The Prisoner Of Shalott
By M Alford
Begun September 2008, finished November 2008
Obligatory disclaimer: This is a fanfiction for entertainment purposes. No copyright infringement is intended.
Chapter Nine: The Curse Is Come
So he flew back to the apartment. He phased through the stairs, through the door. She was laying there, completely used up, an empty glass in her hand, her magic monitor darkened. Her eyes were dull, her face blank. “...This one’s a goner...” Bloom’s own voice issued from the eerie flickering television, proclaiming a patient dead on an episode of the hospital drama he’d starred in, Crisis Outpost. “...She’s completely lost now... pupils fixed and dilated... nothing we did could have saved her.”
“You did everything you could do, doctor.” That was the voice of the heavily-hairsprayed guest nurse that week, pumping Bloom’s ego.
Bloom’s voice came from the television speakers in a woeful sigh. “Everything except save my patient.” He turned his face away from the extra laying under the white sheet, in an exaggerated expression of self-doubt. “Why... why can’t I be God? Why, Deborah, why??”
The blonde guest starlet playing Nurse Deborah that week turned her perfectly sculpted face up toward his. “And why can’t you see how much I love you, Dr. Stuart??” she entreated. And after the length of a beat sanctioned by the League of Appropriate Dramatic Pauses, the actress playing Nurse Debbie and Bloom playing Dr. Stuart fell into each other’s arms, kissing and moaning and making out for the camera, over strains of new wave synth and the fake corpse laying on the gurney.
In the ghostly illumination from the drama on the television, Bloom jumped onto the Goddess’ bed--back where he belonged.
She gasped, the noise as loud as a shriek from a ghost.
Her eyes widened under the invasion, the flood of images blooming to life behind her mind’s eyes. The glass slipped from her hand onto the floor, cracked from side to side.
As if prodded by invisible hands, she sat up, turned toward the dead monitor. She lunged out of bed as if pulled from her repose. She sat down hard in the seat as if forced. Her numb fingers switched the machine on, lit it up. Her magic mirror sprung to life, ready to show her all the gory glory of her sickest fancies.
She held up her hands, her nub-nailed chapped fingers, staring at them as if she had never seen them before. She watched in wide-eyed awe as they dropped to the keys, taking on a life all their own. Her fingers danced over the keys like white, phantasmagoric lovers, as the TV blinked on forgotten; as her eyes shone in the monitor’s light, hypnotized by the tale. She barely stopped to breathe, to spell-check, to even read what her own hands were writing.
He wasn’t controlling her. He held firm to his promise not to write the goddamn thing for her; he was careful to avoid changing her plot or her scenes to suit his own whims. Instead he focused his energies on pushing her--relentlessly. Feverish hours passed uncounted by the smiling cat clock, with him firmly ensconced; feeding her fire, fueling her fantasy. He swam through her blood, crackled between her synapses, gooseprickled her skin. She envisioned, and he obeyed; acting out her every desire, just as if he was playing a role on a real movie set. Thousands of words spilled onto the white screen in an almost orgiastic dance of conception... of creation. Hour by hour, he moved inside her.
They were shot at several times, chased by more than one car as they wheeled madly along the freeway, trying to find anywhere to shelter for the night. It reminded him of that movie Mad Max, where the whole world was in anarchy and they had to drive through warzones just to survive.
It was clear to them both now that Navarro had the power to make their lives pure hell, for however long they wanted to pursue this. It was obvious to them both that they were only prolonging the inevitable. Yet they survived, would survive, as long as they possessed that ring. The same ring that Navarro would gladly kill them for was the one thing that ensured their continued survival.
Days went by, and the two lovers were shot at, threatened, stalked, ambushed. They escaped with their lives over and over--just barely. He rolled the car in Nevada, and almost broke his wrist. She was gouged by a punk’s knife in Las Vegas; they had to spend the night in hospital while she got stitches, immediately after which she and Bloom beat a hasty retreat. They slept in cars, in campgrounds, under bridges. They couldn’t play this game forever. Navarro could play it indefinitely.
In the ironically-named city of Truth Or Consequences in New Mexico, they were cornered by Navarro’s men in black--Tall Boy, Goatee, and Baldie--the three minions to whom the unlucky, now-fingerless punk had tried to sell the diamond. The third man in black, Baldie, was now carrying his left arm in a sling, having been shot by the redhead back in the parking garage. The two uninjured MIBs had not forgotten that. “Our boss has a proposition for you,” the tall, skinny spokesman of the group said, directing his statement towards Bloom. He held out a simple cell phone. To Bloom. Tall Boy was all but leaning away from her.
It was funny. Bloom was nervous of the eerie dark men, but they were even more nervous of the redhead. Carefully he edged forward--and snatched the phone out of Tall Boy’s hand, anticipating an ambush. But after delivering his message Tall Boy turned on heel, followed by Goatee and the bandaged Baldie. The three walked away without a fight.
Bloom looked down at the small phone in his hand as it rang musically. Flipping it open, casting the redhead a glance, he held it to his ear. “I’m here.”
“You sound tired.” Navarro’s dark, smooth voice came over the line. “How long are you going to keep this up?”
“As long as you keep chasing along after us.”
“Put a rabbit in front of a dog, you have to expect the dog to give chase. Eventually, the rabbit runs down.”
“Yeah, well... eventually the dog has to stop and take a crap.” Bloom knew it was a stupid thing to say, but he was fed up with this cat-and-mouse bullshit.
The voice on the other end of the line did not fail to notice. “Mr. Bloom, I’m sure you’re as sick and tired of this as I am. Be a man. Tell your pussy to give you my ring so we can get this over with.”
The redhead took the phone out of Bloom’s hand. “Mr. Navarro. Pussy here. I’d just as soon not part with my ring, nor my tounge for that matter. There’s the wee kink of our instant deaths standing in the way of any threat, or any deal, you can make.”
“There’s an easy way to solve that. I can offer you immunity. How about if I tell you that if you give me what I want, I’ll give you your freedom.”
“You canna promise anything like that.”
“You can’t afford to turn me down. Think about it. How many years are you going to live under bridges? Eat out of garbage cans? How long do you think you can duck in and out of emergency rooms, patching up what I’ll keep doing to you?”
Bloom was listening over the redhead’s shoulder. He looked sideways, glancing at her face. Her green eyes were hard, but she knew the truth in the boss’s words. She didn’t answer him.
Bloom took the phone out of her hand. “We want the first passage back to Scotland, for both of us,” he told Navarro. “We wanna go back where we came from, cut all ties with you. We’ll stay out of your backyard, you stay out of ours. That’s our terms. What say you?”
“Come to Los Angeles. Call me when you get here. I’ll tell you where we’ll meet. You’ll give me the ring. And I’ll let you go. No questions asked. I’ll let you two run as far and as fast as you possibly can.” And then there was an empty, ominous silence.
“What about our passage back?” Bloom insisted.
More silence. “First trip to Scotland. Those were your words. So be it.” There was the muted sound of typing. “The next flight to Lockerbie leaves LAX at 6:45 p.m. tomorrow evening. I’ve booked two seats.”
“--That’s impossible! We canna make it to L.A. in that amount of time...!”
“The clock is ticking, Mr. Bloom. I’ll be looking forward to your call.” And the line went dead.
Bloom snapped the phone shut, aggravated. He gazed down at her. “Well, there it is, then,” he sighed.
The redhead did not look very hopeful. “What makes you think he can’t kill us in Scotland just as easily as he can here?” she wondered.
Bloom shrugged. “Let’s just say I’d feel more confident playing this game on the home field,” he muttered. “We know every hiding place there. Here...” His arm spread wide, indicating the vastness of the country they were now in. “The sheep wants to be secure, he stays in the barn. He doesn’t go running rampant all over the meadow.”
“What is it with you and animal analogies?” The redhead’s voice didn’t quite match her glib crack. “Everything’s an animal to you. I’m a fox, Navarro’s a dog... you’re a sheep. You’ve a regular bestiality fetish, man.”
At least she was trying to joke. Bloom wondered if that was because she had as bad a feeling about Navarro’s so-called proposal as he did. He did not miss the look on her face--he knew what she was thinking. He sighed once again. “I’m sorry,” he said to her. “I know you never wanted to go back there.”
She shrugged, looking down at the ring. “Stop saying you’re sorry about everything. It’s not your fault we’re in this. I’m the one who drove us here.” She rubbed the black diamond; it had become an impromptu stress reliever. “You’re right. I don’t want to go back.”
“Yes, well, we don’t have much of a--”
“And I’m not giving him my ring.”
Bloom knew that tone in her voice. He knew it; he knew it. He drew in a deep, steeling sigh. “Fox... this is our last chance. This is it--this is where this sidewalk ends!”
“So we’ve nothing left to lose.”
“No, but we’ve a shitload to gain! You wanna hang onto that ring, you may as well shoot yourself right now! Save him a bullet!”
“He means to kill us no matter what we do.” Her voice was oddly relaxed, for someone in death’s shadow. So different from Bloom’s state of mind. “You actually trust him to let us leave the country unharmed. You want us to walk right up to him and offer our throats.” She pouted up at him, all sticky red lips and dark-crusted green eyes. “And politely hand him my ring, into the fucking bargain.”
Bloom knew that she was likely just as right as he was. “What do you suggest?” he served back. “You’ve got a better idea, tell me! I’d love to hear it!”
Her green eyes gazed into the distance, as her delicate fingers played idly with the ring. She was thinking of something, but whatever it was, he was not a party to it just yet.
##
Bloom and the redhead entered the jewelry store, in a city some miles east of Los Angeles. Their scheme was an old one, possibly the moldiest in the book, but it was all they could come up with on such short notice. They stepped up to the counter, furtively glancing around just in case any prying eyes were watching. “Can I help you?” asked the clerk.
Bloom gave him what he hoped was an easy, wide grin. “Aye, the little woman lost her engagement ring, if you can believe that.” He cast a glance over at the redhead, who tried to affect a sheepish, sweet smile. “Luckily, we’ve got a photo of the thing, and what we’re wondering is, what kind of replica can you make from that?” He handed the crumpled magazine photo over.
“Ever hear of origami?” The clerk, a beanpole nerd with a serious overbite, looked up at them with a grin that showed all his crooked teeth.
Bloom blinked. “...what?”
The clerk fiddled with the photo between his long, skinny fingers. “If I fold it like this, and like this...”
Oh, Christ. Bloom did his best to grin and bear it. “Funny!” he exulted, sardonically. “Look here fox, we came on open-mic night!” he quipped to the redhead. Trying hard to affect a businesslike tone, he tapped the photo again. “Seriously now... can you make a replica of this? And will it take very much time?”
“We’re on our way to Las Vegas,” the redhead chipped in. “We're on honeymoon.” She tried a grin that looked less friendly than like baring her teeth.
The nerdy clerk cleared his throat, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Well... I know my supervisor is on vacation this week... and our cutter generally takes the orders from him...” He was taking an excruciatingly long time thinking out loud. “...but... if you don’t mind like, waiting, like, ten minutes... I can bring him out here and he can maybe show you some rocks that might come pretty close to this--” He peered at the photo. “--what is that, a onyx?”
The two exchanged a glance. “Cubic zirconia, actually,” answered the redhead.
The clerk looked impressed. “Wow, a black diamond! You know... there was a real black diamond stolen from some huge company not too long ago. A real huge one.”
“I had no idea.”
“Yeah. It’s been all over the news.” He looked up at them. “...Did you want to see the cutter, like, now?...”
“We’d love to see the cutter.” The redhead’s voice was getting tighter and tighter. “Like, now.”
The nerd finally quit hemming and hawing and disappeared to the rear of the jewelry store. The redhead stepped back, hooking Bloom’s arm. “I’ve a bad feeling,” she muttered to him. “That kid knows--”
“He doesn’t know jack shite about anything.”
“If he doesn’t, that cutter’s bound to!”
“Look, this is the last place before Los Angeles that might do it! It’s either here or take our chances finding one in--”
Bloom shut up hurriedly as the kid reappeared from the back--with no cutter. “Wow, uh, he totally thinks he’s got a rock that looks exactly like this!” said the clerk, his voice cracking. He was talking a lot faster now. “Uh, would you mind like, stepping back to our back room? Um, he totally wants to size your finger, he’s almost sure he can order a setting that looks just like this one.” He rattled the photo; nervously, Bloom thought.
The redhead didn’t move. “Why can’t he just come out here to size my finger?” she asked coldly.
The clerk was a terrible liar. “Oh, well, see, he wants to, like, show you the rock he has in mind before he gets to work... cutting it.”
“He can show us his rocks out here just as well as he can back there.” Bloom snapped the photo out of the clerk’s hand. “Thanks just the same. Don’t think I want to be seein’ his rocks.” He finally let the redhead’s arm tug him toward the front door.
“Hold it!!” The nerd’s other arm, which had been hidden behind his back, suddenly shot up. He was holding... a taser. One of those that shot from a distance. He leveled it at the pair. “Just hold it right there, dude!”
Bloom and the redhead froze. Then Bloom uttered a derisive laugh. “Oh-ho, you have got to be shitting me! You don’t really expect to stop us with that!”
The clerk had assumed a singularly ridiculous-looking showdown/cowboy stance. “I know you’re the one that stole the Kneckeburrough diamond!” he shouted triumphantly, as if he was very clever for figuring it out. “It’s all over the news, that thing’s worth like a motherload!”
The redhead stepped up. “Just why would we be asking you to make a duplicate if we already had the real ring?” she posed the question quietly.
That actually seemed to throw the not-so-bright clerk. But he regrouped fairly quickly. “So... so you can sell it to someone, and still have it... to sell to someone else! Yeah, that’s it! Bait and switch! See, I know those tricks too!”
“Clearly.” The redhead was becoming amused now. “Do you know this one?” She pulled out her own gun, which was a hell of a lot more scary-looking than a taser. She didn’t even pause, just fired off a shot at the clerk.
But she missed. And the shot startled the clerk so terribly that he accidentally fired the taser at her. The electrical prongs didn’t quite reach their target; they only brushed the barrel of the redhead’s gun. She saw it coming just in time and she half-dropped, half-threw her gun at the prongs before they could shock her.
That was almost as bad a mistake, however. The electrical current carried through the gun--and the remaining bullet inside the chamber. Bloom grabbed the redhead’s arm and threw her roughly behind a stock shelf just in time before the weapon exploded, spewing shrapnel through every available surface.
The clerk was screaming his head off, panicking. Bloom’s left shoulder was gouged, but it was only a flesh wound. He helped the redhead get up off the store floor. “You all right??” he checked with her, only momentarily, before pulling her out the front door of the store. They ran down the street hand in hand, looking for someplace to duck and hide. Certainly the store’s security system had been tripped by a bullet exploding in its interior. The police were probably on their way already. He pulled her down an alleyway, allowing himself to lean against the dirty wall.
The redhead’s eyes widened at the gash on his shoulder. “You’re bleeding,” she rasped.
Bloom’s shoulder stung, but it wasn’t as bad as it looked. “I’m fine,” he promised. “How about you, you okay?” She nodded her head. “Damn lucky,” he breathed, his fingers searching her pale skin. “That damn thing exploded right in front of you!...”
The redhead was breathing hard. “We’ll never get this ring duplicated now,” she realized. She was trying haphazardly to clean away some of his blood with the edge of his shirt. “That little punk’ll be on the nightly fucking news blabbing all about it within the half-hour.”
Bloom straightened against the wall, catching his breath as well. “It was a long shot anyway,” he huffed. “Navarro wouldnna been fooled by a cheap dime-store replica like that. He’d have killed us anyway, and then he’d have lifted the real ring off our cold dead corpses!”
“Only if we were stupid enough to go meet him.” Her voice was grimly resolved.
“Just where else are we gonna go, fox? How do we get out of the country by ourselves?”
But for once, she looked as though she had no more ideas. She sighed, shrugging. “Get on a plane. Sound as American as possible.” She snickered. “Why, ah do decleah Rhett, this Californy heat done given me the vap-ahs.”
Bloom couldn’t help grinning through the pain, at his little minx trying and failing to adapt a Scarlett O’Hara Southern accent. “Woll, don’t you worry none, lil’ lady, we’ll be, ah say we’ll be a-soakin’ up that Glasgow rain in no time,” he drawled back, in his worst cowboy movie accent.
She giggled. “Who was that supposed to be? Foghorn Leghorn??”
He shook his head weakly. “Supposed to be John Wayne...” He slumped against the wall.
The redhead’s brow creased in worry. “This gash won’t stop bleeding. You need a hospital.”
“Fuck the hospital.” Bloom’s teeth gritted as he fought a wave of dizziness. He and she tore off the bottom of his tee shirt all the way round, fashioning it into a makeshift tourniquet. “We go there, we’ll be fuckin’ cuffed and tasered before they fucking check us into the fucking waiting room. I’ll walk it off.” He stood straighter, watching as she tightened the rag around his bicep. “Tighter... mmm, yes lass, tighter...” He suffered a smile.
“Oh, you like that, do you?” She smiled grimly as she followed his order, tugging the rag tight. She gazed up into his eyes, her brief humor dampened. For the first time, even though she said she never would, she looked honestly sorry.
“I love you for this,” her low purring voice told him in all sincerity.
He knew she wanted to hear it back. Damn it, he did love her too, and he still couldn’t say it. Instead he did the next best thing; he wrapped his good arm around her waist and pulled her in for a hard, sensual kiss. He leaned back against the brick wall again, pulling her flush against him, as they kissed each other ferociously.
They were halted only by the noise of oncoming police sirens. Pulling herself away, she tugged him along into the street, and they both broke into a frantic run.
##
“That’s enough of that,” her soft voice came early in the morning hours.
“Don’t stop.” Bloom whispered hoarsely into the Goddess’ ear. “Not now... we’re almost there.” He keenly wanted to watch her as she finished. He wanted to see how she was going to save the two lovers from their gruesome fate.
But she shook her head, wearily. “I’ve gotta go to work,” she objected weakly. She shut off the computer, the light of the screen going dark. She pushed herself away from the desk, from the overheated leather chair.
Bloom blinked, realizing for the first time that the apartment window was lit by cold morning light once again. “Oh... yeah... I guess you do,” he muttered. “Well... you’ve sent it to yourself, right? We’ll start again when you get to work. C’mon, we can sew this up today, if we keep at it.”
The Goddess only blinked wearily. She gathered up her purse, her coat, moved out the door as if in a trance. Bloom followed the whole way, on her back like a Secret Service agent on the President.
They drove to work under a half-overcast sky, the sunrise ripping through the dark purplish clouds with icy yellow blades. They drove into the lot of the Gazette, and he watched her shut off the engine, shuddering in the cold air under the thought of another day sacrificed to the machine. He followed her as she emerged from her door, limped across the uneven pavement, entered the front door, and approached the front desk.
“What are you doing here?”
That was the receptionist--the one who’d been running at the mouth on the phone to all her friends that one day as Bloom had sat there, watching the Goddess work. She was sitting behind the desk now, looking up with a hint of detached confusion, as the Goddess approached the front desk.
The Goddess blinked, taken off guard. “...I work here,” she answered hesitantly.
“Not anymore you don’t.” The receptionist’s tone was imperious. “You didn’t check your e-mail. You’re no longer needed. Go home. We don’t need you today.”
The Goddess couldn’t sort this out. “I’m obits. I have to be here.”
“No you don’t. You’ve been fired. Take my word for it.”
“Hey, what is your problem, anyway??” Bloom asked the receptionist, incredulous. “Who are you, that you can sit there on your ass and get paid to do nothing? Who are you to tell her she’s fired? You’re just the receptionist!”
But the receptionist only gave the Goddess a simpering smile. “Listen honey--they found those--things you’ve been writing, on the company computer. On the company time. You’ve been writing love letters or whatever they are when you should have been working. Your supervisor was very upset. The paper is barely getting by as it is without supporting... bottom-feeders.”
“Oh, talk about a bottom-feeder!” Bloom burst out. “You, who chats on the phone every second of the--”
The receptionist hadn’t finished. “There are people working here who have families, little babies to support,” she said smugly. “If the company has to cut people loose, it certainly shouldn’t be those people, do you agree?”
“I have a family!” The Goddess looked stunned.
“Not a husband.”
“Well, no, but I send money to my mom! She’s helpless without me; I need to watch out for her!”
“Well, that’s her problem. Maybe she shouldn’t have had a daughter like you.”
The Goddess’ expression was quickly becoming sharper... darker. “Just what do you mean by that?” she got out, her voice low.
“I mean, people like YOU shouldn’t be surprised when they’re the first ones to be cut from an honest company. One that‘s trying to help out the traditional family. Maybe you ought to take this as a cue from a higher power. Maybe the Lord’s trying to tell you something about your ‘lifestyle choice’.” The receptionist sat back, smugly.
The Goddess’ expression now was beyond angry. Beyond ugly... beyond reining in. “I’m not gay, you bitch.”
“She’s really not.” Bloom, curiously, felt the need to step in. “I can vouch for that--I know you can’t possibly tell here, but if you could see the campful of fellows she’d like to sleep with..."
No one was listening to him. “And even if I was, you can’t, you can’t get people fired on that,” the Goddess continued shakily. “People have rights! What--just ‘cause I didn’t sleep around like half the girls around here, that must mean I’m a queer?? It used to be people respected you if you didn’t get knocked up straight out of high school! You think just ‘cause I don’t have kids, I must not have any responsibilities? That it doesn’t matter that much if I lose my job??”
The elderly receptionist tsked, mouth open. She hadn’t appreciated being called a name. “You’re being hysterical--”
“You’re being a bitch.” The Goddess’ judgment was final. “You--stupid--self-absorbed... you don’t give a damn about anybody except yourself. Not God, not people worse off than you... You think you’re so wonderful, sitting there, passing judgment on me and everybody else... you’re a nothing. NOTHING.”
“Well.” The woman didn’t seem nearly as impressed by this little speech as characters in the Goddess’ book had been. “At least I’m a nothing that has a job.”
Bloom looked over at the Goddess to see her reaction to this. He was startled by the look on her face. There were no tears, no sorrow--nothing he as a man could sympathize with. The Goddess looked scarily like she had that day in the bathroom, glaring down her reflection. Like she would have gladly killed the receptionist, had an implement been handy.
And then--her eyes flickered over. The ornate letter opener was still sitting there on the desk. The same letter opener Bloom had glibly joked about stabbing Chatty Cathy with that one day.
An icy-cold awareness flooded over Bloom. “I was kidding,” he entreated the Goddess, futilely. “I was only kidding, that time. That--that’s not the way to solve this.”
She didn’t hear. Just kept eyeing the small, sharp knife, with that fucking scary look on her face.
Bloom rubbed his hands over his own face, as if trying to scrape off some oily, suffocating film he had accumulated. He remembered the last time he’d pleaded with her to turn from the horrible thing she’d been about to do, on the train overpass. His panic had seemed to sway her then. This time, the look on her face... he knew that she got off on violence. Maybe she didn’t even know it herself... but he knew. Panic would not work this time. She would embrace more panic. He needed to take a different approach. He had to entice her... distract her.
Distract her. That had been the Doc’s answer, back when she’d killed Sonny at the camp. Make her forget how angry she was. Entertain her with a show. Divert her attention.
Hey, it worked before. Bloom stepped very close to her. Leaned toward her ear, at the same time trying not to look at that look on her face. “Listen... foxy... let's go home. Let’s write a scene about this. Let’s just write about killing her; that’ll be so much better.” He tried to affect the lowest, sexiest tone he could, pretending she could hear him. “In fact, forget this--let’s do another shag scene. Wild, depraved, sweaty monkey sex. You and me. All night long... do you hear? But, you've got to walk away and come home with me. Right now." He waited, with more than a little trepidation. “Do you hear me, Goddess??”
Just ignore me, he had said to her not very many nights ago. Just don’t listen to another thing I say. Of all the times for her to decide she had a free will. He’d wanted her to think for herself--but not on this, not like this...
He took a deep, shuddering breath. “OK, fuck it all... Did you hear the one about the phone sex operator who died and went straight to hell? It took her two weeks to realize she wasn’t at work anymore.” It was the corniest dirty joke he knew. It was a last resort.
An explosion of laughter burst from her, unexpectedly. Her face was split by a leering grin, eradicating that other, ugly look she’d had. And then she didn’t stop--she just kept on giggling, seemingly unable to help herself. Her entire body shuddered as she broke down, gripping the counter, cackling like a madwoman. The exhaustion of writing for ten hours straight and of being so abruptly fired caused her jittery laughter to sound more than a little hysterical... a little bit insane. Not unlike a supervillain in a spy movie.
The receptionist clearly thought so too. The smile dropped off her face; she actually backed away, rolling in the desk chair. Bloom thought it entirely possible that the Goddess’ laughter was disturbing the woman more than anything else the Goddess might have done to her.
The startled look on the elderly broad’s face only cracked the Goddess up even more. Giggling and chortling and cackling helplessly, the Goddess pushed away from the front desk, making a dizzy trail for the door. She laughed all the way out to the parking lot. All the way to the car.
Here she finally seemed to get a grip on herself; leaning against the car, practically hyperventilating, still choking out a few gulping chuckles. She got the door open, collapsed in the seat, slammed the door. She bowed her head to the steering wheel, heaving, completely wrung out.
Bloom sat in the passenger seat beside her, extremely relieved, feeling almost uplifted by the near-miss. “Well... good!!” he exclaimed, letting out a breath of relief he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Good riddance, right? I mean who wants to work for a company like that, anyway?? You know--you’ve got grounds for a lawsuit, if that’s really why they canned you; they can’t get away with that shit! I mean jeezus... they let you go for something stupid like that, and they keep on that overpaid, pampered--”
He stopped cheerleading for a second, when he realized her shoulders were shaking as she bent over the wheel. The Goddess was crying. She was--shuddering, involuntary gasps that sounded hardly different from her hysterical laughter a moment ago. It gushed from her like dirty water from a sewer pipe; helpless, uncontained, miserable sobs of pain. Bloom watched, uncomfortable, as the Goddess wept uncontrollably against the wheel of her car. But Bloom didn’t believe she was crying for the loss of her job, even although that was certainly part of the reason. One reason it sounded so similar to her fit of laughter was because the emotion beneath it was the same. She sounded positively... relieved.
Bloom felt absurdly like he ought to comfort her. “You’re all right,” he tried, speaking softly to her. “Look--good riddance. Forget the suit, forget them. You oughta start clean... clean break.” He could not voice how truly relieved he was that she had not given in to the dark impulse she’d had, back there. He had the hunch that her crying jag had something to do with that as well. She had scared herself this time. “...Everything’s gonna be fine!” he tried to tell her.
“No it's not!” she snapped back, just as vehemently as if she'd heard him. She pounded the steering wheel with her fist, weeping in her desperation.
Bloom sighed as her sobs petered out, as she remained hunched over the wheel. “Don’t drive home like this,” he entreated her. “Please... you’re worn out. We shouldn't've worked so hard last night. Hey--let’s go get a latte or something, eh? Do you wanna get a latte? C'mon.”
And this, at last, seemed to sway her. She sat up at last in the seat, rubbing her bloodshot eyes. After a moment’s more of gathering herself, she resignedly turned the key, and shifted the gear.
Thunder grumbled overhead as she pulled into a fast food joint, two doors down from the newspaper. Bloom followed the Goddess inside and sat with her in a booth as she nursed a styrofoam cup of coffee--five sugars, four crèmes. The rain poured down outside--but unlike at camp, it was not so much reflecting the sorrowful mood of the Goddess as it was taunting it. He and she sat in silence, waiting for the rain to stop, for the coffee to sharpen her wits enough for the long ride home. Eventually the deluge petered away and the sun came out, casting a diamond-golden sheen on the wet city streets.
When they entered the apartment, it was almost the time she would have been getting off for lunchtime. She stood there in the apartment, staring emptily at the silent computer. “We’ll do that later,” Bloom rasped against her earlobe. “...Let’s go to bed,” he suggested to her, after a pause.
That seemed to be a good idea to her. She shuffled wearily towards the bed, shedding things as she went; her purse and jacket, her shoes, her blouse, her brassiere. She flopped face-down in the bed, and she fell asleep almost instantly.
Bloom stretched out, laying himself down beside her; no longer afraid. He was exhausted, himself. He never would have thought ghosts needed to sleep.
But sleep he did, and she did; side by side, for almost seventeen hours.
##
The next day should have been a work day, and in lieu of that could have been a writing day. But the Goddess’ internal clock was all askew. It turned out to be a cleaning-house day.
Bloom hovered, watching her as she stripped the living room of every scrap of paper and piece of shit that she hadn’t had the time or energy to clear away before. Four heavy garbage sacks were toted out to the landing. She cleared everything off her desk--including the several photos she’d had of Bloom for inspiration as she worked on the crime story. She placed them in a folder, wedging them under a shelf in her desk. He watched this with concern, wondering what she intended to do with the crime novel she and he had been working on so diligently... that she had lost her job for. “Only one scene left,” he reminded her, cautiously.
She stripped the bed, stuffed her work clothes into a bag, readying it for the laundry room. She washed the pile of dirty dishes in the sink that she had piled up during the writing binge. Bloom watched her as she ticked off one item after another, on some private to-do list. Little by little the apartment began to look, if not cheerier, at least cleaner. At one point she came across the broken, handless Kit-Cat clock sitting upon the DVD cabinet. After a moment's contemplation, the Goddess lifted up the bug-eyed mechanism and transported it into the kitchen. She laid its broken body gently on the counter, jerking open the junk drawer. She tugged forth a stained plastic bag full of parts and tools, dumping the bits and pieces on the countertop. Tinkering and tockering, she succeeded in grafting the severed hands to the stump in the middle of beast's belly. Apparently the pendulum that served as the creature's tail was lost forever. Digging in the drawer, the Goddess found a loose AA battery of unknown strength, and pushed it into the slot on the cat's back. The huge plastic slitted eyes slid toward Bloom, as if seeing him. "See if that gets us anywhere," the Goddess murmured, using her finger to direct the mended hands toward the accurate hour. Then she took it back to the living room, and set it back upon its designated perch on the cabinet, promptly forgetting her mental note to check on it in a while to see if it was keeping time. The sun came out from behind a cloud outdoors, and warm, living light poured in through the little room's window.
At last, (four hours exactly, Bloom was keeping track on the resurrected clock) long after the sun had set on her first day unemployed, the Goddess sat down heavily in the task chair. She switched on her computer, and accessed her e-mail.
The very first e-mail was from Sonny, of all people. He wanted to know why she hadn’t contacted his lawyer. He made a few more cheap threats about copyright and intellectual property and lawsuits that he couldn’t back up. Bloom watched with a grim smile as the Goddess crisply hit the Reply button and typed very curtly: EAT SHIT AND DIE SONNY. Then she hit Send.
At the bottom of twelve solicitative mails for sexual enhancers and work-at-home schemes, the last e-mail was from the dude at the sci-fi convention. Mr. First-Aid, passed-out-at-Grayskull, little-diabetic-brother Boy. His mail was much less snarky than Sonny’s; he only wished to know how the Goddess was doing. Then he wrote:
“You’re on the same fanfic forum I’m on. I’m Sunwarrior71; your TrismCat. You wrote the fic about that Bonkbloom dude’s character on Crisis Outhouse, right? That was awesome. Excellent death scene!!1
Your actually kind of a good writer. Let me know next time you post one. I want to read it.”
“Oh, God,” Bloom sneered, unimpressed. “What an operator!”
But the Goddess didn’t seem to share his opinion. Instead she hit Reply and typed, tentatively:
“Thanks. I didn’t know you were Sunwarrior71! Did you write any more on that one you did about The Mergatroid Men? I was wondering what happened at the end.
I don’t know if I’m going to write any more fanfic. I’m working on a quote-unquote ‘original’ piece now. I can send you some of it, if you want to read it.” And then she hit Send.
Next she miserably went to her own newspaper’s website, ironically, to access the help wanted ads. Nothing looked very promising. She listlessly submitted an e-mail to one place, copied down the phone number of another. Finally, she opened up the word document containing the crime novel.
Now they were in business. Bloom positioned himself around her, waiting for her. “We’re almost done,” he whispered in her ear. “C’mon Goddess. Big finish. Show me everything you’ve got. Impress me.”
The Goddess was not so battered by the last forty-eight hours that she couldn’t be swept away by the Muse, one more time. She lifted her fingers to the keys.
##
At sunset they were standing in the dead center of a coastal freeway. The Pacific Coast Highway. Or one similar.
Bloom and the redhead stood side by side on the freeway, facing down Navarro at last. He was a slick character; bore more than a little resemblance to a young, punked-up Morgan Freeman. Bloom could see who was really underneath that façade, however. He could recognize that smug, hypocritically superior smirk anywhere. He knew that the Mayor was behind most of the evil male characters in the Goddess’ fantasy realm. In a way, the Mayor was just as omnipresent as she was.
Bloom cast his glance around at His Honor’s henchmen--Tomoe, Votoe, Marco, Guido, all the rest. He heard the hammers clicking all around. Saw their numbers. Fifteen to two. Bloom turned his gaze upon the redhead next to him--the Goddess in disguise.
“You promised,” he said to her, feeling almost betrayed.
Across the way, Navarro shrugged as if Bloom had been speaking to him. “Of course I promised! The specifics of our deal were very clear, I thought. You’d get your freedom in exchange for what you gave me!” He held up the ring which Bloom had finally convinced the redhead to hand over, after their last little escapade had failed. Navarro flitted his gaze off toward the horizon, urging them onward. “Go on! Before I change my mind!”
“You bastard,” she snarled at Navarro, right on schedule.
Navarro only smiled cruelly in response. Bloom looked at the redheaded Goddess’ face from the corner of his eye, trying to discern whether she meant to go through with it. This was exactly the way she had staged it, back in the other-realm. All those times she’d cast them as blood-smeared victims of their own folly, clutching each other’s dead bodies as their dead eyes watched their own blood washing away down the road. If she had any plans to end this differently now, her expression now gave no hint of it.
She turned her head, looked up at Bloom. Her countenance expressed only the fear, the betrayal, the grim resignation that two characters in their situation were condemned to feel. Nothing more. Nothing less.
He knew then. Knew how she was going to end the story. Do it your way, he had told her. And she was.
They turned as one, and began walking down the freeway, side by side.
“He’s going to kill us.” She almost sounded as though she were preparing him for her final judgment.
Bloom sighed. “And he knows we know it,” he repeated his line listlessly.
Bloom was familiar with the five stages of grief said to aid people in dealing with death. Anger, depression, denial, acceptance, and... outer Mongolia, he didn’t know; couldn’t remember the fifth one. He knew acceptance was the last. He guessed he had reached that final step. This was exactly what he had wanted her to do--end the story her way. It was only fitting. Only fair.
Of course, it was possible that she was simply doing what he’d told her to, once again. But if she was... better this way than his forced, stupid happy ending.
And perhaps... every person she killed in her stories was one less person she killed in real life. That could only be a good thing.
“Got your 9?” she checked with him.
Bloom nodded. “Hard and ready, lass,” he assured her.
The fifteenth hammer clicked. They stopped in the middle of the road.
He turned his gaze on her. She looked up at him unrepentant, unashamed.
“I know how you feel about me,” she told him.
Bloom nodded. “Good show, Goddess,” he praised her.
They both pulled out their guns. They both turned to face the gang. They both opened fire, facing down a hail of bullets. They both took slugs in the legs, in the chest, in the arms, even as they picked off assassins like tin ducks in a gallery. She went down shooting, and she did not move again.
Bloom howled his rage right on cue as he killed her murderer. Then he searched the crowd of goons for the face of Navarro. The face of the Mayor. He found him; grinning nastily from the midst of the rogues’ gallery.
Bloom scowled as he aimed directly for the evil politician’s chest. “Get out of my body, you bastard,” he snarled, squeezing off a shot.
His bullet struck home, like before. Bloom was not encouraged; he remembered that the shot was only supposed to take Navarro down; should have killed him, but wouldn’t. However... the look on Navarro/the Mayor’s face as he fell... he looked different from before. Almost surprised. He collapsed to the pavement, clutching his bleeding chest. He looked mortally wounded.
Bloom dropped to his knees, again. Dragged himself over to his dead lover, the redhead, laying there in her red-stained dress. “Good show,” he whispered to her once more. He dropped down on her chest, softly kissing her bloodstained, beautiful face.
On the street behind them, the Mayor sat up from where he’d presumably fallen dead. He looked down at where the bullet had struck, and his face creased in consternated annoyance at the messy stains on his shirt. He knew then that the game was up. He could feel himself slipping from this vessel, this body he’d hijacked. He could feel the Goddess’ will being done. “Aw... nuts,” he sighed.
Well, at least he could get one last dig in. He narrowed his gaze at the fallen lovers. Slowly he raised his own gun, getting the back of Bloom, his smug upstart replacement, in his sights.
The Mayor's lips crooked in a sinister smile. “God, I never get tired of this,” he chuckled, pulling the trigger.
Bloom’s chest jerked with the impact of the shot. Dammit, that hurt. The whole fucking world was swimming underneath him this time. He felt his soul slipping... almost as if he was having some out-of-body experience...
But he lay down, resolving to fate, nestling against the redhead’s breast. And this time--unlike last time--they both died smiling.
And in the apartment, the Goddess typed the final nail in their coffins: The End.
NOT the end: Chapter Ten: Mirror ClearFeedback
Obligatory disclaimer: This is a fanfiction for entertainment purposes. No copyright infringement is intended.
