I'm a Mess
By Andressa Casale
Disclaimer: I don't own Lost, I wrote this for my fun only.
Rating: Rated T for some suggestive adult themes.
Author's Note: This is a one-shot written on first person POV, I found it difficult, I ended up jumping back to the third person without realizing. But it was a really fun experience. I think first person is the closest you get to your characters mind.
There's some references to Stephen King's Carrie, let's see who can spot the less obvious ones.
Oh, and before you continue, take notice that I'm not a native English speaker, and this fiction has not been proofread yet. If you come across some grammar mistakes, I want you to know I did the best I could to keep it as flawless as possible.
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I'm not a leader! I remember confessing it to Richard Alpert the day that we first met. But he didn't believe me. He wanted me to accept his propose. He wanted me to lead a team of highly trained people, and I would love the offer because, hey, I would have complete freedom, they were privately founded. Privately founded… What a joke?! But I didn't know it back then. I just didn't think that I was good enough for them.
Because I'm good for nothing, I'm a mess.
I still remember when I was a little girl, and kids would laugh at me because I misspelled constitution, and then they called me stupid. Things only got worse as I grew up, they pointed fingers at me while they laughed. "Juliet Carlson eats shit!" I read the graffiti scratched on the walls of the girls' locker room with tears in my eyes. All those mean practical jokes and all I wanted was never to return to school again.
But every time the sun would rise, it was a new day, a new torture. How I wish I was Carrie White, all those boys and girls would pay for what they used to constantly do to me. Nobody understood how much it hurt. My mother would tell me that high school would end someday. And I was supposed to face each new day like new won battle. I have lost count of how many battles I have won and it hasn't made this process any less painful.
When high school was finally over my mother told me smiling, "it's over, honey, now life will get much better!" I was happy then, but mom, why did you have to lie to me? Why didn't you tell me I would fall in love with my college professor? Why when I introduced him to you didn't you warn me to get the hell away from him?
I wouldn't have resented you, but you let me date him anyway. Despite the fact that I was nineteen and Edmund was thirty eight! Didn't you see it coming? That he would make me sleep my way through college even though I didn't need to? That once college was over I would marry him because I believed he was that best I could ever do?
Edmund liked that I was a mess. He liked to see me curled up in tight ball, lying on the floor, in a fetal position. He liked to see me broken down, he liked that he was more powerful than me. He liked to whisper horrible things in my ears when we had sex, they were too horrible to mention, he liked when I cried, it made him come quicker. So I cried every time because I just wanted him to be over with.
I was so young back then that I cried practically every day. I cried in front of Edmund because he loved it, cried in front of Rachel because I needed her support, cried to myself because I was living in a nightmare. Until I cried myself numb. I packed my things, and left Edmund. They were long ten years of suffering, but he wasn't ready to let me go. I still worked for him and he still made sure to prove his superiority as my boss, rubbing his love conquest on my face, as if I cared.
But I cared really! It made me sick when he called some twenty-year-old-long-legs inside his office and closed the door. I knew what he was doing, and I was mad at myself that I cared so much. Edmund was one of the reasons I didn't want to take Richard's offer. "My ex-husband wouldn't let me." I had told Richard, and when he insisted to talk to my ex-husband on my behalf, that maybe there was something they could do to convince Edmund I told Richard that maybe if he was hit by a bus, how about that?
And it happened! I was telling Edmund that Rachel got pregnant, that I had done it, and he was trying to convince me to publish it when he stepped on the street and a bus hit him in front of my very eyes.
At first I was shocked, but then I felt guilty, felt like I was a jinx, that I had wished he would be hit by a bus and then he was. As if I had cursed him! I was on the morgue I needed to sign some papers, but I couldn't do it, I was crying, asking silently that Edmund would forgive me. And Richard was there, to give me his condolences. He told me that they wanted me that bad!
It hit me like a drop of cold rain. I just then realized how much danger I was in. Richard was smiling tenderly, with a calm voice. But I could read him like a book. I knew he had killed Edmund, he was silently threatening me that if I didn't accept his offer, he would not stop at Edmund. And then he was talking about Rachel, that he knew she was pregnant. I couldn't let him get to Rachel, I couldn't let my sister get involved into that.
I was scared out of my mind, I felt cornered. I never told Rachel of my suspicious, I didn't want her to worry. At some level I just thought I was being paranoid, why would someone want me that bad? I am good for nothing. And I accepted their offer, I agreed not contact my family, I wanted them to be as far away from all of that as possible.
When Richard told me that the place we were going was not in Portland, and that I needed to drink orange juice with a great amount of tranquilizer, I hesitated. Because maybe I wasn't being paranoid at all! But he told me that I was special, that I had created life where life wasn't supposed to be. Nobody had ever called me special before, I was dazzled by that, so I drank the juice and ended up here.
And this place, this island, it changed my concept of mess!
The first six months were great, I hadn't had much success with the dying mothers, I had lost two patients. I had learned to behave like Ben expected me to, they would lock me in a room for days on, and all I remembered about that room was that I was responsible for my own suffering and that God loved me as he loved Jacob. I'm afraid of Jacob, he is the one that Ben answered to, so I learned to behave, I wouldn't want Jacob to get mad at me.
Apart from my medical research, Ben made me take part on some regular weird extracurricular activities. I learned how to track through the jungle, learned how to use a gun, how to beat people up. I learned to speak Latin. I was even on a mission to bury a man whose balloon crashed on the island.
His name was Henry Gale, I liked his name. Every since his balloon crashed on the island Ben had been obsessed about him. Mikhail had brought Ben Henry's file, Ben said that the man had potential to be on Jacob's list, but Henry got sick and died before Jacob said anything. I had asked Ben why we couldn't have helped the guy get off the island before he got sick, since we had a submarine.
"That's not how things work around here, Juliet." Ben had said. "Getting out of the island is not something one would want to do."
Ben had always been cryptic, but it was starting to make me feel uncomfortable. And when I asked to go home Ben told me Rachel's cancer had come back. That Jacob would help her if I stayed behind. And so I stayed, because I feared Jacob, but for some reason, I believed in him. I believed that he could cure my sister.
But I didn't like Ben, I didn't like it that he was making me stay, I didn't like the way he looked at me. I knew that he was attracted to me and that he wanted something to happen between the two of us. But I was in love, for the first time in my life. I was really stupid too. Because Goodwin was married and his wife despised me.
I needed Goodwin to kiss me, to love me. I wanted to feel his adoring hands on my body. And the fact that he was married, as sick as it sounds, it turned me on. It was really stupid, but I carried it on, even though Harper warned me to stay away. And she was right, I should have stayed away. But I didn't want to let Ben be in control of my life.
But I only realized the kind of mess I was in when Karl developed Ben's x-rays and I found out that the reason why Ben had been having back pains was because he had cancer. But if Jacob could cure cancer then why did Ben have it?!
I knew something was happening, that Ben wasn't in control anymore. I knew that he didn't like the news either. Ben started to act impulsively. He would do anything he could to keep in charge of things. Then the plane fell out of the sky, bringing Ben both hope in the form of spinal surgeon, and threat in the form of a cripple that was walking around the jungle.
The first thing Ben did was to send Goodwin out on a suicide mission, and then Ben started to make me jealous by telling me how Goodwin's interest had fallen hard on a woman named Ana Lucia. I read her file, and I was beginning to let Ben's poison make its effect on me. I feared that Goodwin was really falling in love with that woman, and for the first time I felt what it was like to be Harper, we were in the exact same situation.
Irony reached its peak when Ana Lucia killed Goodwin. But that didn't make me feel less angry towards Ben. I knew it was what he wanted. He wanted Goodwin dead because he wanted me for himself. He showed me Goodwin's dead body and I cried like a desperate women. Goodwin was the only good thing I had on the island. I cried in front of Ben. I cried myself to sleep that night.
When I woke up I had a plan, I knew something huge was coming, and I would take advantage of it. I would take Ben down! I resumed my life as if nothing had ever happened. Harper hated me even more after she found out Goodwin was dead and I wasn't even sad about it. What she didn't understand was that the only way I know how to cope with things is by being numb. I was grieving Goodwin's death my own way.
Years passed since then, Ben got his way as always. I was sent back in time. I actually thought that it was over. I let myself fall in love with James Ford. But that was just too good to be true. I knew my fairy tale life would come crumbling down someday. I knew James still loved Kate, but I'm not like Ben, I wanted him to be happy. I wanted him to be free to love Kate.
So I was on board for Jack's messed up plan of blowing up the island and resetting everything that had happened in the past three years. I knew what it would mean for me going back under Ben's control, but I wanted James to be happy, no matter what! I was dragged into the Swan Station hole, but I didn't die, because I needed to set off the bomb. I hit the bomb with a black rock eight times and it all went bright.
When I woke up, I was sleeping on bed, back at the barracks. It was September 22nd of 2004, but no plane crashed that day. And now it's exactly three years later and I'm sitting on a chair reading a file Mikhail had just dropped. It's the middle of the night, and I'm on my bathrobe, I'm not angry at him for disturbing me in such late hours. This file is very important.
"Aren't you coming to bed?" My husband asks me from the hallway, he is standing there only on his boxers.
I smile at him warmly. "I'll be there in a minute, Goodwin."
"Don't make me wait too long!" He complains and turns away.
There's a picture on the file, it's the face of the man I try so hard to forget. He is pushing his five year old daughter on the swing of a park somewhere. He is smiling with a big cute dimple on each cheek. We have both moved on, I don't know if he still loves me, but I still love him with all my heart.
Things have changed since I set off the bomb. Jack never came to the island, so Ben died of cancer short months after the reset. I didn't like that I was happy he had died, but I always knew that I would take advantage of the fact that Jacob had turned his back against Ben. I was free to go home, when Richard came to me.
He told me that with Ben's death they needed a new leader. That I could go home to my sister anytime I wanted to, but that Jacob wanted me to be the new leader. Apparently when I set off the bomb, when I reset everything, I saved Jacob's life. And Jacob couldn't find anyone more loyal to be the new leader.
I socked even myself when I agreed to stay. I had lived on this island for six years, the island was my home now. I wanted to give these people a new life, a fair one, I wanted to reestablish freewill. But most of all, I wanted to be as far away from James as possible. He was better off without me.
I accepted my role as a leader, but I continued my research, I want my people to be able to get pregnant, and I know someday I will find a cure. Harper divorced Goodwin, and I married him, because I had someone I needed to forget. Goodwin didn't remember what had happened to him, it was like it never happened for him. I still loved him, not as much as I once loved James.
Every day that passes me by I forget James a little more, it's a like a roller coaster, but not like the cliché. Once I had to forget Goodwin, and move on with James, but now the ride turned and I have to forget James and move on with Goodwin.
It's fine, I really love Goodwin he is a sweet guy. And the file in my hand soothes me. Because it tells me that James is happy, he has moved on apparently. Not with Kate though, just like me he moved on back to the woman he first loved, the mother of his daughter. I'm happy he's happy, and I know that Rachel and Julian are happy too, they think I'm dead. I asked Richard give them the news, this way they won't wait for me for always.
Yes, the island changed my concept of mess, don't get me wrong, I'm still a mess, but I kind of like it. It's my life! And I won't lie to you, I'm still hurting really bad, I just don't let it show, because that's how I cope with things I get numb.