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Each waking moment was an agony I couldn’t comprehend, my humanity and life stripped down and away from me, leaving me panting and squealing like a dog, exposed teeth and all. I could see the way they looked at me, like I wasn’t a person anymore, just a weight on their bags like a baby or a doll they didn’t want to play with anymore. They had thrown me aside, limbless and half-liveless and kept me alive for what? To starve to death? To suffer a slow death in agonising and infuriating pain as that disgusting twat walked in my place, betrayal oozing from every pore of the godforsaken ship?
The hatred I felt consumed me often, pouring over me and sticking to me like a magnet, nobody else in the world could make me feel hatred like Jimmy could. I had barely tolerated him before, he was my friend, sure, but more than often he had a horrifying talent in making people uncomfortable. I thought that’s all it was, oh what a fool I had been. That was all I had to do in days like this, stare, unable to close the eye I had, and hate, hate so viciously that I could have sworn I heard something else in my body pop.
Oh how the mighty do fall, the irony was thick in the air, she had spoken to me, asked me why I did it, I wanted to open my mouth and ask ‘did what?’, but I couldn’t, all humanity means all humanity. Painkillers shoved down my throat and blows on my skinless body was all Jimmy ever did, occasionally he would speak words of comfort, words of hatred, compassion, or envy, they didn’t matter, all he did was speak. All I had to do was think, maybe this is what made me seem more like an animal to them, not being able to speak branded me with a kind of lower intelligence stamp despite being fully articulated before. It was almost as if they had forgotten who I was, that my ‘hard to look at’ form was once full with love and life and admiration. Nobody could save me, I was already dead the moment I stepped foot on the stairs on the way to the cockpit.
And I know my wretchedness does not pave away the sin of the blind eye I turned to what Jimmy had done, what he was doing, how terrible it was. I had failed her, failed Anya, failed all of my crew by bringing him here. I wondered what he’d do to the light in Daisuke’s eyes, he’d snuffed mine out soon enough after we’d met, how long until he was so terrible to that poor boy that he shattered into a million pieces? How many times would Jimmy stomp on him while he tried to get back up from it? Maybe it was a game to him, every damn thing was, in his world, there were no consequences. I should have taken him out back and shot through him ten times over when I had the chance.
It would have done us all some good. Especially Anya, how could I have hurt someone who was only trying to help by not helping her? A friend to everyone is a friend to no one and a friend to her in the time she needed me to be was something I wasn’t. And still she stood over me every day, guilt consuming her as if she’d done this to me. He’d done this to both of us, though it doesn’t absolve me of my sin nor make her life any less of a living hell. I wished, more than anything in my life, that when Jimmy had spoken to me for the first time, that I’d punched him in the teeth and stomped on his head until he had stopped breathing.
The look in her eyes as she tried to move the pills down my mouth told me everything I needed to know, as I struggled and tried to get them out due to the stinging terrifying pain I felt every second, I could see tears well in glassy eyes. She was reminded of it, every waking moment of the day, and I had done nothing. Nothing at all, I didn’t know what to do, if I were to bring it up to the company, it would be unlikely they’d care. They’d probably find a loophole to dock our pay because of it. I couldn’t just lock him away somewhere or put him into a cyropod, I needed him to help me. Working conditions weren’t the best and managing a ship that was falling apart was even worse. I wanted a solution that didn’t hurt anyone or slow progress so bad that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me, that Jimmy and our relationship mattered next to nothing to the safety and well-being of my crew.
A silent bystander was all I was and now it was all I could be, a disgraced leader, I deserved it, it was my responsibility to help and I didn’t, the bigger picture didn’t matter, not when she was suffering as massively as she was. I will not get out of this alive, I’m sure of it that he’ll kill us all, but if by some miracle, I’m able to speak by then with my vocal chords splintered together in an impossible feat, that I’d be able to tell Anya how sorry I truly was.