2019-10-07 - Drowning
You don't drown because you fall into the water. You drown because you stay there.
IC Date: 2019-10-07
OOC Date: 2019-07-12
Location: 23 Oak Avenue
Related Scenes: 2019-10-07 - Fever Dream Aftermath 2019-10-07 - What He Deserves
Plot: None
Scene Number: 2060
Elise wakes in bed with a fierce, stabbing pain running from her left-foot up her leg, jolting like lightning through her knee, all the way up to her hip, her spine, her whole brain. It's brutal - like a Charlie Horse writ large.
The room into which she wakes with this fierce, terrible pain is dark, empty. This is Elise's room, but it's not Elise's room the way it looks right now. There's no sense that she shares this space. There's no smell of Graham, no sign of his crap, no detritus from their days of suffering. This is her room, and her room alone. And the darkness outside feels different - not the cool of autumn, but the deep dark of a winter midnight.
All of this will come to her in the seconds when her eyes open from that shooting pain. And let me not understate the severity of it: This. Shit. HURTS.
Bad.
Agony, that's what Elise is in. And you know, usually she doesn't mind being woken up to things that make her scream (that's a sex joke) but this isn't the kind of screaming she wants to wake up doing; the kind of panic-inducing screaming of pure, unadulterated pain running through her whole body. And if it wasn't bad enough that she was waking up to so much pain, she awakens to this dark, empty space, a space that is so incredibly alien to her. "Oh my god, oh fuck. Graham?! GRAHAM!" she cries out, frantically trying to get out of this damn bed.
Quiet. The house is quiet. It's a quiet that Elise remembers: the quiet of being alone, of having her whole house to herself. It's just Elise and what is now a throbbing pain in her foot.
Until that throbbing foot his the ground, and then she's not alone. She's still in a bedroom, but it's not hers. It's some other woman's, and there's Graham, grabbing clothes and running out the door while a very pissed off-looking husband-type brandishes a pistol. And now for some back-story that washes over Elise like a bucket of ice-water to the face.
When was it? A year ago or more, when Graham had been gone for a while, making enemies. He finally came home, crashed at her pad like he does, sporting a bandage on his left foot. The story he told - he'd been fucking around and literally shot himself in the foot, haha, hilarious, right? - had never quite rung true, but Elise had better shit to worry about than Graham lying to her back then, so whatever. He shot himself in the foot, fucking idiot.
Only maybe that's not what happened. Maybe THIS is what happened. Maybe he got chased down the stairs by this guy with the gun, who is now firing at his retreating back from the top of the stairs. No one - not the husband, not the wife clutching the blankets to her chest, not the fleeing blonde idiot - seem aware of Elise there, being a voyeur with her brutally pained foot.
It was a quiet that Elise was unfamiliar with now - she remembers, but that doesn't mean it feels right. It's not the kind of quiet that she ever wants to go back to. At least the pain distracts, the shooting spasm up her foot when she lands on the ground, the pain that hits her right in the chest when the people who are not her materialize in this room that is not her own. "What the fuck?" she stares at Graham, wide-eyed, and there's heartbreak in those eyes. Confused, sick, hurt, none of this made sense. "Graham, what the fuck is this, what the fuck -- oh my God! RUN!" That last part comes when she sees the man in the room with the gun, and memories of bullshit stories come secondary to this 'reality' that she's living in.
She scrambles to her feet to try and run after Graham - or rather hurriedly limp after him considering her foot -- not yet fully recognizing that no one seems to be aware that she's here.
No one reacts to her presence. Even the dust in the room, lit with a tawdry yellowishness from bedside lamps - even that fails to respond to her presence. Elise can hear herself, can feel the carpet in the room with her bare feet, even the throbbing foot. She's so real, but these people ignore her completely, like nothing she says and nothing she does is going to change the course of events.
Until she blows by husband at the top of the stairs, and she can physically feel the meat of his shoulder when she hobbles into him in her haste to chase Graham, and she can feel her fourteen-pounds changes the trajectory of the gun just a little. And it goes off twice - POP POP! One bullet careens off the banister; the second screams down the stairs, right through the bare foot of Graham Stewart, who screams a litany of profanity, limping toward the door in nothing but his skin.
Husband goes, "What the shit?!" and whirls, seeing Wifey in the bedroom door, assuming she's the one that bumped him. Murder shines in his eyes when he turns back.
"God dammit Graham, what the - ow - fuck - ow - are you - ow - fucking doing!" Elise was positively fuming, driven by sheer adrenaline at this point because her foot was throbbing and she still feels sicker than dog shit. But she goes chasing after Graham down that hall and feels all fourteen pounds of her knocking into this guy who doesn't even seem to realize that she's there. She sees the bullet rip into the bottom of Graham's foot (she'll have her ah-ha! moment re: his bullshit later), and she sees the husband as though he were looking right through her to glare at his wife at the other end of the hall.
It was too hard to think. Her head aches, her heart feels as though it's broken into a million little pieces. Her foot throbs. The confusion runs deep. But if she was able to knock the guy in the shoulder and throw off his trajectory with an accidental bump, imagine what she can do with purposeful force. "Fuck you, asshole!" is probably meant for Graham, but she attempts to grab the husband by the shoulders and shove him into the wall.
<FS3> Elise rolls Melee (8 4 3 3 2 1 1) vs Cuckold Guy (a NPC)'s 4 (7 6 5 4 4 3)
<FS3> Marginal Victory for Cuckold Guy.
What the fuck is Graham doing? He's getting the fuck out the door. It slams behind him, and there's nothing to say he was ever there except the bloody trail from his foot.
As for the asshole she's screaming at - the shove doesn't wholly off-balance him, but he feels it, just based on the way he sways in response. It brightens the fire of rage in his eyes, and he punches the wall, leaving a smear of blood from his broken knuckle, then he barrels into the bedroom. Wifey shrinks, realizing how badly this turned while he screams at her about laying hands on him, about being a cheating slut. The bedroom door slams behind him.
The clap of the door against the frame SNAPS in Elise's ears, and it's like something severed in her brain. Stabbing pain surges inside her skull, bouncing around like a ping-pong ball of agony.
<FS3> Elise rolls Composure: Success (8 7 3 2 2 2 1 1 1)
Elise might not have been able to throw him into the wall, but it's enough to give Graham the opportunity to get the hell out of dodge. In the back of her mind, in the midst of all the pain and sick that she's feeling, she wonders how she even got here in the first place. But it's just her lot in life, isn't it, to fix all his stupid fucking problems? And she wanted to rage and hit the fucking wall right along with the cuckold husband, but his anger actually has her reeling back, and she scoots up against the wall as he charges forward into the bedroom. SLAM! goes the door, and SNAP it goes in her brain, and Elise is on her knees in the next instant, screaming and clutching her head.
It hurts, it's the kind of pain that makes her want to pass out or throw up or both, but she hears the yelling and the shouting and she knows he has a gun. And this was Graham's problem and he was the cheating asshole and she shouldn't be crawling across the hallway floor towards the bedroom but she does because she feels some sort of sick obligation to this woman who was FUCKING HER BOYFRIEND. And maybe it's just a testament to her grit but she pulls herself up to her feet once she's at the door and slams herself against the door in an attempt to open it.
Geez, Elise. Calm down. It's just a door. It opens right up. And she knows this room: this is her parents' living room. She can hear her mother in the kitchen, listening to the radio - so old-school, she never got hip to podcasts and stuff, so it's just regular old radio for her, and she sings along in her heavily accented English - and smell mom's painfully spicy food being cooked, that burning of chile in the air.
And there's dear old dad, sitting in his easy chair in the living room, watching the news. He keeps leaning forward, checking what's going on in the kitchen, the behavior suspicious just because of how worried he seems to be.
Let's see if Elise picks up why...
<FS3> Elise rolls Alertness (8 5 4 4 4 2 1 1) vs Sneaky Dad (a NPC)'s 2 (7 6 6 4)
<FS3> Victory for Sneaky Dad.
...apparently not. Sucks to be Elise today. That headache is a DOOZY, kid.
Elise has no time to be chill right now. She has every intention of busting down this door, knocking this cuckold fucker out, grabbing his gun, bitch slapping his wife across her stupid whore face, and then finding Graham and shooting him in his other foot. Or maybe his dick. Or perhaps both! Maybe it was the headache talking, or the pain in her foot, or the miserable way she was feeling - but Elise was mad. She was practically burning with rage. It was only on account of her sore foot that she doesn't Thai Kung Fu this door right down anyway ... and then she barrels into a room that was completely different and yet heartbreakingly familiar.
She forgets about how angry she is when she sees them, because it's hard to be mad when her eyes are rapidly filling with tears. This is her first clue that things are not real, because she knows deep down that they are gone .. but God, is it so hard to accept that when they are here. The sob stays trapped in her throat, making her voice come out broken. "Mama?" In Thai, then in English: "Daddy?" She doesn't seem to notice that her father seems worried; she's already making her way to the kitchen, still favoring her foot.
<FS3> Elise rolls Medicine: Success (7 7 5 4 3 3 2 2 1)
Mama comes out of the kitchen a few moments later, jabbering away to Daddy about when dinner is going to be done. She breezes near enough Elise to smell her perfume, to smell the powder she wears on her face, the laundry soap, all the things that smell like her mother. Her voice is bright, cheerful even - until it's not. She steps into the living room, near enough to Elise that she can feel the warmth of her mother's skin, and the gasp that catches in her throat is loud. "Karl?!"
The pain stabs through Elise's head again, terrible, tearing. Different than the pain in her foot.
Elise's dad is having a stroke. Right this second. And the synapses in Elise's brain misfire right along with his, but she's young, it won't ruin her gray matter the way it's ruining his. Plus...
The glass of whiskey that falls of the arm of his easy chair - Did he drink? How is that something Elise never knew? The bottle of pills that falls out of his hand and scatters on the floor - PILLS?! Was Dad taking PILLS and no one told her?!
"Mama, I'm so sorry.." The words fall out of Elise the second her mother comes out of the kitchen, a few fat tears dribbling down her cheeks. "I should've come to dinner, I should've been there, I just wanted you to accept him, I just.. mama please," her voice pitches into desperate pleading as her mother walks right by her like she isn't even there, but before she has a chance to lunge after her mom and grab her into a hug, the stabbing pain is back in her brain, tearing through all that gray matter and making her cry out, gasping for breath.
It blurs her vision, but she sees it. Her dad, the bottle of pills, the drink of whisky. "Oh no, nonononono," she tries to suffer through, push herself through, and it didn't matter that it wasn't real because it feels so real, so she forcs herself to her father's side, grabbing the pill bottle up. "What did he take?" she shouts at her mother, then at her father, "What were you taking?!"
Daddy's been taking Adderall, Elise. That's what the bottle says. It's not a prescription for him. The label won't... it won't... she can't fucking read the name on it, okay?! Her head is trying to split in two, and the words keep not being words, except the big, important one: GENERIC FOR ADDERALL. The pill bottle her mother has a sudden blind spot to, because she doesn't see that Elise is holding it, her attention focused on her drooping and unconscious husband.
The words tumbling from Mama's mouth are confused, half in Thai, half in English. She's berating him and crying, because no! Because those pills are bad, Karl! "Elise told me, Elise said those are for hyper kids, and they cause strokes!" Frantically, she slaps him on his cheeks and then digs in the pocket of her apron for her phone.
Cue a phone call Elise remembers: her mother, in frantic Thai, telling Elise-in-Seattle that her father fainted, so what should she do?! Elise told her to hang up and call 9-1-1, so that's what she does.
Oh hey, look. Elise and her mother aren't quite so different, because they are both berating and crying at her father in a mix of Thai-English. "You idiot, why were you taking these?!" she throws the pills on the floor and clutches her head, digging her fingers into her scalp. She can't think, her head is so bad, but she can hear her mother on the phone with .. herself? And none of this makes sense, but the guilt of being unable to do anything - of being useless, of being in Seattle when she should've been here, if she had only just talked to them more..
But god dammit, her mother shouldn't be on the phone with HER! So through the headache, Elise pushes herself forward into the kitchen, where her out-of-touch-with-reality mother keeps the landline. She'll call 9-1-1, frantic to do something, ANYTHING.
For a moment, when she calls him an idiot, her father's eyes lift and hang from Elise's. For a heartbeat, he sees her, knows she's there. But no sound comes out of him, just a muffled grunt... then he's stroked out again, dull and graying. On the other end of the 9-1-1 line, there's a dispatcher going, "Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?" And then whatever dispatchers are trained to say when they receive what seems to be a dead call, that they're sending an officer or some such. They must have some kind of protocol.
They tell her not to hang up. They tell her to stay on the line. The sound of the voice coming through the phone is BRUTAL inside her head, making lights flash behind her eyes, making her ears ring.
Daddy drops into unconsciousness.
Elise drops into unconsciousness.
Everything hurts. Her face. Her body. Pain is everywhere.
The look is enough to momentarily still her, to send her into heartbreak all over again. "I just love you, okay?!" she chokes out, reaches out with trembling fingers to touch his cheek, and then dart through into the kitchen to mash her fingers into the keys. 9-1-1. "Hello?! It's my father, my father! Can you hear me?!" Oh my God, she wanted to reach through the phone and shake the dispatcher, but the headache was worsening and there were spots in her vision and lights behind her eyes. She doesn't hang up, but the phone drops out of her hand, dangling by the cord and hitting the kitchen wall a few times, just as Elise hits the kitchen floor.
The people on the phone can't hear her. Mama can't hear her. Daddy can't hear her. There's nothing she can do, because she's not there. And because they didn't tell her everything, about the Adderall and the whiskey. It was just a stroke, a normal stroke that any man his age might have, wasn't it? WASN'T IT?!
Now the floor under her is tile. But it's not the bathroom at the house. It's the cold tile over that room - the one with the chair, the one with the drain. She's sprawled on that tile, feeling it like ice in her feverish veins. She feels a brutal thump into her abdomen, then one right across her face. Her eye wants to pop out of the socket, her teeth want to shatter and fall out of her gums, but they stay in place. It's just the PAIN. No marks, no bruises or cuts, even the bullet-hole in her foot was just the PAIN of it. That's all Elise ever gets: not the physical pain, the kind that heals; just the agony.
The agony of confronting the things that (might have) really happened. It's one thing to know your boyfriend beat a guy with a brick, for example; it's a whole different kind of agony to be in the room while he's doing it, feeling every blow when it lands.
The sudden ice-cold of the tiles where her face is planted makes her inhale a ragged gasp that's screamed back out with the first blow to her stomach. She doubles over, curling up into the fetal position as more come, the pain intense. Immeasurable. But she tries to drag open her eyes, to see what it is she's feeling this time - to witness the thing that she only ever heard about and chose to believe wasn't real. But this was. This pain, the intensity of it all, from one scenario to another.
"Please make it stop!" she cries out, gasping for breath as there's another smack against her cheek and she smacks her hand over her mouth because she's sure a few of her teeth popped out with this one. "Please stop. Graham, GRAHAM! Please help me!" she begs.
"You stupid fucking - " Not Graham, but Collins, his one good eye fixing meanly on Elise on the floor. He sees her, and he strains against what binds him to the chair, struggling painfully. The feel of those handcuffs bites into her wrists, grating and raw and painful, and that brick comes down on the side of his face, ending the words. It hits Elise along her forehead, temple, cheek, bones that want to shatter but won't or can't. God, it hurts.
Graham throws the brick, a bloody thing, and it claps against Collins chest, slides down, and rolls off, landing right on the back of Elise's head - she'll have a real, actual goose-egg for that one - then bounces off and hits the tile floor. Graham, winded, spattered with blood, has collapsed against the locked door to catch his breath, so he misses when the brick falls wrong. If he'd been paying attention, if he just heard her, he would've seen it. Alas.
Collins's head drops forward toward his chest, heavy, bloody. From Graham's perspective, he looks unconscious. But Elise can see Colins's one working eye still fixed on her, can taste the blood filling his mouth and bubbling through his lips. "Please make it stop. Please stop. Elise, ELISE. Please help me," he begs in a broken whisper.
The actual brick bouncing off the back of her head temporarily blinds her, filling her vision with a thousand dark stars, but she struggles to keep herself conscious. To try and pull herself up off the floor. She barely makes it into a sitting position when she sees Collins' one good eye fix itself on her, repeating her sobs back out at her, mocking her. The brick's nearby, she just has to suffer through the pain and reach, stretching with her fingers until they find purchase, dragging the brick across the tile floor.
"Fuck you," she spits out at him, lobbing the brick through the air at his stupid fucking face.
<FS3> Elise rolls Athletics (8 7 7 7 5 1) vs Dream Collins (a NPC)'s 4 (8 6 6 6 6 3)
<FS3> Marginal Victory for Dream Collins.
The brick crashes into the side of an already ruined face, and Elise feels that one, too. So GG?
Speaking of G... he's too busy lighting a cigarette to notice this. Funny how that works, isn't it? The things people just manage to overlook. The way his attention slides off the misplaced brick when it lands on the floor between Collins's feet. He's watching when Collins kicks the thing, though, shoving it away with his foot, tipping his chair over backward in his new terror. The hate and heat are gone from his eye, replaced by pale-faced horror at Elise's brutality.
His head cracks into the tile floor. Elise feels that pain shooting into her again, a jolt that radiates like wet-warmth on the back of her skull, blows its way out through her eyeballs. She literally sees red - not just hating Collins, but actual physical red washes her vision, a sheet of blood blotting out her vision where no real blood is.
It doesn't matter if that one hurts her, too. It feels so fucking good to see that brick bounce off his face that it almost tempers the pain. Almost. "I hate you," she sneers at him, dragging herself over the floor while he frantically tips his chair backward. She's heading for the brick again, for where it fell on the floor, because god dammit if Graham isn't going to kill him? She's just going to do it herself. But just as her fingers wrap around the brick again, Collins falls backward and slams his head on the tile. The back of her own head feels like an egg that just cracked open wide, and she feels the blood and the heat and the pain seering through her. The screaming is anguished, frustrated, pure agony, and she whips the brick through the air with no direction because all she can see is red.
"God dammit! GOD DAMMIT GRAHAM!" she holds her head in her hands, bowing back to press her face against the cold kiss of the tiles. "Help me, G, please, HELP me."
Sorry, baby. Graham's smoking and watching Collins with a detached satisfaction, like how someone might contemplate a painting they just finished.
The brick sails through the air and goes 'clink-chunk' against the wall, scrapes down it, and lands with a dull thud against the tile floor. But that's not the exact sound. The sound is familiar but different. It clicks inside Elise's brain... clicks... clicks...
That's the sound of a gun being cocked. She's heard it when her idiot boyfriend is being an idiot with his guns. And that tile isn't the cold tile in that horrible room. It's the tile in the lobby of her parents' motel. There they are, on their knees, crying and pleading with a man in a black ski-mask that's putting a barrel to the back of her dad's head right now.
<FS3> Elise rolls Composure-2: Success (8 7 5 3 3 1 1)
"Look at me! HELP ME! Help me you fucking bastard, I'm right HERE!" Elise screams at Graham in English, in Thai, she wasn't begging anymore. This was a demand. And everything hurts but she slams her fists into the floor and tries to push herself to her feet, ready to throw herself at Graham if she has to .. but he's not there. Not anymore. And that horrible sound, click-click, it puts dread in the pit of her stomach.
She staggers, not fully standing but well enough to turn herself around. To see the gunman and her parents on their knees on the lobby floor, the gun pressed to the back of her father's head. "No," the word barely makes any sound, but she finds her courage somewhere. Maybe it's the pain. Maybe it's the rage. Maybe it's the fact that she can't see this, too. "NO!" she pushes off on broken feet, with a body that's spasming with the worst pain she's ever felt - and she launches for this man, completely ready to tear into him.
<FS3> Elise rolls Melee (7 5 4 4 3 3 2) vs Ski Mask (a NPC)'s 4 (7 5 4 3 2 1)
<FS3> DRAW!
<FS3> Elise rolls Melee (6 4 4 3 2 2 1) vs Ski Mask (a NPC)'s 4 (8 8 5 5 4 3)
<FS3> Marginal Victory for Ski Mask.
Elise spends a luck point. Reason: fuck you reroll
<FS3> Elise rolls Melee (7 7 5 5 3 2 1) vs Ski Mask (a NPC)'s 4 (8 6 6 2 2 1)
<FS3> Marginal Victory for Ski Mask.
Elise spends a luck point. Reason: I HAVE MORE LUCK MOTHER FUCKER
<FS3> Elise rolls Melee+2 (8 8 7 6 6 5 5 3 1) vs Ski Mask (a NPC)'s 4 (8 5 4 3 2 1)
<FS3> Crushing Victory for Elise.
Elise launches herself at ski mask. Ski mask, unprepared for this because he doesn't know she's there, stumbles and the gun goes off. And that's how Elise shot her dad in the head.
Good thing she used like 400 luck points.
That wet, hot, crushing feeling intensifies when the bullet crunches through her dad's skull and he falls, face-first, onto the floor. Mama sobs, saying his name, pleadingly, and the shooter... he staggers against the wall where Elise successfully pinned him, gasping in terror at this invisible attack. The gun goes off again - POP! And the light gets shot out. POP! And there goes the front window. Her mother screams after each POP!
<FS3> Elise rolls Composure-3: Good Success (8 7 7 7 5 1)
<FS3> Elise rolls Composure (8 6 6 5 5 5 4 2 2) vs Murder Murder Murder (a NPC)'s 6 (7 7 5 3 2 2 1 1)
<FS3> Marginal Victory for Elise.
This girl's got grit for days. The pain doesn't matter. Getting her father shot in the head doesn't matter. The screaming, the everything, all of it falls away as Elise gets this guy up on the wall and she puts her forearm into his neck and leans, trying to choke him while he pops off with his gun. "Fuck you,' she spits in his face, putting pressure on his throat. "Fuck you, fuck you, FUCK YOU!" And she's totally going to try and claw his ski mask off with her free hand.
She's really good at choking. So good that she's going to make herself pass out if she keeps this up. The gun falls from his hand while stars spark behind eyes that keep shifting colors - brown like Elise's and her mom's; gray like Bubber's; blue like Graham's - and hits the ground. Another POP!
Her throat is tight, burning, raw with the pressure of her own fingers. This is that REAL damage. There will be bruises on her throat, scrapes on her skin from the nails that claw at her own face, but the mask won't come off. She can't - her fingers - she can't feel them...
...stars spark in her vision now...
...swimming...
...choking - drowning? - no, this is choking. She knows what it's like to have lungs full of water, and this is painfully similar, but it's not water. She's not drowning; she's definite choking herself to death here.
Elise isn't going to stop, even if it kills her. She feels the pressure in her own throat and leans her arm further into the gunman's neck, applying all the force she can muster with her 14lb body. She's crying, gasping for air, probably turning as many colors as the one sparking behind her eyes, but she needed to do this. He needed to die, she won't be made to feel useless anymore.
But a woman weakened can only do so much. There's only so much force, so much pressure, that she can apply to his neck and her own, there's only so much air she can lose, before she becomes limp. Before she collapses onto the ground like a sack of potatoes, gulping back air in a raw throat, trying to fill her lungs again. She can't talk, but the thoughts fill her mind: no, no, she was so close!
Gasping on both sides, as he sucks in air through the raw burning. Terrified, he staggers to where Mama is still sobbing over Daddy's body. She missed it all - of course she did. It's time to learn something, Elise: they're never going to notice these things; it slides right off their minds. Even the half-dead shooter staggers away from the wall, grabbing his throat, and he just finishes the job, putting a bullet in the back of Mama's head, too.
Then he stumbles out the door and into the parking lot, toward a car Elise can't quite see. Leaving Elise alone in the lobby with the bodies of her parents and her raw throat - oh, and she also hit herself in the head twice with a brick. She can feel those as real hurts, not these horrible phantoms that don't leave marks. She can't save anyone. Fucking sucks.
It's a horrifying realization to have. It hurts worse than the raw throat, the brick to the back of the head, to know that all she's capable of doing is laying here, useless, while this man shoots her mama in the back of her head. "I'm so sorry," she mouths, sobs soundlessly, finding whatever strength she has left to crawl over to the corpses of her parents and collapse. There's no strength left in her arms, but she finds a way to hold them anyway, brushing her mama's hair like she used to do to Elise when she was just a little girl. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," she repeats, whispering from her bruised throat, that hopeless, helpless feeling overwhelming.
RIGHT NOW, Elise and Graham are at home, fucking while her parents are rotting on the lobby floor, so Graham definitely won't come save her. No Bubber comes to save her, either. The guy will come to fill the vending machines eventually, and he'll find the bodies. Maybe he'll find it in his heart to save this poor, wretched woman sobbing over the corpses of her parents? Or maybe she'll just stay here, forever, drowning in that hopelessness. DROWNING in it. It tastes metallic and empty at the same time, the taste of blood and adrenaline and tears without the satisfaction of actually truly physically really drowning her.
But Elise can feel it in her lungs. If she just stays there, crying over these bodies, it will fill them to the top. Maybe it will spill out her mouth, too, the taste of her own despair and inability to effect change and the lies she believed. Her breath sounds wet and sloshy and strained while her lungs fill with this thick bitterness.
It's agony with no release, drowning without dying.
Maybe if she just waits it out, the darkness will come.
Maybe she should just stay here. She buries her nose in her mother's hair and she swears she can still smell her perfume along with the coppery-metallic scent of blood, her mama's blood, Elise hadn't meant for it to end this way. It shouldn't have ended this way. And what's the alternative, anyway? Go back home and sit hopelessly by while every day, they get closer and closer to the inevitability of their deaths? Will she have to watch G die, too? Will she have to live without him until they finally hold her underwater, take her away from Bubber and his little sister, and where would they even go now that her parents were gone? What kind of life would they lead, when their mom and dad were dead, just like her mom and dad were dead?
It would be easiest to stay. To cut Graham from the ties that bind, to prevent the inevitability that would orphan more children. Her children. Maybe G would be happier anyway, to have no one holding him back. No one to worry about him. No one to call him on his bullshit. No one to ... care.
Maybe it was that thought, that last one, that hits like a sucker punch to the gut, that has her pulling away from her parents corpses. Maybe it was remembering what she said on the bathroom floor, where she told him she wanted a future with him while they were both busy dying from this flu. Maybe it was because some small happiness was enough, and even if she feels powerless and useless in the moment to do anything - maybe, maybe there was some small glimmer of hope. It was all she needed, just a tiny spark, to leave her crawling, dragging herself across the hotel lobby to the doors. She'd crawl home if she has to, if she needs to. But home is where she needs to be.
Elise spends a luck point. Reason: Some small glimmer of hope
The spark ignites, brightens, evaporates that thick, bitter liquid. That despair surges back one more time, one more coughing sputter that comes from somewhere way deep inside her lungs, pressed out when she crawls and drags herself - like squeezing the bottom of a toothpaste tube, making the thick liquid gush toward her mouth. The last, desperate gasp of something that wants nothing more than to take all her shine and leave her drowning in shadow -
- and it comes out of her, just a massive spew of bile that goes all over the bed, the floor, the Graham that's been here for [some amount of time], sobbing because he's had a bad dream and Elise is missing and he has no clue wtf to do about either of these problems and kind of wishes he was dead.
Elise struggles, fighting against that desperate grasp of the shadow, until it comes up out of her in a disgusting mess of bile. But it needs to come out, all of it, and (sorry Graham), she forces herself to heave until she was sure all of it was gone. It's only then that she realizes where she is - not in the lobby, not in the basement, not in some girl's house, but her room. Her house. No, no. Not hers.
Theirs.
And Graham was sobbing and covered in vomit and honestly it was disgusting but there was no place in the moment that Elise would rather be. So with whatever strength she has left, and there's honestly not much at all, she throws herself over him and clings to him like he was everything, too busy sobbing to speak.
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