anomaly 007 . post-fourth wall . spam, video

[dinosize]

[ He's been worrying himself sick since the day came and went. Nick could be gone forever. He probably is gone forever. Stephen has been certain for weeks now that he never truly wants to go back to the ARC, but hearing that he will never see Nick again has gutted him.

He occupies himself cleaning and scouring his cabin. It doesn't even matter, does it? This is all illusion. But he does it anyway, scrubbing up every stain and erasing every bit of dust. ]

[ spam ]

[ Bags of trash gather out in the hallway on level 8, outside cabin 11, things from the closets and basement that he'll probably never use again. Old blankets, ripped clothes, broken equipment. Dusty novels. Eventually a nice smell spreads, like slow-cooking beef or venison, and a large pot of stew shows up on a potholder in the 8th level common room. ]

[ video ]

[ Just a brief post - ] Bit of stew out in the common room on the 8th level. I made too much for just me.

It's from those things like deer, last port.

[ private to friends. acquaintances? people he's starting to know. Later. ]

Are a lot of you dead?

[ He's a few pints down. Wishing he couldn't still think. ]

Comments

Filter

[dinosize]

[ He holds back his next response. A low patch. The whole shape of the phrase sounds absurd to him, almost mocking. He might think it was mocking, if not for the fact that Bush is stern, straightforward.

He swallows down. ]

I'm sure you're right. A low patch.

[ Seems easy enough to see, to him. No one here is interested or willing to tolerate a warden who's as flawed as Stephen is. ]

Re: Filter

[shakenandlimp]

I drank my heart out with Davy that night, reminisced about the old times and them I'd left behind. It passed, though; it'll pass for you, too, the worst of the black cloud. I can't say you'll never be sad because I can't say it of myself, but this depression goes.

[Or it did for Bush, a man for whom despair is all but a foreign country, and can generally be understood to not be intelligent enough to be as completely miserable as clever men sometimes are.]

Filter

[dinosize]

I don't drink much.

[ More that he doesn't make a point of his unhappiness where people can see.

And he can't very well say, of course, that death is only the first sliver of it. There's Helen. ]