A Milder Fate
By Contrarian
Rated: K+ (for some morbid content)
Fandom: Stranger Than Fiction
Warning: Spoilers for the movie
Disclaimer: Anything recognizable does not belong to me.
Notes: I actually wrote this in November of last year. While going through my files today, I reread it, liked it, and touched it up so that I could inflict in on the public.
"Mortality, like art, means drawing a line someplace."
- Oscar Wilde
Benjamin Parker had died quietly on a street corner in the middle of the day.
He did not leave his house that day with a purpose, nor did he meet his end for any discernable reason. He did not pull a child out of the lethal path of a bus. He did not die for a just cause, such as making a point about taxes. He certainly did not die of happiness, although his fiancé would nearly die of grief. His heart had simply stopped, like film on a reel suddenly running out.
Benjamin Parker had died quietly on a street corner in the middle of the day, three weeks before what would have been the day of his wedding.
And in the middle of the day, three weeks before what would have been the day of her wedding, Karen Eiffel was left alone.
She began smoking. She lost weight. She tried to determine the meaning of his death, for surely no one died for nothing.
That was the truly maddening thing about it. Yes, it was less than a month before they would have been married. Yes, it slammed the door closed on what had looked like a pleasant future. And yes, she had loved him. But these were not the things that kept her awake in the still hours of the night.
Why had Benjamin Parker died?
Everywhere she turned, the answer loomed like a brick wall: He Just Had.
Unacceptable. If there was no greater meaning behind death, then why did anyone even bother with life? If she wasn't going to die for a reason, why should she care how and when her life ended?
And yet Karen could not bring herself to follow him. She thought about it. She went so far as to make a list of potential methods. But when it came down to it, she didn't want to. One more meaningless death – who cared? Who cared?
While contemplating her typewriter on an overcast afternoon, she came upon the solution for her dilemma: she would make death mean something. She was an aspiring novelist, searching for a subject. Fine; this would be her subject. She would write tragedies. Hero after hero would meet their untimely ends, but damn it, it would be poignant. People would be moved, driven to actual thought about life and their own mortality. Somewhere, someone would be affected.
She made a list of characters. She hid a piece of Benjamin in each one.
A schoolteacher who loved summer, an engineer who could whistle beautifully, a girl with a penchant for sugar cookies, a man who wore tweed with maddening consistency – these, among others, died tragically, unexpectedly, and beautifully. Her career skyrocketed. Karen became confident. She gained some weight back. She did not give up smoking.
And then she hit her block with Harold Crick.
Harold Crick, who looked very similar to Benjamin Parker. Harold Crick, who had Benjamin's alarming aptitude for math and wore his leather shoes that squeaked horrendously against pavement. Harold Crick, who had more Benjamin in him than all her other characters combined.
Harold Crick, who refused to die even a heroic death for ten years. Her career was coming to a grinding halt.
No wonder she fantasized about jumping off buildings.
He was real, as it turned out. When she met him, she couldn't help but think she had somehow created him, breathed life into him with a thought, a name typed on an otherwise blank page.
She could not kill Harold Crick. Two letters and a punctuation mark would have done it, but she couldn't bring herself to type them.
She blamed it on her lighter, which had run out of fluid at a rather inconvenient point. But the truth was that he had managed to move her without dying. The journey, it turned out, was just as important as the end, no matter how beautiful and heartbreaking the end was.
She could not kill Harold Crick. When it came down to it, she didn't want to, although the revised ending was trite enough to make her wince, the sweetness somehow more painful than the swift, tragic ends of her previous novels. It was not her best work; far from it, in fact.
But she could live with that. Maybe it was time that she started living, period.
Those nicotine patches, though – they could go to hell. Karen Eiffel lit a cigarette, inhaled defiantly, and stepped out onto the sidewalk, into the cold winter sunlight.