Survival Of The Fittest

((Joshua James arrived from Where the Sidewalk Ends ))

Josh ran into the research station where he had started but this time he took a different path. According to his map, he was headed to the correctional area -- some kind of jail or holding cell. A small part of him wanted him to stay in jail, he concluded.

Upon arriving, he found no one living but did find a mess. It was a little hard to see since the only light was from the window and his flashlight, but he could still see the trash and the... person shape.

The body was covered by an emergency blanket, but a large amount of blood stained the ground. The source was obvious, a stump of an appendage hanging out from the blanket. Strewn all about the room were different medical supplies, wrappers and torn packages, a mostly empty first aid kit.

Josh took off his jacket and hung it off the chair at the desk. He rolled up his sleeves and carefully lifted the body as best he could, making sure not to get blood on himself. With some work, he was able to open the door and place the body just outside, then shut himself back into the jail area. A bit of blood had dripped onto his jeans.

Next, he put on the gloves he found in Mariya's first aid kit and went around collecting all of the medical trash from around the room. Josh threw down what leftover bandages there were on the blood and soaked up what he could, then collected everything into a waste bin by the desk. It was disgusting work, but he was able to sort of zone out while he did until the reality of what he was cleaning was in the background of his mind like white noise. Josh went into a trance like when he was arranging towers of candles or fluffing displays of pillows at his job at Pottery Barn.

It was strange. Even though he was cleaning up blood and used medical supplies, something about being domestic like this made him feel peaceful. Josh was cleaning up. He wasn't thinking about anything. He stripped the gloves off and left them on the desk next to his bags.

Finally, he went to the cot and flipped it so that the blood was on the other side now. Having tidied, he felt good about the space. Josh flopped over onto the cot with his gun in his lap and reached above his head to stretch. His fingers hit the iron bars and he wrapped his hands around them.

"Hmm."

He stared upside down at the bars.

"I should find Marshall," he said to himself.

Marshall was the boys lacrosse team captain and his friend. There were times on this island when he did whatever he wanted now and it felt, well, great. Just do what you want, don't think. But sometimes he did think about it and it was harder to shake the guilt of doing wrong. It wasn't entirely his fault. Zora tried to take his weapon, and she would have killed him. The other girl tried to steal the gun too. He had to react and that reaction led to death. Privately, he felt they deserved it.

But sometimes if he let his mind wander, he still felt badly about it.

Now, maybe, people would treat him with more respect, though. One kill didn't seem to do it. Maybe two would. How many would it take?

He bit his lip, a bit unsure about that sudden thought.

Marshall would be understanding and listen. He really liked Marshall.

Josh's fingers stayed wrapped around the bars above his head.

"Turned yourself in?" Shu said from the other side of the cell a little ways down from Josh. Both of his arms braced on the horizontal bar, his hands dipped just inside the cell and bathed in the day peaking through the window, the rest of his form concealed in what could be called dim light if one was feeling charitable.

He smiled softly, and waited to see what Josh would do.

"Ah!"

Josh gasped at the sudden noise coming from outside of the cell across from him. He jolted, sat up, and hit his head on the bars his hands had been wrapped around resulting in a resonating "CLANG."

He retracted and became smaller, moving his arms and legs inward. The gun clattered to the ground.

"I – I – Yes?" he stammered, touching the tender part of his head. Shu fuzzed in his vision and became blurry. Slowly, his limbs extended again until he was sitting on the cot with his feet flat on the ground. He leaned down to pick the gun back up without looking away from Shu. He felt something weird when he picked the gun back up but didn’t want to investigate just this moment.

"Is that you, Shu?" he said in a half-whisper.

It was a strange coincidence that just after Josh had killed a girl and was dealing with the emotional fallout, Shu appeared not once but twice.

If it really was him this time.

Josh remembered the graveyard and averted his eyes and bit the tip of his thumb. But if it was the real Shu, he wouldn't know what happened there. But Josh knew and that made it awkward on his side only.

It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t.

Josh got up from the cot and left the gun leaning against the wall. He walked up to where Shu stood and looked down at his arms that poked in through the bars from the free man’s side of the cell.

"I… killed another girl."

A confession.

Josh asked Shu if it was really him. He gently laughed to himself and kept his smile, half-whispering back. "Maybe, if you want me to be."

And then the confession. Another girl. "That so." The smile folded back into neutral, ambiguous if Shu was upset or just thinking about something else. He recoiled his hands back, wrapping both palms around the horizontal bar where his arms previously lay before leaning his form itself closer to the bars until his face nearly touched the metal, illuminated in the boundaries of the sunlight.

"Can kill you in your sleep, if you'd still like."

Josh smiled back, but his eyebrows came up as if he was pained a little.

He remembered what he said to Dani when she asked him if his name was Joey.

Josh wrote:"I can be Joey if you want."

He wanted to ask if Shu was real. But that would make him sound crazy.

Well, crazier.

Josh focused on breathing for a moment and watched Shu's hands.

"She wanted to kill me," he continued. "But I pushed her. I pushed her there," he admitted.

He stole a small glance at Shu's face to answer his question.

"I don't think I'm sorry. So maybe you should," he said quietly. "Do you want to? Do you... think I'm disgusting?"

"Everyone's disgusting," Shu spat back, turning his head away and breaking eye contact for the first time in several minutes. "Bet everyone would be in here with you if there was some damn justice in the world."

Shu withdrew from Josh and stepped over to the entrance of the cell and played with the open door, sliding it in and out with each creak of the rusted metal. He still didn't return to looking at him.

"Do you believe in grace?"

Though Shu had broken direct eye contact, Josh's gaze followed him over to the door. The answer made his smile more genuine, less pained.

"Everyone..." he repeated.

It wasn't as if people were so much better than him. That's what they thought back at school, but it wasn't true there or here. It wasn't even like he was all so bad compared to many people on this island, in this situation, at this moment.

Slowly, his feet followed Shu as well. He meandered over and dragged his fingers along the bars. With each bar, they fell, then were propped up by the next bar and made a gentle thump thump thump as he did.

One foot went directly in front of the other, heel to toe. He swayed due to the slow, precise steps.

He put his hand on the sliding door to hold it open, so Shu wouldn't shut it again.

"That God loves all of us?"

Josh bit his lip.

"To be honest with you... I don't know if I really believe in a lot of things that have to do with Christianity. I never thought about it before now. I just went along with everything. Went along with church, went along with Christian club, and I didn't think hard about it. Now... I don't know exactly what I believe, and I don't know if I'll have enough time to think it through. But I do believe there's a God. And think... I want to believe he loves us unconditionally. A lot of what I heard about was punishment. Punishment for this. For that. For stepping out of line. Now, I think that... I don't want that to be true. That someone's love comes in the form of punishing."

Josh stopped for a moment and bit his tongue. He looked up at Shu with wide eyes. This was the most he'd spoken to anyone since he'd woken up. In fact, he couldn't remember the last time he spoke at such length generally.

No one ever asked Josh his thoughts or opinions.

"What do you believe?"

"That you think too much and have a lot on your plate?" Shu smiled, just enough to expose his teeth for a fraction of a second.

He let go of the door, taking a step closer to Josh but not quite breaching into the cell he was still confined in. Then he turned around and took his parka off, carelessly tossing it onto the desk with an uncerenomious thud before returning to his cellmate. He wrapped his good hand around one of the bars and mindlessly twisted it.

"Don't know. No one's asked before. There's only so much to believe in out there, anyway. Maybe it's not so bad."

He paused, then looked Josh straight in the eye.

"...Guess if there is one, it'd be that love can't exist without punishment, and punishment can't exist without love. They're inherent in each other, as conflicting as they are. But the conflict is what makes it beautiful."

Another pause. Closer.

"What do you think?"

Shu smiled and Josh tilted his head and laughed quietly. He touched his cheek discretely, either to see if it changed temperature or to hide if it had changed color.

Josh hung his hand on the back of his neck and looked away. His index finger tapped quickly against his nape, fidgeting, listening to his answer.

He looked back and the other boy was closer, eye to eye.

Josh felt stupid. Not in a way of being generally intellectually lacking, but like someone was flipping the dials on the tv stations in his brain.

He stood bewildered, a deer caught in hazy pink headlights.

"I…"

Josh said the single syllable, breathing his anxiety out with it.

"You're right. It's not that one comes as a substitute for the other; it's that they're inseparable parts of each other."

I feel dizzy. My heart is going fast. Am I about to pass out? Am I OK?

Shu is standing near me and he’s close to me but this might not be the real Shu but does it matter what’s real and maybe it is him but why is he so good at talking because it seems like he understands me and the situation very well even though no one really tries to understand me normally and its nice to have someone do that since I'm tired of being alone but how come I never noticed before how

𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘬



𝘓𝘰𝘰𝘬?

𝘓𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘭𝘵𝘦𝘯

𝐂𝐡𝐨𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞




















Ｅａｔ





"I think something is wrong with my heart," he mumbled.

Josh jolted forward and kissed Shu, holding the back of his head so that Josh's thumb rested on his cheek.

"I'm sorry," he pleaded quietly with a shaky breath. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

In one moment, Shu was staring at Josh wide-eyed.

In the next, Shu glared at him, pinning him against the wall directly behind him with a thud. One hand pressed into his shoulder, the other against his arm on the other side.

---

---

Shu moved in closer, face almost pressing into Josh's cheek. His whispers seared Josh's ear a bright red.

---

---

His back hit the wall. Josh's chest rose and fell dramatically as he was held in place.

His face and neck were a deep sunburn blush, both from what he’d done and embarrassment from Shu seeing through him. Shu was right. Josh was a bad liar –- he was new to it. He took a deep breath to try and calm down.

"Fine. I’m not sorry," he agreed bitterly. Josh strained against Shu’s hold, then flattened again. That was the crux of it, wasn’t it? He wasn’t sorry for anything he’d done. He could feel guilty and bad for some of what he’d done, but ultimately, he wasn’t sorry. The gun was leaning against the wall, out of reach.

"It was just a joke," he said with painfully forced levity. “A- And I’m not into guys. You -- You don’t have to take it so seriously,” he stammered. Josh looked straight ahead at the bars, at the desk where his bag lay.

"So you can let me go."

---

---

---

---

Stop.

Stop everything you’re doing.

Stop everything save for the thrumming of your heart.

Unravel.

Josh felt overwhelmed, stretched out, pulled apart, glued back together, like he was going around and around too fast.

I’m a bad liar. But I’m not very truthful either. I’m used to saying nothing at all.

I’m so terrified of my own brain that I can’t stop twisting my fingers together if someone ever does bother to ask me about myself.


Do you want to tell me about yourself?

No.

Please… don’t make me. I don’t want to tell you. To tell anyone.

That’s what I’d say if anyone ever asked. But they don’t. I’m safe in not saying anything.

How do I feel about myself? How does it feel to bury your feelings because they aren’t acceptable? All of them. Burry all of them because none of them are OK, and you’re just set dressing, furniture -- an extra. Who wants a background player that disrupts a scene? No one. Smile, but not too wide. Mumble because who cares what you said. Cry and have your pets stare at you and blink. Only cry between the windows of time you know none of your family will be home because they would tell you to man up and stop.

Don’t ask me anything about myself.

But I want someone to, really badly.

But I don’t want to answer it. My leg is bouncing up and down; my fingers are twisting each other. Thinking of my brothers. Thinking of my family. Thinking of Ingrid, and Zora, and Amy, and Dani, and Mariya.

Allow your heart to race and look at the person before you.

Tell the truth.

"I wish I was more like you. You seem so... sure. I wonder how you got to be that way," he said.

He looked at Shu, properly now, and saw that his eyes were green. Josh’s own eyes misted a little. It hurt a surprising amount to be even a little honest. There was so much pain for the small sentiment of --

"Thank you for talking to me. I liked it." he whispered.

Josh swallowed hard.

"Since you found me, punish me.

If you punish me, hurt me.

Stop me.

Save me."

A tear rolled down his cheek and he looked at the ground.

Shu listened along to Josh's heart, his good hand retracting and clawing at the pinned boy's chest. Once he was done with his secrets, Shu simply smiled. He approached tighter, licking the tear off Josh's cheek before whispering in his ear once more.

---

---

In the next moment, Shu snatched Josh's collar with a tight grip and violently threw him onto the cot surrounded by thousands and thousands of candles and flowing drapes. He didn't let go until he was on top of him, pressing into his soul.

Manuel Puig wrote: — the view espoused by the Church with respect to the problem. The Church has catalogued the homosexual and bisexual impulse as simply ones among several “wicked” although natural urges which happen to scourge mankind.

He wanted and anticipated nails, knives, anything. The intimate act made him lock up and freeze worse than any sudden strike.

"My bed --"

Was as far as he got. Josh landed on the cot, illuminated by the burning wax columns, dripping, bending around them. He instinctively shoved his hand into his pocket and managed to pull out the beads which had reminded him of his restraints, with diminishing effectiveness over the past four days.

A weight fell upon him and his fingers tangled into the rosary.

"W-wait," he gasped. His trapped fingers strained in panic, breaking the strand. Beads rolled off the bed, cascading onto the floor below.

"Please wait," he implored.

Wait for what?

I don't know...

The hand unencumbered by bandages yanked him by the hair, forcibly exposing his neck. Josh made a small yelp of curious surprise. A moment later another, he let out a sharper yelp when teeth sunk in where his neck met his shoulder. The pain he was promised. The other boy pushed his lips against the new wound and then brought his face up to gaze down at him.

A kiss, now initiated by Shu. Hesitantly, Josh opened his mouth, felt warm lips on his lips, and tasted his own blood. His lips felt strangely heavy even after they broke contact. It was like standing at the edge of a pool, worrying that it's cold even if it's a warm day and you would really like to swim, and then having someone come from behind and shove you in.

"But, we can't --" he said, feeling foolish that the words came out of his mouth like a reflex.

The stone began to peel off the walls around them, revealing a shining layer of red and gold underneath. His eyes became half-lidded and his skin burned.

Why can't you?

Well, because it's wrong. Isn't it? It's many kinds of wrong.

What a miserable existence you lead. Afraid of being alone. Afraid of not being alone. Wanting this, trying to convince yourself you don't. Telling yourself its normal to look up the things you look up and that everyone must do it. They don't. You do.

He felt cloth pull over his head, heard zippers scratch, and slid his hazy line of sight to the camera that blurred and became double, like eyes that leered at them.

Had he not wanted to become more comfortable with transgressing? Because it was fun? Because they were all going to die anyway so why not? To finally do what you wanted regardless of consequence. Wasn't that why he sat on that desk with his muddy shoes?

This was probably like sitting on a hundred desks.

The muscles of his limbs began to relax, and he let out a dreamy sigh from blood-stained lips. Blood ran down his shoulder.

Was that me? I didn't know I could sound that way. I sound so... shameless.

Timidly, Josh began to touch back.

Legs slowly poked out of the beads on the ground and they scuttled far away. The flickering of countless flames threw their single dim shadow on the wall, double-headed and many-armed creature.