Disclaimer: Thanks again to the Wachowski Bros and especially to Lewis Carroll for the titles. If you've never read Jabberwocky, I highly recommend it. Also thanks to JRR Tolkien for the penultimate two words.
Rating: PG-13 for kicks and giggles.
Author's note: The titles are not jibberish, by the way. If you care about such things.
The Passing of the Jabberwocky
There were at least ten minutes between the moment when he pulled the trigger and the time when I felt it enter my chest.
It's a test. A game. He never pulled the trigger. He couldn't have. He wasn't like the other agents; he didn't kill for pleasure. He had gotten to know me; I had stalled for time and bared my soul to him. I had told him about how my grandmother would beat me with her spindly walking stick any time my parents weren't looking. I told him about my lifelong hobby of eating dirt. My favorite was the dirt around pine trees – a dark, woody bouquet.
But he was sharp, this one. Somewhere through all of my childhood stories about dead goldfish, he had discerned that I meant not to tell him the truth about Walker. That I would rather die than tell him.
I saw him blink at this realization and slowly turn his head towards me. But I knew that he wouldn't. He couldn't. I loved him. I loved the way his hand rested on his Desert Eagle. I loved the way he strolled through the park, at any time ready to protect me against ten thousand Martian warriors, and die in the attempt. My first assessment of the agent had been completely wrong. Through him listening to me for at least a good ten minutes, I had realized my misjudgment. He wasn't a killing machine; he was just a regular guy stuck in the wrong job.
Not that he had told me any of this; I had just surmised it.
This explains why I was so surprised to find myself in an anonymous alleyway with a Desert Eagle once again pointed at me. This time it was my heart.
I truly did not believe that he would pull the trigger. I knew, in my heart, in my soul, that he would not be able to kill me. He would never be able to destroy this beauty that he had only just discovered. It would have been physically impossible.
I could see his eyes through his square sunglasses. I could see into them, into his soul. I suddenly understood that he loved me.
Realization hit me as sloppily as a snow blower to the face. He was just playing a game! He really meant to propose to me! We were getting married and would have nineteen children!
I watched his finger on the trigger of the gun. It twitched, undecided. I was beyond certain that no harm was going to come to me.
He loved me.
I watched the bullet leave the barrel of his gun and travel over to me.
It must have been made of foam.
I watched it enter my flesh.
This was just a dream.
A dream.
dream
dream
I had to wake up.
And then I did. It felt like I was being painfully ripped through several plates of glass. It felt like running through hail made of bowling balls. It felt like every part of my flesh was being torn in a different direction. I sat up screaming. It was all pink around me. Machines, wires, and pain. Falling, sliding, down, into a chasm, down, down. Splash! Cold, slimy, wet. Now up, up again, in the cradling arms of a cold, steel, machine. It was colder here than it had been in New York. Where was I? And there were people looking at me. And I was naked.
How odd, I thought. Then I passed out.
i metta
(the end)