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Sep. 21st, 2005 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
3pipeproblemShort vignette (is that redundant? I think even by vignette standards it's short) written for the Worst-Case Scenario Ficathon, mostly because I have that planner and wanted to write a story about Alan being stuck in a walk-in freezer. Sadly, that was not my prompt.
This isn't what I'd call "the best" or even what I'd call "good." Which is sad because I think it has potential, but...it's already way past due.
And for the record, TM!Alan and Brad have had a conversation about my scenario.
Alan gets himself unobtrusively drunk in time for the nine o' clock flight out of Dallas/Fort Worth. Head bowed, chin tucked as though he's contemplating a dive into the dregs of what in an airport bar passes for fine bourbon, he says, "I'm afraid to drink scotch here. I fear if I did, I'd forever associate the taste with that of Texas." He laughs at himself, forms a smile awkwardly as though drawing upside down.
Chelina touches him on the arm--firmly, bracing them both for a moment that's already passed. He turns to look at her, smile unwavering, eyes distant and imperturbable and sedate.
"We're boarding. Alan."
You'd think he'd be eager to leave Texas, which tastes of steak and humid air and bile rising in the back of his throat.
With drunken affability, Alan grants Chelina the window seat. Their captain (who doesn't possess so much as a hint of a drawl) has dimmed the cabin lights, sinking dark circles beneath the passengers' eyes. The plane lifts from the ground, prompting a corresponding lift in Alan's stomach, an increased pressure as though the atmosphere's grown heavy in a way that can only be alleviated with the application of alcohol. Alan asks Chelina if she thinks quicksand really exists.
"Quicksand," she repeats, and he smiles because even their sojourn to Texas hasn't taught her to conceal incredulity. She opens her mouth, prepared to ask by quicksand does he mean God, but says instead, "You lose your mind when you're drunk."
"I rarely miss it."
At the airport, he thinks, she'd have patted his shoulder, reached for his hand. In Texas they'd touched absently and often, one another's good luck charms. Something's worn off.
"Quicksand," Alan repeats, "exists for metaphorical purposes. That is what makes it dangerous."
Brad's fond of quicksand. He tells Alan in stern, schoolmasterly tones of how some don't recognize their doom until they're waste-deep in it, how sometimes the abyss is nothing more than another feature in a featureless landscape. Alan asks, have a number of Bostonians fallen prey to this, or are you hinting at something more profound?
"I've never seen quicksand,"--Alan's ears pop as they reach cruising altitude--"nor have I encountered anybody else who can lay claim to firsthand experience. Nor--" he lifts his hand, fingers still curled as though holding a glass--"can I conceive of any practical purpose it might serve."
"And what was the practical purpose of your hat?" Chelina asks.
"To quell the wrath of the natives, provide for my own amusement, and complement my eyes, naturally."
Her lips purse into a smile--on her the expression is condensed rather than expansive. Alan affords it a glance, a brief punctuative raise of the eyebrows, before allowing his eyes to rest on the seat in front of him.
"I'd know what to do, of course," he says, voice suddenly deflated. "You float on your back. A nice countervailing metaphor."
You'd think clutching the first class arm rests of your first class chair on flight 331 Dallas/Fort Worth-Boston would be an entirely different feeling from gripping the arms of a chair dragged from storage to accommodate a makeshift peanut gallery for an execution.
"You should sleep," Chelina says softly, and he feels recycled air brush pass his ear as she speaks.
Eyes closed, he nods. "You'd be surprised what that'll get you through."
Float on your back. Roll over. Play dead.
This isn't what I'd call "the best" or even what I'd call "good." Which is sad because I think it has potential, but...it's already way past due.
And for the record, TM!Alan and Brad have had a conversation about my scenario.
Alan gets himself unobtrusively drunk in time for the nine o' clock flight out of Dallas/Fort Worth. Head bowed, chin tucked as though he's contemplating a dive into the dregs of what in an airport bar passes for fine bourbon, he says, "I'm afraid to drink scotch here. I fear if I did, I'd forever associate the taste with that of Texas." He laughs at himself, forms a smile awkwardly as though drawing upside down.
Chelina touches him on the arm--firmly, bracing them both for a moment that's already passed. He turns to look at her, smile unwavering, eyes distant and imperturbable and sedate.
"We're boarding. Alan."
You'd think he'd be eager to leave Texas, which tastes of steak and humid air and bile rising in the back of his throat.
With drunken affability, Alan grants Chelina the window seat. Their captain (who doesn't possess so much as a hint of a drawl) has dimmed the cabin lights, sinking dark circles beneath the passengers' eyes. The plane lifts from the ground, prompting a corresponding lift in Alan's stomach, an increased pressure as though the atmosphere's grown heavy in a way that can only be alleviated with the application of alcohol. Alan asks Chelina if she thinks quicksand really exists.
"Quicksand," she repeats, and he smiles because even their sojourn to Texas hasn't taught her to conceal incredulity. She opens her mouth, prepared to ask by quicksand does he mean God, but says instead, "You lose your mind when you're drunk."
"I rarely miss it."
At the airport, he thinks, she'd have patted his shoulder, reached for his hand. In Texas they'd touched absently and often, one another's good luck charms. Something's worn off.
"Quicksand," Alan repeats, "exists for metaphorical purposes. That is what makes it dangerous."
Brad's fond of quicksand. He tells Alan in stern, schoolmasterly tones of how some don't recognize their doom until they're waste-deep in it, how sometimes the abyss is nothing more than another feature in a featureless landscape. Alan asks, have a number of Bostonians fallen prey to this, or are you hinting at something more profound?
"I've never seen quicksand,"--Alan's ears pop as they reach cruising altitude--"nor have I encountered anybody else who can lay claim to firsthand experience. Nor--" he lifts his hand, fingers still curled as though holding a glass--"can I conceive of any practical purpose it might serve."
"And what was the practical purpose of your hat?" Chelina asks.
"To quell the wrath of the natives, provide for my own amusement, and complement my eyes, naturally."
Her lips purse into a smile--on her the expression is condensed rather than expansive. Alan affords it a glance, a brief punctuative raise of the eyebrows, before allowing his eyes to rest on the seat in front of him.
"I'd know what to do, of course," he says, voice suddenly deflated. "You float on your back. A nice countervailing metaphor."
You'd think clutching the first class arm rests of your first class chair on flight 331 Dallas/Fort Worth-Boston would be an entirely different feeling from gripping the arms of a chair dragged from storage to accommodate a makeshift peanut gallery for an execution.
"You should sleep," Chelina says softly, and he feels recycled air brush pass his ear as she speaks.
Eyes closed, he nods. "You'd be surprised what that'll get you through."
Float on your back. Roll over. Play dead.
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Date: 2005-09-22 12:36 am (UTC)*snifs*
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Date: 2005-09-22 02:41 am (UTC)And thank you ;)
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Date: 2005-09-22 04:17 am (UTC)♥