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Lord have mercy, cos I'm a selfish man.
Original fiction.
~1700 words.
This week on LJ Idol is another intersection. This fiction entry has been written to correspond with the non-fiction entry that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
comedychick has written. You can read hers here. I highly recommend that you do.
This story is another installment of the ongoing serial. It follows directly after the last LJ Idol post.
. . .
They didn't have to cover a lot of distance to get back to the headquarters, but Mattie had never been on a motorcycle before so the trip felt like it lasted for ages. The wind fingered wildly through her hair and coarsely brushed her exposed skin. She shivered and clutched tighter to Chet, burying her cheek into his back and closing her eyes. The sound buffeted around her and she let the landscape create itself in her mind. It was there, somewhere between flying and fainting, that she realized that this little trip into someone else's life could get her killed. She found that, when she really thought about it, this wasn't a possibility that scared her.
Mattie had never given a thought to the notion that she'd live even this long. When people had asked her what she wanted to do when she left her schooling she never had an answer. It was hard to plan for the future when you can't look inside of yourself and find one. She had just been settling into the idea of living for more than a day out when she'd seen Or again. That was when her whole carefully constructed gamble had crashed down around her. Of all the nodes, what was the chance that Or would end up in hers?
The motorcycle slowed to a crawl and Mattie opened her eyes. She realized that the tips of her fingers were numb and forced her hands to relax their grip on Chet's jacket. They were easing their way into what looked like a chop shop. The warehouse rose above them, a waterfall of rust on a sheet of once blue corrugated metal siding.
“We're in the X zone,” she said, trying to hide her trepidation. All that she knew about the X zone she'd heard from a friend of a friend of a friend who knew a guy. It was said to be the last bastion of drug dealers and pimps and prostitutes and thieves. The inhabitants of the X zone were said to have a tentative treatise with the Diviner's Houses. If they didn't bother the Diviner fearing citizens of the inner nodes, the Diviner's didn't bother them. Still, it was not a safe place, and not a place where anyone who walked the path should be found.
“What better place to hide than somewhere where people don't want to look?” Chet pulled in to the far wall of the high ceilinged garage. The other rider pulled up beside them and Chet pushed a button on the handle of his motorcycle. The door started to slowly close behind them.
Mattie hopped off and ran around to help Maynard off his bike. His eyes were open and he was no longer sweating. A little color had started to return to his cheeks. At least he didn't appear to be in as much pain as he had been. He gingerly swung his leg around to dismount and wrapped his arm around Mattie's shoulder to steady himself.
Once the garage door was all the way down Chet made his way around the car parts and piles of scrap metal to a small, dirty metal door at the side of the shop. “Over here,” he said, and punched out a number on the small pad by the door knob. Mattie helped Maynard over to where the two riders stood, but stayed back from them by several places. “No, closer,” Chet said.
Mattie and Maynard moved in close and, without warning, the concrete below them began to sink down into the ground. Mattie gasped and grabbed onto the Maynard's waist. She wasn't sure who was holding who up anymore.
“Look,” Maynard whispered. The area that opened up below them was bright and clean and orderly, exactly the opposite of the dangerous clutter they were slowly leaving behind. Mattie tried not to gawk, but she'd never seen anything like it before.
When they reached the floor the other rider strode off without saying anything. Chet gently pushed Mattie and Maynard forward so the lift could go back up. He unbuckled his helmet and pulled it away from his head. He gripped it by the chin and let the straps dangle down toward the ground. “Please follow me.”
Chet marched off down a corridor to their right and Maynard and Mattie shuffled behind. “I don't know how I feel about this,” Maynard said quietly. “We don't know these people at all.”
“But they saved you,” Mattie said. She was looking in the windows of rooms as they passed by. Most of them were empty and dark.
“What if they only saved me because of you?”
“You can't prove that that means they're malicious.” She slowed her step a little, widening the distance between them and Chet. “Besides, he knew to come find us.”
“And how do you think they did that?”
“Tracking device,” Chet said. He was waiting for them by an open door at the end of the corridor. “Or placed a tracking device on you when she was with you. It was there to make sure that we'd know if your cab was diverted.”
“Lucky save,” Maynard mumbled.
“Luck had nothing to do with it, I assure you.” Or came around the door into view and stood next to Chet. She had changed out of her black peacoat and was now wearing a white lab coat. “Mattie, Maynard, good to see you in one piece.”
“Just barely,” Maynard said, and patted his side.
“I heard you put up quite the fight. I am in debt to you for keeping Mattie safe.”
“It's what friends are for.” Maynard hugged Mattie closer.
Or looked him up and down, but her expression remained impassive. “Quite,” she said. “I need you to go to the clinic so that we can finish healing your wound. Mattie will stay here with me.”
“It's not so bad. I can stay with her if-”
“You'll do no such thing. Chet,” Or said. Chet nodded at her and headed down the hallway, back the way they had come. He grabbed Maynard's elbow as he passed and pulled him away from Mattie.
Without Maynard pressed against her Mattie suddenly felt cold and small. It was how she had felt that night on the steps of the Diviner's House. Or's eyes were just as bored and impassive as they'd been then. There was nothing in them of the frustration and fight that Mattie had seen an hour earlier at her apartment.
“Do come in and make yourself comfortable,” Or said, and with that she disappeared into the room.
Mattie could feel the hair on her skin starting to stand on end, and there was a small twinge in her stomach. She took a few deep breaths before following after Or. There were several tall, long tables in the room with a row of stools at each one. It looked a lot like the lab Mattie had studied the sciences in when she was at school. Or pulled the door closed and then turned to watch as Mattie chose a stool at the very end of one of the tables and hopped up onto it.
It was quiet between them for a number of minutes, the type of absolute quiet that Mattie had never encountered before. She felt it pushing up against her on all sides as if the white space between them was physical. As if time was a net she'd managed to become trapped in.
“You're a curious creature,” Or said finally.
“Curious?” Mattie said.
“Yes. You have almost no regard for your own well being.”
“Better to die young than not at all.”
Or smiled at that, and it made Mattie feel lighter, like she could breathe again. “You use the Diviner's words in blasphemous ways, you know.”
“I didn't think blasphemy was a thing that would concern you.”
“It's not, in and of itself,” Or said. “But as a common trait I find it interesting. Especially considering your markings.”
Mattie expected her to ask about the tattoos again, but instead Or simply sat herself on a stool across the table from Mattie and pulled a pen and a small notepad out of her pocket. “Why did you do what I said?” she asked. “Why did you come with me?”
“Maynard was hurt. I was trying not to get hurt myself. You seemed to have the only solution.”
“But Maynard was shot because of me. If I hadn't been there you would both still be safely burrowed in your sheets right now.”
“Do you wonder what would have happened if you hadn't shown up?” Mattie said.
Or arched an eyebrow. “Do you?”
Over the last several years Mattie had taken to looking at all question as if they had two answers. She either lived or she died. She either performed a task or she didn't. The final answer wasn't nearly as important as the fact that every answer was the final conclusion of a set of choices that splintered off impossibly in all directions as she made them. At the outset any action had a 50/50 outcome, but down the road choices became more or less likely to turn up at all depending on whether any particular coin landed on heads or tales.
The fact was that Mattie couldn't have landed herself in this room with Or if she'd flipped a hundred coins a hundred times, and that excited her more than the idea that she might simply go through life carrying out a set of predictable proscribed outcomes. Or tipped the balance. Death was no longer defined by the 50/50 chance that she might not wake up in the morning. It was closer now. She'd seen it in the eyes of the man with the gun and felt it in the vibration from the motorcycle's engine. She, Mattie, could die soon because of a choice she'd made. It was such a freeing feeling that she didn't know what else to do but give in to it.
“No,” she said, and Or scribbled something down onto her notepad.
This continuation of ridiculous fiction was written for Topic 22: Playing the Odds at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
therealljidol. All comments and questions are welcome.
~1700 words.
This week on LJ Idol is another intersection. This fiction entry has been written to correspond with the non-fiction entry that
comedychick has written. You can read hers here. I highly recommend that you do.This story is another installment of the ongoing serial. It follows directly after the last LJ Idol post.
. . .
They didn't have to cover a lot of distance to get back to the headquarters, but Mattie had never been on a motorcycle before so the trip felt like it lasted for ages. The wind fingered wildly through her hair and coarsely brushed her exposed skin. She shivered and clutched tighter to Chet, burying her cheek into his back and closing her eyes. The sound buffeted around her and she let the landscape create itself in her mind. It was there, somewhere between flying and fainting, that she realized that this little trip into someone else's life could get her killed. She found that, when she really thought about it, this wasn't a possibility that scared her.
Mattie had never given a thought to the notion that she'd live even this long. When people had asked her what she wanted to do when she left her schooling she never had an answer. It was hard to plan for the future when you can't look inside of yourself and find one. She had just been settling into the idea of living for more than a day out when she'd seen Or again. That was when her whole carefully constructed gamble had crashed down around her. Of all the nodes, what was the chance that Or would end up in hers?
The motorcycle slowed to a crawl and Mattie opened her eyes. She realized that the tips of her fingers were numb and forced her hands to relax their grip on Chet's jacket. They were easing their way into what looked like a chop shop. The warehouse rose above them, a waterfall of rust on a sheet of once blue corrugated metal siding.
“We're in the X zone,” she said, trying to hide her trepidation. All that she knew about the X zone she'd heard from a friend of a friend of a friend who knew a guy. It was said to be the last bastion of drug dealers and pimps and prostitutes and thieves. The inhabitants of the X zone were said to have a tentative treatise with the Diviner's Houses. If they didn't bother the Diviner fearing citizens of the inner nodes, the Diviner's didn't bother them. Still, it was not a safe place, and not a place where anyone who walked the path should be found.
“What better place to hide than somewhere where people don't want to look?” Chet pulled in to the far wall of the high ceilinged garage. The other rider pulled up beside them and Chet pushed a button on the handle of his motorcycle. The door started to slowly close behind them.
Mattie hopped off and ran around to help Maynard off his bike. His eyes were open and he was no longer sweating. A little color had started to return to his cheeks. At least he didn't appear to be in as much pain as he had been. He gingerly swung his leg around to dismount and wrapped his arm around Mattie's shoulder to steady himself.
Once the garage door was all the way down Chet made his way around the car parts and piles of scrap metal to a small, dirty metal door at the side of the shop. “Over here,” he said, and punched out a number on the small pad by the door knob. Mattie helped Maynard over to where the two riders stood, but stayed back from them by several places. “No, closer,” Chet said.
Mattie and Maynard moved in close and, without warning, the concrete below them began to sink down into the ground. Mattie gasped and grabbed onto the Maynard's waist. She wasn't sure who was holding who up anymore.
“Look,” Maynard whispered. The area that opened up below them was bright and clean and orderly, exactly the opposite of the dangerous clutter they were slowly leaving behind. Mattie tried not to gawk, but she'd never seen anything like it before.
When they reached the floor the other rider strode off without saying anything. Chet gently pushed Mattie and Maynard forward so the lift could go back up. He unbuckled his helmet and pulled it away from his head. He gripped it by the chin and let the straps dangle down toward the ground. “Please follow me.”
Chet marched off down a corridor to their right and Maynard and Mattie shuffled behind. “I don't know how I feel about this,” Maynard said quietly. “We don't know these people at all.”
“But they saved you,” Mattie said. She was looking in the windows of rooms as they passed by. Most of them were empty and dark.
“What if they only saved me because of you?”
“You can't prove that that means they're malicious.” She slowed her step a little, widening the distance between them and Chet. “Besides, he knew to come find us.”
“And how do you think they did that?”
“Tracking device,” Chet said. He was waiting for them by an open door at the end of the corridor. “Or placed a tracking device on you when she was with you. It was there to make sure that we'd know if your cab was diverted.”
“Lucky save,” Maynard mumbled.
“Luck had nothing to do with it, I assure you.” Or came around the door into view and stood next to Chet. She had changed out of her black peacoat and was now wearing a white lab coat. “Mattie, Maynard, good to see you in one piece.”
“Just barely,” Maynard said, and patted his side.
“I heard you put up quite the fight. I am in debt to you for keeping Mattie safe.”
“It's what friends are for.” Maynard hugged Mattie closer.
Or looked him up and down, but her expression remained impassive. “Quite,” she said. “I need you to go to the clinic so that we can finish healing your wound. Mattie will stay here with me.”
“It's not so bad. I can stay with her if-”
“You'll do no such thing. Chet,” Or said. Chet nodded at her and headed down the hallway, back the way they had come. He grabbed Maynard's elbow as he passed and pulled him away from Mattie.
Without Maynard pressed against her Mattie suddenly felt cold and small. It was how she had felt that night on the steps of the Diviner's House. Or's eyes were just as bored and impassive as they'd been then. There was nothing in them of the frustration and fight that Mattie had seen an hour earlier at her apartment.
“Do come in and make yourself comfortable,” Or said, and with that she disappeared into the room.
Mattie could feel the hair on her skin starting to stand on end, and there was a small twinge in her stomach. She took a few deep breaths before following after Or. There were several tall, long tables in the room with a row of stools at each one. It looked a lot like the lab Mattie had studied the sciences in when she was at school. Or pulled the door closed and then turned to watch as Mattie chose a stool at the very end of one of the tables and hopped up onto it.
It was quiet between them for a number of minutes, the type of absolute quiet that Mattie had never encountered before. She felt it pushing up against her on all sides as if the white space between them was physical. As if time was a net she'd managed to become trapped in.
“You're a curious creature,” Or said finally.
“Curious?” Mattie said.
“Yes. You have almost no regard for your own well being.”
“Better to die young than not at all.”
Or smiled at that, and it made Mattie feel lighter, like she could breathe again. “You use the Diviner's words in blasphemous ways, you know.”
“I didn't think blasphemy was a thing that would concern you.”
“It's not, in and of itself,” Or said. “But as a common trait I find it interesting. Especially considering your markings.”
Mattie expected her to ask about the tattoos again, but instead Or simply sat herself on a stool across the table from Mattie and pulled a pen and a small notepad out of her pocket. “Why did you do what I said?” she asked. “Why did you come with me?”
“Maynard was hurt. I was trying not to get hurt myself. You seemed to have the only solution.”
“But Maynard was shot because of me. If I hadn't been there you would both still be safely burrowed in your sheets right now.”
“Do you wonder what would have happened if you hadn't shown up?” Mattie said.
Or arched an eyebrow. “Do you?”
Over the last several years Mattie had taken to looking at all question as if they had two answers. She either lived or she died. She either performed a task or she didn't. The final answer wasn't nearly as important as the fact that every answer was the final conclusion of a set of choices that splintered off impossibly in all directions as she made them. At the outset any action had a 50/50 outcome, but down the road choices became more or less likely to turn up at all depending on whether any particular coin landed on heads or tales.
The fact was that Mattie couldn't have landed herself in this room with Or if she'd flipped a hundred coins a hundred times, and that excited her more than the idea that she might simply go through life carrying out a set of predictable proscribed outcomes. Or tipped the balance. Death was no longer defined by the 50/50 chance that she might not wake up in the morning. It was closer now. She'd seen it in the eyes of the man with the gun and felt it in the vibration from the motorcycle's engine. She, Mattie, could die soon because of a choice she'd made. It was such a freeing feeling that she didn't know what else to do but give in to it.
“No,” she said, and Or scribbled something down onto her notepad.
This continuation of ridiculous fiction was written for Topic 22: Playing the Odds at
therealljidol. All comments and questions are welcome.