altruist again or?

[shitglasses]

COMPROMISE OR DIE

CIRCLE is a 2015 film about 50 people waking up in a room with no memory of how they got there. Slowly they realize they have to choose who lives and who dies if anyone is to escape. Only one can walk away.

Fifty people is too many for a thread, so how about two?

SUDDENLY, you wake up in a strange dark room with another person. Maybe you know them; maybe they're a total stranger. There's no way to escape and only one way to survive. You find nothing of use, no doors and no windows, just a note etched into the wall: DECIDE WHO LIVES. IF NO DECISION CAN BE MADE, BOTH DIE. YOU HAVE ONE HOUR.

Ready, set, go.

Comments

[pigsfeet]

"Everybody says that," Daryl rasps. From the fine quality of this woman's skin, the thinness of her shoulders, he can tell she's lived a quiet life out of the sun. How she's maintained that, he doesn't know, but it barely matters. She's distracted. He's done his job.

He crouches on the ground, so he's shorter than her. It's no skin off his nose-- she's no threat-- and it might make her feel better. There are times, frequent, where he hates the strength of his body, the way it shapes his interactions. People always see the worst he can do, no matter what he's trying for.

He'd much rather listen to this woman talk, her pretty accent pitched perfectly to hide a wider twang. He knows the type. And, hell, if the world ended when she was on a pig farm, that explains damn near everything. Good eating to last for years, factories to hide from the sun, and she never quite caught up with the rest of the world 'til some asshole kidnapped her. She thinks it's her sister, though.

That curls up something nasty in his stomach, and he thinks of Merle. "Older. Near on fifteen years. He was a marine."

He likes saying that. He was a marine, because it paints a pretty picture of a man who wasn't a meth dealer who sampled his own stash and cut off his own hand in the hot Atlanta sun. It also makes it clear Merle was a tough son of a bitch, which is how Merle would like to be remembered.

"He'd never pull this shit, though," Daryl says. "Wouldn't have the patience. This shit? Months of work. All setup. No play. Can't watch nothin'."

He heaves a sigh, hating himself even as he says it: "This ain't no prank."

[preaker]

She still hasn't grasped the wider scope of all this — the impossibility of it. In her mind, it makes sense that Amma'd have found this guy at some bar she used a fake i.d. to get into, flashed those big ole doe eyes and waited for him to drink too much, had some of her boy friends lug him into someone's storm shelter room or whatever the fuck this is. That kind of story makes sense.

Except what he's said doesn't add up — that he was out hunting all alone, that he was on his way to Virginia. On some level, she realises that. She just can't look at it too closely just yet. Of course, she's always been a coward. The only thing she ever tried to stand up to was Mama, and it wasn't so much standing up as rebelling in dumb, childish ways. Whatever ways she could. Refusing to wash her shoes after stepping through the mud. Wearing a prom dress that clashed with her hair. Stupid. She's a grown goddamn woman and she gets a thrill off the thought of pissing her mother off by having a whiskey in front of her instead of some fancy little drink.

It's not bravery. She still wouldn't dare walk into her mother's magazine-perfect white bedroom. She still can't face all the ghosts of all the little girls she let die.

She's listening to him talk about his brother the Marine, and then her stomach coils with nausea as he says it's no prank. It'd be easier to think it's Amma. Then there's be a reason, as shitty as it is. Camille stares at him, face pale, listening to nothing but silence for a few long moments.

"If it's not a prank, what's the alternative? Someone kidnapped us?"

Again, there's a pinch of odd discomfort about the kind of things that might happen to a journalist, but.... why would he be here, then?

"Has to be a reason to be kidnapped. You done something to piss someone off lately?"

[pigsfeet]

"Don't gotta be a reason."

There's a picture of a family living on a pig farm as the world crashes down around them. They last longer than the Greene farm, they last longer than they ought to, but they fuck with outsiders and things go to poison inside. Some folk want to leave, some folk want to stay. There ain't enough food, or there's too much and it goes to waste. There's never any good reason for things to go to shit. It's always a pile of bad reasons.

And when people fuck with you, it's usually for no reason at all.

To Daryl, all of this makes perfect sense.

"People are just cruel. World is. Don't take it personal."

[preaker]

Camille hesitates a moment or two before she slowly moves to sink down into a seating position, spine pressed to one of the walls, knees bent to her chest. It makes her look small, feel smaller, but she's tired and still trying to keep calm, and it's easier to do that when she's sitting down.

She's not about to refute that statement. The world's cruel, people are cruel, and she doesn't expect much more than that from any of it. Especially not when she knows it's what she deserves, and her own guilty conscience reminds her of that even now.

Still, none of her thoughts are coming from the same place as he is. The world she knows isn't after the end of everything.

"Almost sounds like you're used to this kind of thing." The kidnapping, weird horror movie writing on the walls... waking up next to someone you don't know in a cold dark prison.

[pigsfeet]

Daryl sits in what looks like a lazy lean, but more vigorous observation will reveal the nervous sprawl of a man who was never too good at sitting still. One hand taps against his knee, another fingers a button on his shirt. His foot taps an off-tune pattern into the cement. His eyes scan the dark expanse before him.

And he doesn't think of human torsos on meat hooks, of sitting gagged before a feed trough, of the way fear makes sweat smell sour.

"I had worse," he says. "We'll get through this."

He looks over his shoulders, at the words carved into the wall.

"If we can't, it's me. You got a better chance, makin' it through."

He reaches out, and hands her a polished object in the darkness. It's the hilt of a knife; the blade points back toward him.

[preaker]

Camille looks back over at him, really looks at him. Vigorous observation is kind of her thing (not something she'd claim to be a "skill", per-say; Camille's not disillusioned enough to think that much about herself, and maybe it comes in handy with the whole journalism thing sometimes, but in all other ways she's a shitty journalist so it doesn't make up for all the other ways she's lacking.)

But... she notices things. Because she looks for them. Ever since she can remember she preferred being by herself and she preferred being quiet. You notice a lot that way.

It's hard to figure him out, though. This person she's suddenly become trapped in some surreal nightmare scenario with. He seems almost.... 'accepting' isn't the right word, but he's not surprised the way most people would be. Not kicking and screaming. He has a lighter and he has a knife, the way someone who knows how to take care of themselves would, and he says he's had worse. Worse than this? (Whatever the fuck this is, but if it's not a prank then it has to be some kind of human trafficking bullshit. Or maybe some lunatic got too inspired from watching the Saw films.)

She's staring at him, hearing what he says and knowing what it means, but it's so outlandish a concept that she can't even grasp it. Then she does, and she's not taking the knife he offers to her, jaw tight and eyes wider with a strained horror.

"No. No way. I'm not killin' you." Her accent does come out more in her upset, words rolling together. There's a strange, nervous sound that's like laughter, the kind of inappropriate response that comes when you're saying something that sounds so crazy coming out of your own mouth.

"If we're here, it's probably because of me. Maybe I pissed someone off. Wrote something I shouldn't. I was looking into some murders—" She's rambling, staring down at the knife she still refuses to touch. "My editor'll find out I'm missing. He'll come looking."

[pigsfeet]

Daryl watches her, and finds what he didn't realize he was looking for-- the person she really is, sneaking through. It's not another freakout, he thinks; it's just the slow process of taking off your armor, so you can put on something much more fierce: yourself, unbridled.

And thank fuck, because when she talks like that, she sounds like a person. The urge to miss and ma'am her disappears. Maybe she reminds him a little bit of who Carol was before; maybe he just wants her to be that way. It'd be a lucky fucking thing, if it were true.

"Didn't say nothing 'bout you killing anybody." If there's killing to be done, he'll do it, but saying that sounds like a great way to get her back to panicking. "Askin' you to decide. All this says. Decide."

Still holding the blade of his knife, he taps the hilt against the wall, the words etched into it.

"You gotta better chance of surviving. Folks'll underestimate you."

And he can't stand to see another person die.

[preaker]

Maybe it says a lot about her that her first thought went to one of them having to kill the other. But that's sure what it feels like to her. Unless there's some psycho waiting outside this tomb with a chainsaw, and the second they decide who should live, one of the walls busts open and the loser gets their head chopped off.

This has to be a prank, some part of her mind keeps insisting. No way this is for real.

Only the other part of her mind is already accepting it as real and entertaining the outcomes, and if this is real and they really do decide who should live, well then, the other's going to die one way or another.

The way he's talking, he's absolutely already decided who that should be. Camille looks back down at the knife in his hand and flinches again. Visibly recoils. Oh, she's no stranger to sharp things. They feel way too comfortable in her hand, matter of fact.

"Let's say all this is real and one of us is the winner, and one's the loser. Not like they're just going to let the winner walk out of here, right? They'd be a witness. The way I see it, we're both dead.

...But I'm not deciding. Don't have much left to live for anyway, so." That came out dark and way too personal, but it's there.

[pigsfeet]

Nobody cares about witnesses anymore, but he's not about to argue with someone who still describes themselves-- present tense-- as a journalist. She's got her own way of looking at things, and it's got her this far. Maybe later, if they both make it out of this, he'll understand better. For now, their only goal is the next horizon.

"Said you got a sister," he says, as placidly as he can. The idea of leaving family is an upsetting one, to him, and maybe his voice rumbles a bit, takes on a little more presence than usual. He's trying, though, to understand. "She ain't worth living for?"