Chapter Text
Plastic sporks and cardboard cups clashed against plastic trays and composite tables as the teens of South Park High scrambled to finish their lunches before the bell rang. The attendees of the school were split into the same cliques they’d kept for years, talking about whatever relevant interests they all shared at the time. Laughter and shouting filled the air that was already dense with sounds coming from every direction, sounding like the stock audio you’d hear while watching something taking place in a crowded restaurant.
At a table in a far corner of the cafeteria sat four teenagers, eating in an uncomfortable silence that sat stark against the bustling energy of the rest of the room. Eric, Kyle, Stan, and Butters all stared at their food, picking at the bits that looked edible and shoving the rest onto the table for the janitor to deal with once they were gone. No one dared speak, not after what had transpired just a few days prior.
God, had it been days ?
No one else seemed to care. Hell, half of the people sitting in that very room probably had no more than a very fringe idea what had happened. Maybe some of them did, but they didn’t know enough to care. Or maybe they cared, but tried to ignore it. Empathy is a bitch, after all.
But the four had witnessed it, so it was hard to ignore.
Kenny McCormick was in the hospital, holding onto life with only the help of the equipment in the intensive care unit.
There had been an announcement about it over the intercom the morning after the accident. Mr. Mackey spoke calmly and clearly about how Kenny had fallen onto train tracks. The way he spoke about it was cursory, avoiding the gory details of what had transpired. He mostly went into detail about his blood alcohol content, which was a morbid segue into a reminder that underage drinking is illegal and dangerous. There was no mention of the memorial service that the Broflovskis were paying for. There was no apologies for the loss. His death was nothing more than an advertisement for a shitty knock-off DARE campaign that the school faculty thought would be an appropriate PR response to a student falling into a coma they’d never wake up from.
Of course, no one in Stan’s pre-calc class reacted to this announcement. Nor did anyone in Butters’ art history class. The simple fact that they had to face was that no one gave a flying fuck about the wellbeing of Kenny.
The four boys ate in silence, knowing this full well, knowing that nothing they did could change this simple fact.
With Kenny’s death came a sinking sense of familiarity, like they’d seen this sort of thing before. It was easily brushed off as a side effect of the society they lived in, though, because of how rampant violence and death was becoming. Murders happened daily, possibly hourly. Their friend being crushed under a train was only another systematic loss in the grand scheme of things, just one that hit much closer than the stories on the news.
The feeling was there, but easily ignored. And that’s exactly what they did. They ignored the feeling of familiarity, ignored the knowledge that this had happened before, because it didn’t happen to Kenny. It couldn’t have. Kenny lived for eighteen years, and fell victim to an alcoholic accident resulting in his untimely death. A systematic death soon to be lost amid a sea of similar deaths.
That had to be the explanation.
Birds chirped outside a shattered window, trying and failing to alert the inhabitants of a shoddy house that the sun was rising. If the birds had any sort of intelligence that could parallel a human’s, they’d notice there were holes in the walls that could easily be picked at and entered. Unfortunately, however, nature decided that birds should be dollar-store quality alarm clocks - loud but ultimately ineffective in awaking someone in a deep slumber.
No, what woke up the boy behind the broken window was a sharp pain running through his abdomen.
“Fuck!” he shouted, his expletive cutting through the heavy silence like a hot knife through butter. The birds outside the window scattered and flew off, leaving behind bits of grass they’d gather to begin building a nest nearby. A tree rustled as a squirrel ran up the trunk, getting away from whatever the birds were fleeing from.
Funny how instinct saves everyone from danger, even if the threat wasn’t there.
The boy threw his legs over the edge of the bed. Rather than stand and begin to get ready for the day ahead of him, though, he instead let the pain in his stomach get the better of him. Thin arms folded together and pressed into his midsection as he hunched over and groaned in pain.
Residual response to a past injury. Something that he experienced frequently, but still hadn’t gotten used to.
He groaned, rolling his head back and squinting up at a broken analog clock on his wall. The hands - if they were still remotely accurate - told him it was half past eleven. He was late for school. Not like school mattered, though. At this point, he was two months away from graduating, and he only had the knowledge your average eighth grader would harbor. He was a highschool dropout that still attended class. A failure who still takes tests. A trainwreck of a person still going on the track, somehow.
Slowly, he managed to pull himself to his feet. His intestines screamed with every movement he made, nearly causing him to collapse onto his floor and curl up in the pile of dirty laundry and old magazines that he’d never bothered to clean up. He managed to avoid the very tempting idea that was curling up in his own filth, however, and make his way to his bedroom door.
The knob was broken, and only there to serve for aesthetic purposes. Sure, the lock had broken six months ago, but as of late his door just decided it didn’t want to click shut anymore. Because of this, the lightest tug he could muster pulled his door open, allowing its unoiled hinges to scream in agony as it slowly revealed a hallway in a similar state of disorganization compared to his own bedroom.
Socked feet traversed the matted carpet stained with decades worth of various substances, slowly traversing the small hallway that lead to the living room. As he walked, he caught a glimpse of himself in a broken mirror.
He looked pathetic. A white tanktop hung off of his thin frame, revealing the plethora scars that littered his body. Some of his most shameful scars stood out for the world to see, harshly outlined by the bright, direct rays of sunrise. Blue and green eyes flicked over his disheveled form, looking at his matted, blond hair and ragged clothing.
He looked fucking homeless, and he practically was.
Tearing his gaze from his own skeletal appearance, he continued on his journey to the living room. The one difference he noticed lately was he had less and less of a need to avoid needles on the floor. Drug paraphernalia was becoming scarce in his house, and it was a change he was ready to welcome with open arms. After eighteen years of nightmare after nightmare, at least he was finally free of the residual smell of meth being cooked mixing with marijuana and Yankee candles.
Of course, the absence of these things came with the absence of their cause.
It had been a few reincarnations with no sign of Stuart or Carol McCormick. It’s almost as if the world decided they were no longer a relevant point of interest. Their characters were dull and overplayed, and keeping them in the picture only hindered the story from continuing. The world didn’t need to keep throwing drug addicts at the blond when it was an obstacle he’d become numb to.
The absence of his parents meant the absence of his life as he’d once known it, though.
Since his reincarnation back into a timeline he’d been in prior, it seemed as if everything had fucked itself up royally. The first few times after then were normal. He remembered giving a presentation with Karen, he remembered celebrating Ike’s 12th birthday party with Kyle, he remembered…
Fuck.
There it went again.
What did he remember?
His brain felt like static. He needed to stop thinking about his life. About his past lives. About the lives he no longer had in his life.
He needed to forget more than he was already forgetting.
He quickly hobbled to the kitchen that sat adjacent to the living room, prying an arm away from his abdomen to open the door to a mini fridge that hadn’t been powered in months. The morning light glinting through broken, overgrown windows illuminated the selection of stolen alcohol and half-empty water bottles that sat behind the door. He didn’t take the time to look at labels, no. Rather, he quickly snatched a bottle of nondescript, cheap beer and made his way back to the living room.
Before he even made it to the sofa, he had opened the bottle with his teeth and began to chug it like he hadn’t drank anything in months. Tears formed as the lukewarm alcohol entered his system, causing his stomach to send shocks of agonizing pain through his whole body. Still, though, he continued to drink, feeling the tears spill over and become unstoppable quickly. The bottle slipped from his thin fingers, shattering at his feet as he proceeded to collapse in pure agony.
For all intents and purposes, Kenny McCormick was dying. He just would never have the relief of a final breath.