#fauconnier

Disoriented, Squig trips down the stairway to her mobile home. The world fades from her consciousness, and then, she is no longer numb.

Robin gasps as the gun malfunctions, relief flooding her veins (Thank FUCK!), and she stands up, rushing over to Squig as she faints. Robin looks over Squig's body, seeing if they didn't get any other wounds.

"Jean is… they're not doing good. They need a hospital."

Kalei presses harder on their stomach, and more blood flows up to meet their palms. How in the world they were acting as if their leg wasn't in immense, excruciating pain, Kalei didn't know.

"Like, now. And I think your friend needs a psych ward, ahaha."

The joke wasn't funny, not at all, but Kalei had to say something.

She sniffles.

"No jokes, please."

She shakes her head.

"But I appreciate the effort."

She looks through Squig's bag for any medkits again.

"I- I don't know how to tend to bullet wounds."

“Pressure. Bandage. Call someone who does.”

The words came out chopped, because Kalei didn’t know either. They weren’t a doctor!

Robin touches something box-shaped and takes it out of the backpack. A medkit. She places it on the ground.

"Okay, okay. I'll call 911."

She grabs her phone and dials the number.

Wait, right, Kalei still has Fia on the phone… and that damn camera. It was angled right by where Kalei had fallen, right by Jean… and right where Squig had turned a gun on herself. They want to puke- all that on video…

Robin hadn't noticed, too focused on the call.

"Hello, someone's- Two people have been shot. Yes. Right by, uhm.-"

Two people have been shot. Unable to keep up any bravado, Kalei leans over and pukes, narrowly dodging Jean’s pants with it. They gasp again. It’s too late to run now, isn’t it? They want to go home.

Squig woke up in a cold sweat; painfully, suddenly, and without any warning. But as soon as she did, she bolted upright and screamed,

"THEY TURNED THE KINSTUGI TIMELINE INTO A GENERIC ANALOGUE HORROR."

Kalei screams, head tucking down as if dodging another gunshot.

…they look back up slowly and turn to Squig. Raise an eyebrow. Glance at their bloody leg, Jean’s blood soaked torso. Look back at Squig.

“…what did you just say?”

Robin flinches with a yelp. She was about to say that an ambulance was coming by. She turns around to face Squig and rushes over to her side.

"Are you okay?"

She grabs Robin's shoulders,

"It was terrible!!"

Squig lets out a sob.

"They, they… Umm… I.. I was in the water! And there was a big moon and I saw Xivvy there, and I thought I died and, and,"

Squig's hands shake, making strange movements with her arms as if to recalibrate them and her brain all at once,

"Xivvy said something enigmatic and compared me to Jimbo from Mouthwashing and then she got all Mandella Catalogue-y, with her face getting long and her eyes going all wide and, oh GOD they're making such a good work of art into something so generic!! Why must so many online horror projects try to make their antagonists look like Gabriel, it NEVER looks as good as it did the first time!!!"

“You’re fucking disgusting. Talking about a nightmare right now? I can’t believe you called me ableist, you,., you….”

They close their eyes and bury their face in the backs of their hands, right above where Jean’s blood still leaked. They felt sick, like puking again. Probably from blood loss.

Robin looks at Kalei and back to Squig, then back at Kalei.

"Can we focus first on the fact that the three of you are injured before you get into another fight?"

She says firmly.

"Wait… Injured..?"

Squig's hand reaches her face, swollen and wet with tears and blood. Her nose is still bleeding.

"Oh. THAT'S why everything hurts. Wait…"

She wipes beneath her broken glasses and adjusts them to more clearly see the three other people here. When she can see again, she states,

"OH. OH FUCK. Oh FUCK I DID THIS."

Yes, Kalei wants to scream. It was you. You hurt me. You hurt them. You did this, and you were selfish enough to try to join us.

But they couldn’t. They couldn’t be that much of a hypocrite, could they? Not when they remembered hands that typed out IP addresses and phone numbers, hands that had caressed a frayed jump rope before stopping out of fear just two days after reading the play. If Squig was a psychopathic, malicious coward, so was Kalei.

And that meant they probably need to not make things worse.

“The… help is on the way,”

Kalei groans. They try to curl their toes, but find that it’s hard to get their body to do much of anything. Oh, good, they think. They’re dying.

“…can somebody get my phone?”

Robin redirects Squig's gaze by gently moving her head by touching her cheek.

"Please don't panic. That's not what we need right now. Focus on staying awake."

She looks back towards Kalei.

"I'll get it. Where's it put?"

“…..mm. Ground. Camera. Hang up the call.”

Kalei wasn’t dying, right? Right. But Fia might still be listening, and that was bad. That was very bad. Worse than their cold fingers.

Robin stands up and looks around. She spots the phone a ways away and goes to pick it up. She sees the Caller's ID.

"Sorry. I'll take care of everyone here. Don't worry. And, uhm. Name's Robin."

She hangs up the call.

"Okay, did it."

She notices the camera. …It's still fucking recording.

"…Everything happened got recorded."

She says out loud, eyes wide.

"Do I turn the stupid thing off?"

She asks, a little harshly in tone.

Whoever took the footage from the CCTV cameras in her workplace could be getting footage from this camera.

Squig raises a bandaged hand, the other of which is being used to feel a patch of grass she's sitting next to.

"Uh… You see that button on the top right? Yeah, just push that and hold it dow-"