An Act of Finality-Sylaire-Part 6

[black_hat]

The light from the golden arches did little to cheer Claire up. She could run while he was in the fast food line, waiting patiently among all those people. Hell, there was a pregnant woman right in front of him, and she had no clue. The car doors were ostensibly unlocked.

 

She had to stay. 

 

Not because she had nowhere to go. That wasn’t it at all. It also wasn’t because she found out, via suburbia, that anyone and everyone could have blood stains in their car. But because she had to know how he had known.

 

 In order for this whole thing to work, for there to be blood on her hands, she had to—precisely down to the measure—freak out. It was even more daunting when she turned the tangled map in her mind to look at the other side. He had to know that a member of the neighborhood watch really wasn’t going to step up and help her. That the policeman wouldn’t notice anything until he shook her—visibly—in the front doorway. That the scene would fluster the man enough to make him forget his radio.

 

Right down to the marrow of the man, he had known. God.

 

However, there were holes to this entire picture. Even though he predicted her behavior, her near suffocation wasn't on his agenda. Even the plant-tossing fiasco may have been unforseen. An oversight on his part. Then there were his own emotions. At times…she couldn't pin it down, and she was trying so hard to stick a needle in the eye of the storm. There must be one hell of a beam in her own eye.

 

How had he known about her and that part of her that was so wrong that it made people abandon her to her fate? And her thoughtless, her consistent thoughtless for the police and the peeping tom and countless others…if only she could remember to before. If she had been superstitious, she would believe that this shapeshifter, this person who could do things that humans shouldn’t be able to do, was sent here to punish her for being so horrible.

 

Thus, she had to stay. There wasn’t a place for her, and if there was a place, she wasn’t sure she deserved it. For, besides her thoughts about him, there was a fresh hate for the pregnant woman in front of him, who went along in her normalcy as if Claire was a ghost. She wished it had been that woman trapped in this car that smelled of blood instead, while she went on, happy and normal and ignorant.

 

As if he felt her polar negativity, he opened the restaurant door for the mother-to-be, who was very pretty in an understated sort of way. The woman thanked him, beaming openly, and Claire thought it would have been funny if he had…

 

No, she didn’t deserve a place to run.

 

“Having a heart attack? Statistically impossible,” she mocked under her breath. He shot the car a dirty look. Dear God.

 

The radio was on its sixth verse of ‘a long, long, long, long, long, long time; it’s been a-' before it clicked off by itself.

 

“A panic attack,” he declared, before thrusting a bag at her face, along with a cup holder.

 

“Er…” She struggled to hold on to the burden while he slid into the backseat. “Is that like a code word for a happy meal?”

 

“You had a panic attack. Not a heart attack. A panic attack.”

 

“Oh.” Now that man’s death was even more horribly pointless than before. “Good to know. So why, um, the hamburgers? I thought I lost the bet.”

 

“Don’t worry, it was on you.”

 

Claire blinked in confusion, then remembered throwing a wad of cash at him. He took out a syringe from the pocket of his jacket.

 

She pressed against the door, cringing. “What are you going to do?”

 

“…you’re afraid of a shot. That is absurd, you do know.”

 

“That’s the one you used before.” He nodded, closing the distance between them. “Is it clean?”

 

“I washed it.”

 

“In McDonald's. In the restroom.” He frowned, looking down at the syringe.

 

“You have a point.” Reaching over the console, he took the cigarette lighter and held the needle to it, turning it a dark, angry red. Familiar somehow.

 

“Please don’t do it. Don’t stick that in my arm.”

 

“Please, please, please, and hardly a thank-you in between. I should have gotten you a kid’s meal. Maybe you’d like a toy with it.”

 

Grabbing her arm. Rolling up her sleeve. “This is gross,” she said. “Filthy.”

 

“You’re one to talk. I’ve been in your room before.” That got her attention.

 

“Was I in it?”

 

In response, he jabbed the needle right to what felt like bone. She clenched her fists but refused to cry out.

 

“It was the stereotypical little girl’s room. I did like the touch with the teddy bears. A little excessive, a little demented.” She felt the heat from his body, and didn’t know what to think or do. And she didn’t dare look at the syringe. “Either you have a severe Peter Pan complex, or there’s a family undercurrent that would make even Nabokov gouge his eyes out.”

 

Claire jerked her arm away, hurting herself from the needle still in her arm.

 

“You can keep that after I’m through,” the shadow man said lightly and pulled the needle free from her skin. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll go with the Peter Pan idea. The burden of growing up isn’t in your reality.”

 

She didn’t know what he was doing until he pressed the syringe into his own arm. “I hope I have some horrible, freakishly bad disease for you to catch.” She flushed with pleasure as he paled, haunted by the thought. Thoughts alone could kill this man. “I don’t know where I’ve been last.”

 

“Stop it, Claire,” he ground out, pushing the syringe down with his thumb. She had hit a nerve. She watched her blood shoot into his arm with a look of defiance.

 

“You saw me, and took me away from my family because you think I’m a placebo. Your last high after whoever she had been.”

 

“Last?” he intoned, studying his hand, as if waiting for his fingers to talk to him in Morse code.

 

“How many others? How many times?”

 

“I always forget them after I kill them.” But he could become them. He was a great mimic, and two of the same people existing at once just won’t hold water. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of a sickly yellow glow, and wondered if he was holding a small flashlight in his hands.

 

His hands were glowing that sick yellow, and she felt pain run along the course of her arm from the proximity. Batteries not required.

 

“I was so afraid I had lost this one,” he muttered. “The thought of you was the only thing that kept me going in the jungle.”

 

Claire looked from his hands to his face and back again, feeling nothing. She took a sip of her drink and then caved, having to know.  

 

“Be honest with me. Am I dead?

 

“Do you think you’re dead?”  The glow dimmed from his hands, leaving only McDonald’s to light the way.

 

“You said you had to pick me up in pieces. That’s sounds pretty dead to me.”

"We've been over this." 

"I can't believe..."

 

He pinched her arm, hard. She gasped at the pain and pulled back.

 

“Okay, that was not cool. A simple no would have been fine.”

 

“No is always enough. On the other hand, pain is never enough. So it fits perfectly with your question. Besides, if you were dead, jigsaw girl, then what would that make me?”

 

“I don’t know, an angel of death?

 

He drew back. “What would make you say that? Of all possible things?” 

 

“It just fits. Like you said. And if it was true, this would be purgatory, I guess. Lucky me.”

 

“What made you…” She saw he was hung up her last statement.

 

“Did you expect something else?”

 

“I shouldn’t have. I....Sometimes it’s like something is talking to me. Sometimes. I mean, if I’m in the design, what made the design? I can see how things work, Claire. I should be able to step outside of this, all of this, completely.”

 

“I’m…I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re trying to say."

“Let’s say you did die and came back. Pretend that you did. Try to remember. Did you see anything?”

 

She looked down at her drink, to miss the…was it desparation?...in his voice.

 

“Dying is like being disconnected. Being dead is like being away somewhere, not really being anything. Waiting around without noticing. But that’s all I can imagine.”

 

“Try harder.”

 

Things were falling apart. If she didn’t come up with a better answer for him, something bad was going to happen.

 

“Isn’t seeing a connection good enough for you?”

 

“It should be. I know this.” He seemed in pain again, leaning towards her, solemnly, depending on her as if he was in a confessional. In this situation, she was the perfectly harmless confidant. She didn’t mind being in pieces so much; she’d quilt herself back together and comfort him, if she could.

 

“I’ve been making myself in that image for a long time. There are pieces of special things just waiting for me to make them transcend, to form the ideal design. If I wasn’t supposed to do this, then why can I see it so clearly? And now things are just repeating, playing the same note over and over again. I don’t think it’s supposed to do that.”

 

“Most things go in circles. Like the sun rising and setting every day.”

"But we're the ones going in circles. Oh, we like to think it's the sun, even though we know otherwise. Imagine, feeling the earth actually circle the sun. That's what I feel like, everyday. And it's all meaningless in its repetition. It’s not noticeable!”

 

“I would notice if the sun didn’t come up,” she said dryly. “Since I assume I’m from the great state of Texas and not Alaska.” She couldn’t help herself. 

 

“Exactly. An act of finality. That’s what I discovered was the way out of the overall design…to cut yourself a way out. That’s exactly it, Claire. Then you can see it instead of being tangled up by it, smothered, lost, invisible. That’s how you feel right now, isn’t it? Like a ghost.”

 

A chord was struck inside of her. Her eyes felt oddly warm again.

 

“The thing about being a part of a design is that parts are interchangeable, replacable. You go about your existence, glancing off other people, connected to them only through happenstance. Parents have to deal with their children because that’s the lot they got…a purely, circumstantial love. Then they are stuck with that lot they pulled, even if it’s a failure in any case. You’re molded to go through the steps until you’re not useful anymore. It’s either age, sickness, madness, or the plain fact there are a dime a dozen others exactly like you. Then there is existence. It’s so fleeting. If nobody knows you were alive, aside from those bound to you by circumstance, were you really ever here?”

 

“But you figured it out, now. You made them look at you, demanded that they look…and voila, you feel alive instead of the dead, blind thing you were. And with people, you can burn away all the trivalities like a crucible and find the real person buried underneath… and you keep a piece of them with you, where the real lifeline is. It’s such a rush, isn’t it, being alive?”

 

Claire met his eyes. “It sounds….lonely.”

 

“A man who can see, surrounded by the blind. I can describe the scenery all I like. Inevitability, it’s lost in translation. Except for you. I’ve watched you taking sneek peeks. I would have opened the door,”  he mimicked, to utter perfection. “You can take the girl out of the world, but you can’t take the world out of girl. The egocentric, little girl. Has it ever occurred to you to ask about me, Claire? All you’ve truly asked about is my name.”

 

She flinched at his unmasked ferocity, terrified, and some part of her felt he was right.

 

“You’d think you’d be a little more interested in me, just a little, since I’m the one keeping you alive. A cirumstance that can change in a second. And yet, here you are, just sitting and staring…how many bodies are we going to leave behind us before this is over?”

 

“I…I’m sorry for not asking more. You know that I’m…” Don’t say afraid of you, don’t say it, her mind screamed at her. “I assumed you wouldn’t answer.”

 

“Oh, I see. Isn’t that a pretty, selfish excuse.”

 

“It’s not! I-In fact. I disagree with you.” He burst out laughing, shaking his head. “No, hold on. There’s so much left out of your special theory. You’re talking about sight. What about touch?” 

 

To make her point, she reached out and put her hand against his chest. After the fact, she thought her hand might be broken again. However, there was nothing she could lose. No family to miss, no friends to mourn. He looked down at her hand, with clinical detachment. Figuring out what reaction went with this action. He was his own analogy; everything on the outside was lost in translation.

With a deep sadness, she began to pull away, but he put his hand over hers, to keep her in place. She felt his heartbeat; it was going awfully fast.

 

“Tomato, tomahto.”

 

“No. Totally different. What about feelings? Sure, you may make them see you, but don’t you think other people feel the same way? Everyone needs someone to care.”

 

“It takes a special type of person to actually do something about it.You’re a cat person. I’m a people person.” He grinned at the thought. “I understand people. For instance, I know that you might have even been a good girl if I had always been right besides you with your life in my hands. And who said anything about need? Why, Claire, do you want me to care about you? Or is it…you need me to care about you.” 

 

She gasped as he pulled her into his lap, trapping her against him.

 

Okay, so maybe, he was mad that his doll grew a personality contrary to what was there before. Claire wondered what he would do if he realized that she had known what to do to keep him happy and her breathing…and had failed to act upon it.

 

Only this punishment was not what she had expected. 

*credit* 

-a long, long, long, long, long, long time; it’s been a-
(Long Long Time by Guy Forsyth)

-Your Last High
(Based on The Last High by The Dandy Warhols.)

-I always forget them after I kill them.” 
(From Peter Pan by J.M.  Barrie) 

-I know that you might have even been a good girl if I had always been right besides you with your life in my hands. 
-"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
(A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O' Conor.) 

-two of the same people existing at once just won’t hold water.
(The concept of that, of pretending to be someone else and thus the other person ceases to exist, is from a Joker comic. I think Batman/Joker:Switch #1)