Survival Of The Fittest

((Eve continued from 2 seconds ago))

The frozen earth on her cheeks, the weight of her bag pinning her down, the glaring beam of the flashlight that rolled a little ways away, and her own labored breaths were all that greeted Eve when she came to again. Everything ached. Even some stuff she didn't know could ache ached.

A groan escaped as she tried to assess if it was even worth it to attempt to get up. But eventually she found the strength and the courage, pushing herself up with one hand while the other shielded her eyes from the bright light until it was out of her direct sight.

It took a bit, but she managed to get up, the contents of her bag spilling out as it fell to the floor of the ditch. It hurt, but everything seemed like it was still working. Nothing seemed broken, thank God, or at least it didn't feel like the time she literally broke her forearm after a bad wipeout on her board.

"Why does this always fucking happen to me," she grumbled to herself under her breath as she wiped as much of the dirt and brown slush off her clothes. Her cardigan was probably ruined. Fuck. She really liked that one, too.

She looked at the bear skin clumped over in the dirt, staring at her. "This is your fault," she spat back at it.

After doing her best to clean up, she looked up at the wall of the cravasse. Looked pretty bad. She was like... 5'4" maybe? But this wall was at least two feet taller. Maybe three or four. She was never good at estimating height, though that was kinda besides the point right now!

She tried jumping, her arms fully extended out and grasping for something, anything. But it was no go other than pretty packed dirt. Maybe if she was fucking Yao Ming she could figure out something, but yeah no. She was truly, properly fucked.

She ran a hand through her hair, the unpleasant moisture shocking her scalp.

Fuck.

She stomped her foot into the ground with the back of her hands on her hips.

She was gonna have to call for help. Phone a friend. It was either that or die in a hole she didn't even have the autonomy to crawl into herself.

Fuck.

Another stomp, another kick of the dirt.

Okay. Okay. Stay calm. You had to stay calm.

First order of business, grab your flashlight and pack your things. Then call for help. Or call for help while packing your things. Whatever. Fuck it, do it live.

She shook her head and hustled over to where her flashlight laid on a pile of dirt, beckoning for her. She bent down to pick it up, only to see something equally interesting on the ground.

Something liquid glistened. Or was liquid at some point.

She pushed the stray hairs out of her face and bent down closer. She dipped her hands into the rust-colored stain and rubbed it between her fingers.

There was even more under the dirt. Like someone struck oil.

"Ho, don't do it," the bear skin called.

But she did. Luckily it was just some loose dirt. Must've fallen from the top of the hole here (okay also a side note, get the fuck out of this hole before it collapses entirely). It didn't take long for the dirt to part and reveal an eye-blindingly pink shirt, torn and caked in blood. It didn't take much longer for Eve to keep digging for the face of Steve (Extreme (Past Tense)).

And then Eve dropped the flashlight, screaming into the dead quiet of the cold night.

((John Kieran walked into a screaming match against nobody from [LINK TO BE POSTED]))

John was, to be quite honest, completely lost. It was pretty cold. Brrr. The shovel was cool though. Both in the good and bad way. Good because soldier shovels are very cool. Cool in the bad way because metal likes to conduct temperature. Brrr.

Night started to turn, and it started to get a bit colder. More brrr. And, as if this were some wendigo-ass place, like Until Dawn type shit, there was some crazy screams. Uhh...excuse me?

John, however, knew that wendigos didn't exist...and the scream sounded rather fucking human. Well. Guess we should probably investigate it. Maybe someone needs help? Don't tell me that this shit has already started up!

~~~

John approached around where they THOUGHT the scream came from. John gulped. Time to give away their position..

"Ay..YO!! Who screamed a few minutes ago?! Yaneed any help?" John shuddered, partially from cold and partially from fear.

Now...it's very scary.

Eve's hands wouldn't stop trembling. She couldn't stop staring at him- at the body partially dumped and buried here with her. At it.

She touched a corpse. She touched someone who was a person hours ago, but now they weren't anymore. Now they were just a thing.

"Told you," the bear skin mocked her.

No. She had to be sure. Maybe it was just an epic prank. Something to upload onto YouTube 7 years ago.

Eve shook her head and snatched the flashlight back in her hand. She bent over Steve and wiped more dirt off, exposing more of his neck. She passed her hand over him, dragging her fingers across for any signs of warmth, any sign of breathing, any sign of a pulse, anything.

But nothing. He might as well have been an ice carving, or a first aid dummy thrown into and abandoned in the fridge. He may not have been dead, but he wasn't alive anymore.

But something more important. He wasn't just not alive anymore. Someone had killed him. There were stab wounds everywhere, all over his torso. He wasn't just buried here.

Eve swivled in place and looked up, pointing the flashlight at the top of the earthen wall. Over Steve was an indentation where part of the wall looked like it gave away like someone scrambled to escape and took out the wall or kicked it in or something, right on top of him. She was still too short to reach it without risking breaking more of the wall. Maybe if she had a shovel or some- okay you know what maybe it wasn't that important because right now she was standing over someone who was fucking murdered so maybe she could be a little courteous.

She turned back around to Steve, even in death still wearing those dumb sunglasses and that cringe self-brand shit like he always did. "Who did this to you?" she asked him under her breath, her hand gently pressing on the tatters of his chest. Guess she'd get her answer if she made it to morning.

Someone called out from beyond the ditch, thank God. Eve couldn't tell from the voice who it was, but beggars couldn't be choosers right now. Worst case it was a murderer but also it wasn't the worst case when the alternative was to die from the cold here in a hole with a corpse anyway.

The beam of the flashlight pointed straight up into the air, the ray gyrating with Eve's wrists like she was trying to land an airplane. "I'm over here!" she called out to the stranger.

"Someone's dead, too!"

"Dead?! Fuck, don't tell me they started this shit already? Okay, just keep calm I'm coming over!"

Shit. Fuck. Damn. John was, for lack of better terms, absolutely fucking hornswoggled at the fact that the killings have started already. There are MURDERERS out here. A bullet has their name on it. They are going to fucking DIE, and it not even in an ironic way. Like, unironically die. Not funny at all.

John makes their way to the hole (officially rated 9.5/10 on Amazon, comes with free lightshow with purchase. The dead body that's included takes away that 0.5). Both the mind and the mouth agree on what to say next about this situation that Eve found themselves in.

"Jesus fucking Christ," they both say simultaneously.

"J-Just hold on. Let me..."

John stammers a bit, trying to find the best way to get this person out. They lay on the ground, moving an arm over the side of the hole. Maybe this person can pull their way up? If not, maybe the shovel will actually have a use other than [insert the many WW1-type-beat ways you can kill someone with a shovel].

The would-be rescuer stuck their hand over the side of the ditch, arm against the dirt wall, though Eve still couldn't really get a good look at them even with the flashlight in hand, pointed down so she didn't fucking blind them. At least even in the suppression of the dark she could make out that it wasn't Josh, and it wasn't those ACAB jackasses, so this was fine with her minus the being stuck in a hole situation. Or that she was trampling over Steve.

She reached up for the hand, but no go. The few inches credited by jumping wasn't even enough to just barely graze their fingers. She just wasn't tall enough.

"I'm sorry, it's too high."

Eve shook her head and stood back, drawing the flashlight up along the edge of the wall over to the suspicious indentation above Steve.

"Do you have a ladder or a shovel or something? I think the slope over here is low enough if you tried to dig it out."

A thin crackle came from behind her and suddenly stopped, on the steep side of the hole she fell over. She shoved the flashlight beam at part of the wall dropping pebbles of dirt into the hole on top of the bear skin.

"Maybe hurry."

"Yes, yes, right! Yes! I'll hurry! I have a shovel - I'll see if I can dig a way out for you!"

And John begins playing their favorite game - minecraft. They started to dig out a way for Eve, minecrafting the way further down for them.

"Digging as...fast as I can..!"

The dirt was slowly giving way, pieces of the ground coming out as John dug more and more towards Eve. This would probably take a hot minute...

"You're...okay...though....right?"

Talking between breaths is hard. Very hard, in fact. John simply focused on the digging.

Oh damn, they were really going to town. Dirt flew everywhere like a dust devil, some landing on top of Chillin' Steve and into the side of the ditch.

Was Eve doing okay? She really wasn't, but was she supposed to be truthful or was this like when the cashier at the 7-Eleven asked how you were doing and you just got text-message dumped by someone 10 minutes prior.

"...I don't know how to answer that."

Good enough.

She looked down at her hands, only now noticing how grubby they looked from the moist dirt. She rubbed her palms into each other to try and smack off the dirt before fixing her spilled bag and grabbing the bear skin.

The slope was really coming along. Maybe just a few more minutes and she'd be home free as long as this dude wasn't gonna try to pull a fast one.

"...Thank you, though. For asking." She stood still, keeping her arms crossed with flashlight and supplies in hand.

[Eden continued from Murphy's Law]

"Gratitude from your mouth, dear sister? That's a precious commodity."

The day had passed quickly, aimlessly. How else was time supposed to pass for Eden? He was no good at all without company. His weapon had been useless. Even his cruelty had been useless, wasted on a boy with his head so far up his ass, as Roberta put it, that if he were decapitated he would--

Point being, when Eden heard his sister's scream, he came running. He would know that scream anywhere--he had caused it, before. And, somehow, in all this, he had found that he missed hating his sister, and missed being hated by her. She'd said it, word for word--I hate you--and it had surprisingly stung, good. It was so much better than snarling at a boy with a gigantic head full of shit.

Eden pointed the light at his face, smiled broadly, before setting its beam on a merry dance to find his sister. There she was, stuck in a ditch. Insert your own joke here.

He looked at John. They really were trying their hardest here, bless them. Perhaps they even deserved Eve's gratitude.

"Not much I can do to help you dig my beloved sibling out of the ditch she's found herself in, but can I offer you a cheer in this trying time?"

"A cheer? I mean...yeah." They said, taking a second. Only a little more now. Just keep on digging. Just digging. Just keep digging.

Just keep digging digging digging, what do we do? We dig.

Dig.

Dig.

John was cold. This sucked. Everything sucked. I'm cold. How did this happen?

"Pffffft." Deflating, like a tired balloon. Muscles aching. Gotta do it!

"Wait, sibling?"

As if today couldn't get any fucking worse.

There was a pang of guilt in Eve's heart at that notion, that she wasn't happy to see her brother. But she wasn't. She scrunched her arms together tighter and hunched herself smaller, trying her best to not let Eden see how simultaneously irritated and sad her face was, though in hindsight what was really the difference between Murder Island and home in that regard? In any case, she'd let the sound of the earth mover moving earth in the quiet forest continue uninterrupted.

"Glad to know you'd leave me dead in a ditch, darling brother."

She let that one slip. The chnk-shhh of the shovel and dirt carried the rest for her.

Dying? "Dying?"

In a ditch?

"Sonuvabitch."

John didn't want to ask questions. Sibling drama was understandable, but leaving someone dead in a ditch? I mean, it would explain the fact that the other one wasn't too miffed about this whole ordeal. Huh. Maybe I should stick around the victim one. Would probably be fine. Right? Yeah I'm sure. Yeah. This other guy seems super sarcastic. Well...

"I'm..not going to ask."

"You shouldn't! No questions, just keep digging. Keep at it long enough, and I won't have to lift a finger to help her. Which I'd rather not, seeing as I'm the kind of guy who would leave his sister dead in a ditch, apparently."

There was a grim quality to the shit-eating grin he wore on his face. He knew he was fucking around, yes; he was in the mood for finding out. He would love it if John pushed the shovel into his hands, told him it was his turn. Go ahead. Do it. Let him show Eve what her sorry excuse for a sibling would do for her.

Eve had shrunk before the light, pulled away as if scalded. If he could focus the glare, intensify it, he would, until she turned around to look at him. She never had liked making eye contact with him. That was his fault, and he hated her for it.

He took shuffling steps towards the edge of the ditch, looked down, lowered his voice. "Nothing personal, of course. After all, Eve, would you not do the same, had it been you who had found me?"

Suddenly Eve snapped up and glared at Eden on the edge of the ditch with his shit-eating grin, and she howled at him like a wendigo. "Eden, can you not be like this for just two fucking seconds for once? I got fucking shot at this morning and nearly kidnapped, or do you not fucking care? You're such an ass." The acid from her words burned in the back of her throat.

John groaned, a bit annoyed already.

"Real happy fucking family." They'd mutter to themselves. "You don't got anywhere else to be?" They snapped at Eden. They'd sigh, regretting it a little.

John FINALLY fucking finished to the point where Eve could hop out of the ditch. Minecraft gameplay out.

"Okay! Can you try making your way out?" John looked down at Eve, trying to completely ignore Eden.

Eden turned away, the better to pretend the words hadn't stung. He was tempted to shout, Like I wasn't kidnapped too! Did you forget about that, or do you just not care?

Instead, his voice was soft. "No. I can't. You know that I can't."

Unfortunately for the both of them.

He shot a glance at John, and coughed.

"Sorry to involve you, by the way. But, you know, this really would have gone much better if you had made me dig her out the ditch, my dear."