Survival Of The Fittest

[S119 - Julia Guercio - continued from Downwards Spiral]

Choosing the right exit from the tunnels was important - of course there was the obvious reasons surrounding looming threat and immediate danger, but also it was important for her to set herself up somewhere safe. The poorly insulated tunnels had been a stark reminder of just how cold it was getting outside and as darkness fell upon the island Julia needed somewhere safe and secure that she could set up for the night. Last night she had spent the entire time hiking across the island and she couldn't afford another night like that. She would be delirious without a good nights sleep, hell she would happily settle for a patchy sleep. Warmth and security were the two things she longed for, craving the likely impossible.

The first set of stairs she had climbed took her to a door jammed tightly shut. She went to push it open but wasn't strong enough to move it - perhaps there was snow on the other side? The second set of stairs seemed like a better choice... until she reached the top of the staircase and heard raised voices on the other side. She quickly changed her mind and made a dash back down the staircase in case the assailant wanted to enter the tunnels too. She couldn't risk the confrontation, no more being hunted by a cunning Fox.

Just like Goldilocks with her porridge, it turned out that the third door was just right.

She opened it just enough to peer in and came to a hallway, doing her best to catch her breath as she shimmied down the corridor. If the tunnels were a mirror maze, this was more like something out of a horror film. Just a long corridor with doors on either side spread out equally. A painful continuation of Sophie's choice as Julia sought out her safe space. Unfortunately her luck had run out, as the door she opened had revealed more than she had ever wanted to see; a dismembered finger, bloodied and staring back at her. Grim.

Julia impulsively retched as she stumbled backwards in to the corridor, tripping through the door left slightly ajar on the other side. This room had not been disturbed in the same way. Well, there were no dead bodies which was a good first step. At first glance she couldn't find any dissected limbs or digits which was a relief. It was those little saving graces that mattered most, presenting an unfamiliar comfort amidst the distress.

She dumped her bag down, firmly gripping the canister in her coat pocket just in case, and sat down on the dust-covered bed. The way the corridor was laid out minimised the chances anybody would come for her unless they rummaged through each and every room. Hopefully anybody who came upstairs in this part of the building would be looking for a room to stay as well, or be scared off by the dismembered finger and decide to leave without asking questions. Plus she hoped that she would be able to hear people if they were coming, the thin walls clear from the draft. Either way, for now this was home. It wasn't glamorous and the chilled air was on the cusp of being unpleasant yet for now it was home. A safe haven that she could rest up overnight, with the tiredness seeping in behind her eyes as she struggled to stay awake.

No more red flags. No more bulls.

((Josh James continued from the hot springs))

With wet hair, Josh concluded he wanted to be inside to spend the night, and if it was a place with beds, all the better.

He quietly walked up the stairs and found a hallway with doors. Josh began opening the doors gently, gun poking into the rooms ahead of him, so if anyone was here sharing the floor, he would know.

In one room, two beds pushed together. In another, a finger on a desk. It was grotesque, but he'd had an incident with an entire severed arm, so the finger on its own was a downgrade, at least as far as disturbing limbs were concerned. He closed that door and continued on.

Josh opened another door and he saw a girl sitting on a bed, seemingly with no companions or weapons. She looked a bit familiar, but that wasn't anything to be surprised about -- they were classmates and lived in the same town.

"Hello..." he said cautiously.

Julia had nodded off, she wasn’t sure for how long but her eyes had definitely shut. No dreams this time, just that unsettling jump in time between the close and open of her drowsy orbs. Everything was still, until her nap was disturbed by the creaking sound of doors opening and closing one after the other.

Thankfully she was a light sleeper, able to pull herself up and back into consciousness in time to plan her next move. The sound of the doors squeaking, the slow yet clear trace of footsteps making their way towards her room. Becoming stalkingly closer. She sat up, firmly gripping the canister in her coat pocket as she waited for the fugitive outside to reach her room. Her olive skin seemed paler than usual, her loose-topped two-braided hair holding an abnormal messiness and her soft lips cracked around every crevice.

She didn’t really have any time to get away, and there only being one door and corridor in-and-out of this floor didn’t help either. Nowhere to hide, maybe under the bed but it was low enough already that it would’ve created enough noise to startle whoever was about to enter.

And then the door opened.

It was light and gentle, not a thunderous crash like she had expected. Expecting to see a figure making their way into the team, unfortunately with everything that had happened earlier in the day she wasn’t taken off guard by the silhouette of a gun making its way round the door frame instead. That is testament to this hellish nightmare, right? A week ago she had never ever seen a gun in real life and now she treated it as second nature. They were so homogenous on this island society that it felt more likely someone would have one rather than without.

This one did look particularly nasty though. Menacingly ready to riddle her.

A boy emerged from behind his member.

A hesitant “hello” followed.

As always she didn’t know really what to do or say so started to improvise. He looked incredibly familiar, very handsome with gentle features and lustrous blonde hair. Admittedly he looked like he had been through some shit over the past few days, slightly dishevelled or unnerved, but she would let him off for that because who hadn’t? She couldn’t place it, she had definitely seen him around before and one of Julia’s biggest faults was her teenage girl tendency to fall deeply in love with a beautiful stranger. His voice was unfamiliar, she definitely couldn’t place that one.

She battled with her brain to try and remember who the boy was, she couldn’t even pull out a name which was unlike her, but with every count of elephant that passed, the awkward silence escalated even more.

She went to speak but only a croak came out of her windpipe.

She tenderly cleared her throat, looked from the boys blunt weapon to his piercing gaze, and continued.

“H-hello,” she calmly replied whilst internally freaking out. “Um… err… nice to see you, how are you doing?”

She wanted to kick herself after asking that - it’s like with Timothy all over again - a highlighted reminder that social interaction and knowing what to say in the moment were not her friends. In reality it was absolutely not nice to see him, whoever he was, but she hoped she was at least convincing.

Julia hoped asking a simple question like that would buy her enough time to at least figure out who the hell he was, and then off the back of that adjust her strategy accordingly to ensure she didn’t end up on the next announcement.

She said it was nice to see him.

“It is?”

And asked how he was. He put a thumb on his chin and smiled a little.

"I’m okay." He pushed his hair back away from his face self consciously. “I tried to take a bath, so my hair and bandages are kind of wet. I wanted some place to get warm again,” he explained.

Josh spoke carefully and tried to look around as much as he could, at the room, at her, to get an assessment of the situation and the person in front of him like an animal circling an unknown object. The girl was not just familiar, she was pretty. Her reaction to him was surprising, but pleasant. He still wasn’t sure how he felt, though it was trending positive.

The gun was pointed down at the ground, loosely held in his right hand. He leaned backwards casually, shutting the door he’d come through with his back.

"Are you ok? Are you alone?"

Usually when you take personality tests or, Julia’s personal favourite, the colour insights tests they hone in on two different areas - the consciousness and the subconsciousness. It’s standard practice that a person will flex their weaknesses or development areas subconsciously to strengthen their capability; and for Julia this seemed to be accurately playing out once again. She always found that, consciously, the tests revealed her to be a strong blue profile. She loved to chase knowledge, dive in to the gritty details and make decisions based on structure and the aforementioned knowledge. However the past few days made it clear that it was her yellow, green and red attributes she was relying on heavily, and thankfully her subconscious was pushing her in the right direction. But needless to say she was deeply out of her comfort zone.

Julia’s biggest concern was that she still couldn’t place him. This mysterious, handsome, blonde boy. Not even a name sprung to mind which offered no comfort at knowing whether this person was a murderer or not. He mentioned bandages so he had definitely been involved in some sort of conflict, but Timothy needed medical assistance too and he was definitely not a bad guy.

In contrast to Salem, the blonde boy immediately felt less sinister. Or maybe that was just Julia adapting to the circumstances once again, but there was an air of transparency in his body language. The gun was clearly on display, not hidden like Salem. That alone, crazily, made her trust this guy just a little bit more than that. She was skeptical over whether he actually wanted to use it; after all it was pointed to the ground once he saw her, not at her directly. An empty comfort.

His words didn’t seem to have double or triple meanings like Salem’s either. They were simple and straightforward, almost a little vacant. He didn’t trust her yet, but that was fine and to be expected. Yet was the key word here. She took the time to assess him; his behaviours, his words. Like he was just another patient of hers. Could she offer to help him bandage up any of his cuts or wounds like she did before?

Am I ok?

Well no. Not really.

Definitely not.

Not with you here.

No. No. No.

No I am not ok.

“Y-yeah. All things considered I’m not too bad t-thanks.”

She paused slightly before carrying on, “I’m a-alone, I’ve been trying to hide tonight after today.”

It had been a tremendously long day and Julia was just hoping to shut herself away somewhere hidden and spend even just a few moments forgetting her problems, the likely imminence of her death. And now he was here to disrupt this.

He could probably smell her fear like an animal, like she was constantly waving a red rag in the face of a bull.

“I-It must’ve been very cold out t-there,” Julia stuttered slightly unable to mask her nervousness through the awkward silences and lack of immediate responses. “I can re-bandage those for you if you’d like?”

And then came the lightbulb moment.

Pottery Barn.

The beautiful face of a stranger, stacking the shelves and plumping up pillows. She had admired him from afar in an awkward immediate-crush-on-a-store-employee kinda way. She remembered being there with her mom, strangely quite regularly with her family’s penchant for design and hoarding new furniture, and seeing him a few times. He had never paid her any attention, in fact she doubted whether he had even cast a look in her direction before, but she knew she recognised those intense hazel eyes and sharp jawbone structure from somewhere. He almost looked like he could’ve been in a boy band.

She tried to cast her mind back, difficult given the time pressures, to when he served them at the kiosk. He had a name badge on and she had used it to try to find him on Facebook and Instagram when she got home.

Jonathan?

No that wasn’t it.

Joseph?

Josiah?

Joshua?

Joshua. That was it. One hundred percent.

“H-hey - you used to work at the P-Pottery Barn right?” she continued, “Joshua?”

Her cheeks flushed as she realised it could’ve been an overstep.

"Oh!"

No one had been this welcoming thus far. It seemed almost a bit too welcoming. He hadn’t made the shadow of a threat clear, though maybe the fact that he had the weapon and was at the door was a subtle enough signal about who held what in the situation. Still, she could have a blade or something on her, ready to slash him once he got close. His left hand went behind his back.

"Well," he said a bit loudly, to cover the click the lock made when he turned it. "Gosh. Okay. That’s –- Sure. Nice of you."

Josh set his two bags down on the desk and put the gun next to them. He unwound the scarf from around his neck and placed it on the back of the chair. He unbuttoned his coat and slid it off, resting it also on the chair. When they weren’t speaking, the only noise was the rustling of fabric.

He pulled the long sleeve shirt off over his head and put it with the pile. Then picked up the gun and a first aid kit and sat next to Julia on the bed, placing the gun on his lap and the kit between them. He still couldn’t be sure she didn’t have something close-range hidden somewhere, and he’d ended up on the back foot a few times now because of a lack of caution.

There was a bandage on the left side of his face on his jaw near his ear and another bandage where his neck met his shoulder. On his sides were shallow scratch marks -- not enough to need dressing -- but visible pink marks. He had removed the bandage on his nose, as it wasn’t really necessary.

"Huh?"

He made a noise of genuine surprise when she mentioned his name and part-time job.

"I -- Yeah! I do. I mean, I did."

Josh suddenly felt more vulnerable now than he had been disrobing. He was fairly sure people he spoke to at school didn’t really remember that about him. She somehow remembered the him from before all this. He wasn’t sure if they were even the same person. What did she think of that person? Did she think that it meant he would be easy to pick off now? A push over? A non-entity?

"How did you know that?" he asked with a mixture of surprise and curiosity. "Who are you?"

Now closer, he could see better her skin had a very lovely warm tone and under that, a pink flush of color.

Because of him?

A tiny bit of greed started to creep out.

Joshua approached her before setting himself down to her side on the other side of the bed. It creaked a little, definitely exuding an unhappiness with carrying two people. He moved slowly, a strange mix of what appeared very calculated, chucked in with an innocence or perhaps a naivety. The gun lurked, stone-faced and bitter-tasting. The threat was clear from his positioning of the gun on his lap. He didn’t need to say anything because she knew exactly what it meant, an assertion of power to ensure she knew exactly who was in control.

She worked on his injuries, for the first time letting go of her canister. His injuries were fine, nothing too bad, just cuts, scratches and bruises but none that looked too difficult for her to sort out. She tried to be as careful as possible, re-bandaging with her tools and cleaning the cuts if they looked like they needed it. The stinging was probably intense but she was careful as to not provoke any strong reactions.

As she finished and she remembered his name, he seemed genuinely surprised. You can tell a lot by someone’s initial reaction. That half a second of reaction in the moment before the brain was able to cloak any revelation. She questioned herself on how to respond to his question without sounding like a crazy person, a stalker or something.

“Oh… I d-don’t think we ever actually met. M-my mom, she loves your store so you served us once or twice.”

She realised she probably wasn’t doing a great job of rationally explaining it, deciding to change her strategy.

“Sorry. That sounded weirder out loud than in my head. I promise I’m not a stalker!”

Her flushing worsened, her rosy cheeks turning a deeper shade of maroon.

“I’m just good with faces I g-guess.”

She looked down at the floor, nervously laughing to cover the anxiety. She had been fighting hard to appear calm and coherent. Inside her heart was racing, beating to a drumbeat quicker than a paso doble.

“I’m Julia.” She shrugged the question off, “I don’t think we had any classes together. W-well I don’t remember seeing you at school ever.”

She let out a sigh, resigning herself once again to a sorry fate that they had found themselves in. It was all very uncomfortable, but she had helped him and done her best to patch everything up, Doctor Guercio style. There had been someone with that name being named and shamed on some of the reports previously but he felt too prim and proper to be the same one. She decided to investigate further.

“This whole thing sucks a lot, r-right?”

Julia continued with this line of questioning, slightly jarring but with a clear intent to pry.

“What have you been up to? How did you get hurt?”

The hesitancy was ever-present in her words, exposing her nerves.

The girl, Julia, stripped the wet and inexpert dressings from him and then cleaned and reapplied bandages and closures with expert fingers. It hardly hurt at all. The touch was so light and dexterous and he was so distracted by her skillfulness that he forgot the situation they were in.

He looked down at her and observed her concentration as she pored over her work — him. She was nervous in her words but had steady hands. She was so focused. His greed grew a little more.

"Mmhm. Sucks," he agreed. "But wow, you did a really great job. Doctor Julia."

Josh gently tapped the areas that had been repaired and smiled.

He felt a strange spike of fear and unease. She knew him as he was, as he had been. Josh didn’t want to lose control of the situation. He didn’t want to be human. But it was unmistakable that he was starting to feel a pull.

"I’ll tell you, but… maybe one at a time. Maybe we can trade. I’ll tell you something and you tell me something."

He took just his index finger and touched Julia lightly on the jaw, corresponding to the place where he was injured.

"I was sliced here by an ice skate."



"Now you."

Doctor Julia.

It just had a ring to it. When Joshua said it out loud it sent a pulse of tingles down her spine. She let out a relaxed smile as she packed away the bandages. He seemed content with her care, another happy patient.

What could’ve been.

The smile capsized in to a frown, the stark reminder that she had spent so much of her life wanting to achieve something and now all of that time had been a waste. All of the time doing extra studies, all the studying and revision. All the stress she had over every exam wanting to make sure she nailed it and kept her high GPA. She couldn’t hide that disappointment, her sullen eyes sinking back to the floor as she fought against the desire to cry.

She had to remind herself of the situation. Joshua seemed nice enough but she still found him difficult to read. The unique way he’d phrase things or behave was unlike anything she had seen from her other encounters. He took his index finger to her jaw and pressed his cold, slightly clammy, finger to mimic where he had been cut. Sliced by an ice skate? That was not something that happened accidentally. The whole thing was unnerving. Was her nursing his bandaging giving him the wrong signal here? The setting was intimate enough without him needing to touch her. It felt unnecessary? Julia was questioning herself, not sure what to think or how to react.

“An ice s-skate? O-ouch.”

Ice skates are scary things at the best of times. She had fond memories being back at the Christmas trips to New York City, skating merrily around the Rockefeller Plaza ice rink, in fact her family were due a trip in just a few weeks time. The overarching fear on the ice rink though was skates slicing a finger off if you fell. As a child she would cling to the penguin balance platforms out of fear of losing a finger, or worse. Aside from the fears, things were all simpler when they lived back in New Jersey with all of their extended family and friends, the nostalgia sweet like honey. She wished they had never moved. Then none of this would’ve happened.

To her. At least.

“I’m not too hurt, just my legs are tired from all the walking and running.”

She didn’t know whether she should expand on everything or keep it short and ambitious like he did, but decided it was best to elaborate.

“I was with Ashlee, Victor, Karen Nguyen and Karin Han for a few days at the start. We all woke up close together.”

Her gentle tone subtly transitioned in to a jagged tone when she said Han’s name.

“It felt fine, it was good and we were all safe.”

She paused again, but Joshua seemed interested in the story and his eyebrow had raised slightly when she started to expand on her trauma.

“Then Victor got weird. Karin stole a gun and shot out.”

She gulped.

“She just fired at us. She meant to hit Victor but it hit Ashlee.” It was hard for her to speak about this all, reliving it once again, longing for a happier ending. “She was next to me and just collapsed. She was gone so quickly.”

She looked away from Joshua, tears welling up in her eyes thinking of seeing Ashlee’s light leave her frame. Probably still there, stone cold under a blanket of snow and ice.

“A-and then this morning. Timothy was there and Salem.” One final intake of breath, “Salem tried to kill us. Well, I think he killed Timothy. I got lucky and managed to get away unscathed but I had to use what they gave me.”

If his name wasn’t on the report it would’ve been a big surprise. Her expression was visibly downtrodden as she continued to spill everything to this stranger. She felt useless again, after the high from the Doctor Julia comment, weakness omnipresent as a constant reminder that she wasn’t good enough.

“Everyone I get close to here gets taken away…”

Maybe it wasn’t what Joshua wanted from her. Maybe she just took his prompt as an opportunity to emotionally unload all of her baggage. Either way, she just didn’t want to be left alone again. She just wanted to be safe.

No reaction to being touched. Adjust approach.

Josh leaned far over away from Julia to put the first aid kit away and grab his thick, long-sleeve shirt from the table. He his arms through the sleeves and popped his head out through the opening. He ruffled his hair, hoping to separate and fluff it out more so that it would dry faster.

He caught a glimpse of her reaction to being called his doctor. Julia’s reaction caused him to smile back.

So cute.

"What a pretty smile," he said bashfully to himself, looking away from her and at his lap.

He continued looking down at the gun in his lap and at his hands as she continued, though made a small movement to look when she mentioned Karin.

"I met Karin earlier today," he began. "She said she lost her stuff and was hungry, so I gave her some bread. She told me Victor had -- well, she said ‘bad vibes’ and that she told the girls and when he found out, he screamed at her and grabbed her and threw her. That she tried to shoot him, and missed. But…"

He set his hand near Julia’s but without making contact as they both sat on the bed. Josh looked up at her seriously.

"She gave me a bad feeling. She said…"

Josh stopped as if unsure whether or not to continue. When he did, he dropped his voice.

"Karin said if I let her stay with me and gave her more food, she’d lure girls to me, and I could do whatever I wanted with them. As you can see, I said no."

He supposed this counted as his contribution for his turn.

"Everyone I get close to here gets taken away…"

“...Everyone's been taken away?” he asked.

A provoked bull charging towards the matador as the red rag is waved, the frenzied animal in eternal torment.

Red flag.

Julia struggled to hide her shock at Joshua’s allegations. She definitely did not like or trust Karin, in fact she had serious doubts upon reflection about a lot of the things that were said earlier on in the week, but the accusations he fingered at Han’s way were nothing short of unhinged. People show or represent humanity in many different ways, some are upstanding citizens whilst others represent nastier, more negative identities. But Julia was baffled by the words he used to narrate his encounter with Han. What did he mean by ‘whatever he wanted with them’?

It was sinister.

Her whole body stiffened, her plump lower lip quivered gently as the tension chilled her to the bone. She felt her body naturally retreating, edging further to the right, away from the boy.

“L-lure girls to y-you?”

The words croaked faintly from her lips, still in a dazed shock at trying to comprehend the reality.

“Whatever y-you w-wanted?”

She worried that she was getting worse at hiding her fear, struggling to hold eye contact for more than a few milliseconds. His gun stayed still, continuing to lay there menacingly. Staring at her with no hesitation. Fixated.

“I couldn’t save Ashlee. I couldn’t save Timothy.”

Julia wiped the first tear that fell from her eyes, silently mourning the two she had lost as well as the others named as being deceased.

“I don’t want more people to die. I don’t want to lose any more friends.” She realised immediately how hopeless she sounded, “I’m s-sorry. I know I must sound stupid.”

He was good at not saying too much. Keeping her talking with more and more questions, but she still needed to understand more about him. Those cuts and bruises didn’t appear magically by themselves. The frightening words he had shared about Karin already haunted her, but she needed to know more.

She needed to understand who her new roomie actually was and how much of a threat he was or whether the earlier red flag was just an oddly phrased narration. It wouldn’t be the first time a boy said something lacking emotional intelligence. Her eyes raised from her lap to the re-bandaged wound on his neck and shoulder.

“What happened to your s-shoulder?”

He didn’t interrupt or interject. She questioned what Karin meant. She reflected on her losses. And she asked about his wound.

Josh was silent for a minute.

He had been observing her through all of that. Her fear, her shock, her sorrow, and then her timid curiosity. He looked at her softly until the last question, when it was his turn to look taken aback.

Josh took the gun in his lap and he leaned back over to the other side of the bed, placing the weapon on the small desk that had his things on it.

"You’re not stupid, Julia. You’re sweet. That’s why you’re crying for them. And why you don’t want to believe what I said about Karin. But I haven’t lied to you."

Covetous. He wanted to see her react more, but he also wanted her to worry over him like she did for those friends. But he couldn’t have both, could he? He couldn’t have control and her concern. One or the other.

Which one was pretty much decided though.

Josh looked down and the tables turned. His face became pink with a blush that extended to his ears and neck.

"I wouldn’t lie about this either," he said, touching the bandage, which was mostly under his shirt now. He avoided her gaze, but he smiled slightly. "But are you sure?" he asked in a mumbled whisper. His leg started bouncing up and down nervously.

The tide was coming in fast, the building waves of reassurance Joshua extended. Through his words, through his actions. He didn't need to console her, to call her sweet, yet it made a difference to her. It mattered. It was the comforting words and metaphorical hug that she needed to pull herself and her emotions together.. She blushed a little more at his words, him taking his large weapon off his lap and placing it further away from her being the cherry on the top. His expressions and body language added to her comfort, juxtaposed bitterly by the severity and disconcerting nature of his story. She nodded to his guarantee that he was telling the truth, hesitant to challenge him further.

In fairness it was a pretty convincing delivery, probably the most evocative he had been throughout their entire interaction. It was difficult to fully believe, as one girl to another, but she appreciated given the present situation of being stuck in SOTF that it was going to bring the worst out of most people, summoning the monsters out of their shadows. Her own encounters had proven that and Karin was clearly not in a great state of mind, Julia positive that the murder of Ashlee was probably weighing heavy on Karin's mind. He had turned down her offer though, of getting whatever he wanted, whatever that actually meant. Whatever harrowing alternate timeline originated from Joshua accepting her invitation was not reality, unless he really was just playing with her.

But now the sandy-haired boy's entire demeanour had changed; her question to him visibly catching him off guard. He had been as cool as a cucumber throughout their meeting and yet now his cheeks were pink and his leg was tapping, only slightly to begin but the tempo hastened soon thereafter. She didn't want to push him if he felt uncomfortable, she had already done good work to calm his initial response down, she had de-escalated any potential issues and he was definitely feeling more comfortable around her too. But her gut instinct was that she needed to know. The intensity and nervousness from Joshua amassing in the lead up to his answer all pointed towards it being an answer that she wasn't going to like. There had been a Joshua on the report, a few times, but she still wasn't sure whether this was the same boy. It was a pretty common name and aside from the initial coldness her instincts were that he wouldn't be like that.

But what was he edging to reveal?

She looked him square in the eyes and lightly nodded once again, inferring that she still sought the answer.

Perhaps her fate had been sealed.

"Okay…"

Josh scooted closer to Julia on the bed. He put his mouth up to her ear and he covered the lower part of his face with his hand, in traditional secret fashion.

He began to whisper hesitantly.




He stopped, then started again.




He continued, mouth shielded so that only Julia would hear.



Josh turned a brighter shade of red.



Furtive whispers.



He pulled at the fabric of Julia’s sweater on her arm for emphasis and swallowed loudly before continuing.




Josh stopped, then continued.



Josh gently prodded the place on her neck that corresponded to his own wound.



He finished and pulled slightly away, though was still just inches from her face.

The boy’s voice trembled as he released the torrent of words on her.

It was a lot to digest.

Like trying to chew down on glass, it cutting and scratching each locality of your throat.

Julia felt unsure on how to react. Confused. Uncomfortable. Sickened. In some ways she had expected something a lot worse; that Joshua had picked up that nasty injury by assaulting somebody, by a murder attempt gone wrong, or well - something worse. But this was worse in an inherently different type way, he was sharing something deeper than she had expected. He was the one who had been sexually assaulted. He… was a victim.

Her reaction was subdued initially - it was too much to process in the seconds that passed. She let Joshua continue to tell his story, left him to spill every inch of his confession. From the gulps, the pauses and the shallow hesitancy on the tip of his tongue, it was clear that this storytelling wasn’t easy for him.

He whispered every word, each syllable a light jab in to her sides, the stabbing feeling sharper as the retelling escalated. It was a punch to the guts, a feeling of nausea embedding deep in to her intestines.

She battled with herself to understand, simply to comprehend what he was actually saying. Her brain pacing back and forth quicker than ever before.

Jail cell.

Shu Hawthorne.

A kiss.

Pinned to the wall? Thrown to the bed?

Ripped clothes.

Begged him to stop?

Brought to his knees.

A blowjob.

He was good at it?

Shu got on top.

A pull of hair.

A bite of lust.

A kiss of blood.

Fucked.

Hard.

But… he liked it?

He withdrew mere centimetres as Julia was left with the taste of his whispers in her mouth. The putrid, sour, churn of what Joshua had shared. She flinched too, out of the horror of what he had been through and the feared reality of decomposing morality amongst her classmates.

She went to speak, but no words fell out. Only a haphazard choke on air. Perplexity slashed across her cheeks.

His hazel eyes, close enough that she could feel the warmth in his breath, still burning a legacy in to the side of her face.

“I’m s-sorry.”

Julia didn’t know whether to give him a hug, whether to cry on his behalf, whether to run away. Or whether to do nothing. Her words weren’t going to be good enough to console him, she was awkward with her words at the best of times and besides, from his story she wasn’t even sure if he wanted consoling or whether he was perfectly happy with his encounter with Shu.

She stuttered out all she could think, to end the silence and cut the surmountable tension.

“T-t-that he did that t-to you.”

Her hand moved towards his, to show support and thank him for opening up to her like that. She squeezed his wrist timidly to ascertain that she was not judging him for it. That she was there for him. Hopefully he felt relief from opening up about his assault.