throt·tle
verb \ˈthrä-təl\
: to choke or strangle (someone)
: to defeat (someone or something) easily or completely
: to not allow (something) to grow or develop

This fanfiction is dedicated to the fanfiction that shouldn't or never gets published.
Sorry.

I'm looking across the table at her and wondering desperately if I can unthink the thoughts I'm thinking. Afraid not, I'm afraid. I take a hit from the glass of scotch and tears. The bitter saltiness that paved the way to my current location, and I'm forced to choke it down, to wallow in it for the rest of eternity.

Or maybe I just choose to.

See, that, I wanna fucking unthink it and unthink it n-

"Do you have to drink so much?"

"No reason not to," I say, lighting a cigarette.

"You're smoking again?"

"Again," I say, exhaling. "No reason not to."

"How about the fact that drinking makes you slow, stupid and kills you?"

"I'm already slow, stupid and in a constant state of decay. Your point?"

"You're making it worse," she frowns.

"But it's gonna happen, right?"

"Well, yeah. Faster. Because you drink and you smoke."

"Even without smoking and drinking, though, right?"

"What?"

"I'd still in my descent to the dirt, as it were, Fiona. It'll only be a matter of time before I'm little more than the flesh of a dead animal. Dead and putrefying flesh; flesh unfit for food. That's where I'll be, Fiona. That's where I'm at, that's what I am, and that's what makes me hate myself and that is why you don't want to be with me."

Her hand hits the table and the glasses chink and slightly vibrate. "Your excuses are pathetic, Nack."

"Like I said. No reason not to."

"You're just as stupid as ever."

"I still jerk off to you," I say without thinking. Then I wonder, first, why that was a thought I had, and why my brain articulated it and my lips allow it to pass. I suppose I have no filter. She doesn't respond. I make it worse, and continue. "I can't help it. It's the only thing that turns me on."

"I moved on a long time ago," she says. "So should you."

"I was kidding," I say with a nervous laugh before hiding once more behind the glass. Fiona Fox. A constant reminder of what a failure I am. How pathetic I am. What I want and will truly never have, simply because I am me.

"I'm not even real," the words flow from her like a disgusted waterfall of truth. "Why are you torturing yourself like this? Why do you look for any and every reason to destroy yourself?"

I don't have an answer. I just stare at her until she disappears again, and there's nothing there but bar stools and regret. But, I suppose you could say that's all I have.

Swiper is snapping his fingers.

"Hey," he says, snapping closer and closer to my face. "Hey, you all right, du?"

"What?" I heard him. I don't know why I said that, but it's too late to go back on now. Forever. He'll just have to deal and repeat himself.

"I asked if you were all right."

Eyeball the tumbler and look back up at him. "Glass is half empty," I say. "I'll call you over when I need more."

He shakes his head. "That's not what I meant."

"Oh, that," I respond after a pause, and nod towards the empty barstool next to me. "I was just deluding myself into thinking someone gave a shit about me."

"You don't think anybody gives a shit about you?"

"What, you're going to pretend to, now? Look, you're not gonna tip for this, buddy. I don't even have any money. You don't charge me anything anyway. YOU DON'T EVEN CHARGE ME ANYTHING. WHAT ARE YOU AFTER."

I've grabbed him by his red vest and I'm shaking him before I've even realized it. I can feel the crazy in my eye. He's smiling at me like I'm an idiot, and I don't think I'm an idiot, I think he's an idiot, and I readjust my belt and sit down and hrmph.

He's shaking his head again, inaudibly tsking. "You really don't get it, do you?"

"Don't get what? I need another drink. Get me another drink."

"Your glass is half full."

"And these metaphors are obvious and stupid. The glass is a glass, the scotch and tears is scotch and tears and fuckshit is fuckshit."

"Fuckshit?" he asks, raising a brow.

"FUCKSHIT."

"Why is it you don't feel like anybody cares about you?"

"Should be obvious. I'm here, innit?"

"Yes, but WHY are you here?"

"Because I fucked everything up past the point of no return? Fuck, I dunno. Actually, I do, I just pretend not to. Okay? OKAY?"

"Calm down," he says, smirking. "Every passing second is another chance to turn it all around."

"Oh," I scoff. "So, you've seen Vanilla Sky, too, huh? Well then. Tell me, Penelope Cruz. Go ahead. Tell me. Go ahead and tell me."

"Another passing second is another chance to turn it all around?"

"Tell me again. Go on."

He knows what I'm doing now, and he's annoyed. But he bites anyway. "Every passing second is another chance to turn it ALL around." He waves his arms around faux enthusiastically.

"Well, shit," I say, laughing. "SHIT, man. You just changed my life. Is this the part where I take off my mask and jump off a building because something about my daddy? Because, I can tell you, bub, my daddy has nothing to do with this."

"You have more of a climb than a fall ahead of you."

"You think you're cryptic, but you're actually just an asshole."

"I'm actually being quite literal."

"Bullshit," I say, waving the hand with the drink in it, sloshing salty alcohol all over myself and the bar. "You're doing that gay metaphor thing again, and it's dumb and I hate you and it's dumb and STOP IT. I hate you."

He nods toward the back of the room, causing me to humor him and look behind me. But the back of the room isn't the back of the room at all. Wide open red skies that rain fire, demons dancing along it like weightless ballerinas, and off in the distance, the far, far distance of the barren wasteland and a mountain of corpses. It's too far to see any kind of detail, but I know it's them. I know they're there.

My fist tightens around the cup as I turn back to face his dumb, smug, stupid fucking face and heave for a minute before using all my strength to hurl the glass at half capacity into the bottles behind him. An explosion of glass and fluids. Still breathing heavy, it strikes me at how profound, that.

Chest heaving in and out slows to a calm, nearly unnoticeable huffing.

He just stares at me. Not with sarcasm, and there's no smugness about him. Just empathy and understanding, and I can't hate him, and if I can't hate him, I can't hate anything the longer he makes me think about it. It is what it is and I hate what it is, and if I'd told that fucker just how goddamn much HOW MUCH it is that I hate the way that it is, he'd somehow fuck me in my mind's cornhole until the feelings of sensation and (cum) spewed forth from my subconscious and attacked my brain with some kind of stupid, useless hippie faggot bullshit about being the cause of it all and accepting the fact that I'm pushing away every chance I chance I get from others to help me out of spite that I can't even help myself, and maybe instead of wallowing in my own state of hell and snapping at the offerings of the few dumb enough to think they could turn a turd into a diamond. Yeah, help such a washed up human turd on a populated beach. Help it off the beach and away from the innocent naive people AND GODDAMNIT SWIPER GET OUT OF MY BRAIN!

"Can't do it, Max," he says, quoting a Wes Anderson film that he doesn't particularly like.

I get the reference, but he's a dick, so I won't give him the nod. "My name is Nack. How much you been drinkin' back there, bartender?"

"Only enough to truly get away with. Can I get you another drink?

There's shards of broken glass digging into my palm. Sticky blood running through the cracks of my fingers. Tighten my fist, wringing the blood into the jar. Look up into his knowing eyes. He nods towards me. Awkwardly return the favor.

Sigh and push the stool aside. Make my way off into the infinite, when I hear him call out to me.

"Hey," his voice echoes from the back of me. "I was going to say good luck, but luck isn't the only factor. Then I was going to say break a leg, and the sad truth to that colloquialism is that it is, at least in your current circumstances. But, hey, look at it this way. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

"Is that Dragon Ball Z? Did you just toss a Vegeta quote at me? The fuck, dude, you watch way too much anime."

"I watch everything. Don't give up, Nack."

Those words stung, and I couldn't tell you why. Struck me down to my soul. Rattled it, it did.

I didn't turn back to face him. I couldn't. "I'm only a broken Mobian, Swiper. A Mobian who can't do shit right, who alienates everyone around them. I'm self-absorbed in such a way that I just have this giant bubble, this aura, this cloudy smog of intoxication about me that no other being should have to put up with and it only fortifies how shitty I feel, how shitty I act, how shitty I AM."

Almost a whisper from behind me, perhaps in my mind; "don't give up."

My foot moves without permission, moves towards the mountain. A mountain of fallen bodies, a mountain of fear, regret, inability.
A mountain of lost potential. A mountain of tragic waste.

And I should... climb it.

(Don't give up)

Sigh and drag in a deep breath and hold it as I take my first willing step. The ground burns beneath my feet, the world quakes slightly around me.

Heart's pounding. Thoughts racing. My body is screaming at me, nagging at me, begging me to just...

Run.

Break into a full sprint at its whims and it already hurts, it's already so painful to try to put this useless body to use. Ragged panting tears through my throat, my joints creak, my thighs burn.

Just run.

Sweat pours from my body like a paper cup being squeezed from the bottom, and it drenches over my body, steam rising from my burning feet, and I keep thinking, I can't, I can't, I can't do this.

Veins and heart trying desperately to breathe life into this carrion excuse for a meatsack. But no matter how bad everything hurts, aches, burns, no matter how much it seems that the mountain isn't getting any closer, I push harder, I push faster, I keep going.

Dizzy. Can't stop until I-

And my face is on the ground and I start pushing myself up and along with my awkward hands and legs and I notice I'm much closer than I was before.

But it's still so far away.

I just close my eyes and run back into full sprint. Faster and faster, breath unable to catch up with me. Head pounding, every single muscle burning and shrieking in agony. I try to pretend to be someone else, but it doesn't work, I feel everything. I tried to literally will the pain away with pure brute force, like a man, but I really think I should just, like. Exorcize at a-

I'm fine.

Totally fine.

And the next thing I remember, I'm in a cave. Face first on the ground in a cave with red sand in my teeth.
Drag myself to my hands and kneel – and behold, some old man sitting in between two open flames with a giant stick in front of him. Stand as quickly as possible and shoot just a taste of the crazy-eye his way. He may not have noticed it, but he felt it. He felt it in his soul.

That's when it happened. That's when he spoke. His words cut straight through the heart with an exceptional combination of old and tired.

"IT'S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS."

"What?" Fuck, I did that thing again. Ah well. Deal.
He doesn't deal at all. He just stands there. Completely silent. Unmoving.

"Hey," I say, poking him on the shoulder. "Hey, whawuzzat. What did you just say?"

The bastard says nothing.

"You want me to take the stick? Is that it?" I ask, pointing. "Is that the big stick? Like, what I'm supposed to take?"

And the old man. The old man doesn't say a GODDAMN thing.

So, I take the stick and BEAT tha MOTHERFUCKER to DEF widdit. Just to see if that piece of shit blee-

Nope, nope. Didn't do that. That didn't happen. I'm pretty sure it didn't. Did it?
Thank the old man and leave the cave.

Upon emerging, I immediately recognize my surroundings. In front of me, way off in the horizon, the lights of the bar twinkle, tempting me. I know what's behind me, and I'm afraid to look. I could so easily just walk forward, back to the safety and comfort of my own self destruction.

Or I could turn around and face my problems. Try and maybe fail.

And maybe fail.

There's a lump in my throat I can't seem to swallow, a fear in my chest I can't seem to shake. Anxiety. My heart pounds, my fingers tremble. Head pounding, knees feeling ready to buckle at any second. Close my eyes and rotate my foot, my hips slowly swinging into motion, following.

When I open my eyes again, there it is. The mouth of the cave in the mountain of bodies.

Not just any bodies. Mine.

I've died a thousand times, and I could die a thousand more. I could just keep killing myself. I notice I'm not breathing and draw the oxygen in deep.

Step forward. Place my hand on my shoulder and my foot on my thigh, and I feel it and it hurts. Hoist myself up. A step is a step. An inch is an inch. A foot is a foot. Keep climbing. (Don't give up.) A yard is a yard. A mile is a mile.

The ache of my bodies, the carrion is overwhelming. My arms will burn. My back will ache.
Head down. One hand in front of the other. One foot in front of the other.

I want to stop, I want to rest, I want a drink and I want a cigarette.
Not now.

My hand grabs my ankle and the bodies, the bodies start moving, they start grabbing at me. I feel a yelp escape my throat, I feel my nails digging into my flesh.

Grab the stick from my back and start beating myself down. The yelps turn into screams. I don't know who I am. Bashing away, wrestling my limbs free, dragging myself upward. I look up into the burning sky and I see everyone I've let down, every mistake I've ever made, every regret that stains my soul.

The screaming turns into frantic sobbing. I try to climb faster, to hit harder, to go further, but the mountain is crumbling, I'm collapsing under the weight of myself.

I ask a question I don't know the answer to.

I don't get an answer.