Guard
A Red Eye Fanfic
It was a dark and stormy night.
(You already hate this story, but hang in there for just a minute. It gets better.)
This circumstance would normally be considered a relaxing and pleasant thing. However, far from commonplace occurences were taking place in a certain apartment in Miami. Imagine, just for a moment, that on that fateful night, you were your invisible superhero of choice. Step inside. You would have first noticed that most of the lights in the house were off. Your first instinct would have implied that nobody was home, but this would be very wrong, for in one room, a single lightbulb pierced the darkness as a classical battle between evil and a greater evil took place.
Glancing into the room of doom, i.e., the kitchen, your second instinct would have said that the greater evil was winning.
However, this would also be very wrong.
Strewn across the floor were the previous inner contents of the greater evil, and yet, the lesser evil combatant, a rather ordinary looking man at first glance, was knelt before the prevailing greater evil in seeming submission. He glared at his hands in consternation, for he held within them the weapons for success... but was he man enough to employ them?
Of course he was.
His head rose with decision and determination, a sinister glint of light in his blinding blue eyes, and the last remnants of hesitation were shoved out of his mind as he fired the weapon in his left hand, ready to wipe out his opponent with the weapon in the right.
The Windex splashed onto the sticky surface, and in spite of the disgusting texture, color, and scent of whatever had died in there ten months ago, Jackson remained stone faced as he plunged his paper towel into the murky uncertainty of the bottom of his fridge.
It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it.
Jackson Rippner hated procrastination. Every aspect of his life was neatly organized and kept up to date in singular immacularity, and nothing ever escaped his notice long enough to get out of hand. But somehow, in the year and a half he had been living out of this small downclass apartment (a nearly celebratory fact; this was the longest he had lived in one place for quite some time), the cleaning of his refrigerator had gotten away from him. It was hours before leaving for a job and he was stuck in his apartment, waiting for nothing but a green light call from his contact across town. Inspiration had struck him to make some use of his restless energy and time.
Something about the severe state of his refrigerator seemed almost disturbing. As if letting one aspect of his life go so far meant he could be incompetent in others. But after a moment of pondering this philosophy, he had dismissed it and moved on to speculating on how in the heck the jar of chutney had gotten into the rear top shelf behind the pickled olives.
Chutney.
He didn't even know what chutney was. Nor whether he had received it as a gift, gotten it as part of a package deal at the local SaveMart, or indeed if it had come with the apartment. He threw it away.
And now he had come to the moment of truth, the scent which had haunted his senses through the entire removal process screaming for the attention of his gag reflexes. The mouldering remnants of the death of a spilt lasagna, caked syrup, rotten lettuce, and whatever had created that odd yellowish custardy substance in the bottom of his fridge seemed to taunt him. The absurdity of the fact that a bit of rotten food had nearly gotten to him put an ironic sneer on his face, but he had to admit, if never to others, then only to himself, that this was somehow a very psychologically demanding moment.
The jobs he had taken in his occupation were cut and dry, mentally speaking. You put aside every questioning emotion, moral, and insecurity and simply went in and conquered. He loved the power high he got from doing what few other people could. He loved manipulating people, using their own quirks against them. He loved the acting aspect- he nearly laughed aloud inside every time one of his gullible targets played right into his hands, holding pleasant conversations, so utterly unaware. And it was so easy to just ignore that whimpering little voice of weakness which had slowly turned into a whisper and eventually became mute.
The refrigerator was different.
There was no obvious entity to work against, a 100 odds of victory, not another person in the apartment to do the deceptive tango of innocence with, and then with the simple fact that it was just a household chore... it had, quite simply, caught him with his guard down.
In the ultimate scheme of things, it wasn't any more dramatic than realizing the left turn you were supposed to take about five miles down the road is about 20 yards ahead and the mind-jogging gear change of having to switch into the turn lane sooner than you thought, or perhaps seeing the same anonymous person in two different supermarkets in a row, giving you that vaguely jarring "is she following me?" feeling. It was simply a sign for him to pull back up the old guard.
The fact that he had to put on his guard for a refrigerator was what got him.
As he scooped out the mucky substance and tossed it into his trash can, the guard that turned his mind into a machine which could hold a subject at gunpoint in a crowded mall with a pleasant smile...
...the guard that gave him the ability to destroy the lives of hundreds of people with a threat or a bargain...
...the guard that worked so well it was almost invisible...
...worked just as well for him to grab the slime coated leaf of cabbage and throw it into the trash can without a single thought of discomfort.
He knew the thoughts were there. He could tell from the sluggish feeling in the pit of his stomach that he should be thoroughly disgusted. The simple fact was that the feeling didn't matter. It was an instinctual human physiological reaction to being so close to something that would be poisonous to eat. But he was above bowing to the primitive weakness which ruled the lives of so many humans.
The last crust scrubbed away from the side of his fridge, and he stood back in admiration of a spotless, empty, neatly done job. He closed the door and grabbed the bag of trash. The storm had passed, and he had decided he could use a breath of fresh air and a break from kneeling on the ground for so long. But in the cool night air, the street lamps gleaming off the puddles on the street from the recently ended rain, he was slightly astonished to find that the sick feeling remained in the pit of his stomach. It remained after he closed the lid of the dumpster, it remained after he returned to his kitchen to put the shelves back in the fridge. It remained after every useless condiment had been shoved to the back shelf with the hope that some day he may use it in some odd recipe. It even remained after the door of the refrigerator closed with a satisfying thud for the last time and he slouched into the living room for a short rest on his sofa before getting ready to go. As he sat in the darkness, rubbing his temples, the reason started to take shape. He didn't like it. But it was, again, very true.
The rotting mess in the bottom of his fridge was a physical symbol of every scruple and moral issue he had pushed away as illogical and meaningless. He didn't know why or how his mind had made this connection, but the connection was there nonetheless, because the feeling in his stomach mirrored the feeling he had gotten during every job in the first few years of his line of work. He shook his head at the irony that it would come back to haunt him in the form of nameless goo.
He loved his job, every second of it. Nonetheless, this night brought home the all-pervading instinctual sense that no matter how mechanically and logically his life and motives may be reasoned out, there had to be something wrong with his perspective. And the worst part was, the tiny fraction of a percentage of him that wanted to fix it was majorly outnumbered by the part that knew that no matter how he tried to reform himself, he was so far skewed and consumed by his work that he could never go back and rejoin the human race without the risk of losing everything he was good at, the only thing that made his life worth living. In short, the life he loved, the life of freedom he deserved for his special skills, a life outside of the mainstream, denied him of something that he could never trade it for.
Humanity.
Jackson's head dropped back onto the sofa. If anything, the pain in his stomach intensified with his realization. He lolled his head over and squinted at the clock on the wall.
Still about two hours before the call was supposed to come.
He glanced around oddly, as if he was expecting someone to leap out of the shadows and catch him. He then slowly stood up and walked numbly to the bathroom.
After years of ignoring his own morality, he felt he deserved this moment.
Closing his eyes and ignoring the guard that kept trying to come up of its own accord, he quite simply knelt before the toilet and threw up into it with great passion.
Every hushed discomfort, unsettled scruple, and ignored feeling from his life was expelled in this most intimate moment. He hacked and sputtered, not caring about the redness of his face or the tears squeezing out of the corners of his eyes. It was the first moment he had allowed himself to be weak in years, and by gum, he was going to enjoy it.
And then... that cell phone rang.
"S---!" Jackson screamed in frustration. He spat into the toilet and grabbed a wad of toilet paper, wiping his face as he ran from the room in search of the phone.
After four and a half rings of searching, he found it in the bedroom sitting pertly on his bed. He snatched it up and fumbled with the "speak" button. "What?" he rasped.
"Jackson, we have a major change of plans. The girl's on a plane out of town and she won't be back until after 8:45 on Monday morning."
"WHAT!"
"Yes. AFTER the Keefes were supposed to check in."
"Lovely!" Jackson muttered ironically. "So, wait, if she lands after they check in, and she lands at 8:45 a.m... when DO they check in? My facts said-"
"5:30 a.m. rather than p.m. Last minute switch by Keefe's security. Almost worked for its purpose, but Tommy intercepted that little detail just today. It wasn't going to be a problem originally, but..."
"Well, that's why we hired him."
"Jackson, you have got to get her to change that room before Sunday. I've got you booked for a flight to Texas in two hours on Fresh Air. The details will come while you're on the way in, but right now your job is to get checked in and get over there. Got it?"
"I'm packing as we speak." Jackson grabbed his emergency suitcase, tossing in a couple other useful items, and started to put together a traveling outfit.
"Good man." There was a pause. "You don't sound so good. Do you think you'll be up to this?"
Jackson dropped the tie he was holding and glared at the phone, then spoke into it with finality. "Never ask me that. Ever."
CLICK
(Author's notes: This story was inspired by my dad asking me to clean the fridge the other day. I wasn't really looking to write a Red Eye fanfic, but being of a logically driven mindset and entirely too similar to Jackson myself, I was very shocked at how much of a taxing, humbling, emotionally demanding experience it was. There is a lot of symbolic abuse to the psyche that not a lot of people take into account, especially if it's not something they do often such as being forced to kneel, facing things from the past you nearly forgot about, seeing how much useless stuff can clutter up your life if you don't stay on top of it, the list goes on and on! At any rate, I felt that someone else with a lot of denial and ignored issues would pull a similar experience from it. And, bingo, Jackson fit the bill just like magic. There you have it. This also happens to be the first fanfic I've ever had the patience to finish, so there must be something there. R&R, and thank you for choosing Fresh Air!)