3pipeproblem (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
3pipeproblem) wrote2004-10-16 10:14 am
3pipeproblem) wrote2004-10-16 10:14 am
(no subject)
So I found this on my hard drive...and I finished it. RPS (Raymond Prentiss Shaw!)
...Manchurian Candidate fic, for anyone who didn't get that.
Raymond has learned to recognize the truth only when it’s reflexive—defensive, thrown in the air to fend off an attacker. He believes his mother loves him because she’d shouted it at him, once, the cut off point of an argument about Jocelyn.
He’d told the Captain he didn’t dream. Whatever words Marco had used to respond, the tone had said “bullshit.”
He hates sleeping at her house. They’ve been playing musical chairs with the beds there ever since father died. The mattress in his room is the most comfortable.
His mother lies on the bed next to him. Her entrances have the effect of eradicating any memory of what he was doing before she came into the room. She tells him she still loves the mattress, even though it’s his now.
He tries not to think of his mother and dead father together on it, of rumpled comforters and tangled sheets and reading glasses and pills on bedside tables and cold stares behind paperbacks left untouched until they can be used as shields in a dispute.
He knew about phantom limb pain even before the war. The thought dances away from him, fleeting as a dream: is this what my emotions are?
When he was a kid, he always wanted to say to a schoolteacher, when she asked what he went by, “Ray.” He lacked the courage.
His mother’s disapproval provides the only certainty that something is right.
He should dream about the men he killed. He should be able to say, “Their faces have been seared into my memory.”
It happened at night. It’s not something he would say.
Everyone dreams; some people just don’t remember.
There’s an infernal hesitance about everything he does, the wavering of a needle before it falls into the groove. He catches himself in the midst of awkward stops and starts, hitches of breath and breaks in step.
The Medal of Honor rests in his palm: some days it weighs his hand down and others it’s unnervingly light.
“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known.” In that infinitesimal division of a second before he recalls who Raymond Shaw is, he nods in agreement.
He dreams.
He dreams of cheering crowds, throngs of people wielding signs bearing his name as if to ward off evil. He dreams of lies and evasions; betraying them by name, rising above and towering over them. He dreams of a war hero, a leader, a man of courage and convictions. A man.
But not when he’s asleep.
...Manchurian Candidate fic, for anyone who didn't get that.
Raymond has learned to recognize the truth only when it’s reflexive—defensive, thrown in the air to fend off an attacker. He believes his mother loves him because she’d shouted it at him, once, the cut off point of an argument about Jocelyn.
He’d told the Captain he didn’t dream. Whatever words Marco had used to respond, the tone had said “bullshit.”
He hates sleeping at her house. They’ve been playing musical chairs with the beds there ever since father died. The mattress in his room is the most comfortable.
His mother lies on the bed next to him. Her entrances have the effect of eradicating any memory of what he was doing before she came into the room. She tells him she still loves the mattress, even though it’s his now.
He tries not to think of his mother and dead father together on it, of rumpled comforters and tangled sheets and reading glasses and pills on bedside tables and cold stares behind paperbacks left untouched until they can be used as shields in a dispute.
He knew about phantom limb pain even before the war. The thought dances away from him, fleeting as a dream: is this what my emotions are?
When he was a kid, he always wanted to say to a schoolteacher, when she asked what he went by, “Ray.” He lacked the courage.
His mother’s disapproval provides the only certainty that something is right.
He should dream about the men he killed. He should be able to say, “Their faces have been seared into my memory.”
It happened at night. It’s not something he would say.
Everyone dreams; some people just don’t remember.
There’s an infernal hesitance about everything he does, the wavering of a needle before it falls into the groove. He catches himself in the midst of awkward stops and starts, hitches of breath and breaks in step.
The Medal of Honor rests in his palm: some days it weighs his hand down and others it’s unnervingly light.
“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known.” In that infinitesimal division of a second before he recalls who Raymond Shaw is, he nods in agreement.
He dreams.
He dreams of cheering crowds, throngs of people wielding signs bearing his name as if to ward off evil. He dreams of lies and evasions; betraying them by name, rising above and towering over them. He dreams of a war hero, a leader, a man of courage and convictions. A man.
But not when he’s asleep.
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There’s an infernal hesitance about everything he does, the wavering of a needle before it falls into the groove. He catches himself in the midst of awkward stops and starts, hitches of breath and breaks in step.
You really have a way with words.
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no subject
It's hard to pick a favorite bit, but:
He dreams of cheering crowds, throngs of people wielding signs bearing his name as if to ward off evil.
I love your spare prose in this--a lot of people try to do minimalism and fail, but because it works so much for this character, it's the theme that informs the style that informs the character, and vice-versa.
(And that Liev icon is SOOOO hot.)
More MC fic! More!!
no subject
There'll probably be more fic (not to mention icons!) when they release the movie on DVD ;)