Water (AKA: When killing darlings is too damn hard)
Nov 13, 2022 15:09:33 GMT -5
CJ Phoenix, Holden Ross, and 1 more like this
Post by Downfall on Nov 13, 2022 15:09:33 GMT -5
They sit together in the parked car, overlooking the dojo down the street. The dark man cranes his head out of the window, noting to himself that the heavy, oppressive, smoggy clouds were about to let loose on the city again.
He hazards a glance at his passenger.
Her tabula rasa, blank eyes bore into the dash; Her brow knit with frustration, she asks, for the hundredth time, "Do you know me?"
He smiles at her. His little poison pill. His Trojan horse. The dagger they'd aimed directly at Daniel's heart. "Let's just say, you know me from Adam," he says, amused at his little joke, "We're old friends, you and I."
Unsure, she fiddles with the handle of her purse; a subconscious tick, half-recalled muscle memory of a previous life. But she looks up, wits gathering.
"Will he know me?" As a first indication that she knew what she was being asked to do, it made him start.
He considers her angelic face for a moment. Then, he reaches across, and opens the passenger door. "Why don't you go say hi."
His hands are trembling with rage as he exits the building with a slam, and he reaches into his leather jacket for a crushed pack of smokes; He rarely indulges anymore, except when his nerves are shot.
Could it be true?
Is he, has he always been his own worst enemy? Well, that was obvious... but was it really true that his own self-loathing and subconscious belief that he didn't belong what held him back when he was just close enough?
He asked the darkness with teeth, his shadow. "I'll always be with you, even on your worst days," the smiling darkness had said... but wasn't that, in essence, the problem?
As he lit the cherry of his cig and took a drag, tensed stone shoulder beginning to soften, he breathed out. The leaden clouds were about to burst, washing the dirty gutters of Japantown with a cold, steel rain.
And it came to him, as those bon-mots of wisdom he'd learned in the dojo as a literal child often did, that doubts were temporary, specious things that melted, if you let them, washed away by rain.
So he breathed out.
And when he opened his eyes, there was a blonde woman standing across the street, her long legs locked in a prim posture, both hands nervously gripping the handle of her purse, her demeanor waiting for him to give access and acknowledge.
He squinted, as the rain began to fall on both sides of the street.
".....Michelle?"
He hazards a glance at his passenger.
Her tabula rasa, blank eyes bore into the dash; Her brow knit with frustration, she asks, for the hundredth time, "Do you know me?"
He smiles at her. His little poison pill. His Trojan horse. The dagger they'd aimed directly at Daniel's heart. "Let's just say, you know me from Adam," he says, amused at his little joke, "We're old friends, you and I."
Unsure, she fiddles with the handle of her purse; a subconscious tick, half-recalled muscle memory of a previous life. But she looks up, wits gathering.
"Will he know me?" As a first indication that she knew what she was being asked to do, it made him start.
He considers her angelic face for a moment. Then, he reaches across, and opens the passenger door. "Why don't you go say hi."
His hands are trembling with rage as he exits the building with a slam, and he reaches into his leather jacket for a crushed pack of smokes; He rarely indulges anymore, except when his nerves are shot.
Could it be true?
Is he, has he always been his own worst enemy? Well, that was obvious... but was it really true that his own self-loathing and subconscious belief that he didn't belong what held him back when he was just close enough?
He asked the darkness with teeth, his shadow. "I'll always be with you, even on your worst days," the smiling darkness had said... but wasn't that, in essence, the problem?
As he lit the cherry of his cig and took a drag, tensed stone shoulder beginning to soften, he breathed out. The leaden clouds were about to burst, washing the dirty gutters of Japantown with a cold, steel rain.
And it came to him, as those bon-mots of wisdom he'd learned in the dojo as a literal child often did, that doubts were temporary, specious things that melted, if you let them, washed away by rain.
So he breathed out.
And when he opened his eyes, there was a blonde woman standing across the street, her long legs locked in a prim posture, both hands nervously gripping the handle of her purse, her demeanor waiting for him to give access and acknowledge.
He squinted, as the rain began to fall on both sides of the street.
".....Michelle?"