lieutenantantichrist | [17] [Text/Action for Mahogany] - "Whenever You Get Involved, Someone Gets Hurt."

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[17] [Text/Action for Mahogany] - "Whenever You Get Involved, Someone Gets Hurt."

[ACTION]

[In a low-rent corner of Mahogany, there's a real gym. No mazes, no boss trying to fight you in exchange for something they call a badge, no lackeys, just weight machines and a floor covered with rubber mats, the way it should be. Open twenty-four hours, and this late there's no human in this room but Blake. He's in a sweatsuit, gray in contrast to the brown of the Hitmonlee holding pads for him in its upraised paws. The only sound is his harsh breaths and the thump of his fists on the canvas. His shoulders are hunched like a boxer's. His eyes look straight ahead. Judging from the sweat darkening the back of his shirt, he's been here a while.

On the other side of the room, a Snubbull is sitting on the floor, looking at a Gear that's resting on the mats. A Musharna floats beside her. Fifteen minutes of frustration proved that claws are no good for texting with, but she wants to talk to someone. She really wants to.

She snubs softly, so as not to make her trainer angry. The Musharna's eyes show no reaction, but the buttons on the Gear depress. The text that Steve watches appear seems to be accurate, more or less. The transcription might come strange through the dreaming creature. It's close enough for what she needs.]

[TEXT]

Hello lo low hello

Please talk to me.
I want to talk.
I will tell you my favorite story.
He told it to me when I couldn't sleep. His eyes were closed for some of it but I shook his knee and got to hear the end. Without the end it isn't a story.

Once
upon a time there was a girl. She was poor and alone because her parents were dead, and child services didn't exist then, so she had to go to live with her wicked stepmother and do work for her. Hard work, the kind that nearly killed her, but in time she got used to it.

Then one day she heard the prince was giving a big ball. She asked to go, but her stepmother wouldn't let her. So she tried to run off and get a ride to the castle from a knight, but her wicked stepmother had tailled her, and she found her and dragged her off the horse. While she was going, the wicked stepmother threw the knight a gold coin. He held onto it, and he kept looking at it all the time. He kept thinking about the girl.
He wanted to help her, but he couldn't.

The knight went to the ball, and he was going to kill the prince, but there were too many guards around watching him, so he ran away.

Then the knight went to find the girl and save her. The wicked stepmother grazed him in the neck with an evil spell, but he killed her and all the other guys too, even though he got hurt bad. At first the girl was scared, but then she was free and she was okay. She got to go back home to her real parents. The knight was a hero. All the papers said so.

And everyone lived happily ever after.

..........
..........
..........

Tell me your favorite story.
Voice or video if you can.
The words alone are lonely.

Tell me please.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Blake lets the useless action pull him up and flop him into a sitting position. He tosses his arms over his knees. From a few steps away, Steve watches with inscrutable animal eyes.

His jaw aches, his muscles ache, and he is very tired.

He says dully to the mats] Fine, you win, kid.

What do you want?

Just tell me what's up.

That's all.

_{[And don't you dare refuse.]}

[he doesn't even shake his head. Just stares down at the mat.]

You don't want to know.

I do, actually.

And if you tell me and I change my mind after hearin' it, that's my problem.

_{[Reaching down, she plants a hand on the floor and settles herself back into a sitting position, chin once more on her fist.]}

[he doesn't look at her. Couldn't if he wanted to.]

You ever met a kid named Shaun Mars?

Yeah, I know him.

Sweet kid.

... Did something happen to him?

_{[She tries to keep any alarm out of her voice, lest that... be exactly what he's talking about.]}

[That's the answer he was afraid of. He can't look at her.]

Nah. He's fine.

[Abruptly, he asks something else.]

Do you believe there's such thing as alternate worlds? Not only totally crazy planets like here, but copies of the real one, with one thing different.

_{[She tips her head just slightly to the side. It's not a DIFFICULT answer for her but it is one she has to think about her wording of, just by virtue of the question.]}

... Yeah, I guess.

I mean, I've met different versions of the same person before. It's weird, but... after this place, I think you'd have to be dumb not to think alternate worlds're possible.

[Blake sighs out. It seems to take all the air in him, and everything holding him up. He can't lift his head, or move his eyes from the scuffed pads with their indents of his own feet.

His voice is dull. Just a mechanical process.]

If those exist, I killed his dad.

_{[Heather's silent for a moment.]

[If she'd found this out any other way, she'd have been angry. Furious, even. Ever since she'd watched a pair of uniformed cops stuff her own father into a police car right after being terrorized by a home invader, a wicked contempt for the badge had been cemented in her mind and it had never really gone away.]

[Her fondness for Blake is practically a fluke-- his fleeting similarities to Douglas, his affability when not being grumpy.]

[But well, if he's telling the truth, he's right. That's something she'd rather not have known.]

[At the same time, though... she literally just saw firsthand how worked-up he is about it. How angry and upset. So, with nothing but a slightly-furrowed brow to indicate how troubling the news is, she asks:]}

How'd it happen?

[This time he's expecting the punch to the head.

She's drawing in breath for it now. She'll hit him, and call him a sick lying son of a bitch. You were a murderer all along, and you let me think you were my friend.

Sitting on the floor with the sweat turning cold and clammy on his back, he's ready for it.

Instead, she just asks.]

You wanna know the funny thing? I don't really know.

[His arms are draped over his knees. His bones are leaden.]

...not "ha ha" funny.

[He tries to collect it all and trace it back to the beginning. It takes a while, a few long breaths. Maybe she'll get sick of waiting.]

Eight little boys, drowned in rainwater. All around the same age, all the same way.

I've seen worse. Kids get killed all the time. Nobody likes to talk about it much, but that's life. But they just kept coming.

[The file photos were usually school pictures, kids who'd had a comb dragged through their hair before being shoved in front of one of those flimsy backdrops.]

Shaun Mars would've been the ninth.

[His fingers laced together, making the sore knuckles twinge.]

Then we got the first solid lead we'd had after months of dead ends. It had to be his father. Every single time a kid was killed, he'd had some kind of blackout. Never once had an alibi. Each time he woke up, he'd be clutching origami, just like the dead kids did. He'd lost his other kid in a car accident a while before the murders started. According to everybody around him, he'd lost his mind, too. We had him in custody for a while and he wouldn't even deny it himself, no matter how hard I hit him.

[Usually "I didn't do it" was the refrain they kept up for a while, but Ethan Mars, he hadn't said anything at all. He'd just taken it. There was still satisfaction to it, like there always was, but his silence had made Blake uneasy and confused until rage rose to cover it up, and it'd made him throw in a little extra. Mars hadn't stayed conscious long anyway. He'd already had all those injuries he'd refused to explain.

Blake hears his own voice keep going, like a cassette tape hooked up inside him that was going to keep on until it hit the end with that little snapping click.]

We finally tracked him down again and had him surrounded at an old warehouse. This newspaper hack, she showed up and kept yelling about how he was innocent, and did some crazy damn stunts to break through and get in to him. We had snipers around, but shit, if you've got the balls to motorcycle through a bunch of armed guys for the opportunity to get yourself killed by a serial murderer, you deserve the chance.

It was quiet, for a long time. Waiting.

[The fluorescent lights cast a steady glow, nothing like floodlights smeared by rain.]

Then Mars came out with the newspaper hack on one side and the kid in his arms. First kid picked up by the killer who was ever seen alive again.

[And he'd had nothing to do with it.]

So I told everybody to stand down, and there you go. Happily ever after.

But the kid--

[His eyes close. His hands are gripping tight to each other, short nails digging into the skin. Hard effort makes his voice steady.]

Shaun says different.

_{[Four years ago? She probably would have.]

[But hey, maybe she's done a bit of growing up since she first got here. ... As hard as that could be to believe, given some of the crap she gets up to.]

[As it is, she just listens, an inscrutable look on her face.]

[She's been on the side of viciously hating police for hurting innocent people, but hearing it from the OTHER side is at least a new experience. She's no fan of him beating on this guy if he was innocent, but if he really did think it was to stop a serial killer from murdering children...]}

So you didn't do it, but Shaun says you did.

_{[... Well, she doesn't think Blake's lying. It took too much to get him to talk to begin with, and the fact that he's telling her at all makes it unlikely that he'd spew a bunch of incriminating details before slapping a 'But I remember something different!' disclaimer at the end if he actually didn't. He'd be accusing the kid of lying, not pondering the nature of the Multiverse.]

[She still squints at him, though, brows furrowed. Not just for reasons of suspicion... this is the first time she's heard that Shaun was kidnapped. And it sends an ache of sympathy for the kid through her chest.]}

... I'll be honest, Blake, that sounds horrific. What you did is horrific.

... But I don't think you'd be telling me you told people to stand down if you didn't.

You wouldn't be so torn up about this if you didn't.

For a long time, I thought the kid was hallucinating or something. He'd been standing in a fucking well for four days, starved, tired, scared--

[Steve's face lifts into the air with an alerted "Snub?". She sniffs, and wrinkles her nose at the sharp scent. Blake's nails have drawn blood from his palms. Blake loosens his hands.]

He could've seen anything. That's what I kept telling myself.

But...it didn't sound like a hallucination that went away. He talked like it was a long time ago. Like he'd spent a long time with a dead dad.

If it was a nightmare, he would've woken up by then.

[Horrific. Yeah, that's about the word for it.

He dares to look at Heather out of the corner of his eye.] You believe me?

[He says it like a report, not an argument.] I didn't kill him. He's alive and well. Had his picture in the paper for weeks.

[He breathes in deep, and out again.]

But for that kid he's dead, and it's because of me.

[Suddenly he looks at her, and his voice is full of urgency, imploring.]

How am I supposed to deal with that? How can I man up and take responsibility when I'm not the one who pulled the trigger?

_{[She doesn't look away or avert her eyes. This is far from the worst story she's ever heard, although her heart still aches for Blake and Shaun both. It's hard to know exactly WHAT to make of this clusterfuck, but the only reasonable explanation she can think of is that Blake is onto something with that 'alternate universe' idea he mentioned.]}

... I don't know if I have an answer for you there. I'm sorry.

But yeah.

I believe you.

... I think... I think all you can do is... you know you're not the guy who pulled the trigger.

So keep being the guy who didn't pull the trigger.

Maybe that'll never be enough to make it better for Shaun, but that's what you can do here and now.

Does that make any sense?

[Steve stays near Heather, watching Blake. He reaches over and rests her paw on Heather's leg.

Blake is quiet for a long, long time. There's no sound but the hum of the gym's ventilation, and a napping Musharna's soft sighs of mist.]

Yeah.

Yeah, it does.

[He shakes his head heavily, causing a drop of cold sweat to run down his temple.] It wasn't that I made the wrong choice. I didn't make a choice at all. It's like a fuckin' coin flip, you know? Didn't have anything to do with me. Things fell one way, I killed him. Things fell another, I didn't. Pure fucking luck.

But you're right.

I don't know why I ended up the one I am, but that's...

[His eyes go up to the long bars of the fluorescent lights. Falling steady on him, not on a warehouse door.]

...that's the one I'd rather be.

_{[She feels the touch, and shoots Steve a very small but hopefully reassuring smile before looking back to Blake. The conversation seems to be on the up and up, despite the extremely somber topic. Somber is better than cursing and punching, in any case.]}

... Sometimes that's all it boils down to.

Luck and where you happen to be in one particular split second.

Not all the time, but sometimes.

_{[She doesn't question whether or not Blake is capable of committing the act that Shaun accused him of. Because he probably-- no, fairly obviously is. But being capable of it isn't the same thing as actually doing it. That's a big difference and it has to be there. Otherwise almost everybody on the planet would deserve a prison sentence.]}

Even if that makes everything seem like it doesn't matter, we have to make it matter.

'Cause we're human, see?

That's how we work.

_{[The reassuring-- but not naiive-- smile reappears then, this time a little bit bigger.]}

[Catching that smile straightens Steve's spine.]

Split-seconds, huh.

[Blake's eyes fall down to his hands. He rubs his thumb on a sore knuckle.]

I've done some bad shit, kid. Sometimes in a split second. Sometimes...real planned out.

It was always what somebody had to do. You can't look back and second-guess, or you'll never get anything done.

That's one thing about this place. It has a weird way of giving you time to think.

[There's a steady rhythm of quiet wooshes as his Hitmonlee shadowboxes.

Blake makes a tired, almost amused huff of breath.] Human? Hell, that's one of the nicest things anybody's ever called me.

"Pig," I got that one a lot. But there was this one guy who, honest to fuckin' god, he thought I was the devil. Kept sticking crosses in my face and telling me to [he waves his hand] "return to the abyss" or "reveal my true form," no matter how many times I told him, buddy, this is all I got.

Then one day, instead of a cross, it was a gun.

[He snorts to himself.] Crazy idiot. He was goddamn lucky Jayden didn't shoot him.

[Remembering that day troubles him now, more than he's quite let it before.]

I'm not saying you shouldn't make reparations for the bad stuff, I mean, you should. But you're right about dwelling on it not being helpful. ... Hell, especially if it's something you didn't actually do.

_{[Not that it isn't normal to be torn up about it. Finding out you murdered some kid's dad in an alternate reality is rough.]

[She does, however, break out into a small laugh at his description of the zealot.]}

God, I hate those guys. Total nutjobs.

_{[She says it both because, well, THAT IS MORE OR LESS HOW SHE FEELS ABOUT BIBLE-THUMPERS, but also to show that she doesn't agree with what was said to Blake. He might be a crooked cop, and he might have done bad shit. But he's not the devil.]

[Heather's met the devil.]

[actually she may sort of BE the devil, but she'd rather not think about that]}

I don't know how you make up for this kind of thing. I've never had much use for apologies.

[From the second he first heard about it, he's been doing nothing but denying it. Just kept saying it wasn't him, but how much evidence can you ignore?

Despite himself, the corner of his mouth twitches.] You've run into a couple too, huh. This one had a weird kind of thing about me.

[He's feeling honest enough to add] Probably didn't help that he was the first one I blamed for a lot of shit. Brought the heat down on him a few times.

[Steve lets go of Heather and takes a hesitant step toward her trainer. He nods without quite looking up.]

S'all right, girl.

A couple is putting it lightly, but yeah.

_{[She's not here to talk about HER dirty laundry, so she doesn't elaborate. Maybe someday, though. If only to return the courtesy. Blake's spilled some heavy shit here tonight.]

[Offering Steve an encouraging smile, she nods and sits back.]}

So... I doubt it feels much better after getting that off your chest, but d'you at least not feel like beating the shit out of things?

[Sounds like there's a story there. But, seeing as how his jaw is aching from getting punched into spilling his past, he doesn't much feel like harassing Heather about hers.

For now.]

You know what? Yeah. I wouldn't call it feeling a whole lot better, but...

['Less alone'?]

Less of a liar, maybe.

[The look from Heather reassures the little snubbull, and she gets up the bravery to flop down by her trainer and lean her head against his leg. Carter's hand lowers down until it rests between her ears, and gives a light scratch.

He says quietly] You're a good dog, Steve.

Well, that's somethin', anyway.

_{[With a grunt, she gets to her feet and stretches her arms. The situation seems to be more or less defused.]}

I guess I should probably head back to the hotel.

Yeah. It's something.

[So his secret's out. The thing he's been carrying around all this time. Well, one of them, at least. And if Heather isn't thrilled with him, she isn't horrified, either. Hasn't even called him a monster.

Weird, how that makes breathing easier.

Blake getting to his feet takes a little more time and a lot more grunting. He gives his lower back a smack. He's going to be feeling this in the morning.]

Lemme walk you back. It's late.

[This may not be a place where druggies and muggers exist, but old habits die hard. It feels like the right thing to do.

He calls the Musharna and Hitmonlee back into their balls. The gym seems wide and quiet without them. His eyes travel up to the ceiling. There's one more thing rattling around at the back of his head, and he's been talking plenty tonight already, so why not.]

Weird to find something almost normal in a place like this.

[He slings his gym bag over his shoulder and head toward the door, pausing with his hand by the light switch.]

There's something this lady told me once.

_{[It's something that, in all honesty, she should be horrified over. In all her life, she never really forgave the entire idea of a police force for the way her father had been treated all those years ago, when he defended their home (and her) from an intruder who meant the worst kind of harm. To hear about a cop killing somebody's father... it should flip every single rage switch in her brain.]

[... But the key detail is that the Blake who confessed to the crime isn't the one who actually did it.]

[That part is important to her.]}

Sure.

_{[She won't object to the company. As they head out into the summer night, she shoves her hands into her pockets and takes an easy pace.]}

I've been comin' to places like this for years. Better than running off into the woods and needing my animals to fight for me every time I wanna let off a little steam. You just gotta know where to look for 'em.

Anyway... what's that?

Yeah. [He gingerly touches the sore place on his jaw. Gonna be an impressive bruise.] I get the feeling you've got some practice.

[It's important to him, too.

Fresh air feels good on his face, and the dark is a relief. It feels like he's been under those bright lights forever. Steve walks along beside Heather.

It's a while before he says anything. He sees her face in his head for a while first. Glaring cold and hard at him, like the noise and light of the police station around them didn't exist.]

There was this guy who got hauled in for armed robbery. Nasty shit. He was there for a while, we had a witness who was real sure. Turned out they were wrong. Anyway, it was his wife who came to pick him up.

[Lady headed toward middle age, straight black hair falling around a face that had a lived-in kind of pretty. At least, until her eyes went wide at how her husband clutched his gut and limped. She'd grabbed his arm and turned him away, whispered to him in rapid Spanish. He didn't say much back. Wasn't the real talkative type.

As soon as she'd looked at Blake, he'd told her he came in that way. Resisting arrest. It was routine by then, he'd barely been paying attention to more than getting this done with so he could get the paperwork out of the way, but now he kept remembering the look in her eye as they thought the exact same thing: that she knew he was lying, and they both knew it didn't matter.]

She said something interesting.

[Blake looks up into the sky. Lots of stars. The only constellations he knew were Orion and the Big Dipper, and he could never find them here.]

'There's a special hell for people like you.'

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[action] Ma'am is this the novel you ordered

[action] NO I WANTED ONE WITH A UNICORN IN IT

[action] WELL YOU DON'T GET IT

[action] >8C INSERT A UNICORN INTO THIS STORY IMMEDIATELY

[action] "And then there was a unicorn. It was a jerk."

[action] DID THE UNICORN SHOOT SOMEONE'S DAD

[action] IT IS A KEY SUSPECT

[action] PROSECUTE THAT MOTHERFUCKER TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW

[action] DAMN RIGHT

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