Title: Manifestations of Certainty
By Jaye Reid.
Written: 19-09-2000.
Disclaimer: Do I really need to do this?? Although you'd think that by now, story 64, that I could almost legitimately claim them all as my own? I should think about applying for the rights... Possession is nine tenths of the law don't they say??
Yeah okay... Southern star own them all...
Author's notes: Ah where did this one come from? Not sure really! Lying in bed at 2 am, busily writing fic for a different show. Frank popped into my head and started talking. Put one book aside, grabbed my ratfic book and started scribbling.
Dedication: Well, just because I also officially announced my Colin Friels fan page today... why not to the guy himself for creating such a brilliant character to write about. g Who cares that he left the show almost a year and a half ago!!
~*~
Frank lay back against a tuft of grass protruding from the sand. He gazed up at the night sky, bejeweled by dazzling stars. Was she one of those stars he thought? Nah... that was crap! He berated himself at the thought. It was the sort of rubbish people told kids to make them feel better when someone they loved was dead. As if it was going to make them feel *better*?
She was dead.
Pure and simple - fact.
The believer in him said her spirit was free, but he wasn't much of a believer these days. He'd seen too much pointlessness in the world to adhere to the concepts and teachings of his old geriatric parish priest. The platitudes the old bloke would have reeled off at this point, just wouldn't have cut it. He felt like Scourge at Christmas. Bah humbug to the lot of it!
The realist within, told him she was merely worm fodder. Rachel was lying in a box in the ground, amongst others lying in boxes. All would eventually decay along with their contents. He scoffed gently as he took a swig of his beer. It would take her a bit longer than most he thought. The amount of preservatives in the takeaway food she had consumed, just in there few years as partners, would keep her for quite some time!
But all the same, that too was a bit of a bastard theory.
So he teetered on his fine thread between one and the other.
Believer or realist... which one was she? What would Rachel be thinking if the shoe was on the other foot? How would she have reacted? Would she have missed him? And if so, would it have been as much as he missed her?
Frank gulped another mouthful or two of his drink, before leaning right back against the dry grass. It cracked and broke against his weight.
He remembered long ago conversations. One time in particular. Their customary debriefings with beers and memories, but they had been lying on grass and not sand.
Tonight he sat alone on this quiet section of beach. He wasn't quite sure where he was, what's more, he didn't particularly care.
They had watched the water glimmering with the lights of the city as they had looked across the harbour. That night, she had described people as ants, themselves included. She had been trying to help him make sense of his life.
He was just an ant.
Rachel was now a squashed ant.
All ants risked getting squashed as they ran around their world. Sometimes they were squashed on purpose and sometimes it was purely by accident. Wrong place, wrong time; but either way they were squashed.
Another time, in the days before he had escaped, she talked about building walls, brick by brick. He'd been half cut at the time, but he still remembered her words. Had she managed to make the difference she wanted to? He hoped so. However all he wanted to do at that moment in time, was take one of those bricks to Long Bay and bash it through someone's skull. Hanging would have been too good for the bastard, but rotting in jail didn't seem punishment enough either. Frank decided he was going to avoid going back to Australia. The thought of his tax dollar supporting low life scum sickened him.
He wanted answers, if only he could figure out what the questions were.
He sighed, lay back...
Angrily stuck his can of beer into the sand.
He hadn't noticed the ant in its path now condemned by a wall of sand...
Just another ant.
The End.