The floor was comfortable, and the stars were beautiful.
Adam laid on the dirty tiles next to Zep. They stared up at the sky above them, admiring the view that had burned through the ceiling long ago. They didn't have a care in the world. Lawrence, his foot, the burning world around them, none of it mattered.
"This is the life, isn't it?" Adam asked.
His favorite star was the little red one that danced along the wall.
"I could look at this view forever," Zep replied. "Couldn't you, Adam?"
Despite the love he felt for his new best friend, he couldn't help but scoff.
"Don't have much of a choice now, do I?"
Because Lawrence wasn't coming.
During their last argument, Larry had assured him of that. The doctor's foot had gotten moody again, and Adam just didn't know when to shut up. And now, Larry wouldn't even look his way.
All that was left was Zep. And all they could do was study the gorgeous stars above them and wait for it all to fade away.
This was his fate.
"Do you think I could have been a vet?"
Zep sighed. "The ship to that pipe dream sailed long ago. I sure as hell wouldn't even trust you with a goldfish."
Of course. How foolish of him. Why would anyone trust him with family?
Stupid.
"Yeah well, you have fuck all chances of being a vet too," Adam responded with a chuckle.
Anything to ease the tension.
And then he burst out laughing. But moving made his shoulder grind against the tiles, and his laughter devolved into shrieks and groans. He grit his teeth and tried to still himself.
"That's not funny," Zep spat.
Adam sighed. What else was new? Of course he had made his friend angry.
"I know," Adam replied. "I never was."
"Pathetic."
Adam's lip curled. "Don't forget apathetic."
"Got something right."
Adam looked at the red star again. It swayed in his vision, right along with the funeral song that played in the background.
And somewhere in the corner where Lawrence once was, he heard laughter bouncing off the walls.
He was the butt of the joke. The fool. The laughing stock of it all.
He weakly chuckled.
He always had been.
The smile wiped from his lips.
Larry had been right. He was always right. And so…
"Lawrence isn't coming back," Adam whispered, "is he?"
Adam's eyes watered. Zep remained silent, and the laughter continued. He listened to it ricochet around as the stars faded, and the eternal darkness around him replaced the colorful sky.
All that remained was the red light.
He needed to change the subject. Maybe Zep would forgive him if he came up with something interesting to talk about.
"Zep, did I tell you that I skipped dinner on my last day at the apartment?"
Zep gave him a disapproving scowl. Adam inwardly groaned at himself.
Yeah, thrilling. Nice one.
"Course I didn't."
Zep stayed silent, and Adam took that as an invitation to continue, despite how horribly boring the whole thing sounded. He would stop if Zep interjected. He sometimes did when Adam decided to tell one of his thrilling stories.
"I just got home after passing out fliers for that band I told you about. And uh, there was this girl and I… I called her 'Rockstar,' man. Then I took her picture."
The mush that was his friend splayed on the tiles rolled his eyes. "What a fuckin' creep."
Adam winced.
"I know."
But he forced more words out regardless.
"She tried to walk away from me and everything, but I just would not take the hint."
Zep scrunched his brows together and gave Adam another disgusted, disappointed look.
"That's exactly what she looked like, thank you." Adam chuckled despite the pit growing in his chest. "But yeah, uh, I went upstairs after being awkward as hell. Then I realized that I didn't get something I needed for dinner, and… I don't know. I was just so sick of dealing with it, you know? So I moved on and didn't have anything."
After a few moments, he looked at Zep again. He needed to know if he was driving him away too. Just like Lawrence. Just like—
Zep nodded, so Adam continued. "Didn't have a bowl of cereal or anything."
His stomach growled, and he rested a hand on it. Starvation was not the way he expected to go out. Or dehydration. He had envisioned something, anything other than slowly withering into nothing.
But what was another plan that didn't work out? That had become his whole life.
"I would kill for a bowl of cereal right about now," he whispered.
Zep glared at him and Adam clenched his jaw. Terrible wording. "Sorry," he muttered.
Another regret. He could feel Zep still scowling at him. Just like Rockstar had when he refused to take the loss and leave the poor girl alone.
Adam sighed and mumbled, "No doubt she went home that night to tell her friends about the creep who ruined her night."
He had tried his best, he really had. He always did.
"I tried, Zep." Adam told him with a raspy voice. "I tried so, so many times to do better. But things happened, and… I thought this would be my chance, but…"
The ground started to slowly swallow him whole. It was getting colder and harder by the second.
Not that he minded. Maybe he deserved to be eaten alive by the bathroom.
"No one's coming for me."
He would die here, and the list of people who would care grew smaller and smaller by the second. And it was his fault. All along, it always had been.
Because he had always been clueless.
"That's the last conversation I had before waking up here. The one with Rockstar. That's the legacy I'm gonna leave. That's what I am to the world. The freak who couldn't leave her alone. Couldn't take a hint." Adam sighed. "That's what I'm gonna be remembered for."
He would fade off into nothing.
And he would study the constellations and listen to the laughter that still echoed in the dark as he replayed scenes from his past. The past he had no control of.
Just as he had no control over everything else.
That was his fate.
"This really is it. Isn't it?"
But Zep was silent. And the laughter stopped. And all he could hear was the sound of himself shivering against the cold, hard floor.
Alone. He was all alone.
Despite it all. Despite all the lies Lawrence had thrown.
This was it.
Something he had realized time and time again, in between his arguments with his friends and the bouts with the clock.
Adam stood up and shivered. He felt the pipe behind him and used it to find where Lawrence was. The foot was there and he knew it. It still laughed along with those voices, and they joked about every lie that he had ever force-fed Adam.
And he had believed every one of them.
But what was the point anymore?
"What the fuck are you looking at?"
He scowled at the foot. He paced back and forth as far as his leash would let him, keeping his hard stare on the darkness where Larry had made his home.
That would show him.
And when Adam died, he would make sure to go out facing the foot and giving it this same look. That way he could scowl at it for all eternity as they withered away to nothing together.
"Where did you go?"
The foot groaned and fidgeted, more panicked than Lawrence had ever been.
It should be. It was trapped in here with Adam, not the other way around. And he had had enough of its shit.
"You promised me! Where's the chariot? The calvary? The knight in shining armor come to whisk me to safety? Who's gonna get me outta here and fix the shoulder that you messed up, huh?"
But he knew exactly where Lawrence was.
Or, at least where he wasn't.
He wasn't anywhere near this bathroom. He had left long ago, leaving Adam to rot away with a corpse and a foot as the voices tore him apart in this dark corner.
"Lies. How many fucking lies could you have possibly told me?" Adam adopted a voice, a voice that sounded nothing like Lawrence, but hopefully mocked him just the same. "'I'll bring someone back, Adam. I promise you. I'm not gonna leave you behind like everyone else in this fucked up world.' What was the other thing you said? Oh yeah, you said 'I—"
Adam stopped dead in his tracks. He leaned forward, eyes wide, and used air quotes as he emphasized every word.
"'Wouldn't lie to you.'"
The foot tried to speak up, but Adam couldn't let it talk over him. He needed it to know how much it hurt.
"Oh, don't lie to me."
It all fucking hurt.
"I'm sick of it!"
But Larry kept trying to interject.
Adam threw his arms out. "If you're coming, then where are you, huh? Got lost on your way to paradise? Bastard."
He reached down and grabbed a shard of glass. He threw it at the foot.
He was running out of stuff to throw. But he had to teach it a lesson. You can't just take it. He couldn't. He couldn't take it. He—
Adam pointed to Zep. "I killed him, Lawrence. I killed a man, and I did it for you! Don't you get that?"
If he could take it all back…
That was something he thought about all the time. Of all the people, Adam had killed the one person here who was completely innocent. Who wasn't a lying bastard like Lawrence, and who wasn't a royal fuck-up like Adam.
Why the hell did Adam—
"At least he pays attention to me! At least he cares! But you—" Adam pointed over at the foot with disgust— "you! You just sit there all day, judging me."
It didn't say a word. Didn't even move. And Zep didn't seem to care too much about Adam's argument.
At the end of the day, it didn't matter what Adam had to say anymore.
Because everyone who ever gave him the time of day left through the wide-open door to his life, never to return.
His hope had left with Lawrence.
He didn't have any before Lawrence was in the picture. It was fitting that it left with the doctor, too.
Adam felt just as hopeless as he always did when he lost his arguments in here. Felt just as hopeless as when he scoured the darkness for more than black, and shapes, and that fucking camera.
Hopeless.
Adam clumsily sat on the edge of the bathtub, shaking.
He had always been hopeless.
Always…
Adam furrowed his brow.
Hopeless, but not stuck.
No. Maybe not stuck after all.
He wouldn't let his captors have this.
He had one choice left in here.
How would he die?
Adam stared at the red light from the camera, twirling around in his vision with some of the saws. An intricate little trapeze show in the biggest circus in the world. One where Adam was still the clown. Still the fucking joke.
He'd die here. That had never been wrong.
But it would not be on Jigsaw's terms.
Not slowly fading out.
He wasn't some candle, sputtering and choking until it died on its own wax and smoke.
No.
He'd go with a bang.
His own thoughts made him start shaking. Quaking under their invisible weight. Ready to crush his entire body to nothingness.
That wouldn't be anything different from now, though, would it?
He was still nothing.
So unbelievably nothing that Lawrence had abandoned him. So unbelievably worthless that nobody was coming to save him, even from a hellscape like this.
He had always been nothing.
So why not become nothing on his own terms, for once?
Apathetic. Jigsaw had been right about that. Apathetic. Waiting until someone or something else did the job for him. Cigarettes were just the backup's backup.
The fear of everything going away, the agony it would cause his mother, those things had stopped him before. That, or sometimes, just sometimes, he'd find something worth sticking around for.
But here, he felt nothing.
He had run out of things to feel. Things to care about. All swallowed up by the darkness.
This was his choice.
His last fucking choice.
And he had better make it count.
Adam pushed himself off the lip of the tub.
The shaking of his legs had already been unbearable. But now, they'd be more stable if they were made of Jell-O. He took a half-step to his little corner and stumbled onto his hands and knees.
He'd have to crawl across the floor. Pitifully shuffle to the space next to Zep's feet.
At least the only people left to watch, left to embarrass him about it, were both rotting in here with him.
He reached into the dark and felt cold metal under his hand.
Just feeling it made him thud his forehead onto the tiles, a small squeak of a cry escaping him.
It was this or… what? Starving. If not dying of thirst.
Sputtering out.
Adam fixed his hold on the gun.
No. He would not sputter out.
'Go with a bang. Go on your own terms.' They had only ever been stupid mantras Scott said to justify the bullshit he did.
On his own terms.
Adam forced himself to sit up and fiddled with the pistol. Acquanting himself with a new friend. The last friend he'd ever make.
He had never fired a gun. That was a Scott thing. When they were kids, and Scott's dad tried to get them both into hunting, Scott held the guns enough for the both of them. Adam's only weapons experience was what he could gather from playing Doom.
"Aim right, and it won't hurt," the gun whispered in his hand.
Aim right. Yeah. Do something right. Adam was definitely the man for that job.
But he didn't think about it. He couldn't. Don't think. The instant he started thinking, he'd hesitate.
Don't think. And go on your own terms.
Tears were gathering at the corners of his eyes. He hurriedly blinked them away.
Don't think. And go on your ow—
"Do you really think that's a good idea?"
Larry's voice sounded about as nice as nails on a chalkboard.
"Fuck you," Adam hissed to the darkness.
"What about Lawrence?"
Fuck him too.
He had lied just to get Adam off of him. Lied, knowing that he'd be leaving Adam to rot in here.
"He promised, though, didn't he?"
Yeah.
An empty one.
Adam felt around the gun and fixed his hold on it. Just like Scott's dad had taught them all those years ago.
He cocked it.
"Trust me. He couldn't lie to you."
He could. And he had. And—
"Adam."
Adam couldn't help but smirk.
The foot was anxious now. It didn't want to be left alone in here. Left alone with Zep. They didn't exactly get along. They'd kill each other before long.
Just like how Lawrence had—
"Steady your aim, Stanheight," the gun said, sounding just like Scott and Scott's dad and Scott's dad's dad. "Won't hit home shaking this much."
Adam turned the gun around and put both his hands on it, trying to steady it.
He wasn't sure if that made it better or worse.
Larry hissed, "Think about this, Adam."
No. He couldn't think. He wouldn't.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
And for a single moment, everything emptied from his mind into the air and onto the floor. A horrible mess of regrets and red hot anger and a sadness so deep and so toxic that it started to eat through the dirty white tiles.
He pulled the trigger.
Click.
There was nothing.
Adam furrowed his brow and opened his eyes.
It was still darkness and the stupid little light.
He let out a shaky breath and felt around him.
It was still the dingy pipes and the disgusting tiles and the clunky chain around his ankle.
He wildly shook, the gun rattling around in his hand.
He aimed somewhere else and fired.
Click.
No.
He fired again.
Click.
And again.
Click. Click. Click.
No, no, no, no—
Adam screamed and threw the gun, sending it hurtling into the black.
He shouted and slammed his fists to the floor. Pain shot out from his shoulder.
He wheeled to face Zep, still glued to the floor. "Fuck you!"
Zep did nothing to defend himself as Adam wildly pointed a finger at him. For a moment, he wished he hadn't thrown the gun so he could give Zep round two. There still had to be something to smash to bits in that stupid little head of his.
"You knew there were no more bullets, you fuck!"
He slammed his fists to the ground again and again, screaming.
Pain. Red hot pain each time. From more than just his shoulder.
Hot tears scalded his cheeks as he looked up.
And the red light from the camera was there. Sneering at him. Mocking him.
The one choice he had. Ripped away from him.
"Fuck this shit!"
He didn't hear his own voice echoing in his ears at that.
Lawrence.
He had heard Lawrence's voice erupt from his own throat.
Adam cried out and thud his head against the ground. He uselessly tried to dig his nails into the tiles.
The voices had been right all along.
He had been right all along.
Hopeless.
No one was coming for him. He would interrogate that foot and beg for reassurance from the corpse as he continued to lose it, until finally, he fell asleep and never woke up.
That was his fate.
It had been since the moment he woke up here.
There were no choices.
There never had been.
Play the game or you're dead.
And he had lost in spectacular fashion. And he would go out because those were the rules of the game.
He had nothing left to do but accept it.
He slammed his hands against the floor again.
Nothing.
There was nothing left.
Adam sat up and screamed to the darkness. A scream that shot his voice to hell.
And then he curled back into his corner, with his spine uncomfortably jammed against one of his pipes.
They were the only thing that didn't hate him. The pipes.
He heaved for air.
He'd fade out. And that'd be it.
He was so close to matching the nothing that littered this filthy room.
Nothing. Just like he had always been.
It was only a matter of time.
And he wondered what he had ever done to deserve all of this.
Adam looked over to Larry.
"Fuck you," he whispered.
But it didn't do anything. The foot's owner was out there, living the dream. Far, far away from here.
And Adam was still in the room he'd die in.
Of course that was the one promise that meant anything. Jigsaw's.
As everything around him faded out, he stared at Zep. The corpse was forever tethered to this wicked bathroom, never to see the light of day again.
That was Adam's legacy.
Death. Decay.
He closed his eyes.
That'd be him soon, too.
Death and decay.
The whispers stopped, never to return. He drowned out the ticking of the clock. All he could feel around him was nothing.
And all he could hear was silence.
Author's Note:
Hi everyone! Thank you very much for reading this. I have loved writing Adam so far and am so excited to share this with you. After thinking and planning for so long, this has been a great experience. The next story, Wouldn't Lie (To You) starts releasing January 19th. I hope you enjoy, and thank you again!
Huge thank you to my co-writer Velitor. These wouldn't have been possible without you.