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The pain has ceased entirely. Your chest is fine. One of the men is Gil, and the other is limp and sopping wet. When Gil stands— he's acquired a tight-jawed kind of look— the other doesn't. He's wearing a crumpled wet shirt and crumpled black pants and black dress shoes, and a tie. It's wet. It's yellow. It has a tiny scale print on it.
You make a noise.
A puddle has formed around the other man, and he splashes a little when he twitches. He also makes a noise, though not a particularly human one.
Gil goes off to sulk against the tree.
The other man attempts and fails to rise, and makes a definitely inhuman noise; he tries again and manages at least to flip onto his back. Richard, wet, stares up at the sky. His fingers tap the grass. His throat bobs.
"You're dead," you say, and his head flops over to look at you. "You're <span class="mu-s">dead,</span>" you say, and his eyebrows go down. He gargles something, to no result. He tries again. "Kharr-he—?"
That isn't Richard's voice— you'd be hard-pressed to even call it a snake sort of voice, though you suppose you wouldn't know. It's gutteral. He sounds like he just crawled out of the mud somewhere.
Then again, he just crawled out of <span class="mu-i">you.</span> And that is Richard, unambiguously. You glance on Gil, who's laid himself out on his back, and swallow. "I'm Charlie. Yeah."
"Kharrrr-he." He's smiling as best he can, but there's way too many teeth. His hand grasps in your direction. You feel bad for him, or something, feel— you don't know. You might've run out of good, describable emotions for the day. But you pick yourself up and crouch back down in front of him, in any case, and don't flinch when he cradles your temples. You do when he punches six fingers into the skin of your face, but fall blank immediately: the next thing you know he's pushing the holes closed. Your head is full of colors. You feel rifled-through.
Richard is still sopping, but his lips are pulled back over a regular amount of teeth. "Charlie," he says softly.
You are definitely out of feelings.
>[1] He's dead.
>[2] He's wet.
>[3] He sounded like a lizard or something.
>[4] He came out of your chest???
>[5] He gave you a headache.
>[6] You were doing just fine without him.
>[7] You **and Gil** were doing just fine without him.
>[8] You were going to take a nap.
>[9] You think you need a doctor. Like, a god doctor.
>[10] You killed him.
>[11] Write-in.
