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Stanley Pines is dying.
He thought it was bad before, blindfolded and tied up in the back of his own car, being driven off to who-knows-where to be killed and dumped somewhere no one would ever find him. Well, now he knows where, and it’s worse.
He can taste salt water on his tongue. He closes his mouth, spits out what he can, and inhales through his nose. It smells like rust and sweat and seaweed. He wrestled off the blindfold on the drive here, but now he wishes he hadn’t, because it’s just as dark outside as it is on the inside of his own eyelids. He doesn’t know how he’ll know when he’s dead, like this. Feels like he could just slip through without noticing.
Maybe it would hurt less.
With his luck, it probably wouldn’t.
The water is slow to rise. He’s managed to plug up the hole with two of his fingers, and the metal is cutting into his skin. He thinks he’s bleeding. He doesn’t know. He’s given himself a long, slow death. If he weren’t a coward he would tug them free and let himself drown.
What kind of bastards drive a man into the sea just to leave him to suffocate? They could’ve rolled down the windows at least. He doesn’t know how they haven’t started leaking yet. Maybe they have, and he just hasn’t noticed. Maybe he’ll die five minutes from now – or less – and it won’t even matter that he wants to live a little longer.
He closes his eyes. Or maybe he opens them.
He can’t breathe.
He tries to push himself up, break through the water, get to the air. It’s a fight, with his fingers wedged into the hole and his wrists bound together and his ankles tied up too, for good measure, but he eventually pokes his head up through the water – only to hit his head on the metal. He exhales harshly into the cramped space. It echoes uncomfortably closely in his ears. He gasps for breath.
Wasting air, that’s what he’s doing, but does it matter?
No, it doesn’t.
He doesn’t want to die.
There’s nothing he can do about it, but he really, really doesn’t want to die.
Funnily enough, he runs out of oxygen before he runs out of air. He probably doesn’t notice when he dies for real, because first everything just goes away. He might have passed out. He isn’t there to wonder about it.
What a pathetic way to die.
Stanley Pines is dying. He’s done this before. At least, he thinks he has, but here he is. Not dead. Still dying. Still stuck.
He hasn’t plugged the hole yet.
Maybe he imagined it. Maybe the lack of air is making his brain play tricks on him. He debates about shoving his fingers into it, saving himself for another few minutes, but he’s already done that. Or hallucinated it. He knows he can’t save himself. He knows he’s going to die.
He doesn’t want to die, so he plugs up the hole anyway. Savors the air while he has it, swallows around nothing and tries to have some nice last thoughts. It’s freezing, and dark, and it reeks. It’s hard to have any nice thoughts like this.
When the water catches up to him this time, he inhales a lungful of it. It burns so bad, worse than anything he can think of, and his body fights and fights and fights the whole time, coughing it out only to suck in another lungful a moment later. He’s terrified. He doesn’t know when it ends.
He only knows when it begins again. He inhales – no water. Just air. He must be out of his mind.
It would be nice if this was all just some horrible drug-induced nightmare trip. He’d like to wake up tomorrow feeling like raw sewage dragged up from the gutter, splash some non-fish water on his face and go back to his pointless life. Maybe he’d call up his Ma, tell her he’s been doing just fine and ask about what she’s been up to. Pretend that there’s something he needs to live for. Someone he needs to go back for, or something like that.
Yeah. That would be real nice.
He forgets to plug up the hole this time. He’s not sure how he knows where it is, exactly, since he hasn’t gone looking for it yet, but he sure feels it when the water closes over his head and he drowns for a second time.
It hurts.
There’s no way he’s imagining it. Somehow, dying once isn’t bad enough, and now the universe has decided to make him do it over and over again. For what? Entertainment? He doesn’t see how this is entertaining. He can’t see anything at all in here.
Well, he’s not going out without a fight. Not this time. He uses the discarded blindfold to plug up the hole this time, freeing up his fingers to get back to work on the knots. It’s hard to do with half his face submerged, but he can’t do it on his back, so he deals with it. He must have loosened them up a bit on the way here with his previous attempts, because somehow he manages to free himself. His hands, at least.
For a split second, he debates about leaving his legs as they are, but if he wants to get out of here he’ll have to swim, so he awkwardly shuffles his knees up to his chest and turns his head to gasp for air before he gets to work on that knot.
The blindfold-as-a-stopper doesn’t hold for long. Eventually, the pressure of the water outside pushes it out of place, and suddenly the trunk is filling up much faster than he can do anything about it. Panic lances up his throat and crawls down his spine, but it’s too late.
He drowns.
After enough times, he stops trying to get out. He just figures out the easiest way to prolong the inevitable for a little longer and tries to enjoy living while he can.
Kind of a hard ask, all things considered, but it’s better than drowning over and over again with no break in between, so there’s nothing else he can do.
He’s tired.
After enough times, it gets hard to stay present. His mind slips away from him, and death manages to get the jump on him every time.
He made it out.
He must have, because now he’s on the pier, dragging himself down the boardwalk. It’s sunny. Too sunny. It feels off somehow, after spending the last eternity stuck in the darkness, like there’s something about it that’s not quite right. He doesn’t care. It’s better than dying. There are people around, but they don’t seem to notice him, or if they do they don’t pay him any mind. That’s fine with him.
He swallows and looks around. He never got a good look at this place before he got driven into the ocean, because he was blindfolded and in the trunk and there wasn’t exactly a window to look out of. He thinks about telling someone he almost (he did, he did) got murdered. Like the cops or something.
He doesn’t.
They wouldn’t have a name to put on the report anyway.
He sits down painstakingly on the boardwalk, feet dangling just over the ocean, and stares blankly out at the horizon. It’s kind of nice. Compared to dying. But when he glances down at his hands, he finds that he can’t actually see anything at all.
It’s dark.
And wet.
And he is still suffocating.
It happens again. This time, he doesn’t hope. He’s just glad that whatever hallucination this is, or whatever weird curse is trapping him here, he doesn’t have to be stuck in the darkness the whole time. Although it would be pretty damn nice if he didn’t keep dying.
He thinks about sitting at the boardwalk again, but he already did that. So he looks around again and decides to try and get something to eat. He walks into a bar nearby – ha, a dying man walks into a bar, waiting for the punchline – and sits down on a stool. Rests his elbows on the stained wood. He waits for someone to talk to him.
It’s not really a surprise when no one does.
Next time, he climbs over the bar table and tries making his own drink, and while it tastes like salt water and fish, he’s mostly surprised he can drain the liquid at all. If he pretends hard enough, it could almost be a really fishy Festina Pêche.
If he pretends hard enough, it’s almost like he’s not drowning.
There’s a phone booth by the pier. He notices it on his – what, tenth time here? He hasn’t been keeping track. He’s a little busy, what with the whole dying business and all.
He’s getting tired of pretending. No one looks at him. Nothing feels real. It might not be, and that’s what really gives him the motivation to step inside and take the phone off its hook. It’s not like it’ll change anything real. He fishes in his pants for some change, surprised to find that he has any at all, and slots them in.
There’s only one number he was ever going to dial.
It rings, and rings, and rings.
Then: “This is Stanford Pines speaking.”
He beams, in spite of himself. He doesn’t know why, except that this is the first good thing that’s happened to him since he got dumped in the ocean to die, and he’s kind of glad it worked.
“Hey, Sixer,” he says. “It’s me.”
“…Stanley?”
Oh.
Stanley.
Right, that’s his name. He’d… forgotten.
That’s not something he’s supposed to forget.
“Yeah,” Stanley replies. He can tell that Ford has questions, but he doesn’t have a lot of time before he’ll end up in the trunk again. Maybe five minutes, ten total. He’s never been sure. It’s already been a few minutes at least. “Ford,” he says, and then he realizes that he is a lot more scared than he thought. “Ford -” he gasps, then coughs. Water splutters onto his shoes. His throat burns.
“Help me,” he pleads. “Can you help me?”
“Help you with what?” Ford asks distantly.
“I think I’m dying,” Stan tells him as his vision blots and goes dark. The water crawls up over his head, and everything is cold and numb and it hurts.
He doesn’t hear what Ford says after that.
He dials Ford again.
There’s no answer.
“Stanford Pines speaking.”
Finally, Ford picks up again. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since Ford did that, but he’s tried a few more times, spent a few more goes walking around while he tries not to think about dying.
“Ford?”
“Stan? Is that you?” Ford asks, breathless. “I thought -”
“I don’t want to die,” he confesses. “I really don’t.”
“Stan. You… I…” There’s a sound. It sounds suspiciously like a sniffle. He would ask what’s wrong, but he thinks his situation is probably a little more urgent at the moment.
“Can you help me?”
“I thought you were dead!”
“I’m not dead,” Stan says, heart beating rapidly under his ribs at the cry from the phone. His heart wouldn’t do that if he were dead, he’s sure about that much. “I’m stuck. I – please, Sixer,” he begs. “Just – I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried everything.”
“What’s going on? Stanley, I don’t – I don’t understand. What do you need help with? Why would you call me, tell me you’re dying, and say nothing else for a whole week!? What kind of -”
“But that was,” he frowns. “That was only a few hours ago.”
Of that, he’s sure. He would know if he’s been dying long enough for it to have been a week.
“What?”
He swallows.
“Ford, what day is it?”
“It’s the seventeenth.”
“Oh.” He leans his head back against the glass of the booth, uncaring of the grime he’s getting in his salty hair. He’s just going to die anyway. “It was the ninth when they dumped me.”
“Your girlfriend?” Ford sounds frustrated. Angry. Desperate, maybe. He notices it, but he doesn’t know what to do about it. That was something he used to know how to do.
He doesn’t anymore.
“The guys,” he corrects. “They dumped me. In the… in the water.”
“Stanley, please, just tell me what’s -”
“The water.”
It’s up to his chin now. He doesn’t want to drown again.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I -”
“Stanley, just tell me what’s going on. Please. Every time I – every time I ask, it always tells me the same thing. You’re…” Ford exhales. “But. I know it’s you. I know it is. So, just, tell me.”
“I don’t know,” he tells him. “I think I’m dying.”
“I – so you’ve said, but you’re not – it’s been days, you can’t be – okay. Just – where are you?”
“In the car.”
“Then how are you calling me?”
“I don’t know. I’m in the car. In the water. And I can’t get out.” He breathes out slowly and presses his forehead to the phone. “Please help me.”
“I would if you would just tell me how!” Ford pleads.
“I don’t know how. I – it’s – it’s getting hard to think, Poindexter. I don’t remember what I was…” he trails off. “I don’t want to die.”
“I don’t want you to die either.”
“Oh.” That’s nice.
“I’m dead, aren’t I?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Time keeps… going. People move. Things change. But… I’m still here. I’m still… but no one can survive in there for this long. So it’s not real,” he explains, sitting in the booth and holding the phone gently with both hands. “And I’m not really dying, because I’m already dead. Right?”
Ford doesn’t answer for a long time.
Then he says, “Yes. You are.”
“You knew,” he says. Not accusingly. He doesn’t have the strength for that anymore.
“I had… hoped. For a while. That it wasn’t true. But no matter what I did, no matter how many times I checked, the results would always be the same. I think I might have found your location this time, though.”
“Oh. I’m glad you know, at least.”
“I don’t want you to die.”
“Can you help me?”
“…I don’t know. But I’m going to try.”
Then, Ford is there.
Actually there.
When Stan drags himself out of the ocean, limping up the boardwalk, Ford is sitting where Stan sat the first time, looking down at the water below. He doesn’t know what he’s thinking about. He wants to ask, but he doesn’t know how, anymore.
He sits down next to him.
Ford glances up.
He sees him.
“Stanley,” Ford says, like the word itself is sacred.
There’s nothing sacred about it. But he looks at his brother and smiles. It’s pretty nice, seeing him in person after so long. Nicer than dying, definitely. He sighs and leans his weight against his side, resting his head on his shoulder.
“It’s getting hard to think,” he says quietly. “Can you… help me?”
“Help you think?”
“You used to read me books when I was too scared to fall asleep,” he tells him. He remembered that last time, when he was drowning again. “Can you help me? I’m too scared… to die.”
“I don’t want you to die,” Ford says, not looking at him.
“Please?”
The sunlight glitters on the water below. It’s bright and loud and fake. But leaning against Ford, feeling his heat against his chilled body, he knows that this, at least, is real.
Ford leans against him, too, and shudders.
It must be cold.
“…Okay.”