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Chapter 7: Sons and Fathers
Drew
"Tell me one thing Father." He began, his voice turned scarily cold.
"What's the last thing you said to Terrance?" He asked and a sadistic smile graced his face.
"What's the last thing your son heard come out of your mouth."
Phyllis tensed, taking a few cautious steps away.
Fitz moistened his lips, "I...I said..."
Damn it all, what had he said? Had he even known Terrance was going out that night? He'd been around, certainly, he'd been home when he heard the news...
And he remembered...maybe it wasn't the last thing, but it was on the last day and...had he really seen him so little...
"Try not to make an embarrassment of me."
But he could not bring himself to say this, so he only looked Drew in the face and said, "I'm sure I don't know. Which is just what you were expecting, isn't it?"
Drew
"How lucky he was to have such a comforting figure in his life, a man incapable of loving anything, anyone, even his own son."
Drew would shake his head as he reached behind himself to grab the tree and pick himself up, standing with a wince.
"Easy," Phyllis reached out a hand to steady him, "It's a long ways back to the common hall. Do you think you can walk?"
Fitz, for his part, had retreated some steps away, his face working spasmodically.
Drew
"God you're just like him, so nice it's insane." Drew said more to himself than to her, but it could be heard by the other party nonetheless.
"I can walk fine, probably better than you can shrink."
"Well, it comes with the job description."
"Don't mind him," said Fitz, "He seems predisposed to unpleasantness."
"You haven't seen anybody else, have you?" asked Phyllis, "Your father and I were searching this entire end of the camp."
"And ought to keep on!" said Fitz.
"But Drew..."
"Please. He'd just love me to lead him on by the hand by one of those other snotrags gets sliced and diced. Aren't we supposed to be thinking of the children? We ought to keep our search on."
Phyllis bit her lip, "Are you...do you think you can keep on with us? We'd about covered everything anyway, I think."
Drew
Drew shuffled his feet faster, moving away from Phyllis, and closer to Fitz.
"I swear to god that bitch is too nice, it's unsettling."
"That's what comes of a life in public service," muttered Fitz, "In any event, she was planning to profit off an illegal book, so she isn't completely perfect."
"Thank you," said Phyllis thinly, moving through the trees.
Fitz studied his son, "What ever became of Tracy? I got the impression you two had some sort of quibble. Boy, if that's why you ran off into the wilderness..."
Drew
Drew scowled,
"Tracey stopped being useful to me, and her insanity and obsession with Terrance was becoming too unstable."
"Yes, it does get wearying after a while," said Fitz, "She does go on about him. It's really very draining. But good on you, I was worrying you were aping off Terrance too much. Mind you, I'm sure he would have thought that was very funny, but there's nothing good that comes from humoring him, living or dead."
Drew
"He's all you talk about as well." Drew spoke with attitude.
"Lies!" Fitz said at once, "It's only since you've been here."
Drew
"You love him more now that he is dead."
"Claptrap!" said Fitz, "I never said I loved him, did I? I only...regret certain things."
"Very helpful, Fitz," commented Phyllis from up ahead.
"Stay out of this!"
Drew
"And what do you regret old man, besides forty years in the closet?" Drew would ask through a cheeky smirk.
"Conceiving you for one thing," Fitz muttered, "That certainly could've been avoided."
"Beautiful."
He ignored her, "Attempting to prove my mettle on that blasted bus. Allowing you to play me like a fiddle. I could go on, but shan't."
Drew
"Apparently according to my mom you're a two pump chump."
"We were both drunk!" Fitz snapped, "She didn't distinguish herself either."
Drew
"Said you called her Quinn?" He asked.
Fitz froze in place and set about babbling inelegantly. Phyllis turned to look at him as if he'd grown a second head.
"She said a great...very...many things I'm sure! Oughtn't she have been sending you to school instead of filling your head with the story of your conception?"
Drew
"Well seeing as how I'm much to smart to be either of you two's son, I made the rules."
"Yes, yes...you know it's this woman's job..."
"Don't bring me into this."
"It's her job to prepare children for school!"
"I'm...I'm not entirely sure I inherited that part of..."
"I'm sure she'd be quite pleased to hear about your tomfoolery with those SATs!"
Dave shook his head, knowing her words could be true and disappointed by them more all the same. "We should find the others, wherever they've gone. Maybe then we could speculate and theorize. I just can't believe...bah!" He turned away, walking ahead, leaving Tina standing over the corpses.
"Yeah," Tina agreed morosely, "Bah."
She lingered behind Dave, looking from one body to the other.
"Bye, Dee," she told her niece, "You murdering cunt."
She turned next to the other, "And bye Lance. You were a great way to spend five minutes. Sorry you'll never get to make your shitty music famous."
And she followed off.
Aleks let out a startled gasp, shaking her head as she looked up when Ryan moved.
Slowly she took out the gun, aiming it at the pig and firing twice.
"Stupid animal!" She yelled out, wanting nothing more than to be at home in her mansion, curled up in her fuzzy bathrobe with a bottle of Dom or something elegant like that. With Zach and Brooke, and the others all just relaxing and playing games like nobody was dead or dying.
She felt the tears fall down her cheeks, felt the hot wetness as they trickled down.
They would never make it out alive.
Drew
"I mean when you graduate earlier, there's not much else to do, but take the SAT's for people in return for compensation."
He would shrug, and turn back to Phyllis,
"So what did you do so wrong with your dead kid, anyway?"
"That'll teach it," Ryan muttered, lifting himself up, "Aw, Jee-zus," he felt the wound in his side, wincing as he pulled his tank top off over his head, "Fucking thing did a number on me," he eyed the gash, grimacing as he began to tear the shirt into strips.
"You okay?"
***
Phyllis eyed him, "I suppose my first mistake was letting him within two feet of snarky ill-faith agitators," she glared at Drew, "But, then, I believed in allotting him a certain amount of freedom."
-Ryan and Phyllis
Drew
"Classic overcompensation for feeling that you helicopter parent you're child." Drew said, as he analysed the woman behind him.
"Tell me, did you breastfeed him until he was three or four as well, is that why he was your best friend."
"You really are a massive cretin, aren't you?" asked Phyllis.
"I never breastfed Terrance," interjected Fitz.
"You don't say."
"Well, I mean, Simone didn't. He liked to bite. We gave him to Rodruhgays."
"I imagine if Micah really was my best friend, I'd have known a deal more about him than I did," said Phyllis, "Parents oughtn't be dictators to their children, but there's no much in being their buddies either."
Drew
"Bringing up Terrance again, more buried emotions?" He asked his father.
"What do you think Hendricks? Is my father suppressing his feelings about the death of Terrance?"