Ficathon: Aftereffects, by Mikey, red cortina
Title: Aftereffects
Author: mikes_grrl
Rating: Red Cortina for violence
Pairing: gen (really!)
Warnings: Description of a child's attack and murder. It's a brief description, but still...thought I'd be honest and upfront here. And, ANGST.
Word Count: 3,000~
PROMPT: Sam-whumping, an uncomfortable meeting, a flat tire (for slashedsilver).
Summary: Sam never recovers.
NOTES: I am such a LOSER! This is a pinch hit for the Ficathon, and it is late, and it is lame, and I am ashamed, and I apologize. I kept sitting on it praying for a wandering muse to whack me upside the head, but no, what you see is what you get. I was going for something better than my usual plot-generator method of "and then!...and then!..." but I think I broke something instead. Honestly I kept getting stuck on keeping it 'gen' (as the requestor has a fondness for gen stories) and keeping it from going 'epic' because it really started sprawling and I had to chop at it like kudzu. So, the end result? *FAIL*
I'm sorry, slashedsilver, you deserve better.
Aftereffects
Sam broke. It was not difficult to do, in the end. Mulligan tied Sam down and tortured him a bit, cutting and hitting and kicking, but grew bored quickly and returned to his original prize, Alice Hall, ten years old. Sam was being punished for interrupting the pleasure, but only that, because the pleasure for Mulligan was centered on the little girl. Sam was conscious for her attack and furious, blinded by rage and pain, and he screamed for what seemed like hours into the multiple gags in and over his mouth. He yelled as Mulligan slapped her, yelled as Mulligan raped her, yelled as Mulligan bit her.
When Mulligan gutted her, Sam stopped yelling, stopped fighting, and stopped caring. Mulligan was sated, to a point, and after a few vindictive kicks just walked out of the place. Sam laid on the ground, the dead girl next him, his eyes as open and glossy as hers.
-------------
There were leads everywhere, and nothing solid. It was a risk to split everyone up but there were too many places to check, too spread out, and no time to lose. There were not enough cars available so Gene ordered people to drive personal vehicles. He hated sending out Chris by himself even more than sending Annie out alone, but there were two lives on the line, Alice Hall and Sam Tyler. The serial killer they were hunting was a ruthless bastard and ramping up his attacks, and Gene tried to steel himself for the worst, because he could not stop himself from hoping for the best.
The killer left clues, but they were literally all over the map. Six months and four dead little girls later, and they knew everything but the killer’s name but had no idea how to stop him. Sam was beside himself with fury and when Alice went missing, stopped sleeping and turned into some kind of machine. More than normal, anyway. He would not quit and when Gene got in that morning at six am after only four hours of sleep himself, he found a note on his desk from Sam giving an address and the time: 3:30 am. By ten, with no calls and no word, Gene and Ray went to the address, which was an unoccupied flat, and found blood. Not a lot, but obviously the remains of a hell of fight, and there was no doubt whose blood it was, because Sam’s leather jacket was covered in it. Sam was dragged out the back and after that, all traces disappeared.
Now, Phyllis was manning CID with two plonks on the phones while every man, woman and recruit was out scouring the list of possible sites, based on the myriad and confusing clues they had. Past evidence showed that the killer took three days, and this was the third day. With that time line and Sam in the mix, there was no saying how bad the situation was, although no one doubted at this point that it was very bad.
Gene was stalking through a row of warehouse workshops. It was late in the day and most were closed, all of them legitimate businesses. Gene knew the tradesmen who practically lived here, and nothing looked out of place. The manager, a man who was old when Gene was walking the beat and still called him “Kiddo”, told him there were three shops that were currently not rented, and gave Gene the keys without question or warrant. In the third shop, the small high windows papered over and dust layering the floor, Gene found them together, the girl’s dead, naked body positioned next to Sam as if she was sleeping, her eyes open and discolored, and it was impossible to tell where her blood ended and Sam’s began. Gene yelled into his radio for an ambulance and ran to untie them, damning evidence and forensics in his desperation to free Sam.
Sam was pale with blood loss and deep bruises were already forming, but it was not as if Gene had not, at this point, seen Sam injured before. What terrified him was Sam’s face, the utterly blank expression that did not look at him or at anything, but gazed off into some distant point far beyond the walls. Gene talked to him and slapped him but Sam’s gaze never wavered, tears streaming down his face as his eyes over-watered because he was not blinking.
For the first time in his life as a police officer, Gene panicked. Sam was alive, but not present - it was worse than any of the strange trips or blackouts that Sam used to have, because this was looking into the eyes of an empty vessel. A cracked vessel at that, Gene noted as he pulled Sam’s body away from the girl’s, hands slipping over the bloody skin.
Outside, ambulance sirens floated closer, and Gene instinctively knew that despite the obvious cuts and bruises and that nasty smashed up left hand, Sam was going to make it, that he was going to survive.
No. He knew Sam was going to live, which was not quite the same thing.
----
Watery graves, or wet dirt, mud they call it soaking him.
She was gone gone gone forever, blond girl down the test card hole in the TV and good riddance. One final jump and he made it, alive, bright and strong and flying. That was a memory, though, he knew that, looking at the blank walls he knew the difference. Something unlike what was real, what was true, but he could not tell the difference even if he knew what was memory fact and what was not.
He felt the blood on his skin like mud dragging him down a new hole, a rabbit hole and he laughed because why not? The Matrix has him. So a slipping sliding purge to renewal and there was blond quiet cool, always there (again? no, not quite), waiting for him. The more things change...
----
Sam folded his clothes. He liked it, these simple tasks, which could absorb him and absolve him by being perfectly done and easy to do. Simplicity was not quite his life goal, never had been before, but it was nice in the moments he could grab it. The laundromat was empty except for him, because late on Friday afternoons, everyone had something better to do. He did his laundry, cleaned up his life. It was appropriate.
Underwear. Vests. Trousers. Jeans. Tee shirts. He rarely wore button down anymore, shirt sleeve or not. Did not need to, and it was a pleasant change to wear what was comfortable simply because he could. More than once he was mistaken for a student at the Polytechnic, until the accuser looked closely at the wrinkles around his eyes. He did not mind, in fact there was a reason he chose to live near the campus. It was close to his job and he could join the pick-up football games in the local park and still walk home. It even made avoiding pubs easier, because they were generally filled with very young people getting very pissed and that was never his thing, even when he was young.
He worked the next day, if anyone could call it that and he did not. His shift started at ten and he was scheduled for the whole day, a joke because on Saturdays the 'whole day' was five hours, max. Sometimes not even that, if the owner Jackson decided things were dead and it was better for everyone (that is, Jackson) to go home and get stoned. He always invited Sam. Sam always turned him down.
The trousers crumpled to the floor, fluttering down to a heap while Sam stared at his hand. Untrustworthy at the best of times, his left hand sometimes went to lunch and just stopped working -- let go, relaxed, checked out. Sam learned a while back not to order steak because if his left hand went out while cutting, utensils ended up no where safe. It worked out alright because most days he either fixed a vegetable dish at home or ate at Samrat's, the Indian dive across the street from his flat. Curry did not generally require cutting action. In fact, Sam realized while he picked up his trousers off the floor, aside from chicken tandoori he was pretty much going vegetarian.
Annie would not approve. Well, neither would his own mother. Or Gene. Or anyone but the hippy girl across the hall he was shagging on Monday nights. She ignored the scars and sometimes held his left hand in a soft, affectionate grip when he was too distracted by sex to be careful. She also invited him to share a joint, but he thought the contact high alone was enough. He wanted to drop by and maybe seduce her, but her boyfriend came in from Blackpool every weekend and by now might already be humping her against the wall. Poorly, Sam was certain, because afterward while Sam was dressing to walk across the hall, the girl always made some remark about enjoying 'an experienced man.'
He was forty now. Experienced, used up, and dead. Or at least stuck in the 70s, which he was beginning to think was the same thing.
Packing his clean clothes into his also-laundered clothes bag, he headed back out into the night and the three block hike to his flat. It was a beautiful night, the rain moving on briefly and leaving a slightly damp but cool spring evening in its wake. No possibility of a football pickup but the park would still be busy enough to be interesting and sitting around in his flat not drinking was too pathetic an option even for him. It was a nice flat -- in 30 years it would be a shopping district here, and Sam had paperwork at the bank for a loan to buy the smaller, battered building next door as an investment -- but still, it was a two-room prison. He quickly filed away his clothes and changed into a fresh shirt, then headed out.
He saw the car before he heard the man, but either way, there was no mistaking and there was no escaping. He stopped and watched while Gene pulled the boot apart. It was obviously a flat tire that felled the Cortina here, out of her home turf, and Gene was trying to put his spare on. Once he found it.
"Bloody hell, what is this? This? Crap..." Gene snorted and threw the contents of the boot onto the pavement: a box of files, some clothes which ended up strewn about randomly on the ground and included two dresses (probably the Missus giving them up for donation), three separate tool boxes, a heavy blanket, and a flashlight. Sam smiled, remembering Gene's packrat ways.
"Tyler?"
"Guv."
"Bloody hell." Gene just stopped and stared at the man-who-would-be-ghost. It was too long now, empty promises of pub visits and phone calls unfulfilled. Annie had been the last to give up on him, but Gene was the most vocal about it. It was Sam's distinct impression that Gene would never forgive him for letting him give up. "Long time, Tyler. Good to see you. Out." Gene pulled the spare tire out of the boot and rolled it around to the side. Sam squatted on the curb, rubbing his hands.
"You mean, not strapped down."
"Yeah, guess I do." Gene kept working at taking the flat tire off during the long pauses, pointedly not looking at Sam. "Thought you were crazy, for a long time. Talking to yourself, yammering on about Hyde. That whole fuck up with Morgan."
"Yeah?"
Gene paused, but kept looking at the tire in front of him. "No idea what crazy was, until I saw you there."
"Before or after I...woke up?"
Gene went back to his work and shrugged. "Either...both. Eh, hell. At least when you woke up screaming it felt like you were alive."
"Yeah, it did."
Gene glanced at him, but it was not the cautious look of someone worried about his nerves. One reason he walked away from everyone was not because he was pensioned off on disability, but because of how they looked at him. Annie could not hide her pity, and Ray his disgust. It was a cycle of people walking by him, through him, and waking up insane was not so very different from waking up from a coma.
The buildings here were just not tall enough.
Gene kept to his task while Sam nodded absently at nothing. If Gene thought it was odd, he did not comment, although he cast at least one exasperated look at him. Finally he flapped a hand in his direction.
"The hand?"
"Still a write off."
"'Least it was your left."
"Can't say I care either way."
"Your todger might." Gene snickered as he tightened lug nuts. Sam smiled, hearing the unexpected football game in the park wrapping up, but not very sorry to miss it. A taste of his old life -- his in between life? He was not sure -- was worth the price of missing a hard sweat.
Finished with the tire, Gene tossed the flat one into the boot and started reloading it with all the junk he threw out earlier. Sam did not offer to help, knowing that Gene would have it all packed back up by the time Sam stood up. He tried to remember if Gene always moved this quickly through life, or if he was simply in a hurry to get away from his past. But Gene closed the boot and sat against it, lighting up a cigarette, and proceeded to stare down Sam with a narrow gaze.
"You did not even fight it."
It was an old accusation and Sam was tired of explaining PTSD and flashbacks and barbiturates to Gene. "Sometimes you just have to give up."
"I coulda pulled a few strings. Kept you on the rolls until...you got right."
"I'm still not right, Gene. I never will be."
"Hell, you never were."
Sam laughed, throwing his head back and nearly howling. Gene smiled, a broad grin that brought sunshine and better days back into Sam's life for a moment. The sun was going down and Gene stubbed out the smoke.
"Pub?"
Sam shook his head. "Got a date."
"So something still works." Gene flashed his grin again, apparently genuinely happy with Sam's continued sex life. It seemed that everything Sam cared least about was still working, which he could not explain to someone like Gene, or anyone -- not that he tried. He shrugged again and shuffled his feet, unwilling to let go. Again.
"Gotta go, then." Sam said, trying to look away and glance at Gene at the same time.
"Well then. Don't be a stranger."
"Because I'm strange enough?"
"Always was, Sammy Boy." Gene slapped him on the shoulder. Gene was confused for a second, looking at him, but tilted away from Sam like an autumn wind and soon the flashing bronze car was gone. Sam stood in place for a long time before turning to walk back to his flat.
--------------
She was waiting for him, sitting on the end of his bed and looking young and innocent and very, very real. He ignored her and puttered around in his kitchen, digging out a bottle of wine and a large water glass because sophistication was beyond him, these days. She pouted at the rebuff.
"I don't bother you, do I? Nothing bothers you. Nothing touches you." She sighed miserably, sounding very much like a girl who forgot her homework.
"I'm touched. Everyone says so." Sam grinned humorlessly as he walked around her and sat down at his dinette table. "I would think you're proof of that."
"I don't exist, so therefore I can't be proof of anything."
"Wise, so very wise." Sam shifted, letting his bones settle, the scars stretch.
She giggled.
"Gene thinks you're crazy. No matter what he tells you."
"Didn't tell me anything, hasn't for a long time. Why do you care?"
"Because I'm the only one who understands."
Sam shrugged. What could he say to the cause? He drank in silence for a while and she wandered around, inspecting the flat like she always did, and he wondered what she was looking for. He never asked.
"Not sure you care that much. If you did, you'd leave."
She spun around, her blond curls bouncing. "Like her?"
"She just confused me anyway, and she sure as hell didn't care."
"She scared you. I don't do that."
"You don't have to."
"Why not? Shouldn't I?"
"Why bother? You know I'm stark raving mad. You don't have anything to prove." Sam set his chin in his right hand and looked out the window, his eyebrows raised in consideration of his crimes against his sanity. His left hand hung limply off the edge, going numb. He picked up his drink in his trustworthy right and swallowed half the glass down. "Nothing left to prove."
Alice Hall's blond hair bobbed as she bounced on the motionless bed, watching Sam while he took another drink. She got up and leaned against him. "Poor Sam."
"Yeah?" He smiled at her, then shuddered as she caressed his left hand. "Poor you, more like. I was too late for you, for me..."
"I'm sorry. But I'll take care of you. She's never coming back, I promise." She kept caressing his hand, the ghostly chills running up his nerves like pricks from a needle. Then her voice went low and danger shrouded his vision as her words landed, blows falling hard on his memories. "And you are never going away."
#######
Author: mikes_grrl
Rating: Red Cortina for violence
Pairing: gen (really!)
Warnings: Description of a child's attack and murder. It's a brief description, but still...thought I'd be honest and upfront here. And, ANGST.
Word Count: 3,000~
PROMPT: Sam-whumping, an uncomfortable meeting, a flat tire (for slashedsilver).
Summary: Sam never recovers.
NOTES: I am such a LOSER! This is a pinch hit for the Ficathon, and it is late, and it is lame, and I am ashamed, and I apologize. I kept sitting on it praying for a wandering muse to whack me upside the head, but no, what you see is what you get. I was going for something better than my usual plot-generator method of "and then!...and then!..." but I think I broke something instead. Honestly I kept getting stuck on keeping it 'gen' (as the requestor has a fondness for gen stories) and keeping it from going 'epic' because it really started sprawling and I had to chop at it like kudzu. So, the end result? *FAIL*
I'm sorry, slashedsilver, you deserve better.
Aftereffects
Sam broke. It was not difficult to do, in the end. Mulligan tied Sam down and tortured him a bit, cutting and hitting and kicking, but grew bored quickly and returned to his original prize, Alice Hall, ten years old. Sam was being punished for interrupting the pleasure, but only that, because the pleasure for Mulligan was centered on the little girl. Sam was conscious for her attack and furious, blinded by rage and pain, and he screamed for what seemed like hours into the multiple gags in and over his mouth. He yelled as Mulligan slapped her, yelled as Mulligan raped her, yelled as Mulligan bit her.
When Mulligan gutted her, Sam stopped yelling, stopped fighting, and stopped caring. Mulligan was sated, to a point, and after a few vindictive kicks just walked out of the place. Sam laid on the ground, the dead girl next him, his eyes as open and glossy as hers.
-------------
There were leads everywhere, and nothing solid. It was a risk to split everyone up but there were too many places to check, too spread out, and no time to lose. There were not enough cars available so Gene ordered people to drive personal vehicles. He hated sending out Chris by himself even more than sending Annie out alone, but there were two lives on the line, Alice Hall and Sam Tyler. The serial killer they were hunting was a ruthless bastard and ramping up his attacks, and Gene tried to steel himself for the worst, because he could not stop himself from hoping for the best.
The killer left clues, but they were literally all over the map. Six months and four dead little girls later, and they knew everything but the killer’s name but had no idea how to stop him. Sam was beside himself with fury and when Alice went missing, stopped sleeping and turned into some kind of machine. More than normal, anyway. He would not quit and when Gene got in that morning at six am after only four hours of sleep himself, he found a note on his desk from Sam giving an address and the time: 3:30 am. By ten, with no calls and no word, Gene and Ray went to the address, which was an unoccupied flat, and found blood. Not a lot, but obviously the remains of a hell of fight, and there was no doubt whose blood it was, because Sam’s leather jacket was covered in it. Sam was dragged out the back and after that, all traces disappeared.
Now, Phyllis was manning CID with two plonks on the phones while every man, woman and recruit was out scouring the list of possible sites, based on the myriad and confusing clues they had. Past evidence showed that the killer took three days, and this was the third day. With that time line and Sam in the mix, there was no saying how bad the situation was, although no one doubted at this point that it was very bad.
Gene was stalking through a row of warehouse workshops. It was late in the day and most were closed, all of them legitimate businesses. Gene knew the tradesmen who practically lived here, and nothing looked out of place. The manager, a man who was old when Gene was walking the beat and still called him “Kiddo”, told him there were three shops that were currently not rented, and gave Gene the keys without question or warrant. In the third shop, the small high windows papered over and dust layering the floor, Gene found them together, the girl’s dead, naked body positioned next to Sam as if she was sleeping, her eyes open and discolored, and it was impossible to tell where her blood ended and Sam’s began. Gene yelled into his radio for an ambulance and ran to untie them, damning evidence and forensics in his desperation to free Sam.
Sam was pale with blood loss and deep bruises were already forming, but it was not as if Gene had not, at this point, seen Sam injured before. What terrified him was Sam’s face, the utterly blank expression that did not look at him or at anything, but gazed off into some distant point far beyond the walls. Gene talked to him and slapped him but Sam’s gaze never wavered, tears streaming down his face as his eyes over-watered because he was not blinking.
For the first time in his life as a police officer, Gene panicked. Sam was alive, but not present - it was worse than any of the strange trips or blackouts that Sam used to have, because this was looking into the eyes of an empty vessel. A cracked vessel at that, Gene noted as he pulled Sam’s body away from the girl’s, hands slipping over the bloody skin.
Outside, ambulance sirens floated closer, and Gene instinctively knew that despite the obvious cuts and bruises and that nasty smashed up left hand, Sam was going to make it, that he was going to survive.
No. He knew Sam was going to live, which was not quite the same thing.
----
Watery graves, or wet dirt, mud they call it soaking him.
She was gone gone gone forever, blond girl down the test card hole in the TV and good riddance. One final jump and he made it, alive, bright and strong and flying. That was a memory, though, he knew that, looking at the blank walls he knew the difference. Something unlike what was real, what was true, but he could not tell the difference even if he knew what was memory fact and what was not.
He felt the blood on his skin like mud dragging him down a new hole, a rabbit hole and he laughed because why not? The Matrix has him. So a slipping sliding purge to renewal and there was blond quiet cool, always there (again? no, not quite), waiting for him. The more things change...
----
Sam folded his clothes. He liked it, these simple tasks, which could absorb him and absolve him by being perfectly done and easy to do. Simplicity was not quite his life goal, never had been before, but it was nice in the moments he could grab it. The laundromat was empty except for him, because late on Friday afternoons, everyone had something better to do. He did his laundry, cleaned up his life. It was appropriate.
Underwear. Vests. Trousers. Jeans. Tee shirts. He rarely wore button down anymore, shirt sleeve or not. Did not need to, and it was a pleasant change to wear what was comfortable simply because he could. More than once he was mistaken for a student at the Polytechnic, until the accuser looked closely at the wrinkles around his eyes. He did not mind, in fact there was a reason he chose to live near the campus. It was close to his job and he could join the pick-up football games in the local park and still walk home. It even made avoiding pubs easier, because they were generally filled with very young people getting very pissed and that was never his thing, even when he was young.
He worked the next day, if anyone could call it that and he did not. His shift started at ten and he was scheduled for the whole day, a joke because on Saturdays the 'whole day' was five hours, max. Sometimes not even that, if the owner Jackson decided things were dead and it was better for everyone (that is, Jackson) to go home and get stoned. He always invited Sam. Sam always turned him down.
The trousers crumpled to the floor, fluttering down to a heap while Sam stared at his hand. Untrustworthy at the best of times, his left hand sometimes went to lunch and just stopped working -- let go, relaxed, checked out. Sam learned a while back not to order steak because if his left hand went out while cutting, utensils ended up no where safe. It worked out alright because most days he either fixed a vegetable dish at home or ate at Samrat's, the Indian dive across the street from his flat. Curry did not generally require cutting action. In fact, Sam realized while he picked up his trousers off the floor, aside from chicken tandoori he was pretty much going vegetarian.
Annie would not approve. Well, neither would his own mother. Or Gene. Or anyone but the hippy girl across the hall he was shagging on Monday nights. She ignored the scars and sometimes held his left hand in a soft, affectionate grip when he was too distracted by sex to be careful. She also invited him to share a joint, but he thought the contact high alone was enough. He wanted to drop by and maybe seduce her, but her boyfriend came in from Blackpool every weekend and by now might already be humping her against the wall. Poorly, Sam was certain, because afterward while Sam was dressing to walk across the hall, the girl always made some remark about enjoying 'an experienced man.'
He was forty now. Experienced, used up, and dead. Or at least stuck in the 70s, which he was beginning to think was the same thing.
Packing his clean clothes into his also-laundered clothes bag, he headed back out into the night and the three block hike to his flat. It was a beautiful night, the rain moving on briefly and leaving a slightly damp but cool spring evening in its wake. No possibility of a football pickup but the park would still be busy enough to be interesting and sitting around in his flat not drinking was too pathetic an option even for him. It was a nice flat -- in 30 years it would be a shopping district here, and Sam had paperwork at the bank for a loan to buy the smaller, battered building next door as an investment -- but still, it was a two-room prison. He quickly filed away his clothes and changed into a fresh shirt, then headed out.
He saw the car before he heard the man, but either way, there was no mistaking and there was no escaping. He stopped and watched while Gene pulled the boot apart. It was obviously a flat tire that felled the Cortina here, out of her home turf, and Gene was trying to put his spare on. Once he found it.
"Bloody hell, what is this? This? Crap..." Gene snorted and threw the contents of the boot onto the pavement: a box of files, some clothes which ended up strewn about randomly on the ground and included two dresses (probably the Missus giving them up for donation), three separate tool boxes, a heavy blanket, and a flashlight. Sam smiled, remembering Gene's packrat ways.
"Tyler?"
"Guv."
"Bloody hell." Gene just stopped and stared at the man-who-would-be-ghost. It was too long now, empty promises of pub visits and phone calls unfulfilled. Annie had been the last to give up on him, but Gene was the most vocal about it. It was Sam's distinct impression that Gene would never forgive him for letting him give up. "Long time, Tyler. Good to see you. Out." Gene pulled the spare tire out of the boot and rolled it around to the side. Sam squatted on the curb, rubbing his hands.
"You mean, not strapped down."
"Yeah, guess I do." Gene kept working at taking the flat tire off during the long pauses, pointedly not looking at Sam. "Thought you were crazy, for a long time. Talking to yourself, yammering on about Hyde. That whole fuck up with Morgan."
"Yeah?"
Gene paused, but kept looking at the tire in front of him. "No idea what crazy was, until I saw you there."
"Before or after I...woke up?"
Gene went back to his work and shrugged. "Either...both. Eh, hell. At least when you woke up screaming it felt like you were alive."
"Yeah, it did."
Gene glanced at him, but it was not the cautious look of someone worried about his nerves. One reason he walked away from everyone was not because he was pensioned off on disability, but because of how they looked at him. Annie could not hide her pity, and Ray his disgust. It was a cycle of people walking by him, through him, and waking up insane was not so very different from waking up from a coma.
The buildings here were just not tall enough.
Gene kept to his task while Sam nodded absently at nothing. If Gene thought it was odd, he did not comment, although he cast at least one exasperated look at him. Finally he flapped a hand in his direction.
"The hand?"
"Still a write off."
"'Least it was your left."
"Can't say I care either way."
"Your todger might." Gene snickered as he tightened lug nuts. Sam smiled, hearing the unexpected football game in the park wrapping up, but not very sorry to miss it. A taste of his old life -- his in between life? He was not sure -- was worth the price of missing a hard sweat.
Finished with the tire, Gene tossed the flat one into the boot and started reloading it with all the junk he threw out earlier. Sam did not offer to help, knowing that Gene would have it all packed back up by the time Sam stood up. He tried to remember if Gene always moved this quickly through life, or if he was simply in a hurry to get away from his past. But Gene closed the boot and sat against it, lighting up a cigarette, and proceeded to stare down Sam with a narrow gaze.
"You did not even fight it."
It was an old accusation and Sam was tired of explaining PTSD and flashbacks and barbiturates to Gene. "Sometimes you just have to give up."
"I coulda pulled a few strings. Kept you on the rolls until...you got right."
"I'm still not right, Gene. I never will be."
"Hell, you never were."
Sam laughed, throwing his head back and nearly howling. Gene smiled, a broad grin that brought sunshine and better days back into Sam's life for a moment. The sun was going down and Gene stubbed out the smoke.
"Pub?"
Sam shook his head. "Got a date."
"So something still works." Gene flashed his grin again, apparently genuinely happy with Sam's continued sex life. It seemed that everything Sam cared least about was still working, which he could not explain to someone like Gene, or anyone -- not that he tried. He shrugged again and shuffled his feet, unwilling to let go. Again.
"Gotta go, then." Sam said, trying to look away and glance at Gene at the same time.
"Well then. Don't be a stranger."
"Because I'm strange enough?"
"Always was, Sammy Boy." Gene slapped him on the shoulder. Gene was confused for a second, looking at him, but tilted away from Sam like an autumn wind and soon the flashing bronze car was gone. Sam stood in place for a long time before turning to walk back to his flat.
--------------
She was waiting for him, sitting on the end of his bed and looking young and innocent and very, very real. He ignored her and puttered around in his kitchen, digging out a bottle of wine and a large water glass because sophistication was beyond him, these days. She pouted at the rebuff.
"I don't bother you, do I? Nothing bothers you. Nothing touches you." She sighed miserably, sounding very much like a girl who forgot her homework.
"I'm touched. Everyone says so." Sam grinned humorlessly as he walked around her and sat down at his dinette table. "I would think you're proof of that."
"I don't exist, so therefore I can't be proof of anything."
"Wise, so very wise." Sam shifted, letting his bones settle, the scars stretch.
She giggled.
"Gene thinks you're crazy. No matter what he tells you."
"Didn't tell me anything, hasn't for a long time. Why do you care?"
"Because I'm the only one who understands."
Sam shrugged. What could he say to the cause? He drank in silence for a while and she wandered around, inspecting the flat like she always did, and he wondered what she was looking for. He never asked.
"Not sure you care that much. If you did, you'd leave."
She spun around, her blond curls bouncing. "Like her?"
"She just confused me anyway, and she sure as hell didn't care."
"She scared you. I don't do that."
"You don't have to."
"Why not? Shouldn't I?"
"Why bother? You know I'm stark raving mad. You don't have anything to prove." Sam set his chin in his right hand and looked out the window, his eyebrows raised in consideration of his crimes against his sanity. His left hand hung limply off the edge, going numb. He picked up his drink in his trustworthy right and swallowed half the glass down. "Nothing left to prove."
Alice Hall's blond hair bobbed as she bounced on the motionless bed, watching Sam while he took another drink. She got up and leaned against him. "Poor Sam."
"Yeah?" He smiled at her, then shuddered as she caressed his left hand. "Poor you, more like. I was too late for you, for me..."
"I'm sorry. But I'll take care of you. She's never coming back, I promise." She kept caressing his hand, the ghostly chills running up his nerves like pricks from a needle. Then her voice went low and danger shrouded his vision as her words landed, blows falling hard on his memories. "And you are never going away."
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