There was a terrifying finality about zip-ties. In most cases, it was a "wasteful, annoying" finality, in that they could only be tightened, and if you over-tightened them, or even just closed them in the wrong place, your only way out was with a knife. Alan supposed that his only way out was also with a knife or somesuch, but he was well past the point where he felt like struggling against it. Or fate. At this point, he could get a fortune cookie that said "You're fucked, just die" and he'd consider it not the worst omen. The plastic dug into his wrists, tied behind his back and carefully slotted into the gap between the back and seat of his chair. With speed and precision, his captors wrapped his ankles, pulling another set of zip-ties taut around them. He flexed his thighs as much as he could, just to give him an extra inch or two of free movement. It wouldn't let him slip free of his bindings, but it gave his upper legs just enough freedom to not crush his balls. He suspected he wouldn't have much time left, and there was no sense in facing one's maker with sore nuts.
And so, the safety of his nuts secured, he waited.
He didn't quite know what for, but he waited.
He could hear the feet of a thousand other nerds shuffling into whatever room he was in, and could feel the slow raising of the ambient temperature with their body heat.
And the much faster raising of heat as someone leaned on him, bracing their elbow against his shoulder.
"Jesus Christ, they put this on you tight," Sawyer said, ripping the black sack off of Alan's head. A pocket knife, flame-treated into a rainbow finish, gleamed in her other hand, having just rent the sack's drawstring asunder. She pulled back, job done, and Alan took in his surroundings. It was the main stage room yet again, where he'd performed in the Masquerade, where he'd seen the Pillows concert, where he'd met Sawyer for the first time.
And now, it was the Closing Ceremonies.
He didn't want to look at the stage. Even empty, flanked by projector screens showing a highlight reel of the convention, it felt like inevitability. Alan leaned back in his chair, as much as he could, and looked over to Sawyer. She was still in her cosplay, still dressed as Sawyer the Cleaner, in full goth gear, messy bob-cut hair and slightly runny mascara. She was beautiful.
"How's it going, Alan?" she asked. Her tone, perplexingly, was soft.
Even if it hadn't been, Alan would have felt safer just hearing it.
"Not great," Alan said. And, swallowing every instinct he had to not be cringe, he added, "Though, slightly better with you around."
Sawyer laughed. He liked her laugh. "But I'm here to kill you, dumbass."
"Yeah," he said. "I know."
"Man, you're weird," Sawyer said. "You don't care, do you?"
Alan let his head loll towards her a little. "Falling to your death has a way of lending you a bit of perspective. Thanks for that, by the way."
She smirked. "Hey, that one wasn't on me. If I had my way of it, you would have been chopped in half up on that rooftop. I have no idea how the hell you survived that."
Alan laughed. "Dude, I don't know how I survived life this far."
She snorted. "You're getting the hang of this. If I knew you'd start acting like this, I'd have kicked you off a rooftop Friday."
"Hey, try it on the next guy," he said. "Might make your job more entertaining."
Sawyer shook her head. "Probably a bad idea. If I have to kill someone, making them more endearing just makes things harder for me. Remember? I gotta take care of myself, keep y'all motherfuckers hate-able."
Alan tried to put his arm around her shoulders, in the classic yawn-into-a-hug maneuver, only to be stymied by the fact that he was more restrained than most federal prisoners. Sawyer watched, bemused, as he struggled against his restraints.
"You know what? Fuck it," she said, and put an arm around his shoulders. Their heads leaned into each other, no strength left in their necks, kept up only by the pressure they exerted against each other.
"What the fuck?" Alan whispered.
"It's not a romantic thing," she clarified.
"I know," Alan said, "but saying it makes it sound like I'm the kind of asshole who might think it was."
"Hey," she said. "You might be."
They were both staring forward, but Sawyer could feel his eyes rolling. "You probably know me better than any of friends by now. Come on."
"Yeah?" she said. The Chairman of the convention was giving a speech now, on how successful this year's convention was, and how much he looked forward to seeing what the next year would bring. "What does that say about you that I still think that?"
"Oh, fuck you," Alan said, and Sawyer tickled his ribs. She was pretty physically skilled at causing damage to him, and very nearly murdered him a couple times earlier, and so, the tickles were effective. Alan laughed hard enough that in his contractions, the zip-ties drew blood from his wrists.
When he regained control of his lungs, he grunted at her, and she withdrew her fingertips. Alan took a good half-minute to regain his breath, and she waited patiently for him. Her other arm was still around his shoulders, and he was thankful for it.
"Seriously though, thanks," he said.
"For what?" She made no move to shift away.
"For understanding me."
Her arm stiffened.
"Understanding doesn't mean forgiveness," he clarified. "I'm just glad you know what I did. And that you're going to do something about it."
Her arm loosened, and she put more weight on him. "And I'm glad you know what I do, and you're okay with it. It's nice to have someone understand."
He nodded, and in doing so, rubbed against her forehead.
"It feels like me against the world sometime, you know?"
Alan nodded again. "I think it is."
"Yeah," she said. "I wonder if you could do this job. Even just help a little."
"Nah," Alan said. "One, I'm a pussy. Two, I'm an idiot. Three, well..." He strained symbolically against the zip-ties. "I don't think I can commit to the schedule. I'll be a little busy being, uh..." Alan trailed off. He still had some trouble vocalizing it.
"Dead?" Sawyer said, helpfully.
"Yeah," Alan said. They spent the next few minutes watching the ceremony, which, for all its rote predictability, may as well have been silence.
"Do you want to live?" she asked.
Alan pondered this. "Well, yeah, of course. But..."
"But?"
"It's not like the life I want is happening anyway. I'm always going to be poor. I'm always going to be a failure. I've fucked up every chance I've gotten, and at this point, I'm just making things worse for other people."
"Man," Sawyer said. "That's depressing."
"Yeah? And?"
"That's it," she said. "I'm not going to contest your accuracy. It just sucks that you had to bring someone else down with you."
"Yeah. That does suck. More for her than for me, though."
Sawyer nodded into his shoulder. "It's a shame you got the point now and not earlier."
"If only I stopped being a dumbass, oh, seventy-two hours ago, right?"
She laughed.
So did he.
"It's Ashley, by the way," Sawyer said.
"What?" Alan didn't understand.
"That's my name. My real name."
"That's going to take a while to process," Alan said.
"If only you had a while," Sawyer said, and laughed again.
So did he.
And when he stopped, she was gone.
After a few minutes of thinking, Alan wanted to laugh again, this time at himself. He'd managed to form the most genuine emotional connection of his life with the person who was slated to kill him. He supposed that that meant he didn't have anyone he'd want to be killed by more than Sawyer - like, she'd be the best person to usher him into the void - but it felt like he was doing everything backwards.
He couldn't parse a word of the Chairman's speech, or of the speeches of any of the guests or staffers that followed him. He could hear them just fine, even if the blood was rushing through his ears so fast they threatened to break a few laws. But his brain, much less his mind, had no time to understand what they said.
Instead, he was thinking about how stupid it was to imagine a life where he could run. Like, why had he thought of that? Not only was it terribly unrealistic, it was also undeserved. He'd ended someone's fucking life. His life was forfeit. Either it could be used to right the wrong that he'd made, or...
Well...
It could just be ended. If the Chairman was right, it would protect everything that Alan cared about. And he sounded right. And Sawyer seemed to believe that the Chairman was right.
What was his life compared to what he loved continuing to exist?
His death was just the consequence of everything he lived for defending itself.
It was inevitable.
It was correct.
He closed his eyes, and he just... breathed.
This was going to be his last AniMass.
It was an interesting one. It was certainly different from every one he'd experienced before, and he doubted many people would have a convention nearly as interesting in their lifetimes. Granted, he'd never know.
Alan sighed.
Did that really matter?
If he just gave in, he'd never have to worry about that, or anything else, ever again. Never again would he have to care about whether he disappointed his parents, or if he'd ever make enough to sustainably support himself, or if he'd ever live up to the potential he was told he had, once upon a time.
In a way, this was freedom.
Peace.
Finally.
By the time he opened his eyes, the crowd had almost entirely filtered out of the room.
The convention had, effectively, finished. Sure, there were a few events left, a few meetups, a few afterparties, but that was none of Alan's concern at this point. He watched them leave, and made no motion to stand up. Tied up as he was, he'd only have been able to manage an awkward shuffle, anyway.
The last person left.
The lights went down.
He wondered how it would happen, and above him, he heard a chainsaw roar to life.
Alan looked up.
Perched improbably on the steel railing of the second floor balcony, Sawyer smiled down at him.
He smiled up at her.
She leapt into the air, and the chainsaw screamed.
And, mercifully, starting with his forehead, Alan was cleaved in half.