[ ... ]

it’s late. despite the moonlit canopy draped over him, jesse is wide awake. he’s been awake for hours, sweating bullets. subsisting on cigarettes, unanswered voicemails, and the bilious tang of fear. when mari leaves, the world condenses to their driveway. the shadowplay of passing cars. the mournful caw of ravens. her absence has a shape. a corporeal dimension. it hooks its legs around jesse’s waist. presses its pallid cheek against the jut of his shoulder blade. hangs off him like a raincoat, sodden with something wine-dark, something metallic— when mari leaves, the world stops making sense. becomes irrelevant.

𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐈 𝐃𝐀𝐈 【 @religun 】 : 〝 it's my business card . in case you need some help or you wanna share some secret hidden evidence . 〞

[ 01. ] sender takes receiver down to the ground during a fight. [ 02. ] sender leaves scratches / bruises on receiver's body. [ 03. ] sender cruelly applies pressure to receiver's [ wound / bruise ]. [ 04. ] sender lightly trails a sharp knife across receiver's cheek. [ 05. ] sender wraps a hand around receiver's neck & cuts off their oxygen. [ 06. ] after a long - winded chase, sender finally corners receiver. [ 07. ] sender holds a knife to receiver's throat, blade nicking their skin. [ 08. ] sender pushes receiver into a wall & pins them there. [ 09. ] sender has poisoned receiver's [ drink / food ]. [ 10. ] sender aims a loaded gun at receiver, cocking the hammer. [ 11. ] sender suddenly throws a punch at receiver during a confrontation. [ 12. ] sender hurls an item across the room at receiver's head. [ 13. ] sender forcefully pushes receiver's head underwater. [ 14. ] sender unexpectedly arrives at receiver's home covered in blood & bruises. [ 15. ] sender pleads for receiver to help them with hiding a body. [ 16. ] sender is knocked out during a fight, & wakes up in receiver's home. [ 17. ] sender gently dabs the blood from receiver's face with a wet cloth. [ 18. ] sender crafts a tourniquet from their own clothes to stop receiver's bleeding. [ 19. ] after severely wounding receiver, sender approaches them menacingly. [ 20. ] sender takes receiver by the throat & lifts them off the floor. [ 21. ] sender licks receiver's blood from their fingers. [ 22. ] sender viciously bites receiver during a struggle. [ 23. ] sender draws receiver's blood for the first time. [ 24 ] sender grabs receiver's hair, forcing their bloodied face up to look at them. [ 25. ] sender straddles receiver to pin them to the floor.

that's what i don't say. i'm not even a very good brother. i mean, fuck, look at me. darlene spent most of her life taking care of me, and—yes, fine, negative self-talk, whatever. this one's hard, okay? i could list a whole lot of reasons why. i don't need to. you were there for most of it. i guess it's better than if mari was talking to sam and said that. then i'd be really fucking worried.

then she keeps going. i have to blink a few times.

"oh. well. i also kind of stare at screens at my job. but i don't know if you'd call me 'content'. just… you know, paying for health insurance, and whatever. semi-consistent pay. i freelance, too, which might be a different situation." i shrug helplessly. tone of i'm never going to be able to afford a house, which is just that kind of thing that everyone vaguely around my age or younger understands.

i smile slightly. not a lot. smiling too wide always feels like i'm about to lie, even when i'm not.

i should talk to krista about that, i think.

"i guess we agree that you should only do what you like, then."

compromise. or something.

mr. robot, finally pacing around to stand next to mari and watch her for a moment. huh. do you really think the person you saw in group therapy today is going to like the idea of compromise?

mark handles all the shit i don't have the capacity for. insurance, co-pays, the things that come in the mail with my name and sound like nonsense. it's weird, i guess. being an adult who's not really an adult, but just some traumatized kid that still depends on her brother to make it through the day.

that's what the therapy's for though, right? or something like that.

i shrug a little, and drag from the cigarette again. the way elliot talks about shit makes me feel like he's more self-sufficient than most therapy-goers are. it's a little uncomfortable, in the way that it's a reflection, and seeing where i don't add up always provokes some kind of response.

i quiet for a moment, watching the cigarette's ash flutter down to the ground. i stomp it out with my boot, and then shrug again.

"does anyone really l — like anything?" it's a bitter mumble. a hard turn from where i was before, and something that a psychiatrist might call a mood swing. whatever. this whole thing's a bunch of rat-race bullshit, anyway, and i don't need to think about it any more than i already do.

mr. robot tilts his head back behind mari, resting against the wall, and exhales smoke like he'd rather be anywhere else in the world.

he probably would. he hates group therapy days. sometimes he goes missing for most of them, just a murmur and not much else.

i don't think he even wants to co-front for this, and he generally likes when people are assholes. calls it honest.

"it probably is." i don't disagree. i don't even really smile, even though i think most people would. she's not smiling either, so i'm trying to mirror that as best as i can.

i shrug helplessly then. "kind of. i used to." i liked pentesting more. okay. i liked the idea of pentesting, and i hated cubicles and the nine to five. so—i'm being honest. "i like parts of my job, but not all of it. it's bearable."

i like being left on my own to write code. i hate being on zoom calls, but freelancing is better for me overall. give and take.

truthfully, neither do a lot of these weirdo-fucks in therapy, but that's the kicker, isn't it? everybody who shows up to one of these things shouldn't be smiling, and if they do, maybe they need to be a level higher, anyway. the real crazies get locked up for that kind of shit.

hence: i don't smile much, either.

although, it's easier to get away with things with mark when i smile. my pseudo-happiness adds up to a lot for him, now. probably because of— well, because of before, but that's not anything i need to think about while this close to therapeutic spaces.

i drag from the cigarette, and watch the embers burn away at the tobacco.

"you sound like my brother." it's not a compliment, by the way. more of just a true statement. mark comes back to his not-shit-apartment, throws off his work-face, and shows up at my shit-apartment to talk about how he loves one part of his job ... hates the rest. i'd roll my eyes then, and i roll my eyes now.

"he spends h — his day staring at fucking screens, and yet is supposedly content as long as he gets his stupid little breaks and paid vacation time. i think—" the cigarette lifts to my lips, billows out smoke, and my gaze flickers over to elliot. "—if you do what you love for a living, y — you're either delusional, or unemployed." my hand points at myself, emphasizing.

the door is opened, and the first breath of fresh air hits like an orgasm— paints an eerily empty smile on her face. her eyes flutter closed; breathing in the sweetness of the sugary air, then breathing out her sickly spores. it lasts but a moment, this beautifully still scene. effy looks almost kind in the dying light of the sun. her face is so wonderfully ... innocent. no trace of spoil, a fresh fruit begging to be picked. a canvas awaiting its eager artist. and then it’s gone. her eyes open —— predatory blue, and she continues on as if the whole sequence was a hallucination. no pause is taken in her step, no look thrown behind to ensure she’s being followed. it’s not egotistical to assume. not when it’s just pure fact.

mari wraps herself in mystery. sheaths god / guilt / girl in a mask. inhales, exhales, flicks the remainder of a cigarette out into dirt; the faint sun sparkles against the jagged edge of her scars. (the other may look innocent, but mari's forever marred.) she hasn't looked kind since she was sixteen. has lived in a thicket of lies since she became an adult. the world has left its marks, and no fresh-set of terrain can change that.

there's a small bag that rests between the soft of her breast and fraying bra, one she's nicked from whatever idiot decided to blab about how he's got the goods. she'd given him a vodka soaked tongue to appease, and slipped it away while he sat in a dazed stupor. now, it's just something to hold on to— a solution, a problem, a bargaining chip. she's not seventeen anymore, yet everyone seems to act the fucking same. easy, malleable pieces of play-dough. effy can't learn her lesson if no one wants to teach!

girls like them are always found in places like this. dirtied couches with prettied faces, cigarette stains and soft-shelled hums. they're found stealing, not wanting, always playing, yet somehow degrading— morphing, over time, like fallen butterflies in forgotten graves. resurrected by proxy of who-they-ought-to-be. who-they-could-have-been. those-they'll-never-become. invented nightly, and dead by dawn.

a new piece of the puzzle. jagged edges that don’t quite fit and she can’t fucking tell if this was supposed to be part of the original puzzle or if tony’s been messing about and switching everything around ( it’s always been his game anyway. he wins, effy bites her lip until it bleeds, he holds a tissue against her bruised skin. ) she stares, but not with any discernible emotion. she's not searching for anything in the other's expression; in her clothing, in the way she sinks into the crack of the couch like a spider. here then gone. it's how it always is, so what fucking difference does it make for her to speak?

mari knows something about that. "mm." a quiet noise hums at the edge of her mouth, perks the corner of her smile up further. if she were a few years younger, she might not see it: the expectant gesture, the blank-eyed gaze, the quiet and silence and everything before it— maybe she's projecting. maybe she's not. or, maybe she's drunk, and none of this fucking matters.

"okay," i say, and even that syllable sounds awkward.

me and mari haven't really talked. i mean, we've talked in the quiet sideways way you talk to someone when you're inpatient. mostly we each kept to ourselves, and drew. so that was something. but group therapy out in the world isn't like that. there's an expectation that you'll talk, even if i spend most of it shaking my head. krista doesn't like that. she keeps encouraging me to talk, but i personally think there's some things that are too fucking weird or fucked up to say even in a setting with other fucked up people.

what i've been paying attention to, though, is how different things have been with mari. in inpatient we were quiet, like i said. i think it took me a week to even get her name, but that might've also been me ignoring most of what other people were saying. now she's not that. she's—abrasive, i guess? i don't mean that in a shitty way. she just changed a lot. and it hasn't been that long. and i know it's wrong to armchair diagnose, or whatever.

don't fucking start this. mr. robot's leaning against the wall behind mari, head tilted up towards the sky like he'd rather be anywhere else, hands in his pockets. if he were really there it'd look like all three of us were on a smoke break. do not tell me you're this lonely. jesus christ. we can get you to a bar and get you laid if you're so desperate for connection that you're about to ask some random woman if she has a dissociative disorder.

okay. one: i'm not going to ask that.

two: i'm not that lonely.

three: it's just that she might have one. i mean, you don't go inpatient for nothing, right?

i blink at her. trying to be here and not there. "i know at least one person like that." trying to not keep looking at mr. robot. "i mean. people say that if you do what you love you'll never work a day in your life or whatever the fuck."

play it well enough, and you'll win without the other party knowing you played to begin with. play it badly, and you're back where you started. example number one? inpatient.

those shit-for-brains nurses wouldn't know left from right even if i guided them. the psychiatrists might as well have been on drugs themselves. i smiled when i was supposed to smile, participated just as i was supposed to participate, and shared the bare minimum to any ass-for-mouth idiot that needed my vulnerability for currency.

aka, i won.

group therapy's different. the rules are different. every minute is a brownie-point contest based on how much you can fill the air, so— example number two? be a participating member of the bullshit, and group will go a whole lot quicker ... or, that's the running theory.

"that's a bunch of bullshit, you know." my fingers twitch around the filter of my cigarette slightly, and ash flutters to the floor. i drag, exhale, and then lean against the wall. "being a bastard professionally t — takes a lot of effort. really, i should be getting paid more for being a bastard less, but—" i'm just spewing random shit, at this point. elliot seems like the kind of guy who will let me, even if it's utter nonsense. (which — hint? it is.) "the world works in m — mysterious ways."

i shrug, kicking my boot out against the concrete. it scuffs, and i turn my gaze back to him.