'The Fourth Wall' fic
Another little ficlet
Title: A Perfect World
Author: ironychan
Show: The Fourth Wall
Words: 436
Characters: Mike
Rating: G
Categories/Warnings: none really
Summary: Mike worries he's gotten lost in his fantasy world
Evening fog was closing in around the Thames. Through it, buildings were barely visible, but the illuminated faces of Big Ben shone through like yellow ghosts of the moon, like something out of a fantasy world.
A fantasy world, Mike thought. He sat down on a stone bench and watched a barge making its ponderous way up the river. Mike had once read a psychologists' paper, in which the author posited that the events of the 'Harry Potter' books were just a fantasy the main character hd invented as an escape from his abusive relatives. The Nick Garland books were an escape, too, but they weren't Nick's fantasy - they were Mike's.
Nick's world was one in which the Four Walls were still powerful and dangerous enemies, but their evil was of a more down-to-earth sort, and unlike Mike, Nick had the courage, the resources, and the time to actually do something about them. It was a world in which Grace had the power to punish them, rather than being forever thwarted by the legal system. And maybe most important, it was a world in which Mike's vendetta needn't be so bitter and personal, because Lacey had never been a victim. A world in which she could have the happy life she'd deserved, in a setting approximating that of the silly novels she'd read endlessly.
It was a world in which you could feel secure that in the end, the Good Guys would always win.
But that was all it had ever been meant to be: a fantasy, a way for Mike to do vicariously the things he could not do in reality. And now that he found himself actually living and breathing it, his greatest fear was that he might yet get lost in it.
The fog was making the world look too unreal, and Mike was starting to feel as if he were floating, lost, in some dimly-lit void. He had to go home - well, back to Nick's townhouse, at least - where there were things he could touch, things that were solid. And on the way, he would remind himself that he was Michael Glass, 21st century writer of historical fiction. Somewhere in another world, he lived in an apartment in Chicago and drove a Volvo, owned an impressive collection of black and white sci-fi movies on DVD and wore Lacey's class ring instead of his own.
That was real. This was nothing but a fantasy... and when Volvos and the Sears Tower began seeming oddly ridiculous compared with horse-drawn carriage and Big Ben, it was time to remind himself of that.
Title: A Perfect World
Author: ironychan
Show: The Fourth Wall
Words: 436
Characters: Mike
Rating: G
Categories/Warnings: none really
Summary: Mike worries he's gotten lost in his fantasy world
Evening fog was closing in around the Thames. Through it, buildings were barely visible, but the illuminated faces of Big Ben shone through like yellow ghosts of the moon, like something out of a fantasy world.
A fantasy world, Mike thought. He sat down on a stone bench and watched a barge making its ponderous way up the river. Mike had once read a psychologists' paper, in which the author posited that the events of the 'Harry Potter' books were just a fantasy the main character hd invented as an escape from his abusive relatives. The Nick Garland books were an escape, too, but they weren't Nick's fantasy - they were Mike's.
Nick's world was one in which the Four Walls were still powerful and dangerous enemies, but their evil was of a more down-to-earth sort, and unlike Mike, Nick had the courage, the resources, and the time to actually do something about them. It was a world in which Grace had the power to punish them, rather than being forever thwarted by the legal system. And maybe most important, it was a world in which Mike's vendetta needn't be so bitter and personal, because Lacey had never been a victim. A world in which she could have the happy life she'd deserved, in a setting approximating that of the silly novels she'd read endlessly.
It was a world in which you could feel secure that in the end, the Good Guys would always win.
But that was all it had ever been meant to be: a fantasy, a way for Mike to do vicariously the things he could not do in reality. And now that he found himself actually living and breathing it, his greatest fear was that he might yet get lost in it.
The fog was making the world look too unreal, and Mike was starting to feel as if he were floating, lost, in some dimly-lit void. He had to go home - well, back to Nick's townhouse, at least - where there were things he could touch, things that were solid. And on the way, he would remind himself that he was Michael Glass, 21st century writer of historical fiction. Somewhere in another world, he lived in an apartment in Chicago and drove a Volvo, owned an impressive collection of black and white sci-fi movies on DVD and wore Lacey's class ring instead of his own.
That was real. This was nothing but a fantasy... and when Volvos and the Sears Tower began seeming oddly ridiculous compared with horse-drawn carriage and Big Ben, it was time to remind himself of that.