long as bedsheets and pillows soon followed, covering most of the girl's corpse. Then, after the longest pause between times the door was opened, it moved once again, and a blue, bloodied jacket joined the pile, before it was closed again.

Jezzie hadn't even paid any attention to where Janice's focus had been. Her eyes were stuck on what she could still see of the dead girl, that being her feet, a few fingers peaking out from under the bedsheet, and the blood. Blood soaking through the bedsheet, dripping from the body, creating a small puddle on the floor. Even if it wasn't anywhere close to her, she instinctively shifted her feet back, trying to keep the blood from touching her.

Her thoughts were no longer on Salem, trying to help him out from some kindness in her heart. He could get his stomach sliced open and she wouldn't even think about it.

Jezzie just thought about getting the FUCK out of this GOD DAMN HOUSE as soon as she could, SHE IS NOT SAYING SHIT TO THIS SOCIOPATHIC BITCH!

"TMI but I gotcha. I will be waiting... iffy on the guarding bit, but if you hear me dying then at least I tried and all that."

Salem took six steps down. The stairwell was fourteen in total, classic Americana two floor suburban low density monstrosity. He was banking a bit on it not being obvious how far down he'd gotten, if he was far away or not. Acoustics were one of those mileage may vary things where some people could hear what people the room over had for breakfast and others couldn't hear the broadside of a jet engine flying inches over their faces.

If he was wrong and she knew what he was up to, his backup plan was loaded and theoretically possible to shoot in a straight line.

He listened. Gentle thumping, irregular timbre, something heavy and slightly wet making it's way over carpet. Several possibilities here. Janice was hiding a particularly moist sack of flour as her assigned weapon, Janice was hiding a lover and had picked that particular time to make love in the most mid exhibitionist way possible, Janice was hiding a dead body. Tricky business, calculating the probabilities of each.

He waited for her slow progress with only mild heart arrhythmia as he dispassionately observed his own anxiety from an out of body distance. His hands fiddled with his jacket, a hand me down. From Mom, specifically, to be clear that his body was that rockin'. He'd walked enough that he had some buttoned up body heat to work with... but man, his hands were numb. Ash'd probably appreciate how ice cold they were but definitely not his favorite sensation. He was kind of preferring it in here where he could appreciate the slow motion return of circulation to his extremities, likely killer slowly hiding away her evidence accounted for.

When she was done he pretended to not be aware a moment longer, but before she could call out for him-

"I know you killed someone, by the way. Before you freak out I've got a proposition. I'm not opposed to helping you out."

Salem wasn't downstairs and knew exactly what was up. Luckily, as a followup he proposed an alliance. Still, given that he was not downstairs, guarding the door for intruders, he proves to not be trustworthy. If she wanted a partner in crime, Janice would want someone to guard the door when she told him to guard the door, instead of unreliably doing whatever Salem's planning to do.

"Why? What do you get out of it? Only one of us can make it out alive."

Since there was no point in hiding it anymore, she took out the bloodied ulu knife out of her windbreaker and held it tightly in her palms.

Motherfucking God damn it all to Hell, she's stuck in this closet, she's stuck in this closet with Tana, she's playing Seven Minutes In Heaven with a corpse, for the love of anything and everything holy, someone fucking get her out of this Hell hole OR SO HELP HER GOD-

Jezzie's train of thought got derailed as Salem's voice cut through the silence like a sword.

God, please tell her she misheard that.

Her eyes peered through the slats of the closet door again, spying the weird knife return to Janice's hands. The murdering girl only confirmed her fears as she asked why. Why would Salem help her. Why help when only one person was getting off this island alive.

Jezzie was in a house with a corpse and two psychos. One already with blood on her hands, the other just waiting for the right moment to dye his own scarlet, if he hadn't done so already.

She could only hold her breath as she stared. Watching. Waiting to see what happened next.

"Buys us time."

His soft voice came from the same general location, no closer, no further. Slow pauses, thinking over each sentence as if he actually needed to.

"Unless you've got three bodies in there you can make excuses if you've got someone like me backing you up, I think? One kill can be claimed accidental by eyewitnesses."

Smiling all the while. Sore jaw, shout outs to his brief foray into MLM (not the Herbalife variety) with Adam. Normally he didn't notice the fatigue when talking this much in ordinary life. The higher stakes must have made him more sensitive to the wear and tear. Shout outs to the corpse in that room, definitely worn and torn.

"Then you can do me the same favor when I get mine. Like, think about it you know? We both have a guaranteed kill, wait it out a while until there's less people. I tried to math it out, not my forte but, y'know."

He had done the math, much more in depth. His mind had been an .xlxs most that morning. Not macro enabled either, those were for plebs.

An early kill was tricky business in terms of attention it drew in an arbitrarily large population who would be likely one third to one fourth armed and ready to fight back. Another reason to stay his gun while he was still unsure if he wanted to ever use it.

"I don't think we have to trust each other. Just be useful to each other."

"Just one, Tristana."

It was true that she didn't need to trust him. She couldn't trust anybody here, everyone was in for their own survival. It was human. You wouldn't give up your own life so that some other sucker could live.

"Hmm. Okay, I like your proposal. Let's make a deal."

Janice liked the idea of covering up each other's murders. It wouldn't hurt to have a clear name. It's not like she needed to be trusted by anybody, anyone who would, would be a fool anyway, but it would be benificial to her to not be immediately shot at.

Another point she hadn't thought about was that she could just wait this out. It just had the problem that she wouldn't have any agency and could potentially just be a walking duck. She couldn't rely on others doing what she hoped for. She had to do it herself if she'd want things to happen her way. Janice walked to the door, and removed the chair.

"You can come in."

He was looking for a kill. He was looking for a kill and Jezzie was stuck in this closet. He was looking for a kill, Jezzie was stuck in this closet, and all she had was this tiny knife. He was looking for a kill, Jezzie was stuck in this closet, all she had was this tiny knife, and he could have a machine gun for all she knew.

And to top it all off, Janice agreed to work with Salem. Jezzie had a front row seat to a murderer and a murderer-to-be becoming BFFs.

Fuck, this was bad. This was so so so SO fucking bad.

She could've taken on Janice. Hell, maybe she could've taken on Salem, even with whatever the fuck his weapon was. But both of them at once?

She was fucked. If they realized she was here, she was absolutely fucked.

All Jezzie could do now was just pray. Pray that Salem would open the door and not want to see Tana. That Janice would follow him out and down the stairs. That the bloodthirsty duo would walk out of this house and Jezzie could run out five minutes later, once she finally felt certain they were both far enough away.

It was all she could do, and it made her want to scream.