"It should've been obvious the first time. But like I said. I was desperate. In my mind, there was nothing else to try."
He doesn't know what it is about this, that makes the words slip out of him so easily; every other time he's done this he'd either skip over this or stutter and stop, choking on his own speech. This time, it feels like all he needs to do is tug on his memory, and the whole thing comes unspooling like a film reel.
Jon Sees, so Phil opens the window. He tells him what it feels like. Metal weights in your hands, sounds in your skulls, the warmth when skin splits. A thousand ways to poison yourself, a thousand ways to strangle yourself, burn yourself, bleed yourself like a pig, break your neck like the butcher with the chicken. Electricity, acid, fire, rope, gas, cleaners, all the sharp and blunt forces in the world. Screaming witnesses. All the repeats. Everything. And Phil Connors was dead-not-dead. And there was darkness, and the world was nothing. And he felt utterly, absolutely alone, because there was no one else who would ever remember, and no one who would ever believe him.
There's too much. There's too much. Once is too much, and this is far more. A terrible number. As he keeps talking, more memories keep appearing, sprung from a hole punched through his mind that he used to be able to live with.
Phil Connors is melting. He doesn't break eye contact with Jon, but at some point he starts weeping, and then he starts sinking to his knees to sit on the ground, gasping around an explanation that won't stop. He's Icarus and Daedalus, both the grieving and the grieved, damner and damned, and all of it is bared open for Jon to reap.
CWs continue; injury, death, references to animal butchering
He doesn't know what it is about this, that makes the words slip out of him so easily; every other time he's done this he'd either skip over this or stutter and stop, choking on his own speech. This time, it feels like all he needs to do is tug on his memory, and the whole thing comes unspooling like a film reel.
Jon Sees, so Phil opens the window. He tells him what it feels like. Metal weights in your hands, sounds in your skulls, the warmth when skin splits. A thousand ways to poison yourself, a thousand ways to strangle yourself, burn yourself, bleed yourself like a pig, break your neck like the butcher with the chicken. Electricity, acid, fire, rope, gas, cleaners, all the sharp and blunt forces in the world. Screaming witnesses. All the repeats. Everything. And Phil Connors was dead-not-dead. And there was darkness, and the world was nothing. And he felt utterly, absolutely alone, because there was no one else who would ever remember, and no one who would ever believe him.
There's too much. There's too much. Once is too much, and this is far more. A terrible number. As he keeps talking, more memories keep appearing, sprung from a hole punched through his mind that he used to be able to live with.
Phil Connors is melting. He doesn't break eye contact with Jon, but at some point he starts weeping, and then he starts sinking to his knees to sit on the ground, gasping around an explanation that won't stop. He's Icarus and Daedalus, both the grieving and the grieved, damner and damned, and all of it is bared open for Jon to reap.