Survival Of The Fittest

And on Morning of Day Four she returned in glory.

Jesus took three. Guess she wasn't as good.

(Fey Zelenka Morrison back from the dead for good from Water is Alright in Tay)

'Course she had no water. Not anymore. She'd guzzled it all down those last two nights and days when it drew out on the edge of a knife and she was going fucking gonzo was what she was.

She'd left them all back 48 hours ago wanting to do something. Knowing what she was gonna do after that night in the tunnels. That last day out and about. Roaming looking for something.

Looking for something to take the edge off.

She'd shadowboxed with her bejewelled dukes against the ghost of a goat on the mountaintop and she'd awoken two hours ago not even knowing how she'd slept the night.

How many people were dead like now? Fucking fifty or so? Who gave a ripe shit, huh?

She'd wanted to be a revolutionary. She'd wanted to start a party.

Now she just chuckled. There was a shed here. Wouldn't be no booze round.

There were graves. She'd take it to 'em like a fistful of roses she would.

She slid down to the ground and crammed a fistful of snow in her mouth instead. That tasted good.

She waited for someone else to come.

She could admit, this was probably a bad idea.

One of her worst, quite possibly.

But...honestly?

Fuck. That. Goddamn. BITCH.

[[Cut to Jezzie Stark, the tri-dagger in her right hand, visibly angry.]]

Juanita, that fucking bitch! She pointed a knife at her like she was the crazy one, but then goes and kills that Eden girl? The girl who's all smiles, wants to be friends with everyone, so sweet she could rot your teeth out Eden? What fucking bullshit! Piece of shit hypocrite for accusing her of being more murder happy when she kills one of the people who wouldn't hurt a fly!

Now, did she kill people? Yeah, okay, she did, but she did it in self-defense! Steve would've totally tried to stab her if she didn't stab him first, and anyone that watched what happened with that Bill guy would know he was hunting for her! You want to tell her Eden wasn't the innocent party in that fight? Fat fucking chance!

Plus, she just spent a day all by herself in one of the houses, and nothing bad happened! No one came around, and because of that no one died! If she could be left alone she was fine, and if she was near sane people she was good, but she only killed when it was crazy dick heads around! How could she be found at fault for that?!

As Jezzie walked through the entrance of the graveyard, her mind continued to go over what had happened and what would happen. She didn't know for sure whether or not Juanita would still be at this church, but it was her best chance at finding the girl. She didn't plan to kill this time, partially to show she was better than the other girl when it came to morals, and partially because she had taken that bath for a reason and she didn't want any blood on these nice clothes. Yes, she could easily wash anything off her light pink jacket she bought on sale, meaning it was only sixty dollars instead of a hundred and sixty dollars, but she didn't want to waste water as it was, and she just wanted to go in through a window, talk down to the bitch that thought she was better than her, and get out before anything bad could ha-oh, there was another person in this graveyard.

Jezzie paused mid-step as her eye met the sight of the other girl. A full foot taller than her, something she could notice despite the fact that she was sitting on the snow covered ground, seemingly shoveling some snow into her mouth.

Jezzie said nothing, not because she had nothing to say, but she had too much to say, and had to sift through it all, unsure what should be brought up first.

Snow was water right? It would save her. Fey sucked on it greedily, wriggling forward and leaving a slug trail behind her in the snow. She grabbed another fistful. She didn't need any more water bottles when she had snow. What a genius you were Fey, to figure that out. Drink up. Hell, just pack some snow in your empties and you didn't need to ever think that you'd dehydrate yourself to death out here, which would absolutely be the worst way to die. The Great Irish Water Famine of 2021.

To die alone in the ol' graveyard.

And the person came in. Eyes up, bitches.

Fey didn't know this girl. Vaguely recognized, maybe.

"Fuck you looking at?" she stuttered.

Fey didn't know this girl, and that was making this situation seem...

What? Even better? Even worse.

Because when you go two whole days and don't talk to a soul, and when you did have plans and even one great idea but knew full well that that shit was never gonna materialize by now, because when you're too goddamn dumb to know how to make a fire or not drink all your water, and when that one great idea was just as ass-backwards as the rest of you.

Even worse? Nah, even better.

Because when you think all that you've got to look forward to is that death and then some tiny-ass goblin girl come strolling in and you're not thinking about the rest anymore. And you find yourself trying to think less and less about what anyone else is going to think and about how dumb you are.

Oh no. Oh nonononononono. Worse was winning, cause her vision blurred and stung, and she shut her eyes trying to force that salt back through her eyeballs and it stung even more.

She opened and thought they were gone.

"I've had a shit couple of days here. You wanna... you wanna talk?"

She pivoted from her belly to her ass and folded up her knees.

Reasons Why Jezzie Stark Deserves Her Oscar Already: This Girl

What is she looking at? A fucking insane person, that's what. Laying on her stomach and eating snow like a God damn maniac. Like, she knew they had a limited amount of water, but four days was this girl's breaking point? Jezzie hadn't even gotten through all of her own water yet! Was she impatient and stupid enough to drink it all too quickly? Or maybe she was extremely desperate to make it last as long as possible?

Maybe she was better off not knowing. Dealing with crazy could make her crazy, and that was something she didn't need to risk. It was bad enough with retail madness, she did not want to factor in anything else.

Anyway, the point is Jezzie deserves an award for not stating all of these obvious facts. Instead she's keeping up the appearance of shock, using it to mask the immediate contempt she has over the situation. She just wanted to confront a hypocrite and she's getting pulled into more bullshit. Fan-fucking-tastic.

At least this one isn't immediately dangerous. Maybe this time she can avoid bloodshed? Maybe? Please?

"I...I guess."

Jezzie crouched, not wanting dirt or snow or potentially drool on her clothes - even if she could wash it off, blah blah blah, she already had that spiel - so she could be at eye level with the other girl.

"So...how bad for you?"

((Letitia May continued from Snatched Edges))

Letitia had noticed someone stepping into the Graveyard. She held her rifle close and tried to slowly sneak past the gate and into the area. She crouched low and hid behind a tombstone. Peering around, she could see two girls in the distance. She recognized both of them. Fey was a party girl who drinks her massive frame in liquor. The other was the beta popular girl whose name was too easy to make fun of, so Letitia wasn't going to bother being so rote about that.

Letitia had made her way towards the town following the announcement. Now that she had guaranteed her ticket back home if she was the last one, it was time for her to play the long game. People like Darryl and Joan thought she was crazy for trying to get water bottles, but now she just had to find a succession of safe areas to hide out in case she was forced out. She could make her way to some of the shelters in town, but if there were some girls nearby who didn't look like they had anything better than her fuck-off rifle, she could surely eke out some more supplies.

Granted, Letitia could see Fey was eating snow, so that girl probably wouldn't have much to offer. At the very least, she might be so far gone it would be easy to rob her.

Until she was ready to emerge, Letitia was content to remain hidden behind a tombstone and observing the girls.

"Well... how bad."

How bad?

"Everyone is fucking dead that's pretty bad."

How bad?

"Haven't seen anyone in two fucking whole days. Spent the whole time planning, and chickening out."

It felt at least good to talk.

"I always wanted to do something. So what I wanted, what I wanted, what I wanted..."

And Fey started to laugh.

"I just wanted to have a fucking party."

Yeah.

"I had this idea, you see. I had this fucking idea that I could go around the whole island and like put up posters or something, and have a real fucking rebellion fuck-you terrorist party going on. Get everyone. Get most of them. Get fucking loaded. Have a big goddamn bonfire or something all night long. WOuld've been awesome. Would've been great."

Fey had the idea to go down in history, and instead she got this.

"But I couldn't put it all together."

She got up and sullenly strolled around a few steps.

"So then I planned to kill myself again. Nope, don't think I can do that either. So I drank all my water and ate almost all my stuff, because I'm a fucking moron and I always have been and how've you been?"

And Fey found she wasn't really caring what the new girl would think.

She kicked a bit of snow around and wandered a few more steps into the graveyard, glancing back to see what other girl would do.

Oh this girl was fucking losing it!

You know. If she even had it to begin with.

She was tempted to comment that not seeing anyone for two days sounded incredibly nice - Heavenly when compared to her own experiences - but she could recognize someone who wanted to just complain, not hear solutions or comforting words. Hell, she could relate to it. The first therapy or psychologist or whatever appointment Jezzie had once she was out of here was absolutely going to be just her complaining about everything that happened here, with the doctor getting a word in maybe every quarter of an hour, if they were lucky.

Similar feelings about how shitty the situation was aside, though? This was probably the stupidest plan she had heard yet.

A party? Seriously? Wanting to give a middle finger to the terrorists she could get, but that was shooting for the moon and expecting the bullet to get out of the troposphere, let alone touch the stratosphere. The girl was better off burning down one of the bigger buildings if she wanted to piss off the fuckers running this. Yeah, it would probably get her killed, but if the party went the way she probably wanted - everyone joining and no one killing - at least it wouldn't take anyone else out with her.

But, as usual, she was a professional. Not a word of this left Jezzie's lips. No sign on her face of her frustration. Not even when the other girl stood did she visibly tense - nothing that her one hundred and thirty dollar faux leather skirt couldn't hide, anyway.

Instead, the face of wide-eyed, slowly dulling shock stayed exactly where she had plastered it on. Hell, the kick managed to enhance it.

"That...that does sound pretty shitty. I'm sorry."

Jezzie gulped down some air. She told herself it was a good way to sell the nervous energy.

"Not the best here, either. Met people, but most of them were either crazy, trying to kill, or both, so..."

A slight shrug.

"About what you expect, I guess, for this place."

Letitia listened carefully to the girls as they spoke. Jesus, Fey was really losing it. Letitia knew that not everyone would be able to carry themselves as gracefully as she had, but seeing someone unravel like a sweater caught on a nail sticking out of a wall was quite a sight.

“Okay, gotta nail down therapy when I get home,” she muttered to herself.

Letitia barely focused on the other girl as she tried to move carefully to another nearby grave. She was sure she could be quiet enough to not gain their attention. If she was going to sneak up on them, she had to be careful.

She just wish snow could be quieter than it was when a person walked across it.

"I think it's about what we all expect, huh?" Fey replied.

This girl wasn't too bad, really. She agreed with Fey, at least.

Or was that suspicious in and of itself?

She wandered in a loose circle as she ranted. Don't pay no attention to anything else. Kicked up some more snow as she went. The raving warmed her up at least.

"We expect things to suck, and then we just let it happen. Where are the fucking PROTESTS, bro? Where are the riots, where are the peaceful sit-ins, THAT'S why I wanted to have a fucking party, you know? Why the FUCK do people still go around killing what is this like the fifth, tenth time this's happened, I don't even know!"

And silence. Fey stared at the other girl. Let that hang out.

Fey's bag was just lying there now. Yeah, right out in the open. Did she even really need it? Had her hands, had her gloves. Could suck on snow all day till the cows came home.

She ignored everything else.

"I'm starting to get... conspiratorial," she finally said. "There's something in the water. Thinking it's the Jews behind all this controlling our minds, who fucking knows? Maybe everyone going apeshit crazy down the rabbit hole has something to it. Whaddaya think about that?"

Then, almost as a disclaimer. Sullenly.

"But I ain't killing shit. Nah."

...you know those moments when you think to yourself 'Things can't possibly get any worse' only for the world to seemingly take that as a challenge, and suddenly a bird shits on your head or your only warning is a crack of thunder before you get soaked by rain? You know those moments?

This was one of those moments, it seemed.

She can deal with bullshit, honestly she could. She worked at a grocery store during the pandemic, you either grow a tolerance for crap or drown in the dumb shit that spews out of some peoples' mouths. She being Jezzie God Damn Stark, of course was the former. She could deal with practically anything thrown at her.

But on Survival of the Fittest, four days in, God knows how many of their classmates dead, several attempts on her life under her belt, and now hearing this girl is coming up with conspiracy theories about how the Jews were behind this and they put something in the water to make people bloodthirsty or something?

She needed to hit the exit button on this conversation as soon as fucking possible, before someone saw this and thought she agreed with any of this nonsense.

"I think...I respect you for not planning on killing people." Jezzie said, pasting a small smile on her lips. "That's a really brave plan, for a situation like this."

Best ways to lie to people - don't, just tell the truth in a way that they like. It genuinely is brave to have a plan like that - it's just also genuinely stupid and almost definitely going to get the other girl killed.

"I wish you good luck with it, but...I think I have to go my own way."

Jezzie let the smile fall as her gaze turned to the ground.

"I kinda wanna do things on my own, if that makes sense. Figure out what I really want to do with my life."

She took steps to leave this place of death. Not too fast to make her seem desperate to escape, not too slow to seem like she was reluctant to abandon the other girl.

"But...if it means anything? I'm rooting for you."

'To get shot before you make an even bigger fool of yourself.'

Letitia was content to listen in and then wait for the right opportunity to rob them. However, Fey and Cummie were somehow becoming almost a parody of themselves. She could assume that, if she was watching this in a movie or TV show, Letitia would maybe be swept away by the situation and feel some empathy for the girls. However, Fey had to open her dumb mouth and stay dumb shit, to which the other girl said she was rooting for her.

That was enough for her. She made sure the gun was cocked and loaded, then quickly stood up and pointed it at both of them.

"Seriously, bitch?" she said to Jezzie. "You're rooting for the girl who just said anti-semetic shit?"

She glared at the two of them.

"I'm disappointed in you."

((skipping posting order to get to an important thread))

For a moment, it felt like Jezzie’s heart stopped.

This…this was bad. Like, really bad. Extremely bad. She wanted to avoid getting in a fight, said stupid shit to do so, and now she had a gun pointed at her for it.

Worse, it was Letitia holding the gun. Popular Letitia. Mean Letitia. Willing to pull the trigger Letitia. Had every fucking right to call this shit out Letitia.

One part of her was telling her to do damage control. Specifically by throwing the other girl under the bus. It was easy. Say the obvious - the bitch was crazy, she was saying whatever she could to keep things from getting violent. It was simple. With her acting skill, it was a cake walk.

But another part was screaming at her to leave. Run. Just get out before she has the time to take a good shot. Letitia may destroy her reputation to whoever is willing to hear her, but it won’t mean shit if there’s a bullet in her lung.

Two options. Let her reputation burn with Letitia and whoever is willing to listen to her, or stay and explain, risking the other girl deciding it was every girl for herself and putting her down like Old Yeller.

Jezzie’s legs made the decision for her.

She turned to the gate, breaking into a sprint. Letitia wasn’t a gun person, she was a fashion person. Yeah, she shot Joan according to the announcements, but God knows how she managed to - it wasn’t even instant if she remembered right! She couldn’t be good enough to hit a mo-shit.

She tripped. She fucking tripped, like a fucking scream queen running from the killer, of all the fucking shitty things to happen, she trips, and even if it wasn’t a full on trip, it could still be enough to-

The crack of a gunshot broke her train of thought.

A bullet whizzed by, and she couldn’t tell if it was overhead, beside her, or what, but she knew one thing.

There wasn’t going to be a second one.

The double dose of adrenaline probably made Jezzie quicker, getting back to her feet and running for her life out and away from this land of the dead.

[[Exit Jezzie Stark, sprinting off camera, not looking back for even a moment.]]

And bam! Fey finished up and stared the other girl right in the peepers.

And then realized what she'd said.

Oh shit. Did that sound bad?

That probably sounded bad.

And despite the fucking weather Fey was feeling that cold sweat breaking out on her forehead. It pinpricked her skin, traveled down and churned her gut and her groin.

Staredown contest. Other girl looked at Fey like she'd had an extra head. An extra-secret alien shapeshifter Jew head for all she probably thought Fey thought, ha-ha!

"Hey..."

Hey what?

Hey guess what Fey you're gonna be broadcast to the world and you said something stupid and now it's cancellation time for you. This is gonna be on fucking ShitWhitePeopleSayTikTokReddit distilled down to a fucking 7 second bite anytime knew all she said it's all they'd know and she was then gonna get blown away holy shit by how apropos Leticia the black chick who just turned up with a gun and pointed it at the two of them and called her out.

Fey hadn't even said shit about black people come the fuck on! Her fucking stepfamily was black!

Leticia May was fucking nuts. Fey vaguely remembered an announcement. She'd killed someone right?

She'd killed someone and now she was gonna kill Fey. Oh and other girl.

Other girl took off. Fey was left alone.

"Whacha fuck you want?!?" she scoffed. OK. She squealed.

"I'm not a fucking anti-semite! It was a fucking joke!"

Stop.

"...Fucking black chicks..."

Oh shit.

...Was that loud enough to be picked up?

Before Letitia could say anything, one of the girls decided to just get the hell out of there. Letitia followed the sight of the girl and tried to shoot her. She unfortunately missed, as the girl had stumbled at the right moment. The girl was soon gone, so she turned back and saw the Qanon girl was still around.

Letitia pulled the lever to move the next bullet up, then aimed at her. Fey tried to defend her recent statement, not that Letitia actually cared. Yeah, being an anti-semite was a terrible thing and Letitia herself would admit she had nothing wrong with Jewish people, but it hardly mattered to the grand situation.

But then Fey made a comment about black chicks, and at that point Letitia realized she was done with this bitch.

"Wow," Letitia said, stretching out the vowel. "Is that what you want on your tombstone? 'Fucking black chicks?'"

Letitia moved closer to Fey.

"I mean, good thing we're already in a cemetery. You can just jump right into a hole since you've already dug yourself six feet down."

She glared at Fey. She wasn't going to affirm this girl's already negative opinion on black women by going into a murderous rage, but the least she could do was make life worse for her.

"Your bag. Toss it over."

When Fey'd come here, she'd been waiting for someone to show up. Didn't know what she'd do when she did. She was just coming out of that haze that comes from that return from the mists. Frankly, she thought the first person who showed up would be just killing her and putting her out of everyone's misery.

But then when the girl she still didn't know did turn up it didn't quite happen that way. Fey had half an idea that they could talk. Fey had half a brain that maybe she wasn't going totally crazy. Cause she wasn't. Tried to let the other girl in a bit, even. Realize just what was going on here. What this whole Survival of the Fittest was all about.

Didn't happen but worth a shot.

Cause the other girl was already about taking off when Leticia May showed up and guess Fey maybe she got her wish.

She at least got some god-given proof what it really really was all about.

It was all about what Fey was really raging about back in the past.

What she was really pissed at.

That this world was fucked. Both ways. Both ends. The proof?

"You kiddin me?"

Leticia was pointing the gun. Demanding Fey's bag. Making these fucking accusations on her. Fey makes one fucking statement and THIS is how it turns out? From this girl? Some rich-ass chickie who never lifted a finger for anyone?

"You kidding me? You fucking killed someone I heard it on the announcements dude! You just tried to shoot that chick!"

Prove it. Proveitproveitproveit.

"I went and marched with BLM you've never done shit you killed someone you want my bag it's over there you go pick it up for all I give a shit!"