"Hey Josh. Is it safe to drink the water? Or does your corpse negate any possible benefits I get from drinking it? Or possibly your sisters. After all, it's the likeliest place they ended up. Do you think they would mind? They would, wouldn't they?"
She hears voices answer back, and tries to make out if Josh is one of them. It's probably something left over from the concussion she had when she fell. It's gotten louder as she becomes hungrier. She can't remember the last time she ate.
She talks to Josh, Because he's here, and she's not going back into that room.
She should. She knows that she should grab the clothes and wash them so they can dry for when she needs to change clothes.
She will need to change clothes. The winter is cold, and she is more and more aware of how dirty hers are. And she is. She must stink, but the water is too cold to bathe properly in.
But maybe not too cold to drown in…
She hasn't quite decided if that is better than starving yet. It's not like she has a lot of options.
"Hey Josh. I know you're already dead, but if you had to pick should I die by drowning or thirst. Or hunger? I've never been this hungry before. Could almost eat you, except that would be gross, and you deserve better than that. "
Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him. Sitting on a nonexistent couch. She looks at that, rather than his dead body, and believes in her delusion if only for a moment.
"Surely there's other options Jess." He asks.
"What? Waiting for the murderer. Yeah, I wouldn't mind that now actually. Suicide is a sin, and there's something is deeply wrong if you go to heaven and I don't."
He gets mad at her for that. "No. You don't deserve a quick death, Jess. You killed my sisters and you'll die the same way!"
"I'm sorry Josh. I'm deeply, remorsefully, truly sorry, that I killed them. " She grovels, aware that this is madness, but fuck, delusions are at least something to do. She's not getting better. Her wounds look worse by the day. She's not eating. She's not drinking. She's dying. Slowly but surely. At least Brain-Josh is company, even if he's angry with her.
She's dying alone, but she can pretend otherwise. Matt is too painful, and Chris and Ash visit sometimes. Chris usually pays more attention to Josh, but Ash talks to her. Sometimes she blames her for Matt's death. Sometimes Matt comes and accuses her, himself.
Jess is in no state to imagine anyone happy with her, but guilt gets boring sometimes, so they switch it up and talk about food. It's always painful to try to reach for food her brain imagines up and have it gone. One time she reached out and touched Josh's body, and recoiled.
Though the idea stayed.
"No, he doesn't deserve that" she whispers, and tries to tell herself she believes it.
Sometimes she holds funerals for the bodies in the room. It's weird to have Ashley give a Eulogy for Chris at his funeral, but if anyone deserved to it was Ash.
Sometimes she makes up stories about the unknown dead man instead.
He's a hiker, he's a homeless person, he's a hunter. He has a family who loves him back home, and she pictures what they were like.
Today they all join Josh on the couch. Ashley looks her in the eye.
"You don't have to die Jessica. In fact, I want you to live. Bring us out of here."
"How could I live?"
Josh gets up from the couch. "Take a walk with us, Jessica."
They go through the room of bodies. She's almost noseblind to the smell, but she still gags at it.
At the end of their walk is freedom at the top of the cliff. Maybe. She could still die, after all. But it's a chance to live. If only she were healthy enough to make it.
They brought her here to torment her. Of course.
"To live, of course, you're going to have to take our strength?"
Oh God.
"What?"
"You're half dead Jessica. You're not going to be able to climb out when you are half dead."
"Yah. You will die too, and then we will all be stuck down here."
"Matt? You want me to live, even after I killed you? I don't deserve that."
"Who cares about deserve Jessica? It's about want? And I don't want to stay forgotten at the bottom of a mine shaft."
"Does it always have to be about you, Josh?"
"No. This is about you Jess. And you know what I want."
"You don't mean that?"
"I admit, when I joked about wanting you to eat me, this is not what I meant then. But I mean it now."
She feels cold, even as she walks towards the body room. Not the cold of the winter, but the cold of horror.
Just for Josh's stupid Joke, she's going to eat Chris. After all, she likes Chris the least. And the feeling is mutual. And Josh likes Chris.
And quite frankly, his headless body is probably in better shape.
It doesn't smell good. But as she eats, she starts to feel stronger, and eats him at a much faster speed then she thought herself capable of. She is devouring him.
She should probably feel like throwing up after she is done. After all, not eating for however many days she has been down here, and then eating Chris at record speeds. Too much, too soon.
But all Jessica feels is hungry.