The Swan,
Title: The Swan
Author: splitting_minds
Challenge: None.
Summary: Prison Break. From the swan's POV.
Rating: G.
Word Count: 429
Author Notes: Got a good reception from zsuness. It's my first PB drabble, so play nice.
The swan lay on a table, trying to rest. It had worked longer than anyone that day- indeed it had been mistreated more than any beaten up prisoner covered in fake blood- and now it was forgotten, next to a plate of Indian food that someone had forgotten to eat. The nauseating smell of small yellow things in a pool of brown sauce reached the poor swan as it tried to straighten its beak. Exhausted and at the same time sickened, it set its head back down on the cool plastic of the table and thought back.
“You’ll be a big star,” Paul Scheuring had told the swan after it refused the offer of working on ‘Prison Break.’ “A big, big star.” Who wouldn’t want that? People screaming your name, red carpets, lots of money… and all it had to do was sit there, float on water occasionally and life would be a snap after that.
But of course, it hadn’t turned out like that. The swan worked for long hours on set (there was no swan worker’s union to get him out of there), and had been treated terribly. Wentworth Miller’s hands were always sweaty, so sticky when he held the swan, as though he had purposefully perspired just to make it all the more uncomfortable, and the swan had been thoroughly tortured at least a thousand times more in addition to that. Peter Stormare didn’t seem to think the swan was even alive when his turn came to use it, he’d just grabbed the tail and scrunched it up like it was common toilet paper.
At the end of each day it was a mess. ‘Just because I don’t bleed,’ the swan thought viciously, ‘everyone seems to think I can’t feel pain.’ And besides the physical harassment it had to endure, it also had its dignity ripped apart. Sarah Wayne Callies, who played the pretty woman doctor, didn’t even care to help him whenever she saw him lying around, twisted until he resembled a duck. She just walked on by, like everyone else who thought nothing of the swan- the real star of the show. Most of the plot wouldn’t even be working if the swan hadn’t deigned to appear. Abruzzi would still be cutting off Michael’s toes if he hadn’t been a catalyst in their joining up and everyone would still think of Dominic Purcell as the fat guy from that episode of House that nobody remembered.
Unappreciated, unloved and unthought of, the swan painfully moved away from the Indian food and dreamed of better days.
Author: splitting_minds
Challenge: None.
Summary: Prison Break. From the swan's POV.
Rating: G.
Word Count: 429
Author Notes: Got a good reception from zsuness. It's my first PB drabble, so play nice.
The swan lay on a table, trying to rest. It had worked longer than anyone that day- indeed it had been mistreated more than any beaten up prisoner covered in fake blood- and now it was forgotten, next to a plate of Indian food that someone had forgotten to eat. The nauseating smell of small yellow things in a pool of brown sauce reached the poor swan as it tried to straighten its beak. Exhausted and at the same time sickened, it set its head back down on the cool plastic of the table and thought back.
“You’ll be a big star,” Paul Scheuring had told the swan after it refused the offer of working on ‘Prison Break.’ “A big, big star.” Who wouldn’t want that? People screaming your name, red carpets, lots of money… and all it had to do was sit there, float on water occasionally and life would be a snap after that.
But of course, it hadn’t turned out like that. The swan worked for long hours on set (there was no swan worker’s union to get him out of there), and had been treated terribly. Wentworth Miller’s hands were always sweaty, so sticky when he held the swan, as though he had purposefully perspired just to make it all the more uncomfortable, and the swan had been thoroughly tortured at least a thousand times more in addition to that. Peter Stormare didn’t seem to think the swan was even alive when his turn came to use it, he’d just grabbed the tail and scrunched it up like it was common toilet paper.
At the end of each day it was a mess. ‘Just because I don’t bleed,’ the swan thought viciously, ‘everyone seems to think I can’t feel pain.’ And besides the physical harassment it had to endure, it also had its dignity ripped apart. Sarah Wayne Callies, who played the pretty woman doctor, didn’t even care to help him whenever she saw him lying around, twisted until he resembled a duck. She just walked on by, like everyone else who thought nothing of the swan- the real star of the show. Most of the plot wouldn’t even be working if the swan hadn’t deigned to appear. Abruzzi would still be cutting off Michael’s toes if he hadn’t been a catalyst in their joining up and everyone would still think of Dominic Purcell as the fat guy from that episode of House that nobody remembered.
Unappreciated, unloved and unthought of, the swan painfully moved away from the Indian food and dreamed of better days.