if i had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense

It's hard to see myself as more than half a man like this, but I guess I made it pretty easy for me to be seen that way. A broken leg, a missing eye, a missing finger, I'm pretty sure the only thing of me that's still whole is that, in all of my strength, I am fully sorry for all that I've done in five days. I was supposed to be good, and I mean good, not just comic hero style good, yet I've spilled more blood than there is in my body at this point, and I can feel it choking up to my throat like the water inching to my knees. I can feel all this pain that I thought I would never cause, and it's choking me like when I nearly died trying to drink for the first time in four days.

It's hard to see in general, I guess, all I know is that Stella is near me and our five combined bags are resting on the same rock I kept my balance on now. There's silence and for a second the pit of my stomach feels almost the same it did the night before - it's maddening that's for sure. If I had a strap for each strand of silence I had to sit through in these past five days, I'd be able to cover all my wounds, that's for sure. I start breathing a little heavy, not because I'm panting or anything, it's just to cover up the silence. Just to make sure I'm still alive, and that I haven't drowned in the own blood that is supposed to keep me alive.

(In out, in out, in out)

"I just saved your life. There's no way I'm going anywhere near your eye."

What do I even say in response to that, I just need conversation at this point, something to keep the blood flowing in my jaw rather than in my throat. "Actually, you'd be near the," I pause, idiot, I mean I've never been great at conversation but I've never had to work at it. I've never had to make sure a conversation didn't die, because I always, "y'know," ramble. Jael said it was my gift at some point, that I could always keep talking and keep living, because dead men don't talk. "Yeah."

I'm still talking, so I'm not a dead man. (Please don't stop talking.)

I'm not quite sure if what I think makes any sense any more, but I think that's a good thing, I think. I mean, insanity isn't good, staying sane is good, but if I do go, then I'll have so much to talk about. There'd be so much to say at that point, and I think that's good, maybe, there'd be too much to say and to do, that this lifetime wouldn't cover it completely. Maybe that's why I'm still here, trying to talk with Stella, because maybe I'm going a little mad. And that's good, I think. Or not, there's not really a way to tell, and maybe I think too much but that's good. I mean, thinking can't be bad. So maybe mad is, y'know, "good."

Now, I didn't mean to say that out loud and for a split second I stopped thinking about whether over thinking was good or not to think about whether I actually said that out loud, but I realized I was fidgeting with the bags. Not actually going through them or anything, just opening and closing and moving them around while I was thinking, and that 'good' was a dead stop of movement. My hands were stuffed inside the tiny blonde's bag at this point, and at this point I'm almost "positive I'm a little insane." I whispered it under my breath, as I felt it, the thing in her bag, the cold plastic-like flesh that met mine that was definitely not one of mine.

Panic hit me in the chest like I think heartbreak felt like, and I slung her bag onto the ground in a frenzy to get my hand away. I could almost feel the whites of my eye strain if that's even possible as I tried to distance my self from the severed leg now bobbing in the water. If I had eaten anything in the past five days that I hadn't thrown up the day before, that leg wouldn't be the only thing in that water right now, and my head feels completely absent on top of my neck as I try to walk. I stumble, fall, and I'm weak.

(So damn weak.)

Stella catches me, at least I think, it's either her or a rock and I swear I can't tell the difference between the dark and me immediately jumping off of whatever it was to lean back against the wall. It hurts, the pure embarrassment of it, because I can barely keep upright by myself to the point that I was bested by a floating leg. I'm supposed to be good, I'm supposed to be saving something in this pit, and yet I can barely walk by myself. It hurts, not as bad as losing a finger or an eye or an almost leg, but somehow it hurts more at the same time.

All three of the bags are back by the leg too, and I'm too scared to go back over there. Scared of what I'm not sure, there's just something unnerving about touching a severed human leg and knowing that that little girl held onto somebody's leg for long enough time for it to get cold. I sit for a second, embarrassed out of my mind, until I chuckle over the fact that I nearly fell over a leg. Of everything I've seen in five days, a leg, an actual leg was just chilling in my bag. And then I get an odd idea, an odd, wonderful idea that sparked out of pretty much nowhere.

"You know what Stella," I start walking along the wall, towards her or the opposite way I'm not too sure, but I'm headed somewhere, all I know is that I gotta keep talking, or else I'll be a dead man soon. "I'm gonna throw a party, not like one of those extra extravagant ones, but like a tiny get together, y'know?" Keep talking, dead man, "just for like us two, and Pearl and Cha, they're both invited, and your friend, the really tall one, he's invited." Even though we killed all his friends, the two boys and the tiny blonde, we killed them all didn't we, Stella?

"But not the red heads, neither of them," keep talking, keep walking along the wall, "they scare me a little." By this time, I guess I'm a good five feet further ahead of where I was, and I feel accomplished. For some odd, crazy, maddening, insane reason I feel like I got something done in going five feet forwards. "It's gonna be like a tea party, just for the five of us." Yeah, that'd be nice. Just the five of us, maybe Jael'll see that I'm not completely bad. (Mad's not bad though, dead man, just keep talking.)

"Do you think they'll show up?"

"I've never had a party,"

I don't respond to that, I'm not sure how to in all honesty. Me, he who never shuts up, (a dead man) I just kept talking about my party, and it's participants. Not the red heads, they scare me so, one of them is Patricia, I know that. I don't know how, I don't remember if I overheard it from Cha or our escort (Ripred, what is their name, I can't remember for the three days of life I still have). She was with Barnabas and Pearl the only other time I remember seeing her - and remember her I do. That was the last time I had any doubt that Stella was fully good, that was the last time two people saw past the whites of their eyes. That was the last time I saw Barnabas Stroud with both of my eyes.

How do I respond to that? Her first party in life is my tea party, and I don't think that's an honor, not anymore. Nobody loved her enough to throw her a party, not even one of those doll parties that are in Matilda's old photos of her as a kid with her dad and the stuffed bat. Nobody loved her like Jael loved me, like I used to love her. This party is going to be great though, I'll make sure of it, (I promise, Stella, from a dead man.)

"Do you think they'll show up?"

"Yeah, I think so," I think I grinned to this with my back still turned to her, but in the dark I can't tell and my ear is still ringing from the cave in, so in all honesty I don't know or care, "and when they come, they can bring their bags with them and we can make wonderful things from the odds and ends and trinkets we've all collected to make a constellation of importance." "Wonderful things," those things aren't in here anymore, I had so many with me, I had the paper airplane and Cha's map and Stella's love and somehow in a single day I screwed them all to hell. I soaked my airplane and used it as a baggy for a spare eye, I blurred whatever importance there was in Cha's map - I wouldn't know, and I wouldn't even begin to know where to ask because it's all just one smear at this point - and Ripred knows, and him only where I placed Stella's love in both her heart and mine. I'm stoic.

"We wouldn't have kept those things if they weren't important," maybe that's why your love for me is gone, Stella. "Don't you think that would be nice, Finn? Maybe they might have peppermint leaves, and we could make a fire and boil our water and drink tea." Is there any food at tea parties, surely there has to be, it's a party, I mean. I drank yesterday, I'm starving more than anything, Jael told me that mostly when you're homesick you're just hungry. Maybe that's why I'm hurt so badly. "Crusader can come, and we can talk to him and he can tell us about his family-"

He has no family Stella, no, we killed them, didn't we? The man from ten, Stella you bled him dry and I took the tiny blonde's life, that much we both know. I tried to kill Crusader though, didn't I, back before the cave in I nearly took off his leg. Why? Why did I do that, I could've been great friends with him, I feel. I fucked that up, I fucked it up so bad. I should've killed him.

(That is a heavy set of words, dead man.)

I shouldn't of invited him, Stella, "he gave me this photograph, you know? It was of his family," "family," I hummed the word, family, it doesn't even feel like I have one anymore. Even through this darkness I can see that Jael isn't as much as family as he used to be, he used to be a model for me. He was like, a replacement dad if that makes sense, but those old jokes we used to throw around don't even seem relevant, for I can't even remember them. (It's only been five days, dead man.) Only five days, and I've already forgotten so much about Jael.

His real name isn't Jael, I still know that ("I didn't have a token, but he did, and I do now, too.") His real name was Jonas, but I've called him Jael everyday of my life for so long that you'd think that I'd think that was his actual name, I don't know why I called him Jael, ("We can see Cha again, and we can stay with her because I think when we're with Cha, we're safer than when we're alone, don't you think?")

(No, Stella, I don't want to think anymore.)

Jael was just like our father, no matter how immature me and him acted, he was always, always, completely and one hundred percent mature, and I have no idea how that is. He'd counsel me like he was our father too, and he looked just like him too, except with less stress and frown lines. ("And Pearl can come too, but I don't think I'm meant to like her very much -") I think they were caused by me. In old black and white photos of my mother and father he didn't frown as much, he looked happier. Maybe it's because I wasn't there back then, back when Jael's tongue and throat couldn't complete a single coherent sentence.

("- or at least that's what Belle tells me, because she says she was killed by Pearl, but that can't be right, no, it can't be right, can it.")

(No, Stella, that's possible and impossible, somehow, I promise there's a way for it to be, but I can't think of one right now.)

Maybe I wasn't supposed to make it back, that fate had it that I volunteered because I was meant to die. I wasn't supposed to be happy and whole in this world, because my life was more evil than the boy's that I took place for. It hurts to think of that, but maybe Ripred didn't want me as badly as he wanted Mar- Ma- whatever the boy's name was. (It's hard to tell what's right and wrong, but I like that idea, and I think that is a right idea.)

"We won't know until it happens, Stel-"

I stop talking, mostly because she kept talking and I didn't want to interrupt. But I feel so hollow, standing there staring through the darkness to the ground as she talks because I'm not wanted, by the one thing that I've followed my entire life. The one person Jael and I followed has no room for me, and I can't feel anything in my body but my heart beating to the syllables of Stella's voice. I stop listening altogether, because I realize that my faith is just one giant maybe. And I'm left staring with one, starry eye at the ground.

"You need to eat."

"I can't eat before the guests arrive, though." That's rude, to eat before the guests arrive, that's what my mother always told me. I'm still after I say it, silent. I don't want to eat, not in this lifetime. I haven't eaten in five days, and I haven't felt happy since, I don't think. If I ate something, I'd be happy, (and we wouldn't want that would we, dead man?) Stella takes my hand, the one with four fingers and a gap where a ring is supposed to lay. "What are you thinking about, Finn?"

Family, Crusader's family or Jael, or your sister Belle, and my parents, both my mom and my dad. Food and proper eating etiquette, everything my mother's ever taught me, manners and manners and love, (well, where is it, dead man?) The ring that'll never be on my real ring finger at the day of the wedding that'll never happen, because that finger is lost to rats or in my bag. My bag, what's even in there anymore, there's my eye and Cha's map and-

(I don't want to think.)

"The paper in my bag," I'm facing Stella now, now that I know where she is for a fact and I'm waving my other hand in front of my empty right socket, "it has my eye in it, but it used to be a paper airplane." I choke on something,

"My brother gave it to me, before Cha and I left."