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[diarists]

[the others might’ve forgotten – they can say they have, nat and mel and jackie and even shauna herself, for those first few months. she’d played along with the idea that they could be anything approaching normal, for that handful of time beneath the manor’s elegant roof, pretended to be a typical teenager, petty and foolish and flighty.

in theory, misty’s appearance should’ve solidified that even more – her as the adult, the rest of them as children, falling into line, organized and cooperative and normal. but misty had been strange before the wilderness, and stranger afterwards, and shauna lies and shauna pretends but she’s the same. they’re the same.

it’s almost a comfort to realize that when they go back, they stay them, at the core. protective and secretive and deadly and other.

shauna nods, quietly, thinking about how the only other person who’d cracked a ribcage open and pared flesh from bone is now lying dead. misty has the stomach for it, the care required to keep it quiet. so, reaching out, she slips her hand into misty’s like she had for mel, the day of the trial, lacing their fingers together and squeezing, tight, their hands between them like a promise, like a vow.]

Just us. [soft, eyes bright and warm and molten, like the pyre, like the cabin in flames, like the endless wounds they share.]

[transponders]

[ The girls falling in line has been an unfamiliar feeling, like the sun when the spring broke through after the winter Jackie died, like seeing her parents again after being escorted from there back to Wiskayok, New Jersey. All things that she remembered, but never actually thought she’d see again. Those first few days after the crash, when she was so necessary, when they’d all be fucked without her - it feels like that.

She’s doomed them the same way. Natalie dead, Shauna about to step up to the gallows.

The hand slipping into hers brings her back to the present. The second chance. It doesn’t have to be how it was. She can do right by Nat, she can honor her.

Misty pulls her jacket - Natalie’s jacket - over herself, and quickly takes Shauna’s hand back, as if the offer might expire, the softness that she knows is and always will be oh so rare prone to changing with the wind. It tethers her. It makes her mouth water like such a foul beast.

Hands together, they visit the corpses. Misty doesn’t let go until it’s time to kneel and pull the sheet off Natalie, scar herself with every stitch she’d stupidly allowed Stephen to make, run her fingers over each one of them, neck, ears, mouth. Tears fall, quietly, as he hands the knife to Shauna. ]

[diarists]

[there are pieces shauna will never have, twenty-five years worth of them, solely and squarely misty quigley's to disperse (or not) as she pleases. when she'd first arrived, that had irritated shauna to no end, the concept of there being a world she wasn't privy to, one after those two winters, one after she had become and unbecome and rebecome someone who had babies and married men and lived quietly and sedately in the suburbs.

she's still in that place, the unbecoming, the space between antler queen and wiskayok, and misty is there. misty is holding her hand, pulling the sheet away, and natalie is there, she's there. it isn't like jackie, who'd been bluish and ice-cold to the touch from the day she died, more doll than person. natalie still -- looks like herself, still and sleeping, lips parted just slightly.

shauna kneels down next to misty, sets the knife over the top of nat's breastbone and -- waits. waits for the witness, for the watching. waits, because what if next time shauna isn't there to do it?] Down, through the skin, until you hit bone. [soft, like a prayer, followed by the glide of the knife, through dead flesh, to the places where blood still pools, still lurks. jackie had been dead for months, when they feasted. javi, coach, mari, it had been immediate.

natalie is somewhere in between, not warm enough to steam when shauna opens her ribs like butterfly wings, not solid enough that only a pyre could coax her chest apart. who had eaten jackie's heart, in the end? had they gotten deep enough? her features were still visible, still recognizable, even when the rest of her was gnawed-clean bone, so maybe, maybe...

veins sliced like the clinging roots of a tree, and when shauna gets the heart into her hands, it's like something from the earth, something warm and blood-dark, iron and oxidization, cradled in her palms. she holds it like a bird, like a newborn rabbit, like it'll start beating again in the safety of her hands.

then she holds it out to misty.] You first. [she was my best friend. shauna had gotten first taste of jackie, travis of javi. it's only right. it's only just.]

[transponders]

[ Ever since the crash, she’s existed in places between life and death. There was the dangerous handful of miles they’d carved a life in. There was Wiskayok again after, staying in her hometown a sort of spiritual death to any young person with big dreams, but the safety and order she could impose on it invaluable in the swirling uncertainty of the return. There’s the hospice home, where the patients that deserve it and the ones that don’t both share the same slow crawl towards oblivion.

Misty finds herself in that same place now, between a warm body and a cold one. Between Nat and Javi, between Shauna and the baby. She weeps as she did when she was a girl, sniffling and slapping some focus back into her face when the knife pierces skin, when blood doesn’t flow so much as ooze, thick and stagnant from her days laying here, being poked and prodded by any amateur investigator who decided in the last couple of days that they care.

The crack of her ribs to get to the heart steels her, spine straightening with the crunch of bone. She knows enough to do this herself, but there’s a sense of safety in letting Shauna do the honors, handing her the role she had back then. Because back then, they escaped. Maybe they can do it again now.

She realizes how close she is, not so much hovering over Shauna but leaning on her as she cuts Natalie open and offers her heart to her. Dark, still, and cold. She wouldn’t have thought twice, back then, but now? In hindsight she can see clearly how twisted and fucked all of their little rituals and reasonings had been - they’d done it because they were hungry and wanted to live, the rest was all just coping. Stories they tell themselves so they can sleep at night, so they can put one weary foot in front of the other. They don’t need to do this here. Misty knows, she knows, she knows.

But the blood streaks down Shauna’s wrist like the salt and grease from a juicy cut of meat and she swipes at it with her thumb anyway, smearing it (wasting it) as she grabs her wrist steady, holding it in place to eat directly from her hand. Her teeth are still sharp after all these years, and they tear at Natalie as if she were always hers, as if she wouldn’t thrash and howl against the very idea of Misty laying claim to her at all.

It doesn’t matter what she would say, Misty decides, deep red smearing her chin with every meaty chew. It’s the living that write the story. Not Ben, not Javi, not Natalie. ]

[diarists]

[it's strange, now, to think of how distant shauna had felt when misty first arrived -- twenty-five years on, older, wiser, knowing so much more and gloating over her experience like some smug, freshly-fed cat, purring and smirking. shauna hadn't trusted anyone then, caught between the revelation of truth and the horrors of the game, the monstrous things that had shaped and formed them. they'd snipped and sniped at one another, back at the house -- yet, when outsiders threatened, they'd circled up, snarling and defensive, protecting one another.

something deep in shauna's chest, in the heart that beats right where nat's doesn't anymore, is satisfied with that. the unity, the loyalty, the belonging that none of them, dead or alive, can ever escape. even if, when natalie returns, she can't undo this, can't draw her heart back out of misty's teeth, her throat, her stomach. she'll be there forever.

the blood streaks like ink down misty's throat, and shauna reaches up with the hand still holding the knife, thumbs away every taste of natalie, sucks it off her thumb and flicks her eyes up to meet misty's. and they're the butcher's eyes, but the queen's too, the last queen of the wilderness, fiddling as rome burns, marched out to the gallows, let them eat cake while they built the guillotine that'd burn her kingdom down. but for a moment, shauna had been queen, and misty had served her, fed alongside her, partaken in that last feast.

so, eyes still fixed up, shauna leans in and presses her mouth to the smeared stain of natalie's blood on misty's throat, flicks her tongue against the coppery tang, lets herself imagine notching her teeth into the pulse she can feel against her lips.]

[transponders]

[ There’s no trace of that smug superiority tonight. Misty had thought herself so removed from what happened out there, so much older and wiser than she was then, educated and rational and immune to the whims of the wild, to It, the undefinable ferality etched into all their bones, wiggled into all their brains like a worm. But a parasite left on its own only grows, only gets hungrier. Misty’s need was there before the crash. Why would it have gone away after?

She eats and she eats like one of their feasts, the meat tough and wet and cold, but perfect, because it’s Natalie, because she’s writing a wrong, doing what she should have done back home. Misty takes her and finally, finally has her in her belly and wrapped around her shoulders, a nesting doll of you and me and you and me and your fate in my hands and my fate in yours. Nat’s hands have gripped her heart and now Misty’s teeth grip hers, tearing pieces in ragged bits like the wolves tore her head from her shoulders.

The difference being that this is done out of love. Appreciation, for the most magnificent part of her, ingested to preserve her inside them, not ripped away and thrown about and mutilated, like garbage.

The eyes that meet Shauna’s aren’t the mother hen’s, or that of the leader everyone outside of them has just assigned her, by virtue of her age or militance. They’re the loyal servant, Natalie’s knight, her best friend and biggest cheerleader. Shauna never had the same fealty. It’s why the tongue at her throat feels like thievery, an attempt to steal what is Misty’s in ways that she doesn't understand, that she can’t, that decades from now she still never will.

She clenches her teeth and reaches for the hair on the back of Shauna's head, wrapping it around her fist to pull her back, off her neck, make the wolf bare her throat for once.

(Misty knows it's her. She did from the start. It doesn't matter. She doesn't care. It'll be her own job to condemn her for it someday, not these fucking people.)

There's blood on the side of Shauna's mouth. She tries to lick it clean, but she's covered in it, it only spreads the mess further. Still she tries, she tries, and before she knows it, it's not the corner of her mouth but full, blood-red lips, it's not the cleaning laps of a mama bear but sharp, demanding teeth. ]

[diarists]

[maybe in this place, this time, this moment that sounds like cracking natalie’s ribs open and feasting on what’s inside, shauna doesn’t think to be angry. it’s not like those last days, that final winter, the searches and the paranoia and the surety that someone’s out to get here, out to destroy her. because – now she is sure. there’s a noose circling around her throat, and soon she’ll end up caged or – worse.

they’ll catch her, they’ll corner and cage and chain her, muzzle and shackles until they feel like they can sleep at night again, because the beast is finally subdued. but misty – misty who plotted against her, misty who never followed her like she did nat, because nat was the first and last queen in her eyes, her heart, misty who poisoned and lied and manipulated her way into shauna escaping the cage the first round – misty would let her free. misty would let shauna’s monstrous teeth and vicious jaws close around whoever’s throat they wished.

so she doesn’t resist the hand in her hair, the wrench backwards, the bloodied mouth hot and hungry against her own. shauna smiles her wolf’s teeth and arches upwards, bares the line of her throat, jugular and esophagus and vocal chords, bared and waiting. misty almost-kisses her and shauna parts those teeth on a laugh, says soft, coaxing:] C’mon. You can do better than that. [because she’s older, because she’s more experienced, but – the after doesn’t matter, only the woods, only the wilderness, only them.

so shauna presses closer, whispers:] Creepy stalker Misty Quigley and all those huts without doors, with holes for windows. Van and Tai – me and Mel. Natalie, alone, thinking about Travis. [she lets it linger, bloodied hand reaching out, fingers grazing up misty's arm, to her shoulder, along her collarbone.] Don’t tell me you never imagined us. Don’t tell me you never watched.

light necrophilia....? ffs.

[transponders]

[ The last time she killed Natalie, she rotted in bed for weeks, and Shauna hadn't offered to make her soup, she hadn't offered a shoulder to cry on. She hadn't even had the decency to call. It's okay. She doesn't clean up her murder scenes or try to keep the fingers of the angry mob off her because she expects anything in return, she does it out of loyalty. When had they all forgotten it? They split apart and faked their deaths and broke their promises, all of them but Misty the liar, the creep, the stalker.

They were meaner back then, but they were their realest selves. Their best, most free selves, not the modified, chopped up versions of themselves that were acceptable to serve to the world when they got back. If she likes Shauna better like this, and Shauna likes her better like this, then someday, the hunt will be on. But today, Shauna trusts her more than she ever has. There's warmth in that. Satisfaction. Even as she snipes at her, bites with her teeth and with her tongue, all cruelties, all true. ]

I did.

[ Snarled and rabid, she reaches for Natalie, just to make sure she's still there. Cold and soft, turning the flaps of her skin back into place, hand stopping for too long on her breast. She's still beautiful, even like this. Shauna is most beautiful now, mean and alive and hot beside her.

Misty takes another bite, and wields the truth like brass knuckles, as she has since she arrived, as she passes the meat from her own mouth to Shauna's. ]

Natalie died because of me. Your reign is over because of me. You eat because I let you. So watch your mouth. I only watched her.

more of that ig

[diarists]

[shauna still hasn’t asked about – herself, then. about how she is, twenty-five years on, whether she ended up as cunning, as self-preserving as misty. the paranoia reminds her of the deepest parts of that second winter, her need to protect herself, and she respects it’s adult counterpart in this version of misty. this misty is closer to her now, to shauna in the wilderness, another bloody-mouthed wolf, snarling and snapping, mouth full of meat.

misty turns, smooths, caresses natalie’s corpse and there’s a sharp spike of that old, sour-wound jealousy – the one that had festered in the core of shauna since that night, since natalie was crowned, the hollowed-out envy of it should be me – because it will always be her. misty will choose the corpse of her queen over any real girl, any day, and shauna can’t even hate her for it, because if jackie were laid out there instead, she’d do the same. she’d covet every bite in misty’s mouth, tear it from between her teeth, swallow every chilled, iron-rich scrap of flesh as quick as she could.

if it were jackie, shauna wouldn’t have let anyone else come along.

but they were there, kneeling beside natalie and shauna is chewing meat gone gelatinous with time, congealed blood, the way it got in the storehouse, the familiar gamey flavor, better than elk, than rabbits or ducks or squirrels. she swallows and bites again, but it’s at misty’s mouth this time, hands suddenly reaching, grasping, smearing blood – a handprint down the front of misty’s shirt, months of curiosity finally snapping.]

Okay. You deserve a medal, whatever. [another grasp, this time finding purchase, fingers curled around misty fucking quigley’s perfect fucking tits, because god damn it shauna’s waited long enough.] You never imagined how anyone else did it? I know you could hear us all. [a squeeze, too rough, too proprietary, thumbs finding misty's nipples, dragging slow, teasing circles.] You never thought about me like that?