John Doe Fic: Memoriam
Title: Memoriam
A Gift For: Gryphon2k written for yuletide, who asked for the aftermath of Karen Kowalski's death.
Characters/Pairings: John Doe, Digger, Jamie, Frank
Rating: PG for mention of character death
Length: 1050 words
Summary: Everyone handles loss differently, but everyone must handle it. John Doe and his friends each remember Karen Kowalski in their own way.
John spent a few days finding the right artist, and convincing her he wasn't a creep or a con man. Once that was done, he had to convince her he knew what he was doing.
"I want it seen, but not from a main thoroughfare. I want people to have to go there on purpose. And I want Karen's story with it, all over the internet. Especially wherever the best graffiti gets talked about."
"You'll get more buzz on a main street," she emailed back. She didn't have a name online, aside from a string of seemingly random numbers.
"It'll also get painted over in an hour," he shot back.
"You have a point."
"So you'll do it?"
"It's your penny."
He spent a few more days deciding on a location - he'd thought of Los Angeles or New York, but she suggested London. Apparently the scene there "goes mad for a good story." He didn't care what they went mad for, as long as they remembered Karen.
*
Digger adopted one of those poor kids from Africa off the late-night TV infomercials right after she died.
It wasn't enough, though, sending a check once a month. So he volunteered to teach a bunch of foster kids rough carpentry at Habitat For Humanity. That felt right, spending time with a bunch of teenagers and building houses for deserving folks at the same time.
But then the kids started showing up at the bar in the mornings, trying to bum cigarettes and offering to bus tables, saving up for their eighteenth birthday slash forced moving out day. Cursing inwardly, he took on a couple as gophers and sent the rest to John for crash courses in Internet stock trading. One of the girls, Kayla, told him she wanted to go into law enforcement, so he introduced her to Jamie. A couple months later, he sent Jamie an excellent bottle of Chardonnay when the whole gang showed up crowing over Kayla's acceptance letter to the School of Criminal Justice at Sacramento State, with a fat scholarship package on the side.
The quietest kid, Brandon, kept a raggedy sketchbook in a backpack, and started taking it out once in a while where Digger could see. He drew pretty well, and Digger wound up helping him get a busker's permit and a better set of sketching tools. He wouldn't get rich, but he would eat if he worked hard and stayed clean.
By way of thanks, Brandon sketched the whole Habitat for Humanity crew, with Digger in the middle. He framed it and hung it over the booth the kids liked to pile into after a work session, and every time they came in, they kidded him about it.
*
The whole tragedy took a while to sink in for Jamie. By the time Digger brought Kayla to her office, though, she couldn't kid herself anymore that Karen's death was just another homicide she could push through. She enjoyed helping with college applications and scholarship essays, and it felt good to realize that there were still people in the world with dreams. But Kayla really didn't need much from her, just a little encouragement and somebody to bounce things off of before she sent them.
When that was done, she looked into the charity work sponsored by the department, but it all smacked of telemarketing and corporate fundraising. Unwilling to let it go, she researched a ridiculous number of volunteer opportunities, discovering a world of rules, requirements and red tape to deal with before anyone could accept the copious amount of free time she could scrape together between cases. She was about to resign herself to the precinct charity phone pool when Kayla's social worker called to tell her about a boy who could use help applying for EMT training, and an older woman working mall security while dreaming of a career in the FBI - both of them good, hard-working people who just happened to be alone in the world.
*
Frank never thought much about art, but his kids took lots of painting classes at a youth center. He went over one day, hoping that looking at their pictures would make it easier to breathe around the guilt and helplessness. When he walked in to the youth center, he was appalled at the crusty paint, the shaggy brushes, the teacher scraping the images off thrift store canvases and painting them white just so the kids would have something to work with.
A quick email to the precinct started a collection; a few weeks later he got to deliver easels, paints, brushes and lots of other stuff. His kids beamed, and for the first time since he'd failed Karen, he beamed right back.
*
John stepped out of the tube station and turned a slow circle, looking for the record store the artist gave him for a landmark. Once he'd spotted it, he headed down the alley and around back, up the staircase and onto the roof of a bike shop. ("Strange, I know" her email had read, "but it really is the best vantage point.") Off to the east an anemic British sunrise was melting into full daylight, but to the north was the mural. It stood at least two stories tall and spanned the width of several storefronts, the red and yellow flowers glowed against the grey London cityscape. A smattering of people stopped to look at it while he watched, and he found himself smiling when a pointing toddler pulled her mother to a halt in front of it, only to be lifted into her arms for a cuddle before they moved on.
His cell phone rang: Jamie.
"Where are you? Karen's painting's all over the news."
"Really?" He said, turning to climb back down to street level.
"Apparently, a copy of the painting turned up today in London. Except it's huge, painted on a building ten stories tall."
"Wow." He hailed a taxi, feeling warm despite the chilly morning air.
"Okay, fine," Jamie groused, "play dumb. But some of us know what's going on here, John. Those buildings have owners. Is somebody going to keep repainting the murals whenever they disappear?"
"Something like that," he admitted, chuckling. "Bye, Jamie."
He opened a text message to the artist. "How about New York next and then Tokyo?"
A Gift For: Gryphon2k written for yuletide, who asked for the aftermath of Karen Kowalski's death.
Characters/Pairings: John Doe, Digger, Jamie, Frank
Rating: PG for mention of character death
Length: 1050 words
Summary: Everyone handles loss differently, but everyone must handle it. John Doe and his friends each remember Karen Kowalski in their own way.
John spent a few days finding the right artist, and convincing her he wasn't a creep or a con man. Once that was done, he had to convince her he knew what he was doing.
"I want it seen, but not from a main thoroughfare. I want people to have to go there on purpose. And I want Karen's story with it, all over the internet. Especially wherever the best graffiti gets talked about."
"You'll get more buzz on a main street," she emailed back. She didn't have a name online, aside from a string of seemingly random numbers.
"It'll also get painted over in an hour," he shot back.
"You have a point."
"So you'll do it?"
"It's your penny."
He spent a few more days deciding on a location - he'd thought of Los Angeles or New York, but she suggested London. Apparently the scene there "goes mad for a good story." He didn't care what they went mad for, as long as they remembered Karen.
*
Digger adopted one of those poor kids from Africa off the late-night TV infomercials right after she died.
It wasn't enough, though, sending a check once a month. So he volunteered to teach a bunch of foster kids rough carpentry at Habitat For Humanity. That felt right, spending time with a bunch of teenagers and building houses for deserving folks at the same time.
But then the kids started showing up at the bar in the mornings, trying to bum cigarettes and offering to bus tables, saving up for their eighteenth birthday slash forced moving out day. Cursing inwardly, he took on a couple as gophers and sent the rest to John for crash courses in Internet stock trading. One of the girls, Kayla, told him she wanted to go into law enforcement, so he introduced her to Jamie. A couple months later, he sent Jamie an excellent bottle of Chardonnay when the whole gang showed up crowing over Kayla's acceptance letter to the School of Criminal Justice at Sacramento State, with a fat scholarship package on the side.
The quietest kid, Brandon, kept a raggedy sketchbook in a backpack, and started taking it out once in a while where Digger could see. He drew pretty well, and Digger wound up helping him get a busker's permit and a better set of sketching tools. He wouldn't get rich, but he would eat if he worked hard and stayed clean.
By way of thanks, Brandon sketched the whole Habitat for Humanity crew, with Digger in the middle. He framed it and hung it over the booth the kids liked to pile into after a work session, and every time they came in, they kidded him about it.
*
The whole tragedy took a while to sink in for Jamie. By the time Digger brought Kayla to her office, though, she couldn't kid herself anymore that Karen's death was just another homicide she could push through. She enjoyed helping with college applications and scholarship essays, and it felt good to realize that there were still people in the world with dreams. But Kayla really didn't need much from her, just a little encouragement and somebody to bounce things off of before she sent them.
When that was done, she looked into the charity work sponsored by the department, but it all smacked of telemarketing and corporate fundraising. Unwilling to let it go, she researched a ridiculous number of volunteer opportunities, discovering a world of rules, requirements and red tape to deal with before anyone could accept the copious amount of free time she could scrape together between cases. She was about to resign herself to the precinct charity phone pool when Kayla's social worker called to tell her about a boy who could use help applying for EMT training, and an older woman working mall security while dreaming of a career in the FBI - both of them good, hard-working people who just happened to be alone in the world.
*
Frank never thought much about art, but his kids took lots of painting classes at a youth center. He went over one day, hoping that looking at their pictures would make it easier to breathe around the guilt and helplessness. When he walked in to the youth center, he was appalled at the crusty paint, the shaggy brushes, the teacher scraping the images off thrift store canvases and painting them white just so the kids would have something to work with.
A quick email to the precinct started a collection; a few weeks later he got to deliver easels, paints, brushes and lots of other stuff. His kids beamed, and for the first time since he'd failed Karen, he beamed right back.
*
John stepped out of the tube station and turned a slow circle, looking for the record store the artist gave him for a landmark. Once he'd spotted it, he headed down the alley and around back, up the staircase and onto the roof of a bike shop. ("Strange, I know" her email had read, "but it really is the best vantage point.") Off to the east an anemic British sunrise was melting into full daylight, but to the north was the mural. It stood at least two stories tall and spanned the width of several storefronts, the red and yellow flowers glowed against the grey London cityscape. A smattering of people stopped to look at it while he watched, and he found himself smiling when a pointing toddler pulled her mother to a halt in front of it, only to be lifted into her arms for a cuddle before they moved on.
His cell phone rang: Jamie.
"Where are you? Karen's painting's all over the news."
"Really?" He said, turning to climb back down to street level.
"Apparently, a copy of the painting turned up today in London. Except it's huge, painted on a building ten stories tall."
"Wow." He hailed a taxi, feeling warm despite the chilly morning air.
"Okay, fine," Jamie groused, "play dumb. But some of us know what's going on here, John. Those buildings have owners. Is somebody going to keep repainting the murals whenever they disappear?"
"Something like that," he admitted, chuckling. "Bye, Jamie."
He opened a text message to the artist. "How about New York next and then Tokyo?"