Title: A Willing Suspension of Disbelief
Author: Domino Nermandi
Feedback: I would love it. In whatever way, shape, or
form that I can get it.
Disclaimer: Alias is owned by J.J. Abrams and all his
cohorts and by ABC and all their affiliates, and by
everyone else who I have to blame for never getting
any work done.
Summary: An isolated minute, brought to you courtesy
of a watery grave.
Rating: PG-13
Classification: Drama/Angst
Random Notes: This is a ficlet that may or may not
turn out to be a WIP.
The endless, deathless cold is a shroud around me,
covering my eyes in darkness until the only spot of
light remains where she stands. Her brown eyes my
anchor even as those cruel currents were picking up,
pulling me away. Only fifteen minutes ago this black
trench coat was my flag, my freedom. Now it is only a
cement dream-no protection against the cold, but
weighty enough to drag me to my death.
There is nothing between us now, but she doesn't know
it. She keeps battering the space between us as if
she could change everything, but it's this
invisibility that has been killing both of us from the
beginning. Now it only has form. A single pane of
triple-reinforced plexiglass and one ominous looking
Asian fellow now guarantee our separation instead of
yards and miles of paperwork and regulation.
There is no air left in me. I am looking at her, so
this is not unusual. She takes my breath away. But
this is not natural. This is no beautiful, painful
exhilaration. This is death.
Funny how it doesn't seem different.
I am trying to tell her to look behind her even as I
sink. Even as the currents change under me and I am
swept backwards. Peeling myself out of the new skin I
inhabited for so short a time, I struggle once more to
see her.
Looking up I can only see the faintest shimmer of
green-light stream through from the door even now. I
see it with failing eyes and I try to reach it with
flailing limbs. But barring a miracle, I'm lost.
I am lost.
Being swept away by this new current, no air in my
lungs, no career, no father, no girlfriend, only an
old, tired obsession to see me to my watery grave.
Still I can't bring myself to panic, to despair. I'm
not breathing, and I can't think and everything-inside
and outside my head-is murky, but I'm still to stupid
to understand that I'm about to die.
The current sweeps me away even faster now, tossing
me about like cotton socks on a rinse cycle. Finally
I am hurled up against a grate-I can feel the
crisscrossed metal digging into my back against the
thin mesh shirt that is now my only cover. I stay
there, pinned in the crosscurrent like an animal on a
dissection tray.
Is this really how I end? In the basement of some
dirty little club in Taipei? In failure? Knowing
that Sydney, hardly even twenty-five feet away, is
probably being beaten to a pulp because she refused to
leave me?
I haven't breathed in about forty seconds now, my
thinking is muddy, I have about twenty seconds left
before I pass out, if that.
Then it hits me.
This is how I end.
I feel the grate under me begin to buckle under my
weight.
And then even the darkness is swallowed.
