Work Text:
The world is gone.
Ashley squeezes the gun, her knuckles white.
Her ears are ringing.
She laughed, hysterically, a moment before. Or is that someone else? Someone else who pulled the trigger, someone else who holds the gun.
The gun is out of bullets.
The gun.
”Come on, Andy! Stop fucking around! It’s not funny anymore!”
Those are her words, coming from her mouth…
But they feel like they are a million miles away, recited by someone else.
And she is still hanging onto the gun. It wasn’t like in the movies, her arm hurts-
It didn’t look real. It didn’t sound real. It doesn’t smell real. Death is for other people. For weak people.
Maybe it isn’t real, maybe Ashley is the only thing that is real now that the world is gone.
Now that her world is gone.
Now that Andrew is gone.
Ashley screams.
Half of his head is gone. Splattered on the cheap carpet.
She throws away the gun and falls on her knees and tries to hold her brother up.
His head, or what is left of it, lurches back with a sickening crack as Ashley cups his cheeks and kisses him.
”Leyley is here…” she mumbles.
She remembers the old game Andy and her played as kids.
One of them, usually Leyley, would lay on the bed, eyes closed, pretending to be asleep.
Like The Sleeping Beauty.
And they had to stay reeeally still and not laugh when the prince would give them a kiss on the cheek.
Leyley loved that game.
Ashley kisses her brother on the lips, now, as if it could wake him up.
Of course it doesn’t. Princes and princesses don’t exist, not that way at least. It had just been a game.
A game for children.
That what Andrew said when he stopped playing.
He was so stupid.
No no nonononoo.
He is stupid.
If she doesn’t accept it, if she doesn’t let the reality where her brother is dead inside of her skull, then it’s not real.
Inside of her.
She kisses him again, brushing her lips against some of the brain matter hanging on his cheek. She extends her tongue and slowly licks his still-warm skin. She turns the bit of brain in her mouth. It tastes metallic and there is probably a bit of bone on it because of the way it scrapes her throat as she swallows.
A bit of Andy is in her now.
And suddenly she is not alone.
”It’s okay, you dumbass,” she tells him. ”I just need to fix this. You better praise my ingenuity after I am done…”
She can almost hear his response. What does he say? She can’t hear him, not quite, she can just imagine it so clearly-
She pokes his brain again. It feels harder than she had expected not at all jelly like. With their parents and the cultist they avoided the brain, vaguely remembering you got diseases from it.
Ashley remembers that’s how the zombie outbreak started in The Murder Cheerleaders From the Ranch part 2: the bikini boogaloo and she is fairly certain it’s based on something real.
She can’t die.
So she gets up and searches for the hatchet.
She needs to take good care of herself. After all she is living for the both of them from now on.
She finds the hatchet from where it got dropped during their little argument.
She grabs his ankles and starts dragging him to the bathroom of this dingy little hotel.
”You’re heavy, fat-ass… Such a gentleman, letting the lady do all the physical work.”
He made such a mess of it… But she could fix it now, she could take that love that had decayed and use it, make something new.
She lifts Andrew into the bath tub with an unladylike groan and gets to work.
”I will make sure I’ll eat everything,” she tells him as she brings down the hatchet to sewer his arm. It takes three swings and on one the blade gets stuck to his sweater.
”Use every part… Maybe not the hair. Is that okay? Should I eat the hair too? Sounds gross.”
He likes his hair, though, so it only feels fair she at least tries to do something with it.
She will cut him into pieces and freeze him, and then prepare him, lovingly crafting delicious home made meals.
”You’ll see, I will become quite the perfect housewife. Soup, steak, broth, one of those brain treats from Temple of Doom but you know, less monkey more Andy. Skin jerky. Liver patties. Sausages. Uhhh… Kidney pies. Stuff that’s healthy and will keep us strong. Probably gonna do something really special for your dick, like… Really fancy, with red wine, right? I need to google some really fancy recipe for that. Like uh. Dick borg-in-non.”
She can almost hear him complaining about her trying to pronounce French and criticizing her meal plans.
She laughs.
”There’s cooking books, I can really get into cooking shows, I can learn! Don’t act like you’re the Master Chef either!”
She will take him into herself and everything that makes him Andrew, everything that made him Andy, is going to become a part of her, and they will be together forever.
It is like fixing nature’s mistake when it made them two people instead of one.
”I’m going to protect you, so you will never- Never get any stupid ideas about killing me in your head ever again-” She stops to wipe her eyes. ”Sorry. Ah, You will love it, I’m sure once I have enough of you in me we can talk again properly, and you will know what you taste like too-”
This is good.
This makes sense.
Andrew, inside of her.
Andy, loved by her.
Together.
Forever.