EFF IT! ➸ jj maybank

014.

   And all because of a stupid fucking rooster.

   A dead rooster.

   It was silly. She knew it was.

   But as time slowly started to pass like normal and each of the teenagers filed out of the chicken coop, a morbid silence looking over them, Sonny couldn't find it in herself to move.

   She was frozen. Stuck. Staring down at the lifeless body of the rooster, her eyes empty.

   Sonny knew animals were killed, it was why she was chose not to eat most meat. Still, she had never seen it. Naturally, it stunned her, right to her core. Sure, death was no stranger to Sonny Penbrook, but that didn't make it any easier for her to sit and process it.

    "Sonny?"

   The voice was far away.

   She couldn't hear over the blood rushing to her ears. She knew it was only a chicken — and she probably should have been glad it was a chicken and not one of them, instead. The rooster had almost got them caught too, but that didn't feel quite valid enough for her to let it go. The rooster was dead. The rooster had been killed. Murdered.

   But if JJ hadn't done it, it would've been over for them. It would've lead the men straight to the coop, leaving the teens to be plucked off one by one.

   It could have been them.

   JJ had noticed her lack of movement.

   It was why he faltered, not moving like the others. His eyes travelled over her stiff limbs and scraped knees, taking in the sweat on her brow. She looked nauseated, like she was about to throw up at any given moment.

   When he realised she was staring at the rooster, JJ figured out why. Guilt hit him like a freight train.

   Like the rest of their group, JJ was pretty shaken up by his actions. Actually, he was horrified. He may have been ballsy, and loud, and total a loose cannon, but he was no killer; gun or no gun, it just wasn't JJ — he never felt the urge to maim, not unless provoked, and never to kill.

   Even if a weapon in his hands did make him feel powerful enough to take down his father.

   He wasn't a killer.

   Lots of people said JJ had a screw loose, that he just wasn't right in the head; and right about now, he felt forced to think about their accuracy.

   Maybe he did have a screw loose. JJ did impulsive shit, and he knew he could act really fucked up sometimes, because he was really fucked up. That was no secret to JJ, he knew he was messed in the head, he could admit that. But that didn't mean he was the lost cause that the island decided to label him. And he knew it didn't mean he was fucked up enough to callously murder an innocent being.

Maybe JJ Maybank didn't know that much...

...but he definitely knew that.

That wasn't JJ.

Until it was.

Until he killed a rooster. And then suddenly, JJ really wasn't sure what he was. Or who. He had just killed John B's rooster, the rooster he adored, and while he knew it was just a damn chicken, he felt really bad about it.