Survival Of The Fittest

The night had not been kind to Bill. His eyes struggled to close and, at the same time, were a struggle to open. His bag was beside him as he leaned into the wall, his legs bunched up and his arms around them, resting his head on his knees.

He had managed to find this building not far from where he had started. With Spike dead, Bill retraced their steps back here. He saw no point in getting to the town now that he was alone. Bill marched through the cold and snow and used the backdoor into this place. From what little sight he had, he could gleam that it was a kitchen of sorts.

What Bill wanted was to lie down for a bit and relax, but he couldn't do that cause every time he closed his eyes, he could see it again. Spike, who laid there breathing his last; Donovan, who demanded his stuff and Jacob, who ran away.

Instead, he settled for sitting down against the wall.

He rubbed his eyes into his knees, shaking his head in the process. It hurt somewhat, but it's what he deserved, what they all deserved after the whole debacle at the beach. Jacob, Donovan, and him. He should have just walked, and he shouldn't have taken the bait from Jacob; because of that, Spike was dead, and someone else had the spoils.

The announcements had come on, and Bill paid half a mind to them. Only noting the number of people that had decided to kill and along with Spike, Constance was also dead. Another one that he could have done something about, but he didn't.

Bill couldn't do anything right. He wasn't smart enough for this nor charismatic enough. Bill had no idea what to do or who to find. All he had was the knife they had given him, and he wasn't exactly a physical specimen to use it.

There was only one person he could dream of using it on, and it was a thought that shook him to his core. But it kept coming back to Jacob. Jacob, whose whole thing was being an ass to people, and now, it had gotten someone killed. He had to be stopped, even if it was only a weakling like Bill who was going for it.

...

Was that his motivation now? Kill Jacob? Or stab him and leave him in the cold the same way he did Spike? Is this really what he wanted to be? What would his parents think seeing him like this?

Bill hoped that they weren't watching or any of his siblings. They were better off forgetting about him and moving on because all he could be here was disappointment.

That wasn’t completely true, but could you fucking blame her for these kinds of feelings.

[[Fade in on Jezzie Stark, visibly irritated, laying on several chairs brought side by side.]]

Why. Why. Why the FUCK did they say it like that?!

Forty times?! Forty fucking times?! Did she even actually stab him that much, or were they just making shit up!? Granted, she hadn’t been counting when she was ending someone else’s life, but were they!? Were they seriously fucked in the head enough that…

Jezzie lost her fire for a moment as she realized, yes, the terrorists that abducted and killed hundreds of teenagers before her were, indeed, likely to be fucked in the head enough that they would go back and count.

Still. Why did they have to say it like that for her?! There wasn’t any mention of Janice slitting Tana’s throat in her sleep! Why was she targeted like that!?

And what was she expected to say to everyone else here? That he ran into her knife? That he ran into her knife forty times?! That hadn’t even worked in Chicago, how the fuck did they expect her to work with it!?!?

Seriously, as if her night sleeping on a bunch of chairs just to get something cushioned wasn’t shitty enough, they had to add this crap onto it?! What, were the terrorists fanboys of Steven’s Youtube channel or something!? Just…FUCK!

Jezzie stopped her internal monologue for a moment. She took in a breath. Let it out slowly. Made her brain think a bit.

This wasn’t the end of the world. She could still make this work. Explain it was self-defense, because it still was. Maybe just…exaggerate, a little bit. Steve still tried to kill her, just came a little closer than she would’ve liked. And after that, she was so scared she just had to make sure he was dead, so he couldn’t try again.

Was it maybe not the best look? Possibly. But it was the best she could come up with to reason with the crazy people on this island.

Her future fans would understand. Survival of the Fittest made people desperate. She had to do it to survive. They would understand.

She’d make people understand.

And that was all there was to it.

Bill decided to get up on his feet, he had spent several hours seated like this, and it had started to make his ass hurt. With a weary sigh, he hauled himself up onto his feet and took some unsteady steps forward. Unfortunately, too unsteady, and Bill careened into the nearby stove where he had left his knife on top.

It fell off the stove and hit the ground with a clang. Bill held onto the stove for dear life for a second before realizing how silly he was being and pushed himself off it. He had been lucky that these things couldn’t be turned on, or his hands would have been toast.

He did some leg stretches using the stove for support; his legs were stiff, and his knees were very stiff due to the posture he had taken earlier. He had been lucky no one else was around, or…well.

It was not worth thinking about.

She could do it. She could handle things. She was completely in control-

Something fell.

Something metal.

Metal things didn’t just fall on their own. Especially if there was a sound of something crashing into another thing right beforehand.

Someone else was here.

And she was bloody and vulnerable.

What thoughts she had were suddenly thrown to the side as she decided she wasn’t ready for her next conversation.

Jezzie, too, went to the side, as she held her bag close with her left arm, knife clutched in her right fist, and rolled off the set of chairs she had been laying on, and right under a table.

Hiding worked for her once. She could try it again, couldn’t she?

Though, maybe she should’ve thought about that before she landed, a noticeable thump sounding out through the room.

Bill was busy doing some stretches to deal with the stiffness in his legs and knees, but his entire body stiffened when he heard the thump in the room over. He held his breath as he slowly and carefully knelt down, holding his left hand on the stove while reaching down with his right for the knife.

What was that sound? Did something hit the floor? Was it in response to his knife?

...

Was it Jacob?

His eyes burrowed at the other door. The one he hadn’t gone through. Someone was in there, someone he had no idea was there earlier. Sweat beaded down the side of his face as he made his way over to the door, right hand tightening around the handle of his knife as his left reached over to the door and pushed it open.

Her thoughts were going a million miles a second as the world ticked by around her.

Jezzie was still vulnerable right now. Even with the knife in her hand, she was hiding under a table, basically waiting for it to get thrown aside and to end up stabbed or shot in the back.

Maybe she could avoid that. Try to talk with whoever was there. Reach some sort of peace. But a good number of classmates had already proven they were below such concepts.

And then you get to factor in the announcements, and shit was even more fucked. She'd been labeled as a murderer. Not just that-a murderer that stabbed a boy forty times. Would this person even want to hear an explanation? Or would they just take one look at her, recognize her, and immediately go for the kill?

There were variables she couldn't immediately figure out in this equation, and she didn't have the time to risk further speculation.

As the sound of a door opening filled the air, Jezzie slowly tried to shift her position, making sure to keep quiet as she pushed her midsection off the ground, and brought her left knee forward.

Maybe she looked stupid, ready to crawl like that. But if it kept her heart beating, she wasn't about to complain.

The door was slowly opened as a figure walked through, something clutched in his right hand as they stood there for a bit. Tired eyes tried to look around; a few blinked, and a left arm reached up to wipe at said eyes to help with this task.

Soon, they walked away from the door into the room. Leaving the door to swing back in place.

His left hand errantly touched table surfaces as he walked through the room, tiredly looking around the room and towards the floor for anything that could have fallen down. At one point, he bumped into a chair with his right foot causing a sharp sound to echo through the room.

"Shit." He muttered as his eyes flickered at the chair; he pushed it away harshly with his foot before getting back to his search.

There was a sound in this room that he was sure he did not imagine. He had to find it; he had to be sure that it was safe.

The guy was skulking around the room.

He was searching. For her.

And that was what it took to confirm things for her. If he'd just left, she could maybe believe things could be okay. Or if he just hadn't come into the dining area at all, she could assume he would leave her alone.

But he was searching. He wanted to find her. And he wasn't even trying to say something to make it sound innocent. No reassurances that he didn't mean harm. Not asking for her to come out on her own. Not even saying his name.

Would any of that actually make her feel better? Not really, if she was being honest. But it would at least be him trying, no matter how little it would genuinely mean to her.

Whatever the case, the silence during this game of hide-and-seek put her on edge. It only confirmed what she needed to do.

During the first screech of the chair's sudden movement, Jezzie shifted forward, crouched under the edge of a table.

During the second screech is when Jezzie ran for it.

Jezzie wasn't the fastest person in the world, but in that moment she felt like she was method acting for the Flash as she sped through the doors to the kitchen.

The doors made a sound as she passed through them. One that the boy would definitely notice.

The question was whether or not he would follow.

Bill's head whipped around as the door swung, the briefest view of someone else there before it closed. Wide, awake eyes now stared at the door.

This confirmed he was not alone in this place, but what else? Friendly? Probably not if they were hiding, right? Was this person messing with him? Was it possible that it was...?

Bill quickly walked to the door, his right hand gripped as tightly as it could onto his weapon. He was not sure if he was ready to use it, but he'd seen what giving the benefit of the doubt gets people here, and he was not about to make that mistake.

He took a deep breath and went through the door.

Bill wouldn't see anyone as he walked through the swinging door.

Bill would find the person another way, once he was all the way through the doorway.

Hard to miss the feeling of a knife being stabbed into one's back, as Jezzie chose this time to strike.

Bill thought he had been ready. He had seen what people were willing to do around here for anything, he had his knife out, and a part of him was willing to use it.

But that was not the case.

Bill's breath was caught in his throat as a shooting pain echoed from his back the minute he entered the kitchen. If the notion that someone else was here had not been enough to wake him up from his tiredness, then this would have.

He could only grunt as the pair tumbled to the floor, whoever's knife jaggedly twisting in his back; his knife was dropped to the floor. He tried to reach around, but weight pinned his arms down as the knife went in and out.

Again and again.

He screamed as loudly as he could. It was hoarse like he had been eating rocks beforehand. He could hear something in-between stabbings, but he could not make out what it was through his own screams and the banging inside his head. It did not take long for that scream to turn weaker and eventually to gurgling as spit and blood made their way through his throat.

Tears ran down his face and hit the floor; his head was the only part of him that could move at this point. It could only flop uselessly towards the ground, bits of the pain of his own doing as the stabber continued to work before, eventually slowing down.

Soon, the stabbing would end as Bill's blood emptied out over the floor from his wounds and his mouth, a mixture of it and spittle. Wide eyes with bags underneath stared out to the side, bits of bruising across his face. Last few gurgles before the end.

S041 - William "Bill" Taylor: deceased

Jezzie wasn't usually one to have a repeat performance, but she wasn't sure what else to do at this point.

He had been searching for her. He had wanted to find her. If he had found her, she was almost certain he would've tried to kill her.

Even when she ran through the doors, he hadn't stopped. He kept following, kept looking. If he hadn't followed her through those doors he would've been okay-he could've just walked out of the building and they both could've lived!

But instead. He followed. And that meant it was either going to be him or her.

And Jezzie still refused to let it be her.

The first strike took them both to the ground because Jezzie jumped when stabbing at him. He was so tall-maybe a full foot taller than her-could strangled her and not break a sweat. Stabbing like normal might not have been enough. She needed to take him down.

And after that, it was simple. The same as it was for Steve. Stab until he stopped moving. Simple. It should be simple.

But he screamed.

He screamed and he screamed and he screamed. Even as Jezzie kept stabbing, the screaming didn't stop.

"Shut up."

He screamed.

"I said shut up!"

He still screamed.

"I SAID SHUT UP!"

And it final started to get quieter. Screaming replaced with chocking noises. A struggle to continue breathing.

It didn't make her stop.

Jezzie stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.

Fate wanted an encore, and it would get it.

Jezzie only stopped when she thought he stopped breathing. She'd been slowing down at that point anyway. Even if he wasn't dead yet, it wouldn't be long.

He wasn't Micheal. He wasn't Jason. Not Freddy. Not even a Bubba.

He let out some more noise. Death rattle, maybe?

It didn't matter. It was over.

She was alive. She was alive because she fought for it, and she refused to lose.

He was dead. He was dead because he couldn't just leave her alone, too focused on trying to kill her probably.

He was dead and it was his fault. She was alive because she refused to be his victim.

That was all there was to it.

[[Fade out on Jezzie Stark as she breathes heavily, her gaze shifting off of her victim, and onto his knife-her knife.]]