Chapter 1, Part 2, Episode 9

Kit rolled his eyes. “Great. So when? Tomorrow? Next week? Next year? Next decade? Gimme a number so I know what I’m in fer!”

“It’s not like that and you know it.”

“What I know is that y’all think you know what is best for me when it ain’t you lying in this damn bed with a catheter stuck up your cock.”

Romeesha crossed her arms and legs.

“Pom-pom, I’m just a body now,” Kit said, sighing. He scratched his head wearily, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “And after a while, it ain’t even gonna be much of a body. Jes a bunch o’ tinker-toys wrapped up in loose skin. Oh, I’ll still breath and digest and all that. But everything that made Kit ‘Kit’ will be gone. Are you keepin’ me alive for my sake?”

“Don’t say it!” she hissed. She knew what he was going to say next.

Kit ignored her and said it: “Or for your sake?”

Romeesha shook her head. “I…”

“You tell me, dollface.”

“I don’t know, alright? I don’t know!”

Kit smiled sadly. “Yeah, Pom-pom. You do.”

“This ain’t fair.”

“Nope. It ain’t.”

“Kit, we talking about killing somebody. Murdering somebody! You!”

“Oh, now yer getting’ moral. You just said you agreed with Scepter! ‘Ts what set this whole mental conversation with me off.”

ROM shut her eyes, her hands shaking. “I know what I said! But when I actually heard myself say it…”

“Yer keeping me around so y’all don’t feel guilty. Keeping me like this won’t make y’all feel guilty?”

Romeesha swallowed. “It’s because you can’t talk for yourself that we can’t! Maybe you want to live!”

“I do?”

“This is my figment.”

“Ok, you got me there. Still—“

“Nuh-uh!” she said, suddenly finding more confidence than she thought. “Maybe you want to live and want everybody to do as much as they can, keep you around as long as they can, before we go leaping off some crazy-ass idea about killing you and bringing you back.”

Kit gave it some thought. “Be honest. You got any other idea how to snap me out of this? Comas happen with brain damage. I got none. My noggin is fine. You heard the doctor. I got…well, I got whatever I got. This ain’t anything like what they’ve seen before. And we all know Vagabond. He don’t have no mercy. Whatever he did to me, he made for me to stay this way.”

“That don’t mean everybody is helpless.”

“It don’t?”

“No, it don’t”

“Fuck, if it don’t.”

“Why are you givin’ up so fast?” When in doubt, get in their faces.

Kit blinked. “I ain’t ‘givin’ up.’ I’m not talking about jes’ lettin’ me waste away while y’all twiddle.”

“Bullshit.”

Kit crossed his arms. “What I’m saying is don’t jes’ leave me like this! To waste away and die! That’s what’ll happen to me. What I’m saying is what Manny is going on about.”

“That means killing you.”

“And then bringing me back.”

“There ain’t no guarantee that’ll happen. You wanna take the risk?”

“Anybody got another option?” he cried, arms in the air. “I already got one foot in the grave now!” Then he paused. “Actually, probably more than just one foot. I think I got, what, a toe keeping me in the world of the livin’? If I'm gonna spend the rest of my life like this, I'd rather be dead.”

Romeesha scowled. “It a crazy option! It only been a few days. All the options ain’t been done.”

“Aikins seems to think so. You heard her.”

“That bitch was jus’ one doctor. I’ll bet she be on the phone calling everybody she can think of to save you.”

“How long are you goin’ to do this?”

Romeesha blinked. “What?”

“Have the same damn argument over and over again in your head.”

“What?”

“That’s what you’ve been doing. And it’s time to change the record.”

“What?”

“MAKE A GODDAM CHOICE!”

Chapter 1, Part 2, Episode 8

Kit was quiet again. “You know, that heart monitor is really gettin’ on my last nerve.”

“Yeah.”

Kit stared ahead for a moment. “So,” he said, “I can either stay like this right up until I die if nobody does anything, or, if we go with Manny, kill me and hope I can come back with one of those heart shocker things.”

“Yeah.”

“So I can either be almost dead for years, or be completely dead all right now.”

“Yeah.”

“Stop agreein’ with me so much.”

Romeesha smiled sadly. “Sorry. But, yeah. I mean, you could snap out of it. There’s always a chance.”

“So they say.” He was quiet again. And then he looked at her, curiously philosophical. “What would you do?”

“Me?”

“If you were in my position. But had the choice.”

Romeesha didn’t reply.

“This is your daydream. Gotta play it out, baby. Isn’t this what it is all about? ‘What would I do if it were me?’”

“That ain’t fair.”

Kit glared at her. “Damn if it ain’t.”

Romeesha fell silent again.

“Don’t do this to me, Pom-pom.”

She looked up. “Huh?”

“Babe,” Kit said, his voice suddenly softening. “We are all gonna die at one point. That’s just the way it is. But not like this. Don’t leave me like this. I’ll shrink down. I worked hard to get this body of death, and now—“he laughed at the pun—“and now ‘death’ is jes’ tappin’ his foot, waiting for me to go. But I won’t go, will I? I’m stuck like this. I’ll be in that persnikity vegetarian cheese-grate—“

“’Persistent vegetative state!’”

“—forever. Don’t you know what this is? People go into them. They don’t come back out. I am here for good, baby doll.”

“People come out of comas all the time!”

“But I’m not in your run-of-the-mill coma, now, am I?”

Romeesha went pale. “You…you could wake up. What doctors can do—“

“They can’t do shit,” Kita admonished. “Unless there’s a doc out that there specialized in psychic attacks. Manny is, and he can’t get through my noodle no how! Two days! We all know how Vagabond works. You fight him, and it is over. He hits you all at once. One big ol’ grand slam. There ain’t never no round two. There ain’t never no survivors.”

The cyber-chick steeled up. “I ain’t killin’ you. I ain’t killin’ nobody.”

“Well, then, it’s a good thing that Manny here is steppin’ up.”

“That ain’t the point!”

“Fine! You tell me what is! It’s my life, dammit! When did y’all become God and get to say when it’s time fer me—ME! NOT YOU—to go and when it ain’t?”

            The first time she had ever heard “euthanasia,” Romeesha, then just a girl, had misheard and thought people were talking about “youth in Asia” and couldn’t figure out why they were all about dying. “Jus’ because we don’ know what to do now doesn’t mean we won’ in the future!” It had become a battle of the accents.

Chapter 1, Part 2, Episode 7

“Well, I’ll be damned. I didn’t think she had the balls,” Kit said, putting his arms behind his head. He caught Romeesha’s appalled glare. “An’ don’t you start. Hell, she’s right. He’s been loopy ever since we pulled Tug n’ Mirrorball outta there.”

“Still,” Romeesha replied. “Bitch!...”

Kit chuckled. Then he winked and said, “’Member when I first met you?” God, that South Mouth could drive Jesus insane. “Meymbur weyn ah furst mechoo?”

Romeesha harumphed. “Fuck you. You ruffled my hair and said ‘Hey, li’l fella!’”

“Yep, you remember. We didn’t have anything like you growing up in Tennessee,” he said with a laugh. Then he blinked. “Hell, we didn’ have anything like me, either!”

“Just my luck,” Romeesha muttered.

“Oh, jeez. You jus’ gotta lighten up, hon.”

“That’s real funny. Coming from you. You’re in a coma.”

“Touche.”

“We thought about bringing your guitar,” Romeesha said quietly. “To, you know, bring you out of it.”

“Now, that’s real sweet of you,” Kit said smiling his Good Ol’ Boy smile. All he needed as a pair of overalls and a stalk of wheat hanging from his lips. “But you heard that doctor. My little piggies can’t wee wee wee all the way home, much less strum ol’ Mason-D,” he replied, citing the name of his beloved guitar, short for “Mason Dixon.” He smiled again, “I’m in the presidential vegan estate, ‘member?”

“’Persistent vegetative state,” Romeesha corrected.

“I like mine better.”

“Baby, you’re a turnip.”

“So I guess I can’t play that guitar, huh?”

“Guess not.”

“Shit. So now Manny and Gwenny are all debating death and dying, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Deep shit,” Kit observed. “Talk about a buzzkill. And you know what?”

“What?”

“I could kill for a shot of tequila right now.”

Romeesha smiled inwardly. “I’ll see if they can put that into your I.V.”

“Aw, do that, would you? That’d be nice. The good stuff, not the crap stuff.”

Romeesha looked away.

“Oh. My. Gawd,” Kit said. “Are you cryin’? The girl who gets all gansta on my ass when I call her the Pom-pom Princess?”

“Oh, fuck that shit,” Romeesha said, her eyes brimming. “I ain’t crying for shit.”

Kit puckered for a second. “’Mums the word.”

“What…what did Vagabond do to you?”

Kit burst out laughing. “How the hell should I know? I’m a figment of that compu-imagination of yours. You tell me! Not like I’m goin’ anywheres.”

“Manny says he paralyzed your mind.”

“OK.”

“And the only way to snap you out of it—“

“Is to off me and hope that they can shock my ass back to life. I got it.”

“Yeah.”

Kit was quiet for a moment. Then, “Well, that just sucks.”

“Yeah,” Romeesha said again, quietly.

EXTRAS!

MIRRORBALL

ROM

TUG-OF-WAR

Want to know what these people look like? LA artist Dene Larson has been nice enough to show us all! More to come!