the deluge. [day 6/end of the breakfast club]

sequential art

The red--

The splatter--

The grit of the sand, it shocks your skin--

It's drying it's peeling--

You can't take it.

What is happening to you?

Diamond glint of the human eye

rotoscope

He's plummeting. His organs are rocks. His words are shrieking in the buffeting wind.

"We kill 'em."

"monster"

"Punch up."

"monster"

"Fuck 'em."

"monster"

His hands have become tendrils, flailing bonelessly in the bluster.

His body breaks like a raindrop when it hits the ground.

animation

His chest fills with a shrieking gasp. His eyes bulge open. He expects the blaring red to burn into him, to thrust into him again-- no. Only the blue of a sky pendulum-swaying. No gunshots though there should be. Just a mech heaving its bulk across sand.

Oz tilts his head to the side. His eyelids sag -- they flutter as he struggles to keep them open, but his body is so... He feels like a crushed bug, splattered across a shoe.

Through his eyelashes, he sees Elliis' jaw. The triangular patterning of the shadows as they twist around the tensing muscle.

He feels the embrace of Ellis' arms, supporting his head. Remembers those times when his mother used to carry him up to bed -- how she would fold his entire self to her breast. Warm, warm memory...

He is so tired.

He gives up. His eyelids close. His head slumps back, jaw loose. His chest rises and falls in a gentle, easy pattern.

sequential art

They're rejoicing in Nine right now.

Their tributes made it. Barely. But they survived this death match, at least.

They cheer and chant in the square, they light firecrackers, they drink and chat with each other. It's a sports competition. The Gamemakers designed it that way. The stadium, the announcers, the hype, the fanfare.

"Mya! You're right. I shoulda put money on Oz, sorry honey..."

And then there are the ones who know.

sequential art

A thousand eyes watch him.

Cold and staring from the waxy paper, ink smudged, rotting in the hot desert sun.

His eyes. Canvas'. Smeared across the red sands, dirtied by the scattered crimson grains, twisting around the heaps of scrap like vines. They look huge and pale against the red sand.

Watching.

Canvas' eyes are red and human. Swollen as they look down, furrowed like an angry god's.

animation

When he realizes, for the second time, that he's alive, he doesn't open his eyes.

His hand opens and closes. The fingernails scrape the dried blood flaked across the palm. Where's the bar--?

The eyelids crack. His head is rolled to the side, his cheek pressed into the slick-feeling jacket. The sunlight glares off the side of the Corn, piercing into his eyes. He squints; his arm twitches with the intention to raise his hand and protect his eyes, but he can't begin the motion. Something's in his blood. Cement. Holding his skin down. Can't move -- doesn't think he really wants to move. Even if it hurts not to.

His eyes rise. The metal war-god lies on its broken back, face turned to the sky.

Sighing through his nostrils, Oz turns his head, his hair dragging across the sand.

Out the corner of his eye, he sees the blood stained on his clothes. The makeshift tourniquet squeezed around his leg. The way the skin of his neck tugs at its sinew as he moves around -- the same way the suture across his chest does.

Ellis is here. Crouched over him, curved like the wall of a protective cave. Sturdy hands working quickly as they wrap a bandage round the gash in Oz's leg. Intense eyes. Kind of like flint -- light like a spark...The way his hands tighten the bandage there. Clinging to the fabric, the two sharp tugs, the slight motion of the fingers as the wrist wind the ends into a knot, then a double-knot.

Saving him.

Oz wants to cry, he wants to run away. He tries to say thank you, can only make a strange clucking sound -- and then he realizes the insides of his throat is on fire. And the fire is imploding his throat, its sinking on itself, his tongue and lips are feel crumbly charcoal. He pries the lips apart. The tongue sits thick and stupid in his mouth, tip twitching once in some vague attempt to fumble out a coherent sentence. He can only groan out one word: "Water..."

Ellis has to retrieve his water bottle from Frog-legs. Oz's arm wobbles and lists to the side as he takes it from him. Tries, at a stiff and awkward angle, to drink. Some of it leaks down the side of his mouth. Most of it gets in. Hot -- he'd so craved a glass of ice water right now -- but, after the first swallow, there's a soothing quality to the sun-heated water. Like a soft hand lying across him.

The water's gone in a few quick, desperate gulps, measured in the distance of seconds, and by the time those seconds are up his entire arm shakes with the effort of lifting the water bottle. It falls clumsily to his side, rolling an inch across the sand. Not a precious drop left. And his arm lies like a dead thing in his lap, unable to move.

He's so tired.

rotoscope

Canvas' eyes are human eyes. Rounded -- three tiers of white, a color, black. The speck of light within the black. Stretches and squints, depending on emotion or necessity. Full of meaning. Eyes have so much meaning.

He looked into Canvas' eyes when Canvas' throat exploded.

There was a human in there. In the color. The speck of light.

A human.

A human.

A human.

animation

"I'm a monster, Ellis."

He doesn't hear his own voice. He only hears Canvas'. It rings in his ear, distant stalking echo, persistent--

"You, too, will always be known as a monster because you are caving to the will of the games just live everyone else because you want to make it home alive."

I don't know what I want I don't know what I want I don't know what I want

"We're all monsters, that's what this is all for." Ellis won't look at him. Why won't he look at him. Oz needs him to look at him. "If you're not a monster by the end of this, you probably were already one to begin with."

"You say I'm a monster like you're completely innocent or something."

Is this what necrosis feels like.

"We don't even get the privilege of dying as good people. We-"

Why. Why would you say that.
"No, no, not you, never you."
That's all you had to say. And you didn't.

Oz cannot move and he does not want to move ever again.

Ellis' eyes are on him. Piercing through him, splitting him apart.

"You had to kill someone today, didn't you."

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

Oz turns his face away so Ellis can't see it.

Just punch up...

"No--" he denies it.

He’ll kill whatever monsters he has to. He will not hesitate this time.

"I didn't mean to--!" a protest. Not his fault! Not his fault! Not his fault!

Kill who you need to.
BUT THEY'RE MONSTERS THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE MONSTERS THEY'VE ALL BEEN MONSTERS HOW

And maybe Canvas was. But the human in his eyes when his throat turned red--

human human human human

His body is about to rupture and he hopes it does. "Did you?"

Ellis nods.

Him too.

Oz reaches out for Ellis. Now understanding the look in his eyes. Ellis reaches for him. They hold each other so that neither falls.

The human, trapped in the splinter of light, banging, begging to be free--

Oswald killed a human being today.

But why. Why did he act like a monster. Why do they all act like monsters...

Eight said he was proud of it.

But you're not but you're not, you weren't supposed to be and you're dead, and you're dead.

In Mrs. Priscilla's class, he'd heard of a place where murderers are supposed to go. Not a real place, some fantasy some people made. It was hot all the time. It scorched your skin everywhere you go, made you blister. Wilted into a raisin of a cretin. Tortured you, hurt you, did more than just rend your flesh, it raped your soul too.

Is that's what happening.

What if they were all dead already. What if this was the punishment for some great and evil sin they committed when they were alive. What sin could be so horrible, though.

"Do you think there's a hell?" Oz croaks.

Do you think you'll go to it?

"Can't imagine it can be much worse than this."

Oz clings tighter. Tighter. Tighter.

The knife the jump I didn't mean to swing so high I saw his eyes I saw his eyes my hand followed my eyes the way it does when I draw I saw his eyes

It won't stop. He wants it so badly to stop.

sequential art

"I kept thinking...

...he deserves this...

...over and over..."

a drawing

Red-flaked scales across the dried-out flesh. Dried-out flesh hardening into the original scales that once coated the primordial ancestor. The old lizard. Fingernails jagged, growing, the motion of the hand molding the nails slowly into claws, reaching reaching reaching. The sweat that tangles the hair and makes it sticky, matted, fur.

Watching creature, with big pale eyes, staring.

Coming out of the television set.

animation

"I don't want to!" He's in agony, he's being torn apart, he screams like an infant. "I don't want to be this!"

Where did Ellis' hand go--

"Then don't!"

Ellis' shadow stretches over him. The other boy has risen. Towering over him, body eclipsing the sun. A shadow shaped like a man. "They can't make us fight... maybe if we just refuse... They can't... They..."

Oz stares at the shadow-man, panting with the effort it had required to wail, trembling still with the pain.

The shadow-man crouches and becomes a boy again. Head between his knees, head between his clasping hands. "We can't both survive."

A blow to the face. Disorienting, world swinging, set in motion by a swinging fist.

Oz presses himself to the ground. No longer knowing who his eyes were seeing, not really. "What...what do you mean, Ellis?"

"I can't kill you."

Oz holds his hand out for Ellis again. It's disconcerting how cold his hand is without him.

"What if we're the last two standing?"

Oz's hand stops, the motion cut off.

a sketch

There are two worlds.

The first one is dead, a meteorite crushed it.

The other one is dying.

The other one is Celeste, Esther, and Peter. And Ellis, and Oswald.

animation

"I wouldn't," it's a promise. Not Ellis. Never Ellis. "You're all I got...I don't..."

The monster stares at Ellis, watching.

"I don't want to be that."

"I'm not...you have your mom... your friend you stayed in for... you need to go back, for them."


But that world is dead. He's not coming back to it. Look at him! He's worthless. The wet guts of a new crushed insect, that's his body.

He'll die a monster.

At least, maybe, he can die with Ellis. And maybe Ellis can remain the human.

Man who saves him, over and over again. The strong hands, guiding him. The back pressed against his at night, after every anthem since Oz has known him, the tide-like rise and fall of Ellis' back lulling him to a sleep that was almost like peace.

Oz drank blood today. Ellis would never drink blood. Not even accidentally.

Ellis saves people.

Did Canvas have friends?

"I fear this might be for the best, Oz."

No.

He looks into Ellis' eyes and sees the human.

No. No no.

It doesn't get to be that simple.

Ellis is a human, he will not act like a tribute. Ellis is a human, he will be Oz's friend until neither of them can be friends anymore. Ellis is a human, the last human left, Oz doesn't want to be alone, he can't be alone, when he's alone he kills people.

"No," his voice breaks. "No it's not. No it's fucking not. Do you...do you know what I thought...before I killed him...? I thought...'I'll do it for Ellis...I'll do it so I can help him...' Because you can't, Ellis...you can't be...like Peter, and Esther, Celeste...you can't..."

He reaches for him.

Come to me hold me please I need you I'll die I need you hold me again you're warm and I feel cold please please please

"You can't."

"Goodbye, Oswald."