Afterlife

16

Wishing to avoid any unwanted attention from the rotting dinosaur's corpse, along with the horrid stench that came with it, the group had moved off to a new location, a long ways away before deciding to set up camp for the night, but even though it was quiet, the event's of the day still hadn't quite worn off in their minds. It didn't help that nearly every little sound had Santino craning to see what it was or where it was coming from. He tried to make it as subtle as possible, since he was only doing it to make sure Hitori wasn't following them, or planning a sudden ambush, but it seemed to be having the opposite effect on his friends. After what Sam had said earlier, they couldn't help but look up every time he made even the slightest movement. He pretended not to notice it, but it was really starting to bother him at this point.

Deciding to test them, he sat up slightly, and pretended to look behind himself as if he had heard something, before quickly turning back to see if they had looked up again. He made an unamused face as he saw all of them look up at him briefly before looking away again when they saw that he noticed them. He then turned to face them head on once more as he looked around at them saying, "Alright, this has to stop! Why do you guys keep watching me like that?"

They all shifted slightly in discomfort as they seemed to be debating mentally whether or not to tell him what Sam had insinuated earlier. They weren't sure how he would take it. Seeing that no one else was taking the advantage, Topaz, looked over at Santino saying in her usual deadpanned tone, "Sam think's you're losing it because of the way you yelled at him earlier, and they're wondering if it's true," she said as she nodded her head in the rest of the group's direction. The whole group was seated around a fire, with Santino sitting mostly by himself on one side of the fire, and with the others sitting in semi-circle pattern around the other side of the fire. Topaz, however, was situated between these two locations, not wishing to make either party feel uncomfortable.

"Oh for the love of- No!," Santino replied giving them a look that said, 'Really? You think so little of me!' before pinching the bridge of his nose saying, "Look, I realize I was a little out of line earlier. But I promise you... other than this fricken headache, I am of completely sound mind."

"Then why are you so on edge?" Xavier asked, as he tried to relax a little as he leaned against a fallen tree for support.

Santino made a face as he debated his answer briefly. 'If I tell them about Hitori and what he said about the girls, it might throw off their game, and they won't be able to think straight out here. But if I keep my mouth shut like I usually do, then they'll never take their eyes off me, causing the same result as the last option, because of Sam's ludicrous notion of me losing my senses. If I chose to tell them, however, they may ask how I know Hitori, and that's something I've never told them. I didn't want them to look at me like a beaten puppy or something when they found out what that S-O-B put me through. And I think we all know they would.' Despite all that could go wrong with any of his options, he knew he needed to give them some form of an answer, and now that he thought about it, he was tired... he was done hiding himself from everyone, especially his friends... his family. It was exhausting to keep up his walls for so long, and he didn't want to do it anymore. They deserved to know the truth.

Having made his decision, Santino closed his eyes with a sigh before opening them again a moment later and saying, "You guy's know about Hitori Jonasan, right?"

"I don't see how anyone could forget," Marcus said. "That man was insane," he added as he leaned forward slightly, wondering where Santino was going with this. As I've mentioned before, Marcus was a survivor, and as thus managed to live in afterlife for quite a considerable amount of time. Meaning he was around when Hitori first arrived in afterlife almost twenty years before now, and as I'm sure you've guessed, he didn't exactly have the best of starts.