Ok, watch out - this is where the story is going to severely depart from the movieline.. I've followed it as best I could up until now, but from this point on, David will be introduced to a whole new world, which will follow for the rest of the story. This chapter basically answers one tingling question I've had.. David had such determination to become a real boy simply to gain Monica's love, because he knew or believed that she was still out there in the world somewhere. But what would happen to David if he had actually witnessed Monica's end, and was given the absolution of knowing his Imprinter, his only reason for existing, was gone? Would he still continue on the wuest for love? Would he just become a despondent vegetable? Would he simply cease to be? Well, let's find out! - LB
*******************
"Please forgive me..."
Monica's heart pounded in her throat as she raced back towards the vehicle. Her ears were ringing, her face felt as if it was burning, and she had suddenly become excruciatingly aware of the severe stinging all over her feet from all the nettle attacks. As the pain seemed to swell in with the force of an ocean wave, she fell into a limping gait, collapsing against the side of the vehicle. She sprawled her back flat against the side door, staring up into the heavens, panting to catch her breath and whisper her forgiveness to who or whatever listened. As if in response to her pleas, the first drop of a light rain splashed onto her chin, running down the length of her fevered neck. Closing her eyes, she stood perfectly still for just a second before trying to pull the vehicle back up out of the ditch. Her efforts fell for naught, the vehicle was far too ehavy for her alone. She would have to back it out.
Suddenly, she felt a sharp tug behind her - she turned to see David, who had run after her, Teddy closing the line behind them both. She simply couldn't believe this was happening, and in that moment she instantly wished she had a long and blunt metal object. Vehemently withdrawing her hand from David's grasp, it was evident her jealousy and shame had consumed her - there was no hope left for David.
"Get away from me! Go... Please..."
But David hung on stubbornly, as if her leaving would be the very end of his world - which indeed, would most definitely be. He pulled and yanked, he begged and pleaded, mounds of tears streaking his softly featured face, his hysteria gradually intensifying the harder she pulled away from him.
"Mommy, please!.. Please... I love you, Mommy... Please don't leave me and Teddy here.. I'm so sorry.. I.. I never even got to finish telling you my dream, Mommy!"
There it was again. That nonsensickal dream. Was it real? Was he.. real..?
"Good bye, David."
With one last despondent look back, Monica turned away for the last time, and leapt into the vehicle, slamming the door shut before David had a chance to catch her. She fumbled for the keys in panic and anger as David's heartbroken face peered in through the rainstreaked window - the blue of his eyes seemed much darker than before, almost as if some of the light had been lost forever. Pounding on the window, his words could barely be made out by Monica from the other side of the thick glass.
"I.. love you, Mommy.. I love you... Please.. Let me be real for you!...."
Holding her breath, she started the vehicle, and threw it in reverse. Dropping her foot to the gas as hard as she could, she nearly bucked the vehicle as it leapt up the slope of the ditch with amazing precision, and once back on the asphalt, she sped off down the road. She shivered in mental anguish as she watched the reflection of David in her rear view mirror gradually shrink and disappear into the line of the horizon. Putting her bandaged hand to her forehead, she wiped away as many tears as she could, but sighed in relief at her dropping anxiety, now that she no longer had to look him in the eye. With a fading kiss and a word of forgiveness to the wind, she shot down the barren highway towards home.
******************
David just stood on the side of the road, his ever faithful companion beside him, and stared down the direction in which Monica had sped off. His wind tossed, babyfine brown hair concealed the greying hopelessness of his tearstricken eyes as it whipped acorss his brow. He too, was also calmed now - there was no more need for anxiety. David simply resoluted at that moment that he would do whatever he could to win back his mother's favour.. He would scour the face of the earth for a way to make him a real boy, and gaain her unending love in return. Teddy tugged gently at his pantleg, and pointed back into the woods.
"David, maybe we should go back into the forest. Mommy told us not to go that way."
"No, let's wait here."
David, still despondent and lost in his thoughts, never once moved his eyes from the road, half hoping that he might see Monica's vehicle come speeding back towards them. They both stood and watched silently for what could have been at least ten minutes. She never came back. Yet, David never once felt any less hopeful or positive that she would come back for him.. That she would love him once again.
Together, both Teddy and David watched as the little green plaid blanket sailed down the road, caught in a pocket of the wind.
*****************
Monica's relief was short lived, as she approached the citylines once again and came back into the world that she knew, with all of its mechanical extravagance and holographic facades, it's artificial population and aire - and this was not attributed to just the mecha in her sights. For once, she saw herself for what she was - no, she had already known that. But this was the first time she had faced it, unrelenting against its vicious mock. She was a traitor. A coward, selfish and heartless. All humans were vulturous creatures, who vandalized and exploited everything they made or touched. There was no therapy book she could ever read that would aid in her recovery from this. She too fell into an emotionless slump, just as did her freshly abandoned son in the forest with his supertoy, as her entire mainframe collapsed beneath the emotional gerth. She felt neither angry nor sad, neither happy nor dischorded. Only intense absolution of her sin. For some reason, she suddenly found herself thinking about David's dream.. flying clouds.. pure white, a magickal bird? Could David really.. dream? Was he real?
Was she sending her little boy out to die all over again?
Her heart suddenly stopped, and she slammed on the brakes as enlightenment instantly consumed her. Skidding to a halt, her hands gripped the steering wheel, and she eyed the rear view mirror heading back into the forest. Already, the quickly setting sun had cast its tangerine rays of oncoming twilight across the forest pines and oaks, and she she came to a realization.
"What am I doing?? D...David..!"
Pulling a hasty u-turn upon the pavement, she spun the vehicle around, and took off back into the forest. With wide and wild eyes, she scrutinized the road on both sides of the vehicle, searching for any signs of David.
"Hold on, David..!"
******************
David sat patiently on the side of the road, he and Teddy staring with wonder at the orange brightness of the setting sun as it fell across the leaves and grass like a transparent blanket. They hadn't even noticed as the light rain overhead began to fall a little heavier.
"She's coming back, Teddy."
"Are you sure is is, David? She didn't sound like it."
"She loves me, Teddy. And if she doesn't, I'll become real for her.. I'll become such a real boy, that she'll never know it! Like Pinocchio, remember, Teddy?"
"Yes, David, I remember."
They turned their heads in childish tandem as the distant sound of billowing motor exhaust coming from down the road caught their attention. They were achingly curious, but it was coming from the other direction.. the direction Monica had told them not to travel. So, they decided to wait for whatever it was to come to them.
"I'll bet it's a dinosaur."
"I bet it's Mommy."
"It can't be Mommy, Teddy.. Mommy would have to come from the other way!"
"Oh. Then I bet it's a dinosaur, too."
*******************
Monica sped down the road as fast as she could without losing her sight or her control of the vehicle on the slippery pavement. She was beading sweat down her forehead, despite the arctic frost that spewed from the a/c vents. She rocked back and forth in her seat as she drove, berating herself for being so cruel, and wondering how she could have ever been a mother. As she rounded the bend, her headlights just barely made out the sight of two small objects on the side of the road through the rain.. David and Teddy! Monica quickly pulled over to the side of the road opposite from them and just a few hundred feet away. Leaping out of the car anxiously, she came running towards them. As she neared them, her vision began to clear as her tremendous wave of fright and panic released its icy grip from her bones.
"David! Dav..."
As she neared the two, she suddenly became aware that what she saw wasn't David or Teddy at all.. It was the torn and tattered remains of the rainsoaked and windswept plaid blanket, ripped and caught on the limbs of a rather disdainful looking oak, whose limbs were bent in torturously twisted array. She gasped and reached out for the blanket, yanking the remains from the branches. Pulling her windblown hair from her face, she looked down the road and shouted into the wind.
"David! Teddy! Where are you..?"
She suddenly heard the distant bellowing of a motor exhaust from some ways down the road ahead. Fearing that David may be in trouble, she dashed down the trail, having run too far to return to the vehicle. She called out frantically as she ran down the road, but the wind rendered her voice useless. Her legs felt very blubbery and numb the further she walked, and she just wished to awaken from this nightmare.
******************
The second, and much nearer bellowing of what now was more audible as the crunching gears of a council truck prompted David and Teddy to stand up, the truck's headlights barreling down the road like sabres and illuminating everything around them in an eery light. As the truck neared, David and Teddy could see that its back platform was filled to the brim with tons of .. mechanical parts?
"DAVID!"
Suddenly, the two turned to see a soaked and limping Monica running towards them from across the road, her arms open wide with embrace. David's smile instantly returned to his eager little face.. he knew she would return! He flung his hands up, never once turning so much as a nose to the rain and wind, to give his Mommy a hug.
"Mommy!"
Monica couldn't believe it. Could this really be? Could some good and fairness actually come out of all of this? The last ounce of hope within her begged it so. What a twist of Fate! David, whom had been seemingly inevitably left to fend for himself, somehow managed to find his way back into her heart without even trying! She couldn;t help but break out in smile. She just couldn't believe this. It was all too good to be true. How mysterious are Destiny's ways.
In her excitement and delirium, Monica had not even taken note the headlights of the oncoming truck. Her eyes were only fixed upon the everloving gaze of David, how all the life seemed to engulf his face again almost instantly as he laid eyes upon her. How truly real he seemed to her in that moment. She ran towards him and Teddy, arms outstretched...
"Oh, David, I'm so sorr-"
..neither one had seen the other, and it became pertently clear that some higher word had it in for Mrs. Monica Swinton that day. The monstrous truck had struck her so hard, that the force of the impact had literally expelled her shattered bones from the flesh, sending them reeling forward across the road with a sickening sound. The blood had exploded from her body like a timebomb, bloody mist taking to air and coating everything around the immediate vicinity, including David and Teddy. The truck nearly toppled its load as it skidded and slid to a halt several hundred feet down the road.
At first, they both just stood perfectly still, not quite understanding what had happened. David's brow bent in confusion, and he reached up to wipe the freshly acquired stains from his forehead. He looked at the tips of his fingers, now coated in shiny, red plasmic scarlet.
"Mommy? Where are you?"
His eyes trailed from his fingers to his foot. The tip of his shoe was covered with the same, slimy, viscous fluid that covered his head, and slowly, gradually, he came to the conclusion as to what it was.. yet he didn't want to believe it.
"M..Mommy..?"
It took a little while before he had become coherent with the idea that Monica was gone, but eventually, every movement within him paused, suddenly locked as his brain's query fell apart, and he was caught in a recursive loop that was unable to comprehend this "negative zero". How could the Impressee function without the Impressor? Could the child succeed without the parent? David suddenly seemed lost, completely detached from this world as he couldn't assess this strange event. David's utter torment became this unexaplainable error in calculation. Without A, can there be B?
Little lost David just stood staring down at the blood and flesh across his boot, perhaps even staring right through it, and through the planet itself, his gaze was so unstirring. He nor Teddy had even noticed when the driver and passenger of the council truck had emerged from their nearly wrecked loader and approached them, looking for some answers to the brains and bile smeared all across the road.
*******************
"Please forgive me..."
Monica's heart pounded in her throat as she raced back towards the vehicle. Her ears were ringing, her face felt as if it was burning, and she had suddenly become excruciatingly aware of the severe stinging all over her feet from all the nettle attacks. As the pain seemed to swell in with the force of an ocean wave, she fell into a limping gait, collapsing against the side of the vehicle. She sprawled her back flat against the side door, staring up into the heavens, panting to catch her breath and whisper her forgiveness to who or whatever listened. As if in response to her pleas, the first drop of a light rain splashed onto her chin, running down the length of her fevered neck. Closing her eyes, she stood perfectly still for just a second before trying to pull the vehicle back up out of the ditch. Her efforts fell for naught, the vehicle was far too ehavy for her alone. She would have to back it out.
Suddenly, she felt a sharp tug behind her - she turned to see David, who had run after her, Teddy closing the line behind them both. She simply couldn't believe this was happening, and in that moment she instantly wished she had a long and blunt metal object. Vehemently withdrawing her hand from David's grasp, it was evident her jealousy and shame had consumed her - there was no hope left for David.
"Get away from me! Go... Please..."
But David hung on stubbornly, as if her leaving would be the very end of his world - which indeed, would most definitely be. He pulled and yanked, he begged and pleaded, mounds of tears streaking his softly featured face, his hysteria gradually intensifying the harder she pulled away from him.
"Mommy, please!.. Please... I love you, Mommy... Please don't leave me and Teddy here.. I'm so sorry.. I.. I never even got to finish telling you my dream, Mommy!"
There it was again. That nonsensickal dream. Was it real? Was he.. real..?
"Good bye, David."
With one last despondent look back, Monica turned away for the last time, and leapt into the vehicle, slamming the door shut before David had a chance to catch her. She fumbled for the keys in panic and anger as David's heartbroken face peered in through the rainstreaked window - the blue of his eyes seemed much darker than before, almost as if some of the light had been lost forever. Pounding on the window, his words could barely be made out by Monica from the other side of the thick glass.
"I.. love you, Mommy.. I love you... Please.. Let me be real for you!...."
Holding her breath, she started the vehicle, and threw it in reverse. Dropping her foot to the gas as hard as she could, she nearly bucked the vehicle as it leapt up the slope of the ditch with amazing precision, and once back on the asphalt, she sped off down the road. She shivered in mental anguish as she watched the reflection of David in her rear view mirror gradually shrink and disappear into the line of the horizon. Putting her bandaged hand to her forehead, she wiped away as many tears as she could, but sighed in relief at her dropping anxiety, now that she no longer had to look him in the eye. With a fading kiss and a word of forgiveness to the wind, she shot down the barren highway towards home.
******************
David just stood on the side of the road, his ever faithful companion beside him, and stared down the direction in which Monica had sped off. His wind tossed, babyfine brown hair concealed the greying hopelessness of his tearstricken eyes as it whipped acorss his brow. He too, was also calmed now - there was no more need for anxiety. David simply resoluted at that moment that he would do whatever he could to win back his mother's favour.. He would scour the face of the earth for a way to make him a real boy, and gaain her unending love in return. Teddy tugged gently at his pantleg, and pointed back into the woods.
"David, maybe we should go back into the forest. Mommy told us not to go that way."
"No, let's wait here."
David, still despondent and lost in his thoughts, never once moved his eyes from the road, half hoping that he might see Monica's vehicle come speeding back towards them. They both stood and watched silently for what could have been at least ten minutes. She never came back. Yet, David never once felt any less hopeful or positive that she would come back for him.. That she would love him once again.
Together, both Teddy and David watched as the little green plaid blanket sailed down the road, caught in a pocket of the wind.
*****************
Monica's relief was short lived, as she approached the citylines once again and came back into the world that she knew, with all of its mechanical extravagance and holographic facades, it's artificial population and aire - and this was not attributed to just the mecha in her sights. For once, she saw herself for what she was - no, she had already known that. But this was the first time she had faced it, unrelenting against its vicious mock. She was a traitor. A coward, selfish and heartless. All humans were vulturous creatures, who vandalized and exploited everything they made or touched. There was no therapy book she could ever read that would aid in her recovery from this. She too fell into an emotionless slump, just as did her freshly abandoned son in the forest with his supertoy, as her entire mainframe collapsed beneath the emotional gerth. She felt neither angry nor sad, neither happy nor dischorded. Only intense absolution of her sin. For some reason, she suddenly found herself thinking about David's dream.. flying clouds.. pure white, a magickal bird? Could David really.. dream? Was he real?
Was she sending her little boy out to die all over again?
Her heart suddenly stopped, and she slammed on the brakes as enlightenment instantly consumed her. Skidding to a halt, her hands gripped the steering wheel, and she eyed the rear view mirror heading back into the forest. Already, the quickly setting sun had cast its tangerine rays of oncoming twilight across the forest pines and oaks, and she she came to a realization.
"What am I doing?? D...David..!"
Pulling a hasty u-turn upon the pavement, she spun the vehicle around, and took off back into the forest. With wide and wild eyes, she scrutinized the road on both sides of the vehicle, searching for any signs of David.
"Hold on, David..!"
******************
David sat patiently on the side of the road, he and Teddy staring with wonder at the orange brightness of the setting sun as it fell across the leaves and grass like a transparent blanket. They hadn't even noticed as the light rain overhead began to fall a little heavier.
"She's coming back, Teddy."
"Are you sure is is, David? She didn't sound like it."
"She loves me, Teddy. And if she doesn't, I'll become real for her.. I'll become such a real boy, that she'll never know it! Like Pinocchio, remember, Teddy?"
"Yes, David, I remember."
They turned their heads in childish tandem as the distant sound of billowing motor exhaust coming from down the road caught their attention. They were achingly curious, but it was coming from the other direction.. the direction Monica had told them not to travel. So, they decided to wait for whatever it was to come to them.
"I'll bet it's a dinosaur."
"I bet it's Mommy."
"It can't be Mommy, Teddy.. Mommy would have to come from the other way!"
"Oh. Then I bet it's a dinosaur, too."
*******************
Monica sped down the road as fast as she could without losing her sight or her control of the vehicle on the slippery pavement. She was beading sweat down her forehead, despite the arctic frost that spewed from the a/c vents. She rocked back and forth in her seat as she drove, berating herself for being so cruel, and wondering how she could have ever been a mother. As she rounded the bend, her headlights just barely made out the sight of two small objects on the side of the road through the rain.. David and Teddy! Monica quickly pulled over to the side of the road opposite from them and just a few hundred feet away. Leaping out of the car anxiously, she came running towards them. As she neared them, her vision began to clear as her tremendous wave of fright and panic released its icy grip from her bones.
"David! Dav..."
As she neared the two, she suddenly became aware that what she saw wasn't David or Teddy at all.. It was the torn and tattered remains of the rainsoaked and windswept plaid blanket, ripped and caught on the limbs of a rather disdainful looking oak, whose limbs were bent in torturously twisted array. She gasped and reached out for the blanket, yanking the remains from the branches. Pulling her windblown hair from her face, she looked down the road and shouted into the wind.
"David! Teddy! Where are you..?"
She suddenly heard the distant bellowing of a motor exhaust from some ways down the road ahead. Fearing that David may be in trouble, she dashed down the trail, having run too far to return to the vehicle. She called out frantically as she ran down the road, but the wind rendered her voice useless. Her legs felt very blubbery and numb the further she walked, and she just wished to awaken from this nightmare.
******************
The second, and much nearer bellowing of what now was more audible as the crunching gears of a council truck prompted David and Teddy to stand up, the truck's headlights barreling down the road like sabres and illuminating everything around them in an eery light. As the truck neared, David and Teddy could see that its back platform was filled to the brim with tons of .. mechanical parts?
"DAVID!"
Suddenly, the two turned to see a soaked and limping Monica running towards them from across the road, her arms open wide with embrace. David's smile instantly returned to his eager little face.. he knew she would return! He flung his hands up, never once turning so much as a nose to the rain and wind, to give his Mommy a hug.
"Mommy!"
Monica couldn't believe it. Could this really be? Could some good and fairness actually come out of all of this? The last ounce of hope within her begged it so. What a twist of Fate! David, whom had been seemingly inevitably left to fend for himself, somehow managed to find his way back into her heart without even trying! She couldn;t help but break out in smile. She just couldn't believe this. It was all too good to be true. How mysterious are Destiny's ways.
In her excitement and delirium, Monica had not even taken note the headlights of the oncoming truck. Her eyes were only fixed upon the everloving gaze of David, how all the life seemed to engulf his face again almost instantly as he laid eyes upon her. How truly real he seemed to her in that moment. She ran towards him and Teddy, arms outstretched...
"Oh, David, I'm so sorr-"
..neither one had seen the other, and it became pertently clear that some higher word had it in for Mrs. Monica Swinton that day. The monstrous truck had struck her so hard, that the force of the impact had literally expelled her shattered bones from the flesh, sending them reeling forward across the road with a sickening sound. The blood had exploded from her body like a timebomb, bloody mist taking to air and coating everything around the immediate vicinity, including David and Teddy. The truck nearly toppled its load as it skidded and slid to a halt several hundred feet down the road.
At first, they both just stood perfectly still, not quite understanding what had happened. David's brow bent in confusion, and he reached up to wipe the freshly acquired stains from his forehead. He looked at the tips of his fingers, now coated in shiny, red plasmic scarlet.
"Mommy? Where are you?"
His eyes trailed from his fingers to his foot. The tip of his shoe was covered with the same, slimy, viscous fluid that covered his head, and slowly, gradually, he came to the conclusion as to what it was.. yet he didn't want to believe it.
"M..Mommy..?"
It took a little while before he had become coherent with the idea that Monica was gone, but eventually, every movement within him paused, suddenly locked as his brain's query fell apart, and he was caught in a recursive loop that was unable to comprehend this "negative zero". How could the Impressee function without the Impressor? Could the child succeed without the parent? David suddenly seemed lost, completely detached from this world as he couldn't assess this strange event. David's utter torment became this unexaplainable error in calculation. Without A, can there be B?
Little lost David just stood staring down at the blood and flesh across his boot, perhaps even staring right through it, and through the planet itself, his gaze was so unstirring. He nor Teddy had even noticed when the driver and passenger of the council truck had emerged from their nearly wrecked loader and approached them, looking for some answers to the brains and bile smeared all across the road.