Author's Note: I take full responsibility for this fic. ...Actually no, I don't. I blame it on Friend A. who wanted me to write a self-insert. Enjoy, you weirdo. The things I do for you...sheesh.
RATING: R for some peculiar/disturbing imagery and language.
INSPIRED BY: Beck, Alice In Wonderland and Frank Herbert's DUNE.
KODACHROME
A Crack!Fic by Osiris-Ra
Marianna opened her eyes. She was alive.
Strobe lights burned into her eyes like a zillion hot coals and she screamed, feeling her head, legs, chest and vital organs all at once ignite. At first, she thought she would stroke from the electrical overload, but then suddenly, the scorching skull melting heat stopped.
The sky was white, without harm, but puzzlingly sunless.
"I wonder where I am," she said. "I wonder WHO I am?"
"I'll tell you who you are." A nasal male voice answered. Suddenly, the world turned upside down, but what was weird was the the underside of the world looked just like the top of the world...or the sky of the world...or...well, nothing was really making any sense, but at any rate, it seemed like she was falling, or maybe being shaken violently.
"Did you ever feel a bit like Alice? Tumbling into Wonderland?" the nasal voice asked.
Marianna looked around? Where WAS that voice coming from?
That was of no consequence. Vertigo kicked in, and suddenly, Marianna puked in mid-air. She fell a noses-breadth from her vomit a zillion billion million thousand hundred miles – or so it felt anyway – until finally something hit her all at once in the face, head, chest, stomach and legs. It was like she had gotten run over by a semi-truck. How pitiless of the driver—he hadn't even stopped to see if she was okay. At any rate, somehow, amazingly, she was alive. She lifted her head, and wiped the vomit from her lips.
She had landed.
Marianna got to her feet, groaning and feeling quite out of sorts and sick. She thought she was going to puke again, but as she looked around, she completely forgot about puking and instead began to again wonder where on earth she was?
Was she even still ON earth?
She was standing in the middle of a jungle, looking up into a canopy of trees that were taller than the tallest skyscraper and into a sky that was bluer than the bluest Jawbreaker. An eerie fog surrounded her, and suddenly she realized that she was glowing. Her actual skin was glowing a sheer, golden hue, and her hair, long and braided like an Indian's, was shining brighter than the brightest lamp, even though it was blacker than the blackest night.
How strange, she thought.
"Fuckin' freaky, I'd say." A female voice behind her concurred laughingly.
Marianna whirled around.
A dark haired woman was standing barefoot on a Tatami mat, balancing on one strong leg. Her eyes were closed and her hands were clasped together, as though she were praying.
Marianna walked closer to the mysterious woman, who did not at any moment open her eyes. Marianna circled the Tatami mat curiously, noticing with reserved caution, the disturbing collection of severed rabbit heads scattered on and around the mat.
"Who are you?" Marianna asked.
"My name is Ana Lucia." the woman replied. "Did you ever wonder," Ana Lucia asked, "if you were actually a figment of someone else's imagination?"
"Um," Marianna started to say, but then suddenly, Ana Lucia's eyes snapped open. The woman called Ana Lucia began to chant:
"See us come runnin' from nothin',
Fool the grave, looking for somethin',
We're not lost, we're just losing,
All we used to hold us together. "
She raised her clasped hands in a Sun Salute, and when she was finished, plunged both hands into her pockets and pulled out twin Swiss Army knives.
"DUCK!" Ana yelled. And Marianna did. The twin knives whistled through the air and ended their murderous journey in the chest of a man who, unnoticed to Marianna (who, for the sake of mentioning it, was a bit clueless anyway) had materialized into the clearing.
"NOOOOOOOOEEESSSS!!" The man shouted as he died. His body instantly went frigid and plummeted like a stone to the ground.
Ana Lucia's other leg stamped firmly onto the mat. She stood, looking very seriously at the dead man, who did not actually seem to be a man at all, but some kind of half-man half bird half-stone half-smoke thing, with an eye patch ridiculously bound around his head.
Mariannea, hiding behind Ana Lucia, gaped in astonishment. "Who WAS that??"
"What, you mean." Ana corrected. "WHAT was that. THAT was Jacob."
Ana Lucia stepped off the Tatami and strode over to the corpse and stuck her hand in the smoky part of his body. Her hand and arm began to change color, a pearlescent and silvery hue swirling up her veined, tanned forearm, hardening it into a limb of solid chrome. With increasing difficulty, Ana pulled her solidifying arm out of the man's chest, and revealed that, held gingerly in her palm, was a small silvery bead that bounced very easily at the slightest movement, even in her palm. Ana carefully put the bead in a slate colored pouch hanging from her belt and rose.
"Jacob?" Marianna looked at Ana wide-eyed. "Who's Jacob?"
"Jacob is the man who created Kodachrome." Ana smiled, patting the slate pouch dangling from her hip. "And I just killed him."
Ana went to her Tatami and began to fold it up. She strapped it to a backpack lying nearby and slung the pack around her shoulders. She motioned Marianna to follow her, and then set off into the jungle briskly. Feeling confused but not wanting to get anymore lost than she already was, Marianna followed.
"I've been hunting that asshole for years." The Latina huntress said. "You know what a fucking pain it is to look for a guy who doesn't even exist?"
Marianna had no idea. With nothing intelligent to say, she let Ana go on.
"I chased that fucker to 1950ies New York and back. Changed my alias about twenty times. Got caught by his security system about fifty. This year, you know what happened? He bends the continuum and gets me stuck in a shitty airplane that crashes here, a place that conveniently does not exist, so that I couldn't teleport out! He thought he'd trapped me here, but he was wrong! Eight Hundred and Fifteen Thousand prayer beads and Forty Two rabbit heads later? I got him. Summoned his dimension hopping ass right outta space!That's right, I GOT you, you sonofabitch!"
Ana pumped her fist. Marianna eyed Ana Lucia. She didn't know quite what to make of her strange companion.
"He doesn't exist?" was all Marianna could fathom to ask.
Ana looked at her with a slightly stunned look, as though she were shocked EVERYONE didn't know that Jacob didn't really exist.
"No. He doesn't."
"Why were you chasing him?"
"To get Kodachrome, why the hell else?"
"Oh." Marianna thought about that. "Well, what is Kodachrome?"
"It's a song by Simon and Garfunkel, Jesus, what planet do you come from?!"
"But you said he created it."
"Yeah, he did. He created Kodachrome and Simon and Garfunkel wrote a song about it. Kid, I don't have time for your dumb questions, I've got a Republican to go screw. See ya."
Seemingly angry, Ana Lucia strode off into the jungle, going far too fast for Marianna to catch up...or was it that Ana's legs were suddenly growing longer?
No, Ana herself was growing.
No. Marianna was shrinking!
How very peculiar!
The world diminished around her. The trees grew monstrously, towering billions of miles above her until she was so small that the GRASS was towering above her. In a bewildered panic, Marianna stumbled through the mountains of dirt and pebbles, avoiding the giant tendrils of growing vines and flowers, and hoping that, whatever happened, she didn't happen upon any ants.
It was dumb luck that she did, however, and as she turned to run from the humongous insect, she tripped, being very clumsy like that, and got her foot stuck between two granules of dirt.
The glimmering beast advanced quickly on her, it's hairy black antennae fluttering about her face, its monstrous jaws continuously chomping at the air. The chittering horror let out an ungodly screech and descended, it's pincers snapping and salivating, but suddenly, the creature's torso exploded into bloody little black chunks and the exoskeleton flew, slamming violently into a sudden, grotesque death.
The ant's crushed corpse lay posthumously twitching between two blades of grass.
Marianna stared in horror and disgust, her face spattered with ant blood, when suddenly, she felt something brush along her shoulder. She whirled, frightened and ready to fight, but found herself staring into the intelligent eyes of a world weary man. Several twigs that had been sharpened into bayonets were slung across his back in a ruby studded sheath. The white medical coat he wore had a tag on it which read in pleasing letters: "Dr. Jack Shephard."
Dr. Jack smiled.
"Hi, my name's Jack. I'll be your hero today."
Marianna couldn't help but smile back.
"Oh. Well, thank you."
Gently, he helped her get her foot out from between the pieces of dirt. Noticing the crimson spots on her face, he delicately wiped them off with his thumb.
"You really should be more careful. I try to avoid this area whenever I can. Sometimes it never fails though, you have to cross through it."
"What is this place?"
"Well, there isn't really an official name for it. I just call it Slumber Land."
"Why Slumber Land? Do people fall asleep a lot here?"
Dr. Jack laughed. "Well no, I just like the sound of it. Slumber Land. It sounds peaceful."
"But there are giant killer ants here. I don't think that's very peaceful."
Jack grinned. "It's supposed to be ironic. Anyway, the ants are harmless when they've got a bayonet through them."
Dr. Jack went to the still jiggling ant corpse and pulled a dagger from his chain link belt. Precisely, he began to cut chunks of meat from the pieces of scattered exoskeleton. It was everything Marianna could do to keep from retching again.
"Ant meat. Good protein." Dr. Jack explained as he pocketed the black meat in a special pouch he was carrying. "And now, off we go."
Dr. Jack Shephard and Marianna trekked northwards, searching, as they went, for local flora and fauna, and collecting pieces of the petals of flowers and leaves that they came upon, and that Dr. Jack explained would be beneficial later when they wanted to grow again. They passed over a glorious hill, sown with sweet smelling grass and wheat, and also traversed over a roaring pond, using a special inflatable boat that the Doctor kept folded in his knapsack.
On the other side of the pond, they collected droplets of spring water in beetle-skin waterbags to drink later, and the Doctor demonstrated how to get mangoes from the very tops of the trees by using special clamps to climb up the massive tree trunk and sawing away at the vine that held the giant fruit to the tree with a flint saw. After collecting as much mango meat as they could carry, the Doctor led the way to his hut, which was set up directly underneath the cover of a very poisonous jungle mushroom. Inside, Marianna helped him to put away the goods they had collected, and then had a cup of strong red tea with him, and listened as he shared his own peculiar story.
Apparently the Doctor had come to the island much the same way the mysterious Ana Lucia had come, via a plane which had crashed on the island. The Doctor had many bizarre tales to tale (though not as bizarre as this one) and apparently had come to know quite a few of the people he had been stranded with before the fateful day he had shrunk. Oddly, he couldn't remember exactly how he had come to be shrunk, it had just happened one day. He woke up one morning smothered by his own bedding and nearly suffocated to death trying to escape. Unable to communicate with his friends due to his minuscule size, he ran into the jungle and lived there ever after, utilizing his size in amazing ways.
"It is difficult though," the Doctor admitted, "to have to avoid insects and birds and people's feet and things like that. I've learned to deal with the bugs, but the people are a different story. Everything looks like a bug to them. And you know how people are about bugs. Some of them are pretty cool, like Eko. I think he's a Buddhist or something. Talks to trees and birds and stuff like that. But whatever you do, don't get yourself caught by Sawyer. He will squash you for sure. He's kind of psychopathic that way...I don't know, I think he's bipolar or something."
The Doctor sipped his tea.
"So," he asked, "what's your story Marianna?"
Marianna shrugged. "I woke up in a box with my head on fire and next thing I know, I'm here. I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to be here...but I am. And I can't quite figure it out."
Jack nodded understandingly.
"You're out of place. I think that's common among self-inserts."
"Self what?"
"You know. Self-inserts. People who exist somewhere else but have inserted themselves somewhere where they're not supposed to be but they really want to be. I think it has something to fulfilling sexual fantasies and stuff."
Marianna looked offended. "Excuse me?"
"Or fantasies in general. Do you recall having any particular desire to be stranded on an island?"
"Uh, no."
"Hmm. Well, I understand anyway."
"I don't see how you could. You seem like you belong here."
"Well, we all belong here in a way. Even you. Well, actually, maybe not you, but what I'm saying is, it's Earth...so...you know. Whatever. Do you want to have sex?"
Marianna blinked.
"Pardon?"
"Well that's usually what happens I think. Well wait a minute, let me check something."
Jack reached up for a thick tome on top of the bookshelf and consulted a chapter. After skimming briefly he said "Ah!" nodded and put the book away.
"I'm actually supposed to ask you what we're supposed to do."
"Huh?"
"According to The Grand Manual of Shameless Self-Inserts, you're supposed to have the answer to the world, universe and everything."
Jack looked at her expectantly and smiled.
Marianna reached out skeptically. "Lemme see that thing."
Jack handed The Grand Manual of Shamless Self-Inserts to Marianna. The book opened conveniently to the chapter to Dramatic and Random Character Deaths which specified that at some point, she (and stunningly the book mentioned her by name) would have to dramatically and randomly give her life for a Lilliputian who had a real life medical degree—specifically as a spinal surgeon.
"Are you a spinal surgeon?" Marianna asked casually, not lifting her eyes from the book.
"Why yes I am. So was my father. He's a drunk though, and died. I see him sometimes...in my dreams. And when I'm awake. They say when you see things when you're awake you're hallucinating."
"Uh huh," Marianna said, uninterested and flipping the chapter quickly to see how she could avoid having to die at the hands of a certifiable spinal surgeon.
"I call it awake-dreaming, though. 'Hallucinating' sounds so...I dunno, crazy or loony bin-ish, you know? Like you're crazy or something. I'm not crazy. Are you crazy?"
"Not yet." Marianna skipped to the final page in the book. Big red words shouted out at her:
HIT JACK WITH THIS BOOK, MAKE A QUICK GETAWAY AND EAT SOME 'SHROOMS ON YOUR WAY OUT.
Marianna clapped the book shut and looked at Jack with a big fake smile.
"Well," she said, standing up suddenly, "I have to go now. Thanks for the tea."
Jack stood up too, looking surprised. "But I thought we were going to have sex."
"Um...maybe later. First I have to do something."
"Oh?" Jack smiled happily, "what?"
"This." Marianna clobbered the Doctor over the head with The Grand Manual of Shameless Self-Inserts. He crumpled to the floor and Marianna ran out, breaking off a piece of the mushroom as she went.
As she popped the mushroom in her mouth and started chewing it (and it was chewy like bubble gum, and peppermint flavored) it occurred to Marianna that it was pretty stupid to listen to a warning inside a book condemning her as a figment of someone else's warped imagination, and that also maybe it wasn't so bright to eat a poisonous mushroom, but she soon forgot all about that because she realized that happily, she was getting big again!
A little...too big.
When she finally stopped growing, Marianna figured she was around 50 stories tall. Her feet had crushed a good portion of the tree canopy, which was really itching her ankles, and just by standing on tippy-toe, she could make the entire island sunk just a little bit deeper into the ocean.
"This is all highly irregular." Marianna thought.
Treading carefully with her size 4000 and a half feet (at least!), Marianna stepped onto a nearby hill and sat on it, feeling somewhat melancholy and depressed. She would have liked to be normal size again, and to talk to someone sane for a change, but that didn't seem very likely.
Someone sighed next to her. "I know what you mean sister. Everyone's crazy around here. Seriously, I can't talk to anybody. All they ever do is whine and shoot at things."
Marianna looked down to see who was talking. To her surprise, a polar bear balancing on roller skates was wobbling about nearby, juggling several mangoes.
The polar bear looked up at her and tossed a mango up to her.
"Don't know if it'll help much...maybe it'll getcha from here to there."
The polar bear roller skated away down the hill.
"Have fuu-UU-UU-AA-AAUUUGGHHWWOOAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH..."
Marianna peeked over the ledge the polar bear had skated over and stared in surprise, seeing that there wasn't anything there except for a plunging black maw. For a second, Marianna contemplated jumping down it, but on account of being unable to even fit down it, decided against it.
She sighed and bounced the tiny mango in her hand.
"Bollocks." she said. "I sure wish I could hear some Beck right now." she thought randomly.
At that moment, something weird began to happen. The sky parted and the one hit wonder band Drive Shaft lowered from the heavens on a stage made of Dharma Oreos. They were all wearing flashy, glittery speedos and playing makeshift instruments made out of Spam cans, boxes of kleenex, bamboo stalks and trash can lids. Somehow, it all sounded pretty good.
Charlie Pace, the lead singer, stepped towards Marianna's huge smiling face and sang right to her, energetically whacking a cowbell:
"The information is laughing at us
The ticker tape feeds the night
Looking for a lost transmission
A heaven that we left behind
When the information comes
We'll know what we're made from
And the skyline rising
Highrise eyes see through you "
Charlie's brother Liam pounded his Spam can drums with gusto. Marianna bobbed her head to the rhythm, unaware that the longer the music played, the bigger she was actually getting, until her head reached sheer into space. The music began to dim and fade into a series of random "Oh oooh oh oooh oh ooooh ohhhh"'s and then, realizing where she was at last, Marianna snapped out of her clueless daze and tried to scream. Of course, with no oxygen in space, she just kind of choked and closed her mouth, surprised. She looked around at the celestial blackness.
There was a white door floating nearby.
How very peculiar, she thought.
Remembering something she'd seen on a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, she floated towards the hovering door, turned the knob and pulled it open.
Insde the door was a warm reading room which was, at the moment, filled with people who were reading books. A woman with blonde hair and sharp blue eyes was reading a chapter from Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep.
"'I've never seen a spider, Pris said. She cupped the medicine bottle in her palms, surveying the creature within. 'All those legs. Why's it need so many legs, JR?'"
The blonde woman whose name was Juliet, looked up at the girl floating at the doorway.
"Well hello. Do come in dear. Close the door please."
Marianna pulled herself in the room and alighted to the carpet as gravity kicked in. Peering one final time at the strange outside view of stars and celestial matter and comets and other strange, eerie things, she closed the door.
A man with large blue pop eyes and a strangely smiling face motioned her to come sit beside him. Marianna walked over and took a seat on the couch, and finding it comfortable, settled in as the Juliet continued the story.
At half past 8:00, Juliet finished the story and withdrew to the kitchen to bring in homebaked chocolate chip cookies.
"What did you think of the story, Marianna?" the pop eyed man whose name was Benjamin Linus asked.
"It was very...Philip K Dick." she replied with a grin.
Everyone in the room frowned, as if offended.
"Do you not like Philip K Dick?" Benjamin asked disapprovingly.
"Well..." Marianna hesitated. "Well, I thought Minority Report was very good."
The frowns ceased.
"Steven Spielberg sure did a good job with those Pre-cogs."
Everyone frowned again.
"You're kidding right?" said a guy who was wearing a lot of eyeliner.
"Steven Spielberg completely destroyed the integrity of a complex, psychological science fiction thriller. I demand that this woman be ejected from the room immediately."
"Hush, Richard." said Juliet, pouring herself a glass of brandy. "Not everyone is as fond of the actual novels as you. I have to agree with Marianna, I think Steven Spielberg did a fantastic job with his film adaption." Juliet munched on a cookie. "I think Tom Cruise was a bit miscast though."
Richard rolled his heavily made up eyes.
"So what are we reading next?" Juliet asked, sipping her brandy and staring very hard at Marianna.
"How about The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum?"
The entire room except Juliet groaned.
"Touch Not The Cat by Mary Stewart?"
Someone laughed contemptuously. Several people mock snored.
"A Clockwork Orange?" A big man named Tom with white hair and wearing a "Gay Pride" T-Shirt said.
"The Shining?" suggested a dark haired girl named Alex with a grin.
"Our Mutual Friend!" Said a Random Person to whom nobody was really paying attention to at all.
"To Kill A Mocking Bird." said an African American woman named Bea in a prophetic voice.
"Oh for crying out loud, Fahrenheit 911." said the fat man in the Gay Pride shirt. "I'll get the lighters, who's got the kerosene."
"Why doesn't our guest pick this time?" Juliet asked softly with a vaguely sinister glint in her blue eyes.
Everyone gave Marianna a hassled glare.
"Sure. What's your idea, kid?" Scoffed Tom, his belly jiggling. "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? I'm sure I haven't read THAT one a bajillion times."
"That is not. Even. A number. Tom." Bea said between her teeth.
"How about..." Marianna said slowly and unsurely, "we just not read anything?"
Everyone stared at her blankly.
"I mean...nobody seems to want to read anything...so why don't we just...not read anything?"
Bea looked at Richard. Richard looked at Tom. Tom looked at Alex. Alex looked at the Random Person. The Random Person looked at Benjamin. Benjamin looked at Juliet. Juliet kept looking at Marianna.
"What would you have us do?" Juliet asked, looking puzzled. "This is a book club."
Marianna looked around breifly. "I notice," she said after a moment, "that you have a music player over there."
Everyone except Juliet looked towards the record player in the corner.
"Yeah." said Tom. "So what? Would you prefer to boogie?"
"No..." Marianna stood up and walked to the player. She perused the collection records until discovering, hidden between an LP of Liam Finn and Ella Fitzgerald, a white record with a simple octagonal symbol etched in the center.
Juliet eyed Marianna as the young girl inspected the record. Marianna turned to everyone with a smile.
"Why don't we play this one?"
Tom snorted. "Screw this. I have to go pee." With that, he got up and sauntered off to the stairs.
Marianna put the disc in. Carefully, she lowered the needle and with a scratch, skip and crackle, the disc began to play.
(playing over a 90ies Old skool rap beat)
"Hello, I'm Marvin Candle, I'm the man you cannot handle, I'm the wizard of this junction, I'm the madman of this function, If you'd like to take a minute, sit on your ass and get down with it, I'll explain the procedure, I'm the master, I'm the teacher, You're the student, not the preacher, Just sit tight and lemme s'plain how it works on this plain, HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA...PEEEAAAACCCEEEE..."
(a random 20ies & 50ies musical medley...)
"Insert here—SNAP CRACKLE POP—a simple set of
instructions, following the example of-NEO (The One) and
BF Skinner (Skinner!Skinner!Skinner!)—The truth is out there—
a large scale incident let out a huge fucking monster--
an electromagnetic utopian splice—do not attempt to
control the Spice (MuaaaaaaaaaDIB!)—in this manner
you will stay as fresh and inert as HAL did when
he was alert. The future of the project
is in your hand (IN YOUR HANDS)
On behalf of the DeGroots, Alvar Hanso, U of M, a Live Journal user named Pretty Butt, and all of us
at the Dharma Initiative, SCREW YOU. Namaste
and good luck."
The record skipped, crackled and continued to spin, but nothing played. Perplexed, Marianna looked at Juliet who just smiled.
"I don't understand." Marianna said questioningly.
"Of course you don't. You weren't meant to."
Marianna tilted her head. "I wasn't? Then who was?"
"Nobody."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"Exactly." Juliet rose. "You see, nothing makes sense. Thats the beauty of it. You're absurd, we're absurd, all of us are fuckin' absurd, that's how we were written."
"Huh?"
"But you have a choice, Marianna."
"I do?"
"Yes. You can make the madness stop."
Juliet handed Marianna a quill pen, a bottle of walnut ink and a piece of papyrus.
"Write the end of the story and this will all be over."
Marianna took the quill in hand and stared at it. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. How was she supposed to write the end of the story? Furthermore, WHAT story?!
Hesitantly, she dipped the quill in the jar of ink and set the blade of the quill to paper.
"What is she doing?" Asked Tom as he entered from the kitchen, his face covered with cookie crumbs.
"She's writing the end." replied Juliet, smirking as though she were very pleased with herself.
"WHAT? She can't do that! Only Desmond can do that!"
"Desmond's not here. You killed him, remember?"
Tom looked up in the air as if the lost memory of Desmond's murder were stuck to the ceiling. "Oh. Right. Well...she still can't write the end of the story! She doesn't know how it's supposed to end!"
"What does that matter, Tom? It's got to end eventually, doesn't it?"
"Wha—woman, you've lost it!" Tom looked over at Marianna who sat writing out everything they were saying.
"Forgodsake, stop her!" Tom lunged for Marianna, but Richard leaped from the couch and tackled him. The two wrestled on the floor until finally Richard wrested a fork from the table and stabbed Tom in the neck. Tom lay spewing blood and profanity at everyone.
"And now..." Marianna thought as she wrote manically, feeling drunk from the power of being able to control everything everyone was doing, "Desmond will come back from the dead and kill you all. Wait...scratch that...Claire..."
At that very moment, a short blonde woman carrying a baby who was holding a tiny little Uzi burst into the room.
"You're all gonna DIE!" She screamed in an Australian accent. The baby giggled it's agreement and let loose with it's infant sized Uzi.
Richard, Random Person, Benjamin Linus and everyone else except Juliet screamed and ran, only to be pumped full of tiny little bullets that, if you slowed down time and looked closer, had little tiny Dharma octagons etched on the ends of them.
Juliet surveyed the carnage around her and sipped her brandy.
"Interesting. But killing everyone off won't make the ending any better."
At that, everyone who had been shot, sat up, groaning, mumbling and trying to tourniquet their wounds.
Marianna looked up incredulously. "Then what will?"
Juliet sighed and shook her head. "Stop thinking like a producer! Do something interesting! Reveal something, bring someone popular back from the dead, redeem someone!"
"Oh." Marianna thought for a moment. "Ok!" She smiled and began writing again.
Suddenly, Juliet's pretty skin fell away, revealing her to be Alvar Hanso. Alvar Hanso sipped his brandy and nodded approvingly. Everyone gasped. The infant giggled.
"Interesting reveal."
Marianna scribbled some more.
Suddenly, they heard screaming and moments later, a large African man crashed through the ceiling. He stood up altogether too quickly and looked around frantically.
"Where is Yemi!?" He demanded in a thick African accent.
Marianna shrugged. "I dunno. Who's Yemi?"
"He is my brathah! Where is he, take me to him NOW!"
Marianna grinned slyly. "Are you sure he's not...The Black Smoke Monster?"
The African man whose name was Eko looked deliriously puzzled. "What?? No!"
"I think he is."
The Black Smoke Monster burst through the door, grabbed a screaming, flailing Eko and left, politely bowing to everyone and closing the door on it's way out.
Alvar Hanso blinked at Marianna. "I have to tell you, I'm not entirely sure where this is going."
Someone knocked on the door.
"I'll get it." Random Person limped to the door and opened it. Sawyer, Jack, Ana Lucia, Kate, Arzt, Nikki & Paulo, Libby, Bernard, Rose, and several dozen other insignificant people stood at the door, dressed in the weaved garb of Arrakis Fremen. All except Ana, Sawyer, Jack and Kate, of course, who wore glimmering black stillsuits in classical desert fashion.
"We're here to see Marianna." said Sawyer, wrinkling his nose tube.
"Hitchcock's over there. I wouldn't dusturb her." Random Person said in a random sort of tone.
Marianna stared as everyone crammed into the book club cabin.
Ana Lucia approached her and extended her palm, which held a vial of blue water.
"Hey, didn't I just—" Marianna started.
"Nope." Ana interrupted. "You never saw me, I was never here. Have some kool-aid."
"That's not Kool-aid, you moron!" Yelled someone. "That's the Water of Life!"
Ana just rolled her eyes. "Please get this over with, I hate these people."
"Marianna," spoke Alvar Hanso from somewhere within the crowd. "This is not an ending, all you have done is make the plot a little—for heavens sake, get off my foot!—a little more convoluted!"
Marianna put an elbow on the table and tapped her foot, looking at the vial of Water of Life, feeling rather chagrined. She sighed. "Ah, screw it."
With that, she unscrewed the cap from The Water of Life and drank it in one sip. She smacked her lips.
"Mm, blueberry flavored!"
Everyone waited.
It occurred to Marianna that she did not feel particularly enlightened.
Paulo picked his nose. "I don't mean to state the obvious, but I don't see anything extraordinary happening."
Suddenly, the heavens rumbled. The roof lifted off of the cabin and rocks fell, crushing everyone in the room except Marianna to death.
Marianna rose from the table and surveyed the bloody mangled horror that used to be the book club. Suddenly, the surreal golden glow that surrounded her extended, forming a protective, enlightening bubble around her body. Marianna lifted her eyes to the heavens, staring into the black, star spackled void of space and spread her arms. Everything suddenly became clear to her. She had a waking vision of everything that would be, could be and had been. She dreamed of her mother, her father, her mother's mother and her father's father, and of all the ancestors and tribes that made up her distinctive heritage. For a moment, the collective consciousness of her female ancestors overwhelmed her, but her inner-self strengthened her with a perspective correcting bitch-slap, and she awoke with a startled, sweaty gasp from the vision, her minds-eye now as clear as her actual eye.
"If I have the power to control the worm..." Marianna thought to herself, "I have the power to control the spice. And whoever controls the spice...controls the WORLD."
Marianna opened her eyes. She felt breathless from the power and knowledge that surged through he body. "I know how it will end!" She smiled.
Marianna closed her eyes, focused very hard and in a shocking, spontaneous poof of dust, ceased to exist!
THE END
(END CREDITS ROLL; Fast Rock/Pop music starts to play)
I wanna be your driver, I wanna be your driver
I would love to ride you, I would love to ride you around
I wanna be your writer, I wanna be your writer
I would love to write you, I would love to write you a-aaround
LYRIC CREDITS (in order of appearance):
Inside Out/The Information - Beck
The Information/The Information - Beck
End Credit Lyrics based on "I Want To Be Your Driver" by Chuck Berry (though the version I'm thinking of is Shivaree's awesome cover)