Soma Lullaby

Disclaimer: I do not own Brave New World or Whiskey Lullabye. (Yeah, I WISH...) They belong to Aldous Huxley (whatta name!) and Brad Paisley, respectively. I DO, however, own this story. It may be the first Brave New World fic ever written. I'm making history here, peoples!!! -

I guess I wrote this story not only because it was a class assignment, but because it had been drifting around in my head for a while after reading the book. Our "creative project" was just an outlet. I simply adore the relationship between Lenina and John...it's so shallow, yet so terribly complex at the same time! Well...enjoy!

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Lenina paced the 10 feet across her small apartment restlessly, back and forth, like a caged tiger. She crossed over to her bedside table. She picked up her soma. She put down the soma. She picked up the soma. She put it down again. She turned around and began pacing again.

She put him out like the burning end of a midnight cigarette.
She broke his heart: He spent his whole life trying to forget.

"One shouldn't feel this way. One shouldn't feel..." she thought over and over to herself. She'd repeated this for weeks, weeks on end that felt like years. It wasn't her fault, after all. Not her fault...she supposed this was what happened when one wasn't conditioned. It wasn't healthy at all for a child to grow up unconditioned in a horribly uncouth Savage Reserve...there were reasons he'd ended up that way, and it wasn't her fault.

She marched over to the soma bottle and stared at it, as if expecting it to grow wings and fly out the window. She was being silly. Take the soma, you know it would help, whispered a voice in her head. Nasty little voice...why didn't it leave her alone? But it was right...why didn't she? Bernard's reprimands echoed through her head. No, he was wrong, soma was good...it would help. She sensibly reached out for the bottle, and emptied out three half-gramme tablets onto her palm.

We watched him drink his pain away, a little at a time,
But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind

Lenina shuddered with revulsion at the memory of the woman Linda, lying in the hospital bed, swollen, wrinkled and unconscious. That was what soma could do...it wasn't good, it wasn't! It was vile! She poured the tablets back into the small bottle. 'No,' she had to remind herself, 'that won't happen to me. She went without any soma at all for at least twenty years, maybe more, and then started popping it like gumdrops...she brought it on herself.' Her hand clenching the soma bottle was trembling: she put the bottle down on the table again.

Until the night...
He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger.
And finally drank away her memory.
Life is short, but this time it was bigger,
Than the strength he had to get up off his knees.

She had been playing these awful little mind games for weeks. Every time she looked at a soma pill, she felt sick to her stomach and John's face flashed before her mind's eye. A dead man's face... She braced herself with one hand on the bed-stand. It wasn't his death that unnerved her, heavens no...death was a natural occurrence. Everyone learned that as mere children, of course. Instead, it was the chilling fact...that he was no longer there. He wished to leave, and so...he left. No one had done that in several hundred years.

We found him with his face down in the pillow,
With a note that said: "I'll love her till I die."
And when we buried him beneath the willow,
The angels sang a whiskey lullabye.
La la la la la la la
La la la la la la la.

And that poor woman he'd whipped to near-death...she was still in the hospital. In the very wing Linda was in; but not in the room reserved for the dying, once her condition had been stabilized. Lenina shuddered as she remembered the awful sight...John huddled at her side, snapping rudely at little children yet to be conditioned...then as Linda was dying...her hands clutching vainly at the air, red veins straining in her eyes, a dead look in them already...John hadn't known she followed him there, hadn't even noticed when he brushed out of the room, bumping into her shoulder, at that! Lenina couldn't forget the look in Linda's dead eyes, what was also hidden behind the panic in John's...

...hopelessness.

The rumors flew, but nobody knew how much she blamed herself.
For years and years, she tried to hide the whiskey on her breath.

Lenina had mentally tortured herself about this for weeks, especially when Fanny and others commented on an odd look in her eye. The same look, they said, as Bernard sometimes had. Fanny had gone so far as to insist that she not associate with Bernard anymore. They had disputed for a week, the longest spat they'd ever had. She still wasn't over it...the dispute, or John's death. She gasped instinctively. Was all her conditioning coming undone? She'd her horrible tales about some adult reconditioning facilities...she didn't want to be treated like a child again!

This wouldn't stand. Lenina seized the bottle before her with such ferocity that it nearly flew from her hand. She fumbled for it in midair, clutching at the little cylinder vainly. Take the soma. Don't take the soma. It'll heal you. You'll end up like Linda. The voices ping-ponged around in her brain. "Stop it, STOP IT!!" she screamed. The lady in the flat above her stomped on the floor. "Pipe down! We are trying to relax!" A harsh voice echoed through her ceiling.

She finally drank her pain away, a little at a time,
But she never could get drunk enough to get him off her mind.

There were twenty-two full-gramme tablets in there, enough to send someone much stronger than her on a soma holiday for who-knows-how-long. No one had ever taken that much at a time before.

Lenina downed it in one gulp.

Until the night:
She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger.
And finally drank away his memory.
Life is short, but this time it was bigger,
Than the strength she had to get up off her knees.

Doctor Sullivan addressed the small congregation around the hospital bed gravely, his face neutral from years of such work. This mad girl was just another of society's dropouts, nothing major. "I'm sorry," he announced, managing to not sound one bit apologetic. "I have no idea what she was thinking, but by now... She overdosed to a fantastic amount, and even for our main source of comfort, soma is incredibly unstable. It must be, in order to affect one's mind so dramatically." He gazed into the faces of those gathered there, a mere three people: Fanny Crowne, Bernard Marx, and Helmholtz Watson...he had not been expecting the last of the trio to be here at all, and suspected it was only to support his odd friend. "She won't be waking up. Ever."

This got mixed reactions from the group. Mr. Watson blinked, shocked at the conclusion. He stared straight ahead for a long time, either deep in thought or in emotional shock. Ms. Crowne fumbled ironically at her belt, clawed open her soma bottle and downed three full-gramme tablets.

Mr. Marx collapsed on the floor.

We found her with her face down in the pillow,
Clinging to his picture for dear life.

Lenina ran through a hazy mist, similar to what she'd always been told an out-of-body experience felt like. She wouldn't know. She'd never had one.

She ran on a wobbly road, suspended in nothingness, it seemed. It swung like a rope bridge. She had crossed with a guide and Bernard at the Savage Reservation. 'Is that where I am?' she though vaguely. 'How odd. I thought I'd never go back there again.' This didn't look at all like the Reservation from her memories, though. It didn't look like much of anything. Huge shapes lumbered by in the fog, and she remotely thought they would acknowledge her. They kept on moving though, as did she. She concluded they were not alive, and kept sprinting.

A man-shaped blur appeared before her on the trail, a good five-or-so yards away. As she ran closer (she didn't know why she didn't stop running, she just felt compelled to do so) she recognized his face. John the Savage.

We laid her next to him beneath the willow,
While the angels sang a whiskey lullabye.
La la la la la la la
La la la la la la la.

"John!!" she called happily. He smiled at her, and held out his hand. Lenina became aware of a damp sensation on her cheeks, and was slightly alarmed, until she remembered: these were tears. It had been ages since her last cry...she was barely four, and had scraped her knee when tripping over the protruding root of a bush. She hadn't cried for long, though; a nurse came rushing over with soma and a chocolate drop, and her tears immediately ceased. This was different, though. Lenina ignored the warm waterfall now coursing down her cheeks, and rushed towards John, laughing like a child. As she reached him, one message flashed through her mind.

'I'm home.'

La la la la la la la,
La la la la la la la...

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Well, I'm sure you know what I'm gonna ask now.... R&R please! Tanky-oo!