BELOW: CRAWL 11 (Patreon)

And awaaaaay we go! The beast sticks around a bit longer but who knows how much longer in this way. I've got plans for it, but nothing too solid.

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It takes a moment for my learning to come back. I spent a few weeks figuring out how to speak a totally new language to communicate with Samir, since I couldn’t speak at all and he couldn’t write in the languages I know, but it’s been… a while since then. First my week spent hanging from a hook, then my time in the escape tunnel, now my time with the beast I’m following. How long exactly is the next best thing to meaningless, and half-formed knowledge isn’t quite so good as fully realized knowledge. 

But still, when Samir starts to speak, I know enough to understand the very basics.

“It is you,” he says, over and over, as if in shock, as if terrified of being wrong. 

He’s changed from before. His long, stilt-like legs remain, but his arms have changed to match, gaining a new elbow-joint and lengthening even further out. In spite of this enhanced reach, and the little spikes of bone I see coming from his joints that may or may not be a WOUND, might be an evolution instead, he still seems… weak. Desperate, really, and giving off the energy of prey rather than predator.

I wonder, as a self-described and system-acknowledged scavenger, where I fit into that dynamic. 

I raise my hands in a placating gesture, thoroughly uncomfortable with how my other new WOUND, Ossified Jigsaw, makes my bones feel. When I’m clenching my muscles, everything mostly fits together, but if I relax, it feels like I could just come apart in a mess of jagged chunks and soupy meat. 

I can experiment with it later, just like with my Expanded Mind (another distressingly literal name for a WOUND). For now, I focus.

Samir focuses in on me, bright red tears running from his eyes. He seems overwhelmed and exhausted both, drained and almost violently relieved to see me, though I don’t know why. The last time I saw him was–

Ah. Right. Was right before I tried to escape, got paralyzed and paraded through the streets, and then taken away into the Masked Father’s quarters, never again to emerge. 

I guess he was… worried? About me?

That feels weird. That… maybe it wasn’t the case, maybe there was something else to it. 

Or maybe someone was sincerely worried for my well being, and is relieved to see me.

How… distressingly human, in this place. What a painful reminder of how little I’ve come to expect and what this place so often holds.

I wave my hands at him, then start using the improvised, simple sign-language we developed in our time together to start asking questions.

“Why here?” I sign.

Samir gasps, as if he totally forgot I could talk and the sign language in general. He quickly starts signing back at me, waving his hands excitedly and like he doesn’t quite know what to do with his new joints while simultaneously going on a much more complex set of sentences in his native tongue.

“Thought you were dead,” he gets across, though I ignore the inaccuracy of that last word. “Still trapped. Here? How? Why? When? Are you ok? What?”

Either he’s way too good an actor or he really is this frazzled to find me.

“Escaped,” I sign back. “Pain. Slow moving. Hiding now. Getting stronger. You? Why here? How?”

“Followed you!” he signs back. “From the pit! Saw you there! Crawling! Near the edges! Followed!”

“Why there? Why even–”

Does it matter? Ugh. 

“Why?”

He looks at me, shocked, eyes wide with the crimson track of tears flowing down his face.

“Scared. For you.”

Fuck. Fuck. Poor bastard. Actually giving a shit about me, about anything in the goddamn world. Then again, I’m not–

Ugh. I just want to protect him, don’t I? And keeping him away… is that any better way to do that? Probably fucking not. God damnit.

“What about Home?”

Samir pauses, then trembles. 

“Have to go back,” he eventually signs / says.

“Why?” 

He frowns at me. “Others! Scared. Didn’t get away. Masked Father/Cult Bitch knows I am in fight pit. Told me to come. Wants me back.”

There’s a vicious thrill of fear that runs through me at that.

“After me?” I awkwardly sign.

Samir shakes his head, then nods, then shakes his head again. 

“Yes. Not me. Not fight pit. But looking, yes.”

Ok. Good. He doesn’t know where I am. 

I’m not ready for that yet. Not ready to go back there, and not ready to rip him apart. If I can do as much as I’m doing now at the Thaumiel tier, and he knows more than me, has been here for longer than me, has active plans different from mine? Then he’s got to be a fuckload stronger than I am right now. Based on the pressure I feel from him alone, I’d put him above the beast in terms of raw power, though that’s blatantly influenced by my traumatic experiences. 

But I remember how fast he moved. How quickly he went from “not being there” to inches away from me the first time I got my SIN past the threshold of my outer skin. And I don’t think that the skeleton golem, Bratu, or the other SINners back in the Home were following him purely out of some charisma skill. If it was that, why not use it on me to begin with, rather than torturing me?

No. He’s strong, and I need to be stronger. 

“Don’t tell him,” I sign. 

For the first time, Samir hesitates. At first he looks at me like it’s obvious that he won’t, but then he freezes, panic coming over his features as he suddenly realizes the situation we’re both in. 

“I wouldn’t,” he says, but I know he knows he’s lying. 

I shake my head. “You will. Can’t. Have to hide it.”

Samir shakes his head, speaking and signing at the same time, making meaning overlap in my head. 

“I won’t. Can keep secret. Won’t know.”

He’s not afraid of me. Well… no, he is afraid, I can see it in him. The realization flashing through the shakiness of his fingers and the details of his gestures that helps me to know that he’s figured out what I might do, might have to do, to keep him quiet. 

But mostly, his fear is for me. It’s pointed into my eyes, the sincerity in his own gaze heartwrenching. 

“Can trust me. I won’t tell.”

Fuck. He really wouldn’t, if he can help it.

But that’s the thing about torture. Eventually, you can’t help it, can you? You’ll say anything. It’s why it’s so shit and so good for interrogation. Short term, it’s just about the worst kind of information gathering there is, but over days? Weeks? Samir will break, and the Masked Father might not even know exactly what he’s torturing him for at first. Just that Samir has some sort of secret, and that he can be broken. 

That limits my options. It limits them terribly. It also opens up new ones.

I could bury him. 

I mean literally. I could dig a hole, bury him in it, then melt stone back over top of him. If he ever does get out, it’ll be months, maybe years from now. And hell keeps us from breaking with reality, but it doesn’t keep us sane.

At least it hasn’t kept me sane, I don’t think. 

I could just break him. Bash his brains out so he doesn’t see which direction I go. But that’s a halfway measure and I know it, because it doesn’t solve the issue of him going back to the Home after. 

I could get him lost. Take him out then drag him somewhere, leave before he realizes I’ve gone. 

None of the options appeal to me. All of them offer me less of the immediate sort of fear that one can drown in, if they’re not careful. 

Deep breath. In. Out. 

Ba-bump, goes my heart, choosing a fucking inconvenient time to beat and sending a thrill of pain through me. Like my veins are on fire, like they’re bruised on the inside and the blood only makes them hurt worse. 

“Come with me,” I sign.

Samir shakes his head, and I can tell by the way he’s a bit more nervous now that I’ve stayed silent a bit too long for comfort. 

“Have to go back,” he signs. “Masked Father / Cult Bitch will know I am gone. Will find me.”

“Can he track?” I ask, confused. 

That doesn’t make any goddamn sense, because if he can, why didn’t he follow me? Why wasn’t he waiting for me when I got out? 

I mean sure, I dug diagonally through a stone wall for… a long time. Fuck, two weeks straight? A month? I genuinely don’t know. But if he can track me, someone should have come after me by now, right?

Unless he can only track through tunnels? If there’s a direct pathway to his target?

God damnit. Damnit. Everything’s such a fucking mess.

But if he catches Samir, he’ll know. I have to believe that, because to do otherwise is to be something less than paranoid, and I can’t afford that shit. 

Could the beast take him down? 

Probably not, especially since I know he’ll come with others. But could it slow him down long enough for me to get away?

…Absolutely. That, I believe it could do. That, I’m confident in. And if…

Fuck. Fuck. Maybe the system’s wrong about me. Maybe I am a goddamn coward. But the thought of a friend, someone I can speak to without having to write, who knows me even a little bit, it’s intoxicating. Like a drug. Like air I didn’t know was missing from my lungs. 

I’m so fucking lonely. And I’m so afraid of being lonely forever, or for years, or for until I’m something so powerful and unrecognizable that I can’t even remember what it’s like to not be lonely. 

I have absolutely no idea if this is a good idea or not. But if he goes back, my fear and my practicality together tell me that it’ll be too much, and that he’ll be seen. That the bastard that almost broke me will do a much worse and more thorough job with poor Samir. 

I repeat myself.

“Come with me,” I sign, more insistent this time.

“If I stay, he will know”, he signs, also equally more insistent. “I won’t talk. Happy you are ok. Just happy.”

I put my hands out, placating him. “Have a plan,” I sign. “Trust me.”

Samir shakes his head, though. “If I stay, he will know. If he knows, he will hurt others.”

Fuck. Bastard fuck of shit balls pissing in crap. Literally explode and die forever. Turn to mulch and get eaten and shat out so many times you never come back. Go absolutely fuck yourself. 

Ok. That wasn’t helpful, but it felt good for a minute, so there.

“You go back, he will hurt you,” I sign, putting extra weight on that final “word”.

“Not if I keep secret”, he signs, though I’m guessing at that last word. We never actually got around to making up a sign for “secret”, so he just puts a finger to his lips, and I take his meaning from the word / hand-signal. “Can stay quiet. Will punish for leaving pit, but if hurt, I have xxxxxx,”

I tilt my head, repeating the half-made signal he just tried to sign, vaguely gesturing at the word he used. 

“बहाना” he repeats, then shakes his head. Taps his head a few times, then mimes out a finger falling onto a hand and turning crooked, and–

A reason? Oh!

“If hurt, you have excuse?”

I sort of improvise off of his improvisation, but it seems like he’s figured it out, nodding brightly. “Yes. You hurt me, he not know. Keep secret.”

Wow. Great fucking job, Samir, great fucking plan. Worst of both worlds. I hurt him and I send him back to the guy who is obviously, blatantly, absolutely going to figure out that Samir is hiding something. 

But what’s my alternative? Force him to stay with me, to come along? Hurt him worse? How can I convince him if I can’t even really fucking talk? How can I explain anything? How can I do anything, goddamnit? 

Samir is braced. Eyes squinted. He wants to go back to the cult because apparently, if he doesn’t, the Masked Father has some sort of torture insurance, and why the fuck not, right? That fits the fucking bastard, don’t it?

I stare at him, and even if I had a mouth, I think my expression wouldn’t seem very human right now. 

Maybe it would work. If I trusted him, maybe it would be fine. Maybe. 

I hit him in the face as hard as I can, crushing the back of his skull against the tunnel wall. 

He doesn’t go unconscious, though his hands spasm, his feet kicking in shock. 

I don’t hesitate. I can’t afford to at this point. The only thing worse than gambling is pulling out of the gamble, taking all the loss with none of the possibility of anything else.

Hit him again. Again. Again.

Even with my enhanced Violence Aspect, it still takes me all four hits to cave his skull in against the back of the stone. 

He trusts me enough that he doesn’t even fight back.

I have never felt like more of a monster than at this exact moment. Even when I was digging through Saranda’s body, I didn’t feel quite this bad, because that wasn’t quite so fucking intentional, was it? That was desperation. That was agony and pain and fear. 

This was choice. Cold and calculated. 

Samir’s slack, empty face stares up at me from a halo of his own brain matter. 

He trusts me. Trusted me. I don’t know. 

But I can’t let him fuck this up for me. Better I fuck it up myself. Better some nameless, faceless figure be tortured for my sins than someone I consider a friend.

I will not break, I tell myself. Whisper it, strong and loud in my heart and in my head.

But what does not bend will always break. 

Will I at some point forget the difference? Maybe. 

Fuck me, I don’t think it’s been six months since I woke up down here. 

I push as much of Samir’s brains back into his head as I can, hoping to speed up his regeneration a bit. I close up most of his skull.

I lick up the blood left behind. 

I carry his body with me back down the tunnel, Lust’s Blinders directing me back towards the beast and my “plan”.