as god i am

“It’s not really much of a game when you can’t leave.”

It just becomes a life then.  

She unconsciously raises the crowbar a little when he talks about being able to do anything.  She hasn’t seen this guy around the barricade.  Maybe it was better that way.  

“So it’s like a book you can’t put down. Those are the best.”

She can pretend that she’s doing something, and her feelings of frustration will overcome her feelings of powerlessness.  The adrenaline rush covers her sense of fatigue.

When she rounds the corner, she gets ready to club the next thing she sees over the head.  The only things here were walking corpses much like herself.  Speech causes her to drop her hands.  Slightly.  People could be dangerous too, especially as hungry as they all were.  She’ll keep her distance for now.

The man seems more confused than he should be.  It’s not like they haven’t been at this for awhile.  The sight of dead bodies wasn’t anything new.  Nor was the sight of walking dead bodies for that matter.  However, seeing people freak out as a result of low sanity’s pretty common.  It would certainly explain why he’s talking to himself.

The question is odd though.  While she assumes it is rhetorical, she answers anyway.  

“Liar. They said it’s a game. One of those newfangled MMOs. I’ll ask again, what kind of game is this? Seems kinda twisted in a Grand Theft Auto vice city kinda way.”

But he doesn’t sound very upset about that. In fact, there’s a lilt to his voice, an unbridled excitement that glistens in his eyes and shimmers in the curve of his lips. Too much chapstick sits on his mouth. Maybe he just likes the taste or maybe he ate the entire tube. Hard to say when he’s only turned to his side instead of over his shoulder.

Colette looked up to make sure she was still dreaming. If she was, then what she would see was a disgusting monster of a human in this whatever this was. She didn’t see that and thanked the Goddess in her heart but she also felt overwhelming grief. This was real.

“All those people are dead. This isn’t the Goddess’ blessing. This is Her wrath. You’ll die too, you need to get out of here.” Colette slowly stood up, dusting herself off. She didn’t want to meet this stranger’s face who heard her crying. “There’s a way this way. I’ll get you out.” 

“No, no, I think I’m gonna stay. This is my kinda turf.” Rocking back and forth upon his heels, he watched the girl drone to and fro. Like a robot, she was. Spoopy. “It feels like home--no, it makes me feel alive. Know what I’m sayin’?”

Both parties were talking to walls at this rate.

He took her by the wrist, though, to prove to her that he wasn’t going to just disappear - that he wasn’t going to abandon her so readily. Gave her a good shake. Any harder and he’d have dislocated her shoulder. “You just need to learn how to embrace it. Better than moping around. Definitely better than moping around.”

She was dreaming. Dreaming. Dreaming. Dreaming. She had to be dreaming. There was no way her arm was crystallizing. That was just in her head. It was all in her head. 

The screams. The smells. The monsters. People eating one another. All in her head. The food she found was long rotten. The things she grabbed to defend herself, she threw far away from her a long time ago. They spoke to her and she didn’t want to hear it anymore. 

She had to get her mind off of this. She hoped the people she helped earlier were okay. She hoped and prayed that she helped someone in this nightmare world. If she did that, if she saved their lives then she’d be okay after all. She brought her knees to her chest, eyes all too aware of the shrinking bars at the edge of her vision. 

If she became a monster, she would be okay. If she saved someone then it was okay. If she…

He emerged from the shadows, from the suffocating darkness, out into the blinding light of a street lamp that was less a beacon of hope and more a glaring mistake; his hazel eyes sparkled beneath its harsh judgment, mischievous and eager to ‘assist’.

“I won’t let you, little girl, so dry those tears of yours and take my hand,” which he then offered to her, never saying what exactly he intended to offer. Aid? Protection? Temptation? Any of those were possible the way his eyes gleamed a little too brightly. “Let’s go on an adventure, just you and me! All this chaos and mayhem’s just a blessing in disguise.” No one could stop them. Well, not him. But he wanted her to tag along and he’d keep her safe from harm but only because her scared angelic face plucked at the hair-thin heartstrings just barely hanging throughout his ribcage.

Right, act confident, Flynn Rider. He quickly wiped the stunned look from his face, masking the amazement with an applaud. “Good god—that’s not bad, Shawnzy!” Composing himself, he coughed once for effect. 

      The wind calms. It’s vanished. Her frustration inflates. She has to take a breath – exhale. She’ll find it, she’s certain. One could only hope, she thinks as she looks to the man a little desperately, but to uphold her dignity she must only show a fragment of her vexation and not much more. “Perhaps I’ll… keep looking… It can’t have gotten far.” Or so she still hopes. And she takes a step, looking north, only to find… She gasps. “There! That dog has it!!” Blue hat on its mouth the dog looks in their direction only to start running away.

Sean sheepishly keeps his ulterior motive to himself and follows after the young man looking for his hat (he’ll wait until he’s given more cues to decide whether or not he’s wrong).

“My way?” Perplexed as to why ‘Seanston’ asked him such a thing, the man’s lips flipped down in aghast. “No, no―that’s not how this lesson goes!” His arms crossed and he heaved a sigh. “Alright, first thing you gotta do is show me your smoulder. One hundred and ten percent charm!” 

“Actually I meant coffee. I might need to fall back on it if the good tea places I know take a while to recover.”

      And as it turns out it doesn’t. Yet the height seems feasible for her to jump. Heaving a sigh she drops down, only to almost collide with a passing stranger who’d halted in his steps. Widened eyes and still breathless she’ll not let desperation get the better of her once more. Regaining her balance she clears her throat, moves a step back from the tall man to grant the both of them some space.

      “Please excuse me for that. But I also need to ask, have you seen a blue hat somewhere in this area? Or anywhere at all?” 

Hat. A blue one. Right, well. “Uhh...” He tosses a look over his shoulder and spots the item in question dangling from a tree branch like forbidden fruit. In all honesty, he’s impressed that it got up there. “That one? I could probably reach it.” One of the great perks of being a giraffe was the ability to grab things from trees. (One of the downsides was not living as long as short people, boo.)

“I haven’t really felt comfortable exploring much beyond my own area yet. Still breaking in the new uh, Hive legs, you know.”

Grin widening, slim fingers fish into one of his pockets for something which he presents with a flourish of his sleeve–

“Ah, good of you to ask, my good man. The one of a kind mini-confessional! For all your private thoughts at the drop of a hat.”