Adventurer who's just going through a really hard time right now, okay?
I’m the luckiest drunk on this godforsaken planet of the apes.
Right below me is about 80 men dressed to the nines in Imperial Garrison uniforms, prowling around in the woods near that church I burned down. They've got muskets at the ready and have even mounted bayonets, every bunch of about 10 or so is accompanied by officers of some kind. Unlike the tall pot-like hats the regular rank and file are wearing, they officers have got these fluffy caps that kinda resemble a woodland critter's pelt. I'm definitely not stoked by the view from up here, it's a long way down and these guys are prowling with a pretty deliberate line of advance, fanning out Eastbound from the Western-facing slope just past the smoldering remains of the church.
I've got good news and bad news, uh for my own sanity let's do the bad news first: they’re looking for whoever burned down the church. Good news though: they don’t know it was me! No security cameras or instant playback to tell them whodunnit, and of course the frame of the structure has charred skeletons all over it and the most these guys did was bury said skeletons, I think. I woke up to an argument and have been sitting in silence bleary-eyed, trying not to drop anything as I fix my pack and things so I can GTFO. I can't believe, genuinely, that my drunk ass made this climb... I must've gone as high as I could manage on the adrenaline. We're basically at the top of this not-quite-a-pine-nor-an-oak, imagine your generic park/city tree with its low branches was stretch/skewed to the height of an average pine, that's what these trees are like.
I can overhear an argument slowly escalating from two officers below the tree I’m hiding in.
“Captain, it is nearly noon, we will need to return to the road soon, or we won’t make it to the muster station before nightfall.”
One of the poofy-hatted guys has peeled off from his group of soldiers to talk to some dude in a cloak with kind of a sweet hat. Hey wait! Oh shit. The French-looking bastard Captain Morgan (hah) Seeker is alive! THAT DUDE DEFFO GOT DECAPITATED, and he's all 'naw I'd win' and gets up like the Teacher at the end of Battle Royale when the phone rings. Morgan's outfit is like that of the Imperial Gendarme Cuirassiers from Age of Empires 3, you know the Imperial Age guys who're all shiny in the HD Remake? Instead of the neat helmet they have, he wears a wide brimmed hat which has that cool-guy fold like an Australian's hat and a floofy, shiny gold feather in its band. I don't remember his outfit being all that unique before, but now that I'm looking closer, he's got a pretty sweet cloak with a nice angular collar and that flour-de-bullshit french shape plus the rest of the Imperials' iconography emblazoned on the back with pale yellow and blue thread.
How the fuck did I not notice his face until now? Well. Okay in my defense I am definitely still buzzed. I woke up clutching an empty bottle of wine or something. I don't remember what it was, and I can't read East Elven or whatever this script / language is. Glad I didn't get body-slammed out of this tree by the Duolingo Owl for skipping my practice sessions because right now, I'm sharing the prime nesting space with what looks like a barn owl from Grandpa's farm up in Virginia. Morgan and I go back a ways, he's the guy who shot me with a crossbow and then interrogated me about my shotgun. That was also the day he got beheaded, and I met Huey; who is still conspicuously absent all things considered. I think when I was moving through the woods at this time though, the Alliance wasn't sending dead guys with huge sections of infantry as retinue.
Ugh. I kind of miss doing Duolingo stuff. Man, I'll never learn Spanish at this rate. Or Elven, for that matter, honestly kind of just wish I had a cell phone. I feel like shit, a distraction would be nice and posting "I'm literally in a tree being hunted by badguys" to Twitter would be cool.
??? X? Twitter is X now? What the fuck... never mind the undead Captain is talking. Listen:
“I’m aware of the inconvenience to our schedule, Sergeant. We’ve a small enough band that marching under torchlight isn’t going to be all that bothersome. We have sworn and oath to protect the peoples from threats within and beyond our King's holdings, I shan't neglect that duty, and by extension neither shall you. This church-house here can’t have been burned by mistake, not with the slain child outside. I learned from one of the locals this morning that it was the local orphanage as well.”
“Uh, yes Sir, I can ready the formation for a march this eve. But I can't help but think we're spending valuable time that ought to go to grander objectives. Perhaps our auxiliaries elected to engage in recreational arson, I've seen little evidence the local gangs and rejects would torch one of their prime sources of new recruits."
Morgan visibly puts off the look of ‘oh fuck off with this again’, he looks away from the Sergeant as he speaks, he seems like the kind of man who wouldn’t do that unless he plans to disrespect you, so the Sergeant’s defeated expression and slumping shoulders kind of fill me in on what might be next.
"You imbecile. The Gnolls are the ones who found her scent, and this ghastly scene. Have your section head into the nearby town and gather information on the brigands and ne'er-do-well's, I want the perpetrator found and hanged before sundown. I will not accept sloppiness on this issue, Sergeant."
"B-but Sir! Certainly the local militia can attend to these matters! We'll be trading valuable time and exposing ourselves to unnecessary entanglements with the locals-"
Morgan draws his (admittedly) cool decorated longsword, it ignites on contact with the air a moment after being unsheathed. God this dude is so cool, he spins around and thrusts the blade just past the sergeant's face, it's like, a laser-precise thrust that's just close enough that the fire is almost in contact with the dude's poofy hat. I can see steam hissing as the dude is seemingly is scalded by the heat on his cheek, to his credit he maintains his at-attention posture, he didn't even flinch. That's fucking crazy. Morgan's hard to hear, but in a low voice he mutters a reply.
"I will have you branded for disobedience, that is an ORDER, Sergeant."
“Y-y-y-yes, Si-Sir!”
The Sergeant’s face is pale, even though he's maintained his composure it's clear he knows better than to cross Morgan. I wonder if Huey and Morgan got along ever, or if they were both silver-spoon-fed boys who took wildly different paths. The two conclude their chatter and go about their ways, Morgan is shouting for the search to expand, and for now they've gotten far enough away I can breathe a little. As for the Auxilleries... if I had to guess they could be Wolf Gnolls from the north side of the continent, and those are some seriously bad dudes. They can run on all fours unlike the Hyena and Coyote Gnolls who are more top heavy, K'yan said the Wolf Gnolls can dart around as fast as horses and can track scents better than any pure-bred foxhound. They're not as muscular or tall as their contemporaries, but the Wolf-Gnolls are kinda like the Huns. These are the kinds of guys who could single-handedly eat entire teams of Default-Dancing fortnite scrubs like they're a bowl of cereal.
For an idea of their skill level in hunting: picture you’re playing Call of Duty 4 casual deathmatch and some cunt with Prestige rank 69, a Funny-Weed-Number Player Banner and [MLG]xX_Xx's in his screenname 360-noscopes your ass while shouting a stream of legendary drop gamer words over his mom’s faintly shouted bitching on the world’s singularly most shittiest microphone on this planet, and then YOU'RE the one who gave him the Tactical Nuke calldown. Everyone saw that game-winning-kill, you fucking shitbird, and tells you to uninstall the game and then unalive yourself. You can’t even be mad! That’s just 10+ years of experience quickscoping 8-year-olds and the reflexes of a mentally-still-15-year-old man (aged 38) who's trapped in a fortress of Monster Energy cans, a barely 6-o-clock shadow dorrito's-crusted neckbeard, and his bitch mom's basement. This is just nature running it's course; you gotta git gud and sweaty to not let gaming nature happen to you. I hope I'm wrong, I've never seen them in action let alone the kind the Imperials would hire.
Speaking of not letting nature happen to you, nature is calling me... and the call is coming from inside my ass!!! I need to get off this tree before I live long enough as a flightless bird to regret having a singular pair of underwear. Alcohol isn’t a good habit, fellow gamers, and the call of nature is being held back only by the game-clutching pucker of a woman surrounded by badguys and overfull of roiling pure determination not to let the sauce win by shitting myself. I’m going to do a pro-gamer move here and accomplish a blindfolded hardcore no-alert (s)hitless any% parkour-only speedrun through this section of Deuce Ex, or I will die trying, making the inevitable post-mortem torrent of liquid suffering ruining my wardrobe no longer my problem. God why didn't I just get addicted to Adderall in college instead!? OH DUH I HAVE ADHD. Right. I was already 80% Adderall by volume in college.
Let me just size up the scene here, that's probably 5 yards of distance between the level of branches of tree I'm at, if I get a running start...
Uhhh.. yeah, gimme a sec… I’m coming up with... thirty-two point three three uh, repeating of course, percentage, of survival...
Hoo boy give me a second to just, disassociate as a treat.
...
Alright chums, I'm back! Let’s do this!
LEEEROOOOOOYYYY-
HOLY SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT
OH MY GOD
I FUCKING MADE THAT JUMP HAHAHA DOUBLE KNEES FOR THE WIN
Okay, that might have been dramatic, but I’m REALLY high up. You probably know if you know, real trees are fuck off tall, like, “this is 3 stories tall” kind of tall. Tall enough that my rat-like dexterity allows me to leap from tree to tree without the guys beneath noticing me. This is fucking scary though, I might puke.
HERE GOES ANOTHER BOMB TRACK AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
SAFE! BLEUUUUUGH! EW! THAT’S THE FLAVOR OF BILE AND SOUR WHISKEY.
Oh my god I have to explode out of both ends something fierce, we’re talking typing ‘tumby hurty’ into Google Search and getting “you’re going to fucking explode into shit, piss, and vomit, lie in it for several moments, and then die”, and if I do that again I need to ask whatever fucking eldritch horror turned me into a rat flavored dickgirl if I can get a punch card, because I’m gonna be doing this shit again almost assuredly. My life is literally a fucking videogame right now, except the twist is the Southpark World of Warcraft episode is happening inside of the videogame to me. God I feel like a Hot-Pocket you put in the microwave for 30 extra seconds, literally boiling with liquid hot death that will symmetrically splash anyone within a 30ft radius. There might be enough stomach acid in both bodily ejections that it can even melt skin like a Hot-Pocket.
God that shouldn't be possible with how sick I'm feeling. How the fuck do I have room to be nostalgically hungry for hyper-processed trash food designed to fist-fuck your dopamine receptors with every single ingredient at the same time!?
A lot of the way I want to go is where Soldiers are going, so I picked a gap that had branches close enough to jump to, and we're not dead yet! I’m picking up the pace, leaping like a 90’s anthropomorphic platformer star, and every time I land I pick a new part of my cheek to bite on while I try not to release the pure tension-hardened reinforced steel rod impregnated concrete gravity dam in Italy circa 1963. Conker would be proud of my capacity to resist the Great Mighty Poo, and probably jealous that I’m not trapped in an entire level of shit turned musical number. I’m getting some good progress, the clump of colorful red, blue, and yellow soldiers are starting to become very faint when I scan beneath the canopy. We’re not out of the woods just yet, in fact I’m realizing that I'm heading deeper into them due South away from where I’m supposed to fucking go today. I can't even see where the church or the main road is. I check the compass and it's just sorta spinning.
Fucking. Shit. I just fucked myself really hard, enough to make my stomach sink right past my guts and into my goddamn shoes.
…
N-no! Don’t make that sound! I’m good, the Italian dam is holding! I’m just hyperbolically reacting to the situation I’ve put myself into by going the way I did. It’s now well fucking past noon, I’m short and won't make the ground I've lost up before it gets dark, and I'm off course by like… a quarter mile at least. Cool that I could make all these jumps! Bad that I fucking can’t directions while trying not to shit myself or die. God my head fucking hurts, it's like my ears are full of swarming hornets, I can hear my heart very loudly in my ears too.
It feels like my eyes are gonna pop out of my fucking skull, holy shit what did I do, swallow an entire gallon of gasoline just now!? Oh my god I am SHAKING and I can’t tell if that’s Adrenaline, a Streamer’s Bowel Tremors on hour 19 of a 24 hour stream, or the fact that my vision is clear for the first time today. The pain my entire body is steadily acquiring at every synaptic cleft is signs I’ve sweated all of the alcohol in my system out, which might be a touch fatal on this particular day where I can't remember if I have any hooch left to stave off the brain-themed disaster I'm struggling against.
No wonder I want to puke.
Pardon me while I hallucinate french hotpockets in my peripheral, wipe blood from my nose (that wasn't snot, turns out) and slide down this tree like, forever. God when I get down I'm gonna strip and throw my gear, pants, and everything else that isn’t above my tail 100 yards away from the disaster zone, and then I'll have a planned detonation like a bomb-squad is intentionally setting off a Mentos-Pepsi cocktail inside of a luxury car owned by some tik-tok teenager’s parents while they record themselves trying to swallow the fountain of foamy soda volcano-style spraying all over the leather interior.
…
Y'know, I miss toilet paper. And toilets.
Hell, grandpa's outhouse was better than squatting (or in my case, keeling over on my hands and knees) in the woods, and these trees mostly have pine needles or poison oak style leaves, so it's not like I'm afforded the luxury of wiping anytime soon.
Hey, welcome back, you're welcome for skipping the part where I discover what the volume of my entire digestive tract is like with a field exercise demonstrating it in excruciating detail. I've picked up my shi- Uh. M-my things, stuffed my pants and boots away because going bottomless is just easier on account of the pitstops I am having to make. I'm losing water like crazy, so after getting lucky and spotting a stream coming from the North, I'm at least somewhat on track... but it's nippy. A bath would be killer, both in the sense that I want one and it will kill me probably from hypothermia. But we're walking! Shameful as it is.
There are many walks of shame I've had to do in my life and today our victory is avoiding the “I have shit myself, please be patient with me” walk, and instead we’re just doing the “I have no pants, do not ask why, it is for your safety” walk. I can see my breath but I’m fucking sweating bullets like I’m the protagonist to Shotgun Roulette who just watched the dealer dump the only blank shell in the tube. Every hour or so I take a moment to lie down, disassociate a little, and then maybe vomit or assplode furiously. I'm starting to feel too dizzy to walk, I can't tell if that's due to blood loss or not. My nose is still dripping blood on and off, and I keep vomiting coffee-grounds. Making matters worse, my brain has decided it's Hurricane Irma because I can see the guys in high-visibility raincoats appearing in my field of view while something like a mish-match of Barbie Girl and California Girls plays backwards with weird distortions. Oh and bees are making honeycombs in my leg flesh.
I hate how my skin itching feels like 1000% like the fake bees my brain is superimposing over my legs, it's making me scratch a lot.
No, they're not real bees and the raincoat guys aren't real. Those are DT’s, we covered this. This is normal. It’s fine. The hotflashes, vomiting, dizzy spells, and occasional minutes-long spells of tumbling over and vibrating like there is a cellphone in my stomach and I keep getting texts from mom because I’m 3 minutes late to coming home on a school night; all of that is normal for your brain self-deleting when the alcohol runs out. I’m like idk, cognitively speaking feeling pretty detached and sober-brained but the rest of me is singing ‘one burbon, one scotch, one beer’ on loop. It only remembers the riff, and has excised everything else like the guy leaning on a post because he’s tired. Meanwhile, my central nervous system is all: that don’t befront me, long as I have my money booze by next Friday.
Well next Friday came and I didn’t have the rent, on the floor I went.
[slick guitar riff]
My ancestor spirits must be cool guys, if those wolves are real, they're fighting something big and hairy, it's covered in eyeballs. I wanna write that as the fever-dreams of a dying alcoholic, but pipe cleaners exist and it kinda looks like something related to the spooky eyeball-covered creatures from the hollow earth beneath the surface world. The wolves aren't directly winning by any measure, but they're herding this thing away from me, so I can't backseat game without feeling like a dick. I'll just lie here and collect myself, this isn't real, probably.
Oh hey! The leg-bees and raincoat guys are back, and now I’m also watching Steampunk Miley Cirus and Cyberpunk Hannah Montana battle each other with the Penetrator from Saints Row 2 but it's a lightsaber duel, pretty sick. Pretty sure whatever noise my ears are pretending to hear is from that album about dementia, you know the one that starts with ‘heartaches’ and then gradually gets fucked up until you’re at hour 2 and piss yourself because of the fucking doom horns. Oh, I also am peeing, that’s great, I’m having a fine time.
NOOOOOOOOOO!
GODDAMNIT I CAN FEEL IT AT MY TITTIES! THIS IS A LEATHER ARMOR SET! THE SMELL IS GONNA BE THERE FOREVER! FUCK! …at least there’s an unpleasantly warm spot rapidly spreading on the forest floor where I’m seizing. That gives me enough conscious presence to roll into the rescue position before I vomit chunky blood. It’s fine, I’m fine. Just give me a minute to empty my bladder and cry a little from the sharp pain of this fucking ulcer.
Maybe 15 minutes, actually.
Gosh I’m seeing fucking snowflakes, but I am hotter than the inside of a Tesla having a mild Lithium Ion Battery Explosion. Either that’s visual snow or I’m about to have a really bad time again.
cold. cold. cold. cold. cold. cold. cold. cold. cold.
I'M COLD!?
OH MY FUCKING FUCK IS IT COLD!!!
OH RIGHT I don’t have my pants on. I dump the Satchel of Holding, open my Trunk of Holding, and with the kind of violent speed and coordination of a wasp that is on fire after soaking in 100-proof ethanol, I re-pants my piss-stank, no-ass-wiping, uncranked hog havin’ ass. Wait- was that a bottle of Whiskey? Well fuck me sideways, I fumbled it back into the trunk somewhere. That'll take a while to find, but maybe a little sippy could-
OOOOOOOOOOH FUCK
EVERYTHING HURTS
I'm writhing on the floor like I need player 2 to come hold my hand and kiss me on the boo-boo for a revive. My eyes hurt, all four of the meat cables that steer the eyeballs around are aching, the muscles inside of my eye that control my lenses are aching, the little bit of light left in the day hurts to look at. My sinuses feel like they are 80 PSI truck tires, and every single one of my teeth aches. My tongue is made out of papercuts. The air is full of angry bees that sting the entirety of my airway from my nostrils deep into my lungs.
Have you ever had Bronchitis? Sometimes when you clear phlegm from your airway, you can feel the tree-like branches of your Bronchi and Bronchioles, using the power of pain.
Anyway so, that’s what the cough I have going on is like. Ooh we wretching. We doing dry wretching. This is all good, you know. Helps you purge toxins, like all of the blood in your stomach. The thump-thump-thump-thump-thump of my heart at over 120 beats per minute (we’re beating Stayin’ Alive’s tempo by at least 30 beats per minute) means I’m getting exercise, that’s why it’s called an exercise heart rate!
...Am I gonna die like this?
I can’t quite stand. I can barely sit. I want to go home. I want my blankie. I want a hotpocket, and a roll of four-ply toilet paper. I want cheese. I want central air conditioning. I want to play a round of Trouble in Terrorist Town with the most racist, homophobic, sexist fucking 8 year olds that 2007 can produce. I wanna go to mc dondles and order the chimken nuggets and get pets on the head and called a good rat. I wanna pet a therapy dog.
I wan-
YO HOLY SHIT GAMERS, I FORGOT ABOUT MY MAGIC PISS
No! It's not my piss, goddamnit! It’s the faintly glowing yellow vial of magic liquid called “unfuck my shit”, it basically is a Phoenix Down but harder-core and way cooler. I still have one in one of my sleeve holster thingies, and I’m only just now thinking about it because LMAO, LOL, I think I’m dying because I can’t breathe. Like. Oh my god I didn’t know you could feel this tired, did you know breathing is something you have to think about?
Okay, okay let me just get this fucking... thing... open...
AH! NO NO NO NO NO NO-
-JESUS FUCKING CHRIST Z GET IT TOGETHER
I almost fucking spilled it and would've probably died from the dramatic irony. Thank fuck I’m retarded and dying at the same time, I didn’t figure out how to uncork it because of the wire latch that secures the cork to the vial. I mean I threw that shit with the force of 10,000 angry pre-teens having their phones taken away in class, but it’s fine. I’m fine. I got it.
Just gotta.
Crawl.
Like 10 feet.
Through mud.
Into a ditch.
Oh shit, the snow is sticking. Hahaha better hurry up Z, it’s getting kind of fucking dark, and very fucking cold.
Thank fuck this stupid thing glows in the dark haha, I’d be so fucking toast.
I got it. I am leaning against maybe a stump. It's open. I can kinda even get my lips around it, that's not bad considering I'm getting some dark fucking circles that are making me have tunnel vision like a motherfucker right now. Bottom's up, fellow gamers.
MMMMM TASTES LIKE [MORPHINE ADMINISTERED]
Y’all ever play Half Life Alyx? I’m thinkin’ of quitting Alcohol and switching to getting shot up by like 8 needles with smashed space bug larva juices. The high is so worth it, even if it probably causes like 90 types of cancer, you literally can’t beat “this heroin heals my gunshot wounds”. I feel a lot better, this was a total waste of the good shit that can reattach arms and stuff, but whatever. Not dead, back to wanting things I can't have.
I miss videogames.
Well. My tumby stopped hurting, and I don’t smell like pee. Forgot about that bit.
HEY WHAT THE FUCK!?
MY WHISKERS ARE FUCKING BUUUUUURNING, THERE’S MAGIC IN THEM/THEIR HILLS
N-no scratch that, I just got a little Phoenix Down juice on my snoot. I’m so fucking done with today man. I wonder if it is gonna help prestidigitate away my SERIOUS case of underwear skidmarks. I'm not dead but I kinda wish I was, I gotta push myself to crawl back out of the hole and drag my pack and shotgun into it, then push myself to crawl around on my hands and knees looking for shrubs. God all of this shit is wet, it's gonna be SUCH a bitch to make it catch on fire.
It’s so fucking cold. I’m a Florida girl, if it’s a single degree below 90 (Freedom units, we ain’t commies here unless I decide metric makes more sense) I will freeze fucking solid. I need fire. All of this wood is wet, but we have the power of GUN-powder. Gunpowder. The infinite box of shotgun shells only really cares if the shell exits the box, it counts up to 255 before the shells start fucking fading out like its culling shell casing sprites from a 2000’s FPS. They come back outta the box reloaded and ready to rock, so I can use the powder as our cheat-code fuel and strike the brass against a rock to ignite it.
YOU THERE, IN MY HEAD: Stop being such a BABY, it’s just gunpowder! A LITTLE SIPPY, not the whole shell’s worth. Jesus, chill. You've never set a camp fire by exploding some gunpowder over some crumpled leaves before? Have you even TOUCHED grass!? My uncle and I used to do this all the time to have smores with Dad and Granddad. We could have probably used like, a lighter and some butane, but that's for losers and people with more fingers than 7 (my Uncle was missing a few, if you couldn't tell).
Anyway, highly dangerous redneck fires in the woods, that's like a universal human experience, as American as apple pie, ...that or my uncle was a gap-toothed yokel living in the hills of West Virginia. You ever had moonshine made from Mountain Dew? Literally the most fucking weird booze I've ever had, kind of based though. Uncle used to spice his. My sister smuggled some to her place in California on the plane and coz it was in regular mountain dew bottles packed into a cooler, it made it through TSA! Fucking, running moonshine like it's the 20's, that's some real family tradition for you.
Oh hey there's a moon. This planet has two, apparently. You almost always can see one, so a night without a moon in the sky is kinda rare, happens once every few months.
BRRRR. I'm so fucking cold lol. Hungry too.
I'm really hungry, like that kind that feels like an emergency, I wonder why! I'm digging through my pack because I vaguely remember having food of some kind and- hold the phone gamers, I FOUND BREAD AND CHEESE AW YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE WE GETTIN' V-BUCKS FOR CHRISTMAS, I'M THE COOLEST KID ON THE BLOCK AND-
...a-and...
Oh my god I burned down an orphanage. WITH THE KIDS INSIDE.
Like. Jesus Christ. Oh no there's this lump in my throat I can't swallow, and somehow I found tears to cry. I barely have any water, my throat feels like it's on fire and also coated in barbed wire. I'm trying to maneuver the one shitty cooking device I have over the fire to boil some pretty suss slushy ice-water, it's kind of working. Still kinda pouty, it's been a hard day, okay? I even shanked one of the kids- I mean it was self defense but c'mon that's some Blackwater-in-Afghanistan tier excuses, and we don't excuse shit, we only explain it. Dude I fucking shot nuns. I mean combat nuns with necromancy magic in their hotbar and flintlock pistols where the King James should be, but nuns. They're not supposed to fight.
If I can find the strength for it, I should cram my tent into this tree nook I've settled into. It's not exactly a hide, but it is a relatively well sheltered dip with roots all around it- and no bugs! Well. Some bugs. Normal levels of bugs, they're staying on their side of the shelter and I'm staying on mine. But I kinda need protein, maybe I'll finally eat the bugs like the liberals want me to. My stomach is finally settled enough to nibble on bread again. God what I'd do for some butter. Like the cheese is a rare luxury, but man BUTTER!? Ya'll ever cook with BUTTER like REAL BUTTER because when you haven't for a while you MISS THAT SHIT.
I miss my stupid ex husband and his dumb face, and our lunches every Thursday at the hospital. He came every week of the two months I spent dying there, you know. I died on a Wednesday I think. I couldn't even hold on long enough for one more shitty little lunch with my favorite person. I hope that didn't fuck him up.
...
Wet bread makes for poor eating, and I'm gonna let myself have this ugly cry for a little.
I'm going to sleep soon, but I thought I'd check in before I do that because I might die and y'know, you're here and that's cool. Hi. How's things? Fine? Not fine? Naw, it's never fine, I know. You're doing good, okay? Don't beat yourself up, you gotta fuck up pretty hard for your favorite people to leave you, you know?
I wish I didn't lose track of that Whiskey. I want it so bad. Not the same level of full-body dependency as earlier, just to help take the edge off. Everything hurts, the real things, the things in my head, the things I know you're probably going through, y'know. I soak pain up like the skin of a rare frog in a toxic cesspit. It's enough to make you go extinct, I guess I did in my first run at life. It's cool that I get to try again, but I'm feeling lonely and it's not your fault you can't reach through your screen or whatever 5th dimensional viewing portal you're using to see this.
I just kinda, need somebody. I don't have anyone so I have to pretend, tonight's cuddle partner is my backpack, if I pull the straps tight it kinda feels like it's hugging me back. Man I just feel all kinds of shitty and sad and pathetic, thanks for hanging in there, y'know?
Wolves howl in the distance, the group's cry echos through the woods, disturbing a few night-time birds.
Huh? Hang on I’m being paged. ACH-HEM.
“AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
Sorry someone started a howl. I’m not allowed to be a closeted furfag after turning into a ratgirl with a cock. Honestly, I should have been more into that fandom when I had the chance, I met a lot of cool people at the few things I went to.
Hang on I think my brain is catching up to me...
OH MY FUCK! I am such a goddamn SCRUB.
WOLF GNOLLS. SEEKER PROBABLY HIRED FUCKING WOLF GNOLLS. TO HUNT ME.
OH MY GOD LMAO I'M THE DARK SOULS OF MY OWN FUCKING LIFE!
HAHAHAH!
...
...FUCK!
I'm not getting any grade higher than a C- on my shelter tonight, but it's cozier now that I have the fire burning in this slightly-ventilated enclosure of mine. I want to sleep so bad, my eyes are so heavy, every single part of my body aches, I ate a little bread and cheese, and a few bugs (ew but cronchy-gooey, like eating a bag of really old gushers). I kinda wish I had hot chocolate, it's very Christmas actually with the snow coming down around me, it's actually kind of adding up, the ground is mostly white. I wanna just curl up into a little ball and sleep because I'm very small and very tired.
The howls are closer, reverberating like they're somehow aimed at Z's little hole.
...I actually do not have room to sleep, I think I just have to stay up all night. Leeeeet's go ahead and put one in the chamber tonight, and keep the big knife on the end. Yep, that's going right across my lap. What do I have to keep myself occupied? Digging through my shit again, OH, hey it's that book! 'Zenia's Big Book of Firearms', I don't think she wrote it exactly, but maybe she did the magic to make it happen. God did I fuck up tonight. Pretty sure I did the vocal equivalent to kidnapping Liam Neison’s daughter.
More howls echo perilously close by, but the next time they cry, they are at last farther away.
God, that was close. It's like I'm the guy getting told "I have a particular set of skills", except instead of being taken out like the trash, I’m gonna have to take the knot.
You know. Because they're wolf guys.
Yiff-yiff.
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