Work Text:
𝐄𝐋𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐀 𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐈𝐄𝐑, 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝟑𝟔𝐭𝐡.
It's day three. I've never written that down, and now that it's plainly scrawled on this mold-soaked parchment, it looks ridiculous.
They're dead. Say it outright, say it aloud. Say it so you believe it, Elysia. They are dead and I am alive and I wish to the ends of the bloody Continent it was the other way around.
I think I'm the only one who's made it.
That first day—it feels like eons ago—I hid in the woods and watched them. They built a scintillating fire with flames that licked their bones, and they gathered what was left of them, and they burned them all until they were black. The Nevrons didn't speak a word. They didn't even sing. They just sat there, flaccid, and watched the flames luxuriantly, as if it was a play. Suppose they're moored with all the tedium around here.
Armored things. Demon things. Nevrons, like we thought, like we knew. Then, they sauntered off like all their lives meant nothing, were nothing, and I cradled their bones and knelt and sobbed until I grew exhausted with even the likes of that.
Log 4.
I was convinced the cursed things couldn't follow me this far inland. But I'm surrounded by Nevrons more colossal than the last.
They were almost on me when I woke—I mean, you really can't find yourself sleeping here. I climbed to the top of the tallest boulder I could find, and here I am, stuck, with nowhere else to go. I'm writing this in hopes that someone will read it one day. This logbook is the only thing I can realistically expect them to find.
We thought we were safe on the Western edge. At that point, we were well clear of the storms that sank most of Expedition 37, and the weather, at least, was on our side. We thought everything was on our side. That's how it goes for the expeditions, we're better than the last. More prepared, more studious, inlaid with fresh talent. Right.
Well, we didn't see the first Nevron until it tore open Aloïs' tent, and then we saw hundreds of them. They just come out of the sand, you know? You do know, don't you? You'll have seen them on the coast or you'll have seen me struggling up the beach, the only one left, and you won't be reading this as you run past my body.
Don't set camp when you arrive. If you can take anything from this, take that.
I made it through the storm. I made it through the wasteland—the stench was putrid and charred, the bodies a testament to how most expeditions have never fucking reached a quarter of the way to the Paintress. I made it through everything so many of us haven't, but I won't make it past this. I think I can keep them off for another few hours. They don't climb, not really, but they're learning to be patient. They're looking at me right now—just—staring. They weren't this calculated before.
There's still hope for one last entry. Which is more than can be said for—
Fuck. Sorry. I didn't mean to cut off that abruptly, I was only trying to fend them off with a shock. But they're getting better at predicting when I'm going to cast Luminas, and they're not dull enough to keep falling for my lure.
Maybe I'll make a last push for the beach when I start to feel more desperate. Maybe I'll double back to camp, if I can do that without doubling back to Aloïs' body. But he's laying there, so insistently sweet, hands cradled against his face, and I—well, I'm not getting any better at this. At grieving. You would think I've had thirty years of practice, hm? Why am I still shit at it, huh?
Trying to keep my tears from bleeding the words, smudging them, but I'm right miserable at that, too. I think the Nevrons are getting off on my horror. They're collectively making this beetle-like, chittering sound. My pen's beating off the pages so quickly, it's starting to create this insurmountable rhythm that not even these bastards can resist.
Log 5.
One of them turned on the others. Stepped on its own kind until their shells were broken, until there was this gold spooling from them, flammable-looking and messy as train-smoke. And that allowed me an opening, just enough of one to wriggle myself loose of this corner, and here I am with the hours closing in and closing me down.
It didn't follow me—that Nevron. Stayed behind and stared at me, like it was working something out. Like it was waiting for me to start writing this entry, too.
I don't really believe I have a chance if I'm being honest with this page. It's the only thing I have left to confide in.
But I found a little shack and a little loot, what remains of Expedition 82, I assume. Field notes and some supplies, enough to help me last a few more nights, a few more entries.
This logbook is the one decent bit of parchment left. I know I can record my entries, but I don't want some of you to hear my voice break every few seconds. Besides, I lost my voice on the first day, so wasn't much of an option at the time.
There's a cot in here, even. Maybe I'll sleep for the first time since they—maybe I'll just close my eyes for two minutes and I won't wake up. Wouldn't that be a laugh.
Log 7.
Do you really want the details? Do you want me to spoil your illusions of the Continent, only to find yourselves doomed on the shores, on the waves, on each other's miserable necks?
Tentacles. Beaks. Anomalies. I don't know which of those killed Marceau—by the time I reached him, he'd already gone stiff—but since you'll be dead anyway, let me ruin what dreams you had, because they'd only ruin all of you.
We made a map of what came first, of what to look for, the few hours of peace these fuckers give you before something else gets you. The landscape is ferocious in a way I can't explain. And the Nevrons—there's no words to impress that horror on you until you're in it up to your throats.
Log 12. Status: doomed.
Sleep is a fucking implausibility.
The Nevrons aren't spontaneous. They're waiting for me to grow tired, to grow reckless. They were right, you know? When they said I'd out-study most of my own ambition, and that I'd shrivel up in the field. Just like I've been out-scribed, I'll be out-lived.
I did the reading. Spent years on it. You'd think I'd be relieved for knowing so little, for the surprise of it all, how it hit us. That it wasn't my lack of trying.
Yeah, turns out that's not the case. I just wish they'd resort to brute force. There's a raw pleasure I imagine in having your neck slit all at once.
22.
I think that's what you're wanting, isn't it? To see that I made it much further than you, so that you can at least try. You'd take comfort in dying if it meant I could suffer longer. That makes sense. I'd feel the same if I was in your position.
Here, you can't have a moment to yourself. Any small relief is immediately swallowed up by the next threat. The next fuckery. I'm following the path I started before the last onslaught—the remains of each expedition, the breadcrumbs of carnage and despair and tents and bones like the ones you left on the beach before I left their bodies, too. Wonder if they're still there.
I'm starting to lose track as to what I'm writing anymore. This isn't a logbook as much as it is yelling into a void. I'm scribbling so fast, the pen's getting raw with the likes of it all. Think I have a shot or I wouldn't be wasting my time with this. I'm hurting with it. It's a strange, consuming feeling. Like seeing them all, their smiling faces, for an instant.
22. Sub-log, maybe.
Expedition 92's scorched bodies are in the field outside. I think. I don't want to look that closely. Think they must've died quick, by the glimpse of it. At least I have enough supplies for it to drag on a bit longer. This isn't as glamorous as you lot must've been picturing it, is it?
I'm spiteful enough to write a few more before my hands rot. Don't worry.
Log 29.
Got a little cocky.
Slipped into the guts of a Nevron with my Luminas.
Did you know they have a gut? Did you observe a spare second of that, in your haste to get on with the dead and the done-for? It was all soft matter and gooey and unbearably pagan in there. Like a living temple. Smaller ones move faster, but they don't have the same strategic minds as the rest.
One of its limbs just up and severed from the main body and it let out this spectacular, huffy screech. Lanced me with its blood and lightning, like a parting gift. Didn't know those fuckers could scream. One of us, at least, went down triumphant.
Everything's bleeding together. Just like the ink when I fell. Just like the wells of Nevron blood when I lashed out from their insides and raced up that hill. Some of it got on the pages, hope you forgive me for that.
What if I make it? What if I arrive after all you've known is my dismal logbooks? Wouldn't that be the most cruel, drawn-out—no, wouldn't that be typical of me? Feeding your resentment of this place, of the Paintress, even posthumously.
35, my age.
Did you know the Paintress was a giant? I didn't. Well, I knew, but I guess my mind didn't want to grasp it as severely. Should've, but didn't. She can't be anything else, though, unless these fields of lavender marbled between the monolith and here have shriveled me up.
How far do you reckon I can make it? Even if I make it to the monolith in time, there's hundreds of them between me and her. Thousands, maybe. I'm forgetting why I thought this was possible. Why I thought I could survive until we landed ashore.
The ink is still drying on the numbers: three and five. I can smell it against the lavender, like salt and oil and seaweed.
This isn't going to be as hasty as you'd imagine.
It wasn't for the others.
You might be surprised with how calm I've become. Takes the franticness out of you when you've seen so many of them die—a lot, as it turns out—and you're expecting yourself to, at any second. I think I'm ready for it. Think I'm looking forward to it, even.
40.
When the shock of seeing someone, just anyone, has finally clawed its way through me, I think it might be Marceau. It might be Aloïs. But he's got a beard, got himself a full head of hair, and he's got legs where I last remember theirs being misshapen stubs.
He calls himself Verso. Says it with a grin, too, and it takes all the composure I thought I never had in my body to not swat him so hard that his name rearranges itself on his face. He's alive. I have to mumble it, not loud enough for him to hear, but to write it as plain as day on this logbook. This is my only recourse.
I'm alive. Elysia is alive.
He tells me something I know I'll put down on this page and not believe it tomorrow. He tells me he's from the first expedition. Expedition Zero.
And then, just like that, he's handing me a steaming cup of something or other, and he tells me I don't look too fresh—that's his word for it, fresh, and I tell him he should've seen me thirty reports ago.
41.
I'm hunched over my pages, peering at him. Some apparition, dark and gangly. If he was a Nevron, he would've got me by now.
He's just standing there with arms crossed against his chest. I don't think he's seen anyone in a while, either. His face—it's drawn and weary but there's this fucked-up spark of pleasure in it, like I'm his cosmic joke.
"Still writing?" he shouts, and the way it rolls across the ferns is like he's been watching me longer than I care to know.
41. Sub-log.
He's going to wait until I look up. Until I see him, and I'm so starving for the sight of someone still fleshed that I give him a tentative wave. Like I'm a teenager.
He gives me a more jubilant one.
The logbook nearly falls from my hands in the meantime.
"Elysia," he calls.
Like we met in a former life and he's here to pick up old threads. Like he can see the questions behind my face. Maybe he can.
He's got about seven decades of experience on me, after all, and I bet he's answered them to more ghosting survivors than me, and I bet he's got an answer that I don't want to hear.
I don't think he's found a logbook without a body in years.
43.
He's strode up to me with this fuck-all attitude, like he's as young as me.
"Elysia," he says again, like we're already past the pleasantries of getting reacquainted to living.
He says we're halfway to the monolith and fuck all farther to go back. That they're thick, the Nevrons, but not impossible. That we're worth ten of them, and we're not the first, but we're the last, and one day we'll reach her.
We, Elysia. We. He says it like I haven't been alone for any of it.
47.
I want to ask him why the fuck he's left me to think I'll be the last expeditioner to see this through, but I'm not sure I want to hear the answer. I'm not sure it'll leave me sane enough to make another entry.
He's looking over my shoulder. He's got an abiding interest in how my hand skates the page. He's still alive and still watching me. I'm alive and still writing.
I can't believe either of our conditions.
"You don't trust me, do you?" he says, when I peek at him from the edges of my logbook like I'm a scorned child.
But there's no accusation in it. There's only a hint of what I've been yearning for since I thought I lost everything.
Affection.
Log 48. Status: unsure.
How many logs can you write before you're disproved? Before you're ridiculous in your own penmanship? Before you find yourself alive, even out of spite? Wouldn't that be the cruelest slight against you? You think you've come to terms with your death, but it turns out you're still breathing. Huh.
His arm's around my waist as we walk. He's got the good sense to keep quiet while I work through the history of it all. He's got the good sense to keep quiet when I cry. He hands me a rag to dry the pages and my face. Sorry, this journal's my personal tissue. You should already know that by now.
Verso tells me we can reach the Paintress if we're clever enough, if we're stubborn enough. He tells me I've outlasted all of them.
He tells me, "I never said you couldn't hate me while we make a run for it."
And I tell him, "good, because I do."
"Good, then," and his arm's steady as the horizon gets closer.
The sky's violent with strokes of emerald and purple and blue. It's a wonder, even if it's the last thing I see.
49.
"Still writing?" he says again, his voice as rugged and lazy as this desolate field.
He's got a tent made up. He's got it so made up, there's bits of wildflower poking through the threads.
You thought I was dead, and it turns out I'm not. How do you like that, you lot? How do you like that little betrayal? Would love to see the looks on your faces. Would love to see your faces at all.
"Elysia," he says, and he's helping me out of my sour-stinking clothes. He's got that grin, again, and it's the most repulsive, heartening thing I've ever seen.
"One of these days, you have to put that down."
50, you brutes.
The days are long. Shit, what do I know about time anymore? Verso says things like morning and nightfall, like they've ever had significance on this wretched Continent.
He's peering at me, waiting. Maybe a little more desperate for companionship than he lets on. Maybe I'm a little more desperate for it myself, now that I've let the possibility emerge.
What if we could reach her? What if the Paintress was thrown off, not knowing what to do with those who refuse to die? Is that what was always intended for us? For me?
Verso thinks I'm delusional when I mention that idea, but he's not fucking subtle, and he calls that my specialty. I call his specialty being a self-important, scruffy git. Maybe I've let myself get too acclimated. Maybe I've let my guard down. I don't care as much as I should.
Log 52.
He's sleeping, or pretending to sleep after a meal of spoiled fruit and leftover regrets.
Is this the hardest thing, to accept that you haven't been cheated? To accept that someone still lives to nag you?
Don't think I misunderstand, don't think I haven't had it in my head that the contingency plan was always to outlast the last expedition. Expendable new blood, permeating with the illusion that they might do better. Expendable, and somehow you'll die edgier and more flashier, more fucking committed by the cause, to the cause. Funny how that works. Our desperation transfers to the next generation.
His arm's draped over my waist as I write this, and I don't smack him away.
55.
Verso says I'm quiet. Says he's suspicious of it, which means I'm suspicious, too. Never gone this long without a ruthless set of circumstances. Never gone this long where the only horror is one's own company.
Maybe he's right. About more than one thing. Maybe the safest place is close to certain death; the universe has to recalibrate for you. Maybe that's the joke I've spent years not getting, years without laughing, two days without smudging the ink with my tears.
Feel like I should be putting your names in here—if I knew them, like I should be writing a comprehensive fuck-you to all of those who expected less of me. Bet you saw the first entry and didn't expect a second.
I see now how much you've counted on me pulling through, on me surviving so you can all savor it, even the dead ones. I see now how much you can thrive on someone else's hope, someone else's abysmal go of it.
He keeps me cradled against him, even when I've got all the blankets. That's the kind of man he is. The kind of man I can rely on dying with.
Log 60, your prized number.
The kind you complain about when you get to it. The age you think I'll reach myself, then some, then leave you to wallow for the rest of your inverted life.
I'll keep you posted, you bastards.
Log 64.
I think I see it, even from here. The paint. We might make it. I won't write lustrously of our odd chances, only truthfully.
If this isn't proof enough that you can do this, then fuck it, and fuck you.
For not believing in me. For not believing in your bloody self.
68.
"Elysia," he calls, and he wants me to look up. He's on the same hilltop, the one I've been trailing him up and down for weeks.
If I look now, with reluctance, with a smile, he might catch how it sneaks across my face. I don't want his ego to get any larger, but I look anyway, and he does. He catches it.
He grins like a child, like a scoundrel.
"What number are you on?"
"Sixty-eight," I say. "Did you think I'd make it?"
He laughs.
"Did you?"
And I mean to follow it up with something cutting, something clever, but he's already drawing me into his arms, already kissing me with the warmth I didn't know I missed until it collapsed into me. Until it set me alight. I thought it was only the Nevrons that could burn me, but here he is, grinning against my lips, and I know that it's only the beginning of how much this will get to me.
70.
Verso's tugging at the edges of the logbook. He wants me to pay more attention to myself than the pages. He wants to get there as much as I do.
His hand is sly, finding its way between my chest and the logbook. I elbow him. I elbow him again when I see he's got a gaudy bouquet of wildflowers splotching the page.
"Elysia," he says, like, here, I've got you these, and I would knee him if it didn't make the ink run. The old man thinks he's charming.
70, sub-log.
Do you know what it's like?
When you've reached the upper limits of your desperation? When you're nearer than you could have dreamed to the thing that has set each and every one of you on this fucked-up path?
Like the rest of the world, the Paintress doesn't seem to give two shits about your ambition, about your hearts, how they beat so wildly when you get this close, how they tear open just as fast the moment you think you're being granted everything.
There's a sprawl of bodies. I almost don't notice them, and I almost think I've missed her entirely, because we're upon her, and she's the fucking horizon.
She's there. Right there. Looming and indifferent. Verso says we're so close, and I'm too busy staring, and my heart is ripping, and I don't realize that I'm yelling it over and over and over again, too.
"She's there!"
Log 73, the last.
They're all dead and they don't have to gnaw at the implications. The rest of Expedition 36.
You don't have to gnaw at the cruel prospects of being alive. Just Verso and me, we're the only ones who have to contend with how fucked it's going to feel if we make it. If we don't make it. If we make it and we wish we hadn't.
I think Verso might be as crazy as me. He's just better at hiding it.
He hasn't run out of hope. It's contagious.
Or maybe it's just him, arms around me, shoving the most improbable, wild-eyed things into my head. He's got a new map, a new plan, a new vantage. He's got me against him, and I can't believe it, any of it.
I don't think he's slept in years. Don't think he's woken up to much, either.
Verso won't be subtle like I am; he'll call this a miracle. He'll call this restorative.
He's awake next to me. I'm awake. The air feels charged with more than zealousness.
"You should've seen your face when you thought you were the last", he says.
He says it with a grunt. He says it while we're already ripping at each other's clothes, while he's already got my back against the tent poles, while it's already the most alive I've felt since I left Lumiére and the bloody wastes of it all. He's burning and ardent and impatient, and it's the only time I've ever liked someone getting the best of me. It's the only time I've ever thought the logbook could wait.
I don't think I'm going to write this bit. I suspect some of you would explode, or worse.
Number 80, hopefully not the last.
You must think I'm delusional, and I must be, because I saw the flash of my own pen accuse me of it.
Crazy Elysia, with her ink and her man and a real shot at getting there. Eight-zero. Zero.
Going to reflect on that.
Then throw back my head and laugh.
Log 82.
He hasn't said a word all day. Not a single goddamn one.
You know what that does to you? When you've gotten used to thinking your only company is the dead? Then when you've gotten used to someone being alive and verbose and a nuisance?
I corner him against the side of the tent, tell him I've been the one writing all these doom-laden entries, that he's been the sanguine prick who suddenly goes cold on me. He just sinks against the posts and shrugs. That's it. That's all.
"Elysia," he says, like it takes him some awful effort, like he's about to break with the strain of it. "What if we can't do it?"
I tell him it's a bit late to be saying that, which is when he does break, which is when he grabs me and kisses me like all the logbooks in the world couldn't see it, so I might as well.
He's hiding something. I know it.
Log 83 (you may want to skip this one).
It might seem harsh to you. It might seem pointed.
Enough for you to curse me for being dead, enough to thrill me to no fucking end, watching you all irate and fuming and expectant for me to slip. I was expectant, too. Surprise of my lifetime.
I thought I was grandiose at first, but no.
No, I was simply, sordidly, and unquestionably wrong.
Believe me or don't, but I think I know what's coming when Verso grips my shoulder harder than he ever has. When his eyes take on a guilty, reflective gleam.
"There's something else," he says, "someone else, actually."
"Renoir," he says, and I'm already sick with the intonation. He sees it. He continues on, like the words themselves might exonerate him.
"My father. He's behind the rest. The deaths. The expeditions."
When I'm done reeling, when I'm done yanking myself out of his arms like they've betrayed me, too, I think I see him through someone's eyes other than my own.
"So, what? You're just taking me to my death? Didn't think I could shoulder the information, that I was too weak?"
His expression shrivels. He shrivels. He's the one pliant and hurting, now.
"You think I'd let it come to that?" He exhales an uneven breath, and the air is almost as ragged between us. "You think I'd love you this damn much, only to finish you off?"
I can tell it's the first time he's said it.
He tilts his head apologetically.
"Waiting for the perfect fucking moment, you know?"
"Don't think you're finding it," I say.
"No. I'm not," he says, shrugging, snapping his eyes away from mine.
"We're going to make it, Elysia," he says it like he's addressing himself. Like he needs to. Or he'll just fade into flowers.
"Together."
Log 84, all the way to your graves.
Is that how you thought you'd get to have it? Is that how you thought you'd have me? Desperate, convinced?
I was for a while. I was a fucking riot for a while, wasn't I? Well, I'm sorry to break it to you, tendons and bones and the next of you—I'm headstrong, I'm alive, and I'm still writing. How do you like being here after us, knowing us? After Verso?
He might still be around. I hope so. Find him and ask if he remembers a girl named Elysia. Knowing him, he'll keep it short and clipped, but you'll see something in his eyes either way.
I got one over on you. Romanced my way into being remembered. Alive or dead, I got you to know my name.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's livelier for you. Maybe you've got this logbook, and you're hooting cheerily at how much I was like all of you. Determined. Stubborn. A bitch. I'm sure you've got a few of those you want to screw on your team. Sure wish you did back on the docks now, right?
Maybe I just want to be part of the legacy after all.
Don't say I didn't make it worth your while.
Tell me you didn't expect to find my neat and tidy corpse. Tell me you didn't expect me to be so ruthlessly persistent. Tell me you didn't expect this many pages.
And what about you? You think you're the last, don't you? You think you're on the edge of hope for us all. You think you won't die a little each day, slower than you thought, and see how much it gets to you. I shouldn't be so sure, right?
You'll have to prove me wrong. That's what this is for. That's why I've left it. Something to fight for. Something to spite.
Log 86.
"What if we didn't have to kill her," he says, like he's spent weeks conjuring the thought. "What if we only had to find her and—"
He stops. He's got that same look from when I first saw him, only worse. Squinty and evasive, like he's trying to figure out the best way to tell me something.
"Elysia," he says, and it's the most imploring four syllables I've ever heard. It's the only offense I can't forgive. He wants me to make the decision for him. He wants me to carry it through while he stands at a coward's distance.
He puts it off for another hour until I go mad enough to write this. Until I'm mad enough to not write it at all, and finally—finally—he stops pulling his punches.
"What if we only have to be patient?" he says, like that's ever been a possibility. Like he's the one desperate to believe it.
Stalling. Not just with words. Not just with words he hasn't the courage to say. We're supposed to make it to the Paintress by tomorrow. At this rate, we might as well be going backwards.
What if we didn't have to kill her. What if we didn't have to kill her. What if we didn't have to.
Log 87.
He wants to keep me here, far enough from the Paintress to save me. Like I'll let him.
Logbook's my only recourse again. It's the only thing I've got to argue with.
Not used to putting up this much of a fight, not used to it for this long, but I'm hellbent, and I refuse to let go. I'm not going to be the one to cave, no matter how much I love him.
It's been a week since we set up camp. A week of us talking in circles. I won't justify him with asking for him to elaborate.
I think he knows I'm writing this. I think he knows I'm digging my heels into the fields to spite him, to capture every aching second. He knows me well. Doesn't know me well enough.
"Fine," he says, and his voice is grave, his look graver. "But we try everything else first."
Log 90.
We've reached the end of the Paintress. We're there, her arms sweeping across the Continent like an indescribable map, a monument to our tenacity, or the lack of it. Verso says she's the beginning, she's the end, she's the artful mockery of everything in between. He says she's brighter than the sun, and I don't think he's speaking metaphorically.
I lied about one thing. I had to write lustrously. I couldn't help it. It was either lustrously or not at all, and I couldn't help it.
She's gold and crimson and milk-white. She's everything and then some. She wraps around our lives like an inheritance, and the bastard won't tell me what happens when we reach her. I pretend like I don't want to know. Spoil the surprise, I tell him, and he says I've ruined enough of them already.
I think I can feel the shapes of us, Verso and me, dying and dreaming and defiant to the very last entries.
"You've made it, then," Renoir calls, and the authority of his voice puts us at a new, conclusive distance.
He's waiting beneath her, like he's had the time of his unnatural life. He's there at the crest of the hill, arrogant and uninvolved and maybe even glad to see us, like we've done him the courtesy of persisting. He's got this glint in his eyes that makes me believe he's dumbfounded in a way. Not when Verso showed up over the dune, no, but when I climbed in tow.
Verso's got his hand on my arm and I don't know if he's holding me back or holding me up. Maybe he's holding himself up. Maybe nothing's going to keep me this far from an answer, or a trap, or worse.
Somewhere, I want there to be a record. I want the ones after us to seethe and breathe, and to put their wayward bodies into the world. I want them to feel alive, like we do right now, and I want the thought to cleave them in half.
Swindled? Outdone? Renoir dusts off his hands like we're neither of those, like he prefers not to get them dirty after the first go-around. It's a good sign.
The air is brighter, sharper, like I've never had it in my lungs before. This might be what it feels like to reach the end of the longest entry and the longest expedition and my longest fucking breath. This might be what it feels like, since he hasn't done anything with it, yet.
You'll see what I mean.
You're alive. You're here. You think you're dead but you don't know a single thing about it. Let him wait for you, let him have it, writhe and scream, and live, and let me know what becomes of you then.
Only then.
Don't be without a pen when you go.