GLIMPSE:
A Resident Evil Short Story
Starring:
Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield
Guest Starring:
Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Rebecca Chambers, Sherry Birkin, Albert Wesker and the Ghost of Ada Wong
Part One:
Life Without Umbrella
Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California – Present Day
The shiver of the rubble left him breathless. He couldn't move. He couldn't even pretend to want to move. He was nearly numb, nearly lost, nearly forgotten.
He was pretty sure this was the end of his life.
This is how he died, buried beneath what was left of Raccoon City. He'd come here for a reckoning, he was leaving in a body bag. There was no more fight now. There was no more light.
There was only the darkness that left him cold.
Cold.
The cold was all he knew anymore.
Outside of Raccoon City - 1998
"I have to find my brother."
"I know that."
"I-" She touched is face. The first real time she'd touched him since the longest night of their lives had started. She touched his filthy face with an expression on hers that was pure regret, "I…I'm sorry. I just…"
She glanced at the little girl asleep on the bench beside them. Their eyes met over her and he gave the girl in the Made in Heaven motorcycle jacket her walking papers, "Go. Go on. I've got her. I'll wait here until the Feds show up. Go on. Hurry. I'll find you when I'm done."
Claire paused. She hesitated. She glanced at his mouth.
Yeah, he thought, kiss me goodbye.
But she didn't. She ran to find her brother and the world he knew became a nightmare. They took Sherry, they blackmailed him into serving, and Claire Redfield disappeared out of his life.
Rojo La Muerte, Spain - 2004
The troll was defeated. It collapsed, in a cacophonous roar, to the earth at his feet.
He shook, he stumbled, he fell to his knees to heave – a dry heave that vomited nothing but pain from his lungs and chest to the ground – and the white wolf stood in the swirling dust to watch him.
Leon eyed it, trembling, and he whispered, "My hero."
The wolf paced, blue eyes neutral, considering.
Leon felt something shift in his guts with it.
Leon queried, softly, "What do you know? What do you see?"
No answer.
The wolf woofed once, softly, and padded away into the rainy dark.
Harvardville – 2005
"Next time we bump into each other, let's hope it's someplace a little more…." He laughed lightly, "Normal?"
"Normal?" Claire mused, eyes twinkling, "What's normal?"
"You got me." The helicopter waited on the other side of the beach. He considered her. The girl who'd fled once in Raccoon. She was watching him. She looked so amused.
She looked…eager.
He considered her and backed up two steps, "Where do you go from here, Claire Redfield?"
She shifted in the sand, looking a little desperate. He got it. He did. He felt it too. He wanted to stay. Ask me to stay, he thought.
She shrugged instead, "The world still needs saving right?"
He kept on backing up. "Looks that way. So normal next time huh?"
"Why not? See ya when it's normal, Mr. Kennedy."
There was no normal in their lives. Their "normal" was a fuck in the ass without lube by weird. It was asinine and obscure and unreal.
Normal?
He couldn't remember the last time he felt anything at all…let alone anything "normal."
Santa Monica, California – Present Day
The slap of skin and forgetting chased him around the room as he collapsed to his side, heaving out labored breaths. The slim, sweaty, slick body of the girl from the mini mart merged with him as she folded atop him, laughing lightly. "Lord…vinyl records, ripped jeans, and cigarettes…and you fuck like that. Who the hell are you?"
It was a good question.
He stared at the shadows on the ceiling.
He didn't know who he was anymore. He hadn't known in some time. He'd just turned Arias in a puddle on the pavement on the Upper East Side. He'd just buried the last of the people who hadn't died in that rubble when Patricio had betrayed them.
He'd just said goodbye to Dr. High Hopes and the BSAA's Golden Boy.
And he was here now. Here. Balls deep in a girl he'd met standing outside the place he'd stopped on his Ducati to grab a pack of Camels and a bottle of Glenlivet. Like James Dean or something, he'd ridden up on his steel steed; one leg thrown over the side, in faded, ripped jeans and scuffed black boots. The leather jacket he wore with the blood still crusty on one arm. The black t-shirt beneath flecked with dirt and sweat.
She'd chewed her lips, in her leather jacket and skinny jeans with the holes in the knees, and queried, "Merry Christmas to me after all. I'm Jenna. How do you feel about free love?"
He'd taken her home to show her all about it.
Who was he?
He was Leon Kennedy, supposedly. He was channeling Hank Moody from Californication some days and fucking pointless pussy while he drank himself into oblivion. But he was still Leon Kennedy.
He lifted the well rolled joint to his lips and inhaled, feeling the mellowing effects of a good hit of Blue Moon, and couldn't seem to care about the emptiness that lay beneath the shallow state of his existence.
He couldn't seem to care.
He'd sat in that bar demanding answers from Chambers and Redfield: What am I fighting for?
There were no answers.
There were no explanations.
He rolled his head to look at the big dark eyes of the girl who'd just ridden his dick like a pro…no answers….and maybe he'd been asking all the wrong questions.
Maybe the better question was: What was worth dying for?
The sweaty girl eyed him with a grin on her perfect face, "Who are you?"
"Who do you want me to be?"
"I don't care. I'm just looking for a stallion, baby."
"Yeah?"
"Oh, yeah."
"….giddy-up."
She laughed and crawled atop him to ride.
The motorcycle whipped down the dark road. He'd dropped Jenna off at that minimart where he'd met her. He'd left her laughing and fulfilled.
He wanted to say he felt the same.
But he mostly just felt…empty.
There was nothing under the emptiness. That was the problem. What was worth dying for?
There were no answers.
He had nothing but questions.
A white streak shot out in front of him as he corned on Mulholland doing eighty-five. A wolf.
A white wolf.
"Fuck!"
The bike kicked. The wolf stopped. It just…stopped. It stopped in the middle of the road and stared at him with ice chip eyes.
He tried to avoid it. He tried to stop. But it wasn't possible to stop when your bike was barreling down the road at a death throttle.
He laid it down, it tore up his leg and his leather jacket as it ate pavement and burned rubber, and it spilled him over the edge of the road. Mullholland…nothing but a drop into the dark. He grabbed on, he missed, and the bike tossed him over the edge of the barrier that was meant to protect him.
He flipped. He felt the world catch fire. He hit the grass and the dirt and smashed into a tree and rolled. He rolled. He rolled and rolled and rolled.
And came to a stop at the bottom of the drop.
No helmet.
Are you kidding? He mused in his head, who wore a helmet at times like this?
The blood spilled out his mouth. His body told him he was dead before he felt it. He didn't feel anything. His arms were twisted around him like a pretzel. The bike was perched atop him like a bird in a nest.
The wolf waited atop the rise, watching him with its silver eyes. Silver and blue.
On a gurgle of blood and breath, Leon whispered, "Why are you stalking me? What do you know?"
The white wolf was there to show him, clearly, what was worth dying for.
Leon gasped, gurgling, "….what do you see?"
He closed his on a small lisp of sound.
There was no white light.
Even that was a lie.
There was nothing in the dark to guide you "home".
"Do you want to know what's worth fighting for?"
"Are you kidding? Show me anything. Anything. Am I dead?"
"Not yet. Or maybe you are. Who's to say?"
Why was his "angel" Ada Wong? Couldn't he even escape her in death?
"Why are you here, Ada? What do you want?"
"Long time, no see, Leon. I'm here for your glimpse."
Misty eyes. Misty lies. Misty sighs. Where the hell was he? The beyond? The end of the end? Where was the fucking white light?
And Ada said, "Time to see what's on the other side, Leon Kennedy. Put down your gun, and look at your life."
He blinked. The weapon in his hand trembled. It tumbled into the mist as he let it go. "Ada? What is this place?"
But she just laughed. She laughed.
And kissed his mouth.
The mists swirled into him and stole his pain away.
She was licking his face.
Which…was weird. It was totally weird. It was odd indeed. Although not unpleasant.
She was licking his face.
And then she said, "Take her outside, Leon. She wants to go out." In a sleepy and quiet voice.
He cracked an eye. He was staring, now into Ada Wong's fathomless ones, but into the muzzle of a very, very, very big malamute. She was white and gray and had big blue eyes. She was watching him raptly…and licking his face.
The voice behind him said, again, "Take her out, Leon. Ok?"
He shifted in the sheets, trying to figure out what was missing here. Something was off, clearly, but what? What the hell was going on?
There was something curled against his back. It was warm. There was a foot draped over his hip with red toes. He stared at it for a moment and his eyes shifted, subtly, to the belly beside the foot.
He blinked.
He blinked again.
His hand lifted to touch the belly. His belly?
No.
It wasn't his belly.
HIS BELLY was not…soft. This belly? It was soft. Not fat, no exactly, but soft. Where the fuck was his six pack!? He sat up in the bed, abruptly, dislodging the foot.
And the voice said, "…shit, what? What is it?"
He rolled his head to the face of the voice.
And Claire Redfield was in bed beside him in gray sweat pants, a stained yellow t-shirt with the Cheerios logo across the chest, and hair sticking up in wild ways around her sleepy face. She was also watching him like he might have, at some point, sprouted a second head.
"Leon?"
He pointed at her, accusatory, "….why are you here?"
Her brows arched and a smile split her face, "Philosophically? Metaphorically? Scientifically? Which answer do you want?"
He shook his head and glanced around the room. A small bedroom with inexpensive furniture and scratched hard wood floors. There was a door to one side showing a shower and a small bathroom with blue tile. His eyes shot down again to his belly.
As he was sitting, a little band of skin had decided to roll over his plaid sleeping pants.
Horrified, he looked at Claire, "….I'm fat!?"
Claire looked bright eyed and so amused it hurt a little, "…um…not even close. But I think you can blame the beer for the belly, if that's what you're implying."
"I let myself get fat!?" His voice was high pitched and embarrassing, sure, but he didn't care. He couldn't care. He had dad bod! He was FAT. What kind of hell had he woken up in?!
Could this get any worse?!
He pointed at Claire agtain, "What did you do to me!? Hmm? You let me turn into a tubbo!? This is your fault!"
Oh, her face. It was all big blue eyes beneath the shaggy crop of her crazy hair, "I did? Me? I forced the Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby on you at night when you get home? That's me? I did that? I put the Bud Light in your hand? Me?"
Oh, dear god.
He was a guy who ate ice cream and drank cheap beer.
What kind of plebian seventh circle of torment was this!?
And Claire added, "It might be all the pizza too, hot stuff, just sayin."
Oh…sweet mary mother of fuck. He ate carbs.
HE ATE CARBS.
It was official.
He was not Leon Kennedy. He was, however, apparently in a horrible nightmare where he was a normal dude in a badly decorated bedroom with….
His eyes shifted to her. She was scratching her belly watching him. Her face was soft and her smile so happy. She looked rested in a way he'd never seen her. Her belly was soft and smooth and flat. There was the shine of something on it as she shifted and dropped her shirt. He wanted to lift it up completely and see the breasts that were barely hidden beneath the cloth.
He was in bed with Claire Redfield.
She took his hand and tugged it to her mouth to kiss it, smiling at him. "What's with you this morning? You ok?"
And there it was.
The brush of metal. Hers. His.
Metal.
Rings.
Matching platinum rings as she blended their fingers. Rings. On their left hands.
He whispered, "….we're married."
And she grinned, "That's the rumor."
His heart. His heart was beating so hard. But he whispered, "How long?"
And she grinned again, "You're so silly. How many times are you gonna joke about this? Eight years in a few weeks, you little jerk."
Oh. LORD.
His hand grabbed the remote and clicked the button. The television on their cheap dresser, half hidden by a bobble head of Mr. Magoo and a stuffed pickle, flickered on. It was a happy faced reporter in the cold air while music and laughter swirled behind her.
She laughed as well, signaling someone off screen, "What a parade, John! I'm telling you – people here in Raccoon City are NOT letting 2006 go quietly into the good night! We're gonna celebrate this Christmas with a BANG."
The parade behind her was loud and excited. People danced in heavy jackets while plumes of cooking meat on grills wafted into the frigid air.
Leon trembled on the bed, "….2006."
Claire sat up finally, concern on her face now, "Baby? What?"
He glanced at her face, shaking, "Raccoon City?"
She tilted her head, like a dog, watching him, "Baby…what? You ok? You're acting…"
The door to the bedroom opened. Leon reached for the headboard where he usually kept his piece, but it wasn't there. Of course not. This wasn't his place. This wasn't his time. This wasn't his world.
He was in Raccoon City but there were no zombies. There was no destruction. There was no death here.
There were, however, children.
A little boy in skinny pajamas stood in the door of their bedroom. He had crazy red hair and big blue eyes. He was holding an infant in a cute little pink sleeper. She was sucking on his nose.
Claire grinned, "Hey guys! Merry Christmas!"
And the boy grinned back. His grin.
HIS.
His face with Claire's crazy hair.
Oh my god.
And the boy said, "Merry Kissmas!" In an adorable little lisp. He was probably five. He was fucking adorable. The baby in his arms was maybe six months old. Pretty with a shock of white blonde hair.
Holy hell.
The boy brought the baby to the bed and Claire took her, tossing her a little to make her giggle. The malamute jumped on the bed to get in the middle of the laughter and hugging and kissing. Leon slid off the bed and grabbed the sweatshirt emblazoned with U-MASS on the navy front. He threw it on, the hook tangling around his face while he spun a bit to loosen it.
He stuffed his feet into boots beside the dresser and Claire called, "Baby? Coffee. Ok? BLACK."
He ran for the stairs.
Fuck coffee, he was fleeing. He was fleeing fast and far away and never looking back.
On the stairs, he ran into Chris Redfield.
The big guy oomphed and caught his arms. "What the fuck, Kennedy, slow down. Where's the fire?"
And Leon gasped, "I need…your keys. Please. Keys? Keys now."
Chris arched a brow, "What? No. Drive your own fucking Jeep."
Right. He had a car. Sure. He had a BEER BELLY and also a car. Leon scrambled down the steps. A two story house…where? It was pretty yellow paint in the kitchen and kid drawings on the fridge. It was a table laden with books and graphs and pencils and crayons. Toys were hanging out all around the living room to his right and the big fat fur tree covered in popcorn and lights.
The couch was plaid and red and covered in a blank atop the body of a sleeping, and snoring, teenager. Leon blinked, narrowed his eyes, and realized the teenager was Sherry. Sherry -sleeping on his couch. What…the figgety fuck!?
A key holder in the shape of a rooster was hanging on the wall by the door. Leon grabbed the ones with the lightsaber for a keychain (clearly his) and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror hanging on the wall by the door.
Him.
Ok.
OK. That was him. Still him. The hair? Still him.
Thank god, for small miracles.
He grabbed the door handle and jerked it open, running into the cold. The snow was thick and the cold immediate. Raccoon City. He was IN RACCOON CITY.
HE WAS IN HELL.
He grabbed the door handle of the black jeep, jerked it open and Chris shouted, "Where the fuck are you going, you idiot?!"
And Leon jumped in the Jeep.
He fired it up, Jill Valentine walked by carrying a box full of brightly colored gifts, and had a HUGE fat belly clearly full of Redfield spawn, and Leon felt the world fracture again.
He gunned the engine, whipped the Jeep into the street, and shot off into the cold air.
Chris sighed, watching him go and took the box of gifts from his pregnant wife, "Great. The roads are shit and the world's worst driver is fleeing down them like he's running from the scene of the crime. What the hell is wrong with that guy?"
Jill laughed, lightly, and pointed up. Above them, mistletoe was dangling. "Maybe he was afraid you'd try to kiss him."
Chris chuckled and kissed her instead, "He wishes. But then he'd fall in love with me and my sister would kill me, so it's best that he ran away."
"Clearly."
Fleeing down the slick streets, Leon Kennedy was a man on a mission. He didn't know what yet. Or where. OR WHO. OR WHY. But he was on a mission.
To find out what kind of parallel dimension he'd stepped into. He'd run off the cliff and died and come back from the dead in Raccoon City. It was hell. Clearly. He was in suburban hell.
He was married with kids and fat in suburbia….and being punished.
Why? WHY? WHY!?
From the seat beside him, Ada Wong said, "You know why. You asked for a purpose. You wanted to know what you're fighting for. This is it."
Leon shouted in surprise, jerked the wheel to stay on the road, and sent the Jeep careening through the field beside him. He barely missed a cow (what kind of nightmare was this!?) and the Jeep hit some ice, spun three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle to barely missed crashing into a tree as it came to a stop in the frozen grass.
Beside him, Ada Wong mused, "Was that necessary?"
Leon threw his head back, gasping for air. The engine ticked. The world was his sharp gasping and the tick tick tick of the cooling Jeep. "….what the hell is happening Ada? Why are you here? You're dead. I watched it happen."
She laughed, lightly, and turned to face him in her pretty red parka with her pretty sparkling eyes. "And yet here I am. How is that possible, you ask? Oh come on, Mr. Genius IQ, you know why I'm here. This is it, Leon Kennedy, this is your answer."
"….my answer to what?" He whispered it, turning his head on the rest to look at her. "To what?"
"To the reason you're fighting. To what would have happened if you'd never had to. To what you'd be if you'd never picked up the gun that day in Raccoon City to face the end of times. This is it."
He breathed, watching the cows moo and loll about in the frozen grass beyond his windshield.
And he answered, softly, "What the hell is this, Ada?"
"Don't you know, Leon?" She tilted her head, she gestured to the swirling cube hanging on his mirror with the pictures of the kids and Claire. Happy, he thought, they all looked so fucking happy. And Ada added, grinning, "Leon Kennedy…this? It's your Jimmy Stewart moment. It's your Ghost of Christmas Possibility. It's…." She considered her next words, sighing and laughed lightly, "It's your glimpse."
The cow mooed and eyed him like it might consider rushing the Jeep and mowing him down.
His glimpse?
He wasn't up to his eyebrows in the dead. He wasn't fighting for his life against the mutated or the murdering maw of a million monsters. It was just beer bellies, and babies, and diapers and diarrhea. It was "normal". His glimpse wasn't a millionaire with a model on each arm and a kidney shaped pool filled with coke and cookies.
No.
The American dream right? The little two story crackerjack house in the burbs and the pretty wife with the adorable kids. It should have been a glimpse into a perfect life.
Instead?
He wasn't entirely sure, but it felt more like he'd once again entered the world of survival horror.
Post Note: He's not dead. It's like...It's a Wonderful Life...he's getting his chance to see life without Umbrella. O_o