Survival of the Unfit

QUICK AUTHOR'S NOTE

Okay! So here's your next story I've been working on for awhile, with all the time I have in the summer. Sorry it's about murder again, I just have a weird liking for writing about it.

Again, general trigger warning for blood in a couple graphic scenes, but nothing you can't handle if you've read Dandelions & Cigarettes already (in which case you haven't, you should). Swearing, that too. I mean, they're teenage characters. I don't like sugarcoating.

I dedicate this to Lauren and various Tumblr users mostly. Credit for the general idea goes to Tumblr users scotthepilgrim, crazyassmurdererwall, and cinematicnomad. Lauren because she's awesome and motivated me and has listened to my far-fetched fantasies of fame for countless hours. That takes some tolerating, friend. Pazzelli because you're awesome. And Elsa, because she is an avid reader.

INTRODUCTION

Here, everyone fights.

You're stupid if you don't get yourself into a self-defense class at least once. Concealed carry permits are as necessary as a driver's license. Pocketknives and switchblades are given as gifts, mace handed out like drugs. Medicine and law enforcement are the biggest fields to go into. Why?

No one quite knows how it works, no one quite knows how it happens, but when you kill someone on this island you automatically get their best trait. By some form of witchcraft, it's bestowed upon you like a crown of leaves on Cassius (after the idiot killed himself in Julius Caesar). Brains, beauty, athleticism, abilities like musicianship or art; the most that person has to offer becomes yours.

They say it's like drinking something warm, the way it sits in your stomach and heats you up from the inside. They don't know if that's just the adrenaline from getting away with it or the actual trait becoming a part of you, but it feels nice. Apparently, it feels nice.

But it's all very hush hush, and it only happens ages 14 to 20. Kill anyone before that, you're a pretty messed up kid. Kill anyone after, you're a simple murderer. Most of the kids who get away with it move from the island as soon as possible and are never seen or heard from again, because people here know how to cover their tracks well. The murders don't happen often though, since most teenagers don't have the simple guts to do it. But you've got to be prepared, or your ass is getting dumped in a lake and someone's walking off with your amazing mental math ability.

I'm seventeen, right in the thick of the age group. It's dangerous to be this age, but only if you're good at something. Thankfully I'm a painfully average person. I don't do sports or music, and I'm not particularly bright in anything. I guess I'm a pretty good cake decorator, what with working at the bakery on the weekends and during the summer, but overall I am a painfully, average, person to start this off.

And I think that's the best protection you can have. I know how to shoot and I have a switchblade of my own, I know how to pin someone down and what points on a body would get a linebacker screaming like a little girl, but having nothing to offer is the best shield in the entire world.

But why does anyone even continue to live here if these are the risks? Why do I live here, you ask? The medicine and law enforcement fields here are pretty important (as aforementioned), so having a nurse for a mother and a police officer for a dad makes the place pretty appealing. They have no idea, though. They have no idea their daughter's in dire danger at any moment in any place, a lot of the parents that are here simply don't know what goes on and no one tells them. They don't know their sons or daughters might be killers, because teenagers are dumb but also very sneaky, and strict parents don't help the cause. And the doctors and officers don't even get any more work than they would while living on mainland United States, the community just pays more taxes for public safety and the kids just be more careful. If they can do it. If they can get away with it.

See, it all revolves around us. The fact the island's deemed one of the safest places in the country because there's so much focus on hospitals and policemen, because no one makes robberies in light of everyone knowing how to shoot a gun and throw a knife from their teenage years, it's all a joke. It's all a hilarious joke no one ever talks about. Everything is only held together by high tension, paranoia, and fear of what might happen, not what does. The people that grew up here and stayed here, they know but don't say anything. The people that move here never know. The kids and teenagers that tag along with their parents to this wonderful, novelty-like island find out, they always find out. "Everyone deserves a fair chance to live," is what the dark-haired and hazel-eyed girl said while handing me my first pepper spray under the lunch table. "Survival ain't always of the fittest."

Rushwood Isles is enigmatic. The people are even more guarded. So whatever ancient curse is bestowed upon this place to where you can gain someone's strengths by killing them, it has to be a well-kept secret.

And oh, it is.