So in defense of murders: yes we are evil, we are evil, yes we destroy.
But we are quick about it. we are honest about wanting to destroy something.
We don’t pretend to be something we are not. Our crime is not hidden under the guise of good intentions or authority or accident or---love.
It›s there, unashamedly, for all to see. Pure, unadulterated. Evil. So join me. you know, you›re already here. So come on anyway. it doesn›t make a difference when you look at it like that, does it?
So join me, let’s go have some fun, we’ve evil to do together. go on for me. not for them. for me, because I tell you the truth. I give it all to you.
Let’s go.
Chapter 7
“C
ard, what are you doing? You’re supposed to be in the brig,” Ebbel says, turning quickly as he sees me approaching him. We are outside the brig. He’s going back to his rooms now, from checking up on us. He’ll never make it.
“I know. But I’ve come here to kill you, then I’ll go straight back,” I say, stopping a few feet away. give him good running distance make this fun.
“What?” he asks, staring at me.
“Just that, you shall be dead soon,” I say, cocking my head a little as I look around. Not knives, I don’t feel like wallowing in the blood tonight and I can already explain bruises from the fight with Leavitt. And Card School of Asphyxiation went oh so very well.
“What the hell are you talking about? How did you get out here?” he asks, approaching me.
I’m on him in a flash, and we are on the ground, struggling. His weight brings us down. and I’m letting him pummel me, as I feel systematically for the tubes to his oxygen tank. They are secured down so this sort of thing doesn’t happen but I can undo that.
He shoves me into the cement and I roll away, off the path and into the grass. He reaches for my boot, but I bring it up to kick his face. He falls back, just remembering his radio to call for help.
“Looking for this?” I ask, standing panting, holding his earpiece.
“Just give me that, Card,” he’s looking in my eyes, he’s seeing now, now he’s finally realizing what I am.
“Sure,” I say, charging him again. I have every intention of leaving it on his body. I curl it into my chest, though as we collide, again I let his weight carry us to the ground, which is far more painful for him at his size and age than it is for me.
“Card just calm down, we don’t----they’re going to catch you,” he says, his strength is waning. He’s out of shape, tired, old, I’m none of those things, I’m ready. I planned this, he didn’t. He thought he was going to bed in a few minutes. Well, he’ll sleep soon.
“I doubt that,” I say, crawling out from under him, clawing his face, he cries out, his hands racking my SBUs, getting a hold and trying to pull me back down as I work my way around him.
“Why are you doing this?” he asks, managing to get a hold and battering my head into the ground.
“Entertainment,” I say, breaking free of his grip by smashing his knuckles into the paved path.
“What?” he says, staring at me, aghast.
“Boredom,” I say, darting around behind him last time now the oxygen tubes are free.
“Is that all people are to you?” he asks, stopping even going after me and staring into my eyes to see the emptiness there.
“It’s all I was to you,” I say, and then I run into him again. this time, I let my hands hook the tubes and twist around his neck. One. Last time.
He realizes what I am doing, of course, and tries to work his fingers underneath the oxygen tubing, instead of just going for my eyes with his thumbs, which is what I would have done. He has stronger hands than, I though, so perhaps his reasoning is sound in that he could break the tubs. As it is, it doesn’t work, not in time anyway. He does do significant damage to the plastic, but it does more significant damage to his trachea. It is crushed and he dies rather quickly after that.
I take a deep breath, using a hand to further the damage crushing down as I regain my composure and prepare for the night ahead. Now that the fun’s over, I get to dispose of the body.
I check my tablet for messages but of course there are none. My poor Liesel got herself in the brig. That was really rotten of Ebbel, they are just kids. Stupid kids who don’t need to be kissing, maybe, but they are going to and it wasn’t as though they were on duty.
I lie down on the bed. it›s late, well past midnight. Hopefully we don›t have any shenanigans in the morning. I›m glad it›ll be Sunday, just chapel services, milling about drilling, and then Monday we get to send them off to testing. I wonder how Liesel will do, well, of course, but what will she want to do? I haven›t asked her, but she also hasn›t specifically mentioned the testing either. I›ll have to prod her to see, I want to know, and anyway tomorrow is Monday so they›ll be wandering about just messing with their tablets. That will work out, I suppose. I am bone tired, all of a sudden. Herding the small noisy annoying people about is exhausting, funny I still think of them like that when my own flesh is one of them. Well, she isn’t annoying. Nor is Leavitt. Nor was that one who got chopped up. I close my eyes, it will feel good to just sleep.
I lay face down on my cot, trying not to breath too much and wishing for sleep to come. Every moment lying here is remembering Ginny is dead and wishing I were drunk so I could forget. And yet I don’t because I know that’s the last thing she’d want me to do right now. But it hurts. And I want the hurt to stop.
Getting drunk is one step short of just hanging myself, so the problem is every time I talk myself round from getting drunk I start thinking about the ways I could kill myself.
Then I think about how very out of here I would be if anybody knew I was this suicidal. And then I think about how lucky I am to be here when I am this suicidal.
And then I think about how much I want to be happy and not feel like this and how good I was doing when the girl kissed me and everything was seeming okay and then the bastards had to go and murder my sister and life could get okay for me at anytime now.
Except I’m a firm believer in making your life okay but the thing is right now I am just too damn tired. Except the problem is I’m too tired to sleep too. So I just lie here wishing for the absolution that is sleep.
I am very bored and lonely with both Liesel and that idiot Titus in the brig. Granted, that idiot Titus is usually in the brig, but even so.
Peter gone.
Terrel turns out to be a psychopath.
Tsegi dead and cut up.
Tim dead and baked.
My world is so weird right now. It doesn’t even feel real. I miss them, in a way. Yet in another way I’m so passive to them being gone, it scares me. Like I didn’t want them gone, but there is this surrealness to my feeling, like yes they were here, now they aren’t.
So now they just aren’t here. Them actually being gone or having died horribly doesn’t feel like it makes a difference. Yet it does. Just like not having my parents makes a difference, yet I can’t do anything about that or wonder because it’s over. and they’re dead. And I’m still here. I’d rather they were here, just like I’d rather have parents and a home. but they aren’t and I don’t. so I just sort of go on, a bit lonely, but just sort of resigned. I’d say it’s because I’m Forgotten, but Peter isn’t like that, Darla isn’t like that she’s crying her eyes out, has every night since they took Terrel away. I don’t think I’d cry my eyes out if they took Titus away. that would probably be for the best, actually, he’s a bit crazy. But I still love him.
I lie down to sleep and wonder what fresh hells we shall awake to. I wonder if it’s always been like this and I didn’t notice. If things have always been corrupt, evil, decaying. And now my eyes are just open. Or if things really have changed for the worse and we are slowly slipping to our deaths and most of them don’t know it.
Then I wonder about Card. He could save us if he wanted to. He’s cleverer than all of us put together
, he knows it damn it that’s why he’s so annoying. But he could save us—or is that all a façade to cover up that he is actually Satan? I really don’t think Satan would be so obvious, but apparently it’s not obvious to everyone otherwise somebody with less control or more courage would have shot him in the head by now. The thing is, he’s a really horrible person, but it would take a horrible person to defeat the devil, wouldn’t it? Could good really conquer evil? I don’t think so.
I think evil in some way must conquer evil. Because to be truly good, you must have a heart, a soul, and to do the monstrous things we must to wipe out evil , we cannot have a soul. So I look at the soulless. And I wonder which are the redeemers and which damn us? And how do we tell which? And do they choose what they become, what separates them in their brains that small fraction of what we are that makes us either good or---evil? Or do we even know? I doubt if they know. They don’t know what makes them good or evil that I’m sure of. They think they’re just like us. Or close enough, but they’re not, they’re very different. And only time will tell how.
Chapter 8
“H
ow’d you sleep last night?” Tom asks, as we walk to the laundry, our mesh laundry bags slung over our shoulders.
“Quite well, thank you, and you?” I ask. The brig is always nice and peaceful. Especially after a good murder.
“Fine,” she says, flatly. Rather flat after our kiss last night. Then again, she could have gotten in trouble as well.
“Did they get you in trouble last night?” I ask.
“No, the MTIs assured me it was your fault,” she says, calmly.
“Right, then,” I say, shrugging, “Will you kiss me again? Only I quite liked it.”
“Shhh---” she hisses, looking around, “Not now.”
“Oh why not there’s nobody----Kip go away,” I say, with a groan, seeing him and Leavitt come around the corner with laundry bags.
“You’re supposed to address me as sir or something,” Kip says, not at all concerned, as they come upon us.
“Good Morning, sir, where’ve you been?” Tom asks, politely.
“We’ve been collecting laundry from the MTIs, apparently we have to do it,” Leavitt says, holding two bags of laundry over his shoulders, “Part of the next phase of training.”
“Oh, lovely,” Tom says, offering to take one.
“And apparently I have to supervise you,” Kip says, “Come on, then, at least gets me out of the computer room.”
“Right,” I say. No kisses for Titus. Okay fine I can live with that. It isn’t so very fair. But I can live with it.
“I remember reading that in our OCSMAN,” Tom says, nodding to Leavitt, “We’ll get Liesel to help us as well, then we’ll be done in no time---and, who’s Coruscant’s leader now that Tyrell is gone?”
“I don’t know,” Leavitt says, “They didn’t have a change of command ceremony---I guess that would be in poor taste.”
“They just didn’t appoint one,” I explain, since I am apparently the only one who’d memorized the OCSMAN, I am going to forget it soon, though, it hasn’t been all that helpful so far as brain space went.
“Why do you have to watch us?” Tom asks Kip.
“The MTIs are short handed, Ebbel decided not to report for duty this morning, not that you heard that from me,” Kip says.
“Of course not,” I say. I already knew.
“We shall have to iron their things, I suppose---I’m rotten at ironing,” Leavitt says, as we walk into the laundry room. it’s hot, as usual, and a few washing machines churn gently.
“Titus isn’t, he can do that bit, and I’m good at rolling things so is Liesel,” Tom says, going to an empty washer.
“Oh, thanks,” I say, teasingly, tossing my SBUs, grass stained and a bit bloody from murdering Ebbel last night, into a washer. I drop in a packet of soap and turn it on.
“Well you are, you get it nice and neat,” Tom says, sitting on top of her washer as Leavitt fiddles with his. He sighs, the one he picked isn’t working, he goes to look for another empty one. He doesn’t find an empty one.
“It smells in here,” Kip says, leaning by the door and looking around lazily, “Aren’t you guys supposed to clean in here?”
“I did just the other night,” I say, opening a washer. The smell hits me before the sight does. For a half a second, I think it’s just crumpled up clothes and SBUs. Then I realize it isn’t. It so isn’t.
Leavitt staggers away from the washer, pointing. Kip walks over to look and then leaps away as well, swearing. I hop up and go over, a horrible, smell is coming from the washing machine. A dead smell.
A body that has been put in the washing machine overnight looks surprisingly purple, a variety of bodily fluids remain in the tub, tongue hangs out, and interestingly enough what is left of eyes remain open.
There, now that’s something we both know.
“Oh, my---oh my god---who---what,” Kip and Leavitt are leaning against the wall hugging each other. I’m trying to summon up the courage to go back and look. Titus is leaning over the washing machine staring at it.
“Who is it?” I ask him.
“The SBUs are mostly intact and stuck with suds from the attempt the machine made to wash its rather hefty payload---skin lacerations appear to be from the agitator---oh sorry it’s Ebbel,” Titus says, looking back up at us.
“We----we---we need to do something,” Kip stutters, still not moving.
“That is---oh my god that is really sick who? Why---?” Leavitt finally speaks, doubling over and looking like he’s trying not to vomit.
“I’m just pushing the emergency button,” I say, going over.
“Oh—nobody else wants to try to revive him or something? Okay,” Titus says, still looking in the machine.
“Revive---he is so not alive,” Kip chokes out.
“No, but we could haul him out and have a look at him before we realized that,” Titus says, hopefully.
“No---Titus I know how much you like dead things but no,” I say, going over to drag him away, “Just don’t touch anything.”
“Okay, let’s just get somebody,” Leavitt says, pushing the intercom button by the door. Needless to say it doesn’t work.
“Let’s just look---oh please Tom?” Titus says as I drag him bodily away. Then he notices Leavitt and Kip basically cowering in a corner. “It’s not like the cadaver can hurt you. It’s dead.”
“I’d sooner not be near it,” Leavitt says, backing towards the door, “Let’s just go and get someone.”
“Me neither that’s why I didn’t volunteer for front lines,” Kip says.
“Well I did; it’s interesting. He’s already dead,” Titus reasons.
“We’re still not touching it---I’ll go running with you later tonight Titus we can poke at dead things with sticks then not right now,” I say, succeeding in getting far enough away to try the intercom button myself. It doesn’t work for me either but it felt worth the try.
“Really? So long as we’re in the woods in the dark can we canoodle as well as poke at dead things?” he asks, hopefully, completely distracted from the body by now.
“We’ll see, now, can you run very quickly and go and get Wilde or somebody competent?” I ask, pushing him towards the door.
“As I’m not afraid of it and the rest of you are why don’t I stay and Leavitt go?” Titus asks, not really leaving.
“Because you’d poke at it,” I say, trying to push him out the door.
“And I’m in charge I say you’re going to get someone,” Kip speaks up.
“And I don’t want to leave him alone with you, I think that’d be rotten to do to somebody who’s alive let alone dead,” Leavitt says.
“Okay, I’m going to kill you and poke your body just for that forget chopping your legs off----”
“TITUS,” I say, pushing him out the door before he and Leavitt can start fighting again, “Go and get help, please? For me?”
“All right then----y
ou guys had better not be doing this so you can poke at it without me---”
“We’re not.”
“Believe us we’re not.”
“We promise.”
Titus looks suspiciously at all of us then he goes.
“You could’ve gone with him,” Kip says to me, as I lean against the door. He looks very green and ill in general.
“Ah, call me paranoid but after all the weird stuff that’s happened around here I felt like if I left it might disappear,” I say, shrugging.
“Oh, that’s why I’m staying as well---God the smell’s awful in here,” Kip says.
“It isn’t his fault,” Leavitt says, a little sadly, going to stand by the washing machine, “That’s what happens when things die. Titus was right, we shouldn’t be afraid of him.”
“Please don’t say things like ‘Titus is right’ when he might be in earshot, it isn’t good for him,” I say.
“Thank you Leavitt, I heard it anyway, Tom---here, putting jelly under your nose helps with the smell,” Titus says, returning with a little pot of petroleum jelly in one hand.
“WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE???” we all three cry.
“Man, there is a body in the washing machine I truly think we should be doing something,” Kip groans, as Leavitt and I accept the jelly.
“I know, but it occurred me as all of you were not fond of the smell you might want this,” he says, helpfully, “And I saw Wilde coming towards the building she’ll be up in a minute.”
Darkside 2 Page 7