#kirsten and tyler’s dynamic makes me crazy in the head genuinely

[lamentablesbian]

it’s about this boy this adaptation that takes a predator and makes him back into a boy he’s just a boy and he wants to keep children safe from the horrors of the world before, keep them safe in the way he never was, create a shelter for them not in isolation but in family. he tells them a bed time story like some kind of pied piper, he leads them away into a fantasy so that the future–past they’re all hurtling towards can be staved off just a little longer. the last thing he downloaded before the satellite went dead was the wikipedia entry on capitalism— he asks if he should just delete it. he spends every waking moment after trying to keep it from happening again. “there is no before.”

it’s about this girl this girl who has never had the chance to say goodbye who holds people so close that sometimes they end up passing through her altogether and she knows the boy’s story, it’s his bedtime story— but it’s her guiding light. she remembers damage too, the damage and horror of the world before, but instead of falling into a fantasy she makes herself a horror, makes herself untouchable. because if she couldn’t pretend the world was something better then at least she could protect herself from the worst this new world has to offer. knives tucked into hair, boots, belts, sharpened lovingly and methodically. she picked up her first knife out of the pool of her brother’s blood, wiped it clean. spends hours throwing it end over end into the wall of the cabin— she never misses. “to the monsters, we’re the monsters.”

it’s about their parallel lives, their ever-narrowing orbit around one another their inevitable collision. it’s about a knife drawn like a breath and pressed tight under his jaw. it’s about his gasped words in response to the sudden blade. were they a threat? a promise? did it matter? because, really, it’s about the knife he didn’t see coming— fast, short, sharp as anything, and deep in his guts. “Kirsten, why are you helping me?” “stabbing you didn’t work.”