A/N: Hey Everyone!
I'd like to apologize for the following:
1. Taking so long to update... it's a problem (one that will be significantly worse next chapter)
2. This...
You're name is John Egbert and you don't know if you can take it anymore.
You pass through the school day on nothing but weak determination and some crazed sense of necessity. As the day wears on, you find yourself caring less and less about your studies, which you could barely find the strength to care about in the first place. You are still confused as to what divine power managed to get you out of bed this morning.
You wake up the next morning in a haze. Nothing matters, nothing can touch you, you are floating in your sheets and nothing matters. You are drifting somewhere between waking and sleep when you realize that you can't be pulled down under, however much you want to; and with this realization comes the stabbing pain of consciousness. You roll your head over so that you are facing your clock and see that the buzzer gave up on you a long time ago. You groan and roll out of bed, accepting that you are not going to make it to school on time.
Today is going to be a hard day and you know it, but there's nothing stopping you from walking out that door.
So now here you are, roaming the hallways between classes, not bothering to eat lunch, one of which you don't possess anyway. You can't even be bothered to go to your locker to see if Vriska and her lackeys had left you another "gift." Curiosity guides you for a few moments before you decide against checking; you aren't sure if you need anything that she could give you to bring you down, you are doing a pretty bang up job of it as it is. The final bell rings harshly in your ears.
You remove yourself from your desk and exit the room. You are content to wander the ahlls until your fellow students vacate the school. You can't say you're in a hurry, you don't have a bus to catch and you doubt either you or your dad want you home anyway, and what you are about to do you feel you should do alone.
You stroll down the hall heading toward your locker and you are plagued by your thoughts and emotions. you feel as though you are sinking, yes, sinking. You find this to be a very accurate metaphor of what you're feeling. It's as though you are a swimmer at the beach and it was all fun at first, cruising through life with nary a care in teh world. Then you decided to take a chance and swim even farther away from the shore and you payed the price for it. You were sucked under by a wave, the crushing blow sending you end over end. you couldn't tell which way was up and you were fighting for air, fighting for your life. You then began to panic, tried so hard to return to where you were before, the surface. But the waves just kept fighting back and they are stronger than you, so much stronger, there's no way you can compete. In a last ditch attempt to save yourself, you inhale, hoping silently that air will magically rush into your lungs, that you will suddenly change and grow gills. But you're drowning, so that lungful of air turns into a lungful of water and that's when you lose all your fight.
And now you've given in to your fate.
That's it.
It's beaten you.
You'd say that a life guard could save you, but it seems that there aren't any around any-
BANG.
You crash to the ground as one of the football jocks shoulder checks you and sends you and your things to the ground. You hear the jock's mocking laughter as he walks away. You rub your shoulder in pain and irritation and begin to pick up your things. You hear a set of footsteps come up behind you when they suddenly stop a few feet back. Fear grips you for a moment and the papers in your hands are rustling because your hands are shaking so hard. You finish picking up the notebook you were hovering over and turn around. What you see surprises you.
There is a boy, about your age, hunched over and picking up your binder. There is nothing all that striking about him, other than his white-blonde hair. He rights himself, oh god he's taller than you, and offers you your notebook without a word. You just stare at him for a moment, but you can't tell if he's staring back at you or not because his mirror shades are blocking your view of his eyes.
What, is he just going to stand there?
Is he going to do anything?
Say anything?
At all?
You stare back and forth, as far as you can tell, for what seems like hours but what must have been only seconds. You cautiously extend your hand out and take your binder from him.
"Thank you," you manage to choke out.
He simply nods at you and walks back the way he came. You suppose this response was supposed to have a sort of stoic, level-headed effect, one that left the receiver thinking, "Wow, what a cool kid."
It had the desired effect.
Shaking the (was it awe?) away, you turn back to the task at hand and finish the trek to your locker.
This is it. The moment of truth. Do you open it? You already know the answer to THAT question. What could it possibly be, anyway? What more could she possibly think up to do to you that you have already suffered through? What more is there? How much more can she do?
Despite all these thoughts, you are still scared. You gulp lightly once you enter the combination into your lock and it glides open easily. Taking a final deep breath, you open the locker door, and your heart sinks through the floor. Someone has taken all of your books and binders. All your pictures are gone, the blue shelf that Jade had gotten you is missing as well. All that is left is a wrapped box and a note.
Feeling pale, you grab the note first, like always, and break the seal, feeling the icy chill of those blue words inside taunting you. You remove the slip of paper from its hold and unfold it, reading the words as they are revealed.
Egbert,
One more step...
Love, V ;)
You are immediately confused by this, but that doesn't surprise you. Nothing horrible really surprises you anymore and this is sure to be the worst of it.
This is what it all comes down to. You and that package. You just look at it for a few seconds and get up the courage to open it. Once you feel you have it in you, you don't even remove the package fro the small space, not because you don't want to, but because this one's a lot bigger that the others. So, instead of removing the harassing mass, you rip the paper off the top of it, where you're sure you'll be able to pry it open andlift the lid. The first emotion that hits you is a light disappointment. Despite your original assumption, you are abble to fully lift the lid of the box; although you are able to get it open enough to see what's inside. This realization leads you swiftly to your second emotion.
Resignation
You begin to walk home in a daze. Should you do it? Shouldn't you? It's not like anyone cares about you anyway. There's no lifeguard on duty. No one's going to save you and you can't save yourself. So why even bother trying anymore?
Because you're too chicken to go through with it?
Because there might actually be something worth living for?
You think the former is the more likely case.
But for now, you walk. You don't really want to go home right now. If you go home, your mind will become cluttered with useless emotions and thoughts. That's not what you need right now. You need to give your brain a breath of fresh air; you need to clear your mind.
And so you walk. You don't have any particular destination in mind, but you guess that's what they say, it's all about the journey.
So you keep walking, you allow your mind to wander to more pleasant thoughts; ones that don't make your head hurt, one's that don't make your heart ache. You mostly think about your mom. She used to smell like vanilla. You were never quite sure whether it was a perfume that gave her the scent, or if it was just her natural odor, but you liked it. Sometimes, when you're wearing - were wearing - that shirt you found her in, you thought you could still sense that homey essence; it always seemed to make you feel better. But now anymore, there's a different memory tied to it now.
And so you keep walking.
And walking.
And walking.
Without even realizing it, you begin to think about Dave. You're not quite sure if you're ashamed to admit it or not, but you miss him. You miss your best friend. And you've done nothing for your relationship with him but screw everything up. Even if you convinced him to let you talk to him again, a prospect you find very unlikely at this point, there would always be that tension, there would always be that thought that you weren't strong enough to even maintain a friendship. That's something that you don't think you can-
You stop in your tracks at the sound of a click and a flash of light. You look up and the feeling of your gut hitting your shoes makes your head spin. Standing in front of you is Vriska's boyfriend with his cronies and he has a knife.
"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" he said ominously, "A faggot caught in a trap?" the cronies laughed and you try to remain calm. You know that what they have in store for you can't be good. He seems to be waiting for you to say something.
"Gonna say something faggot?" without warning, two jocks come up from behind you and secure your arms behind your back and kick the back of your knees so you're forced to fall to your knees, "Gonna call for your mommy?" You look up at him. You know what he sees in your eyes; it's not panic, or fear, or even stoicism. He sees resignation. He doesn't seem to be very satisfied by this because he shrugs his shoulders out of his jacket and as he's turning to hand it to one of the boys at his side, he says, "Well, if you were going to call out for her help, here would probably be the best place to do so." And that's when you notice where you are.
You are in the alley you found your mom in.
This is where she was killed.
She was standing about where you are kneeling right now.
You think you're going to be sick.
"But today," he turns back toward you, knife still in hand, "we are going to paint it a different color red," this sends the first panic you've felt all day up your spine and you feel your throat begin to close up. You feel your jaw go slack, but you're pretty sure it's never been so tight in your life. Were they really going to kill you? Were they really willing to go as far as to murder another student? Did Vriska really have that much control over them?
You guess you are about to find out.
"Take his shirt off," he says and his lackeys immediately do his bidding and rip your backpack, jacket, and shirt and throw them somewhere out of your view. Once your mottled flesh and fresh scars are visible, he walks up to you with a dastardly smile on his face. He reaches and prods your chest as though feeling the toughness of meat.
"What do you think, boys," they all laugh at their leader's upbeat tone, "Do you think he's tender enough?" A rumbled no echoes off the walls of the alley way, "Well then," he looks around, "Pound him."
And they do.
The first blow strikes you in the face and you are sent sprawling. From then on, it's almost impossible to tell which blow comes next. With almost a mob-like severity, Vriska's crew comes down on you with so many blows that you can't even think straight. You try to go deep into your mind, to find that place where you are weightless, but you can't. Each punch, each kick, each stomp draws you back. Some blows are worse than others; at one point, someone kicks you in the face and your whole head is thrown into a fiery pain that center's somewhere around your nose. The beating seems to be never ending.
But then, thank your lucky stars, it does end and each person slowly backs away from you. You realize that at some point, without your knowledge, you had curled up into a ball on your side as if trying to protect yourself. Once that last person throws in their final kick and backs away, you roll onto your hands and knees and cough despite the pain. Blood scatters on the ground.
"Are you satisfied then, gentlemen?" Vriska's boyfriend asks the group. They all signal their approval, "Well then, I have a girlfriend I have no intention of disappointing," and with that, you are grabbed roughly by the shoulders and put back in a kneeling position facing the boy with the knife. You can't find the energy to stay up on your own anymore so the jocks that had brought you up had to stay there to make sure you remained upright.
Vriska's boyfriend struts up to you with the switchblade in his right hand and his left was positioned in front of him like he was an artist about to make his first brushstroke, "Now where to begin, where to begin..." He takes a few more moments to decide and you pray to whatever deity is out there that you will fall unconscious. But alas, your luck has run out once again because suddenly, and almost without warning, the knife is on the flesh of your chest and you feel the first mark being claimed. You don't have the energy to scream or break free, so you do the best you can and try to wiggle away from the knife with your mouth open in a vain attempt to scream. All that comes out of your mouth is a strangled squeak.
"Sorry, what was that?" he asks after he's finished. Everyone laughs, "You want more? Okay!" He delves in with the knife again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
He runs the blade across your chest a total of ten more times.
Once he's finished, you can feel the blood running down your stomach, you can feel the hands of the jocks holding you in your place, but most of all, you can feel the searing pain in your chest that you can't seem to escape no matter how you position yourself.
"I believe our work here is done gentlemen," he says after he cleans the blade on your shorts and has it tucked safely away his pocket. Then, with his words, the two jocks at your side shove you to the ground and you can feel the dirt work its way into your wounds. You lay there and sob for a few minutes until you can pull yourself together to assess your condition.
You somehow manage to get yourself on your knees once again and you look down at your chest and see your wounds for the first time. You gasp in honest shock at what you see written in speckled red.
F
A
G
You know for a fact that this time you are going to be sick. Not having the energy to move any farther, you vomit straight in front of you and you use up a good deal of your self control to keep yourself from falling into it once you're done. You just sit there, absorbed with your pain for a few more minutes and then the tears begin to fall again, because while you're sitting here feeling sorry for yourself...
You know you deserve every second of it.
You turn around and crawl over to where they had thrown your back pack and you reach for the main pocket's zipper. You fumble with the contraption in fierce concentration and once you finally get it open, you reach inside and feel the rough texture of the gift that Vriska had sent you. You grasp your present and pull it out of its blue confinement and hold it up for you to observe with a serious determination.
Out of your bag, you pull out the rope.
A/N: QDHSDOJFHS!
I feel so bad about writing this chapter!
Bleargh! But anyway! The next one is going to be the last chapter for this fic, but it's going to take me a bit longer to write (I know, I'm sorry. I'll get it done as fast as I can! [*cough cough* reviews help *cough*])
Also, if you check out my page, I wrote a one-shot called Dear Nanna and I'm reeeeaally looking for suggestions on that, so if you'd check it out, that'd make me feel good. :)
Thank you all so much!
-AJ3