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damned_lounge2008-10-31 06:52 pm
notachick.livejournal.com) wrote in damned_lounge2008-10-31 06:52 pm
Entry tags:
Oktoberfest Entry '08: Q and A by Kaze
Title: Q and A
Author: MurasakiKaze "Kaze"
Beta (if applicable): Re, Duski, Kouje--er, Serey
Word Count: 2,109
Rating: G? Nothing much happens :c Mentions of blood but dude, Disney does that shit
Character(s): Lydia, Martin Landel, Alec Doyle, Jill - brief mention of certain doctors
Pairing(s) (if applicable): Nien :c
Summary: In her head, all the horror made sense. It all boiled down to the Q&A of everyday life.
Notes (if applicable): Oh, the fun of taking liberties. :|
When people asked her about her job, she never really said much. Oh, certainly she answered their questions and talked about it, but as anyone knows, a person could speak for years without ever really saying a thing. That was how it was for her. Her family and friends asked her how she was doing and she’d obediently and dutifully give the PR answers, as if she were reciting from a pamphlet. No one ever seemed to notice. People liked pamphlet answers. It meant they didn’t have to think.
“Is your job very difficult?”
“Oh, not very difficult at all.”
“What do you do?”
“I assist him as best I can. He’s very busy, you see, and sometimes needs the extra hands.”
“Isn’t it dangerous up there with them all?”
“The staff is well trained to handle any emergency or situation that might arise.”
“Don’t you ever think of quitting?”
“Never.”
It wasn’t like she could quit, even if she wanted. She owed him too much. He had too tight of a hold on her. The thought no longer crossed her mind, never even entered her brain as a minute possibility of “what if” or “down the line.” She worked here now and she would always work here. She would always work at his side.
Once, a long time ago, things could have been different. A long time ago, when there had been three instead of two standing at the head of the program and working feverishly into the night. Desks and laboratory equipment side by side, lamps burning in a pair like the Eyes of God until the daylight came and chased them away. Two bright stars that seemed like they could illuminate all of Heaven if only that one single something would just come to them in a flash of divine inspiration. Back then, things had been simpler. The past was to blame for all the things gone wrong today.
She used to flit back and forth like a hummingbird between those two jewels of the night. She’d bring them coffee or herbal tea, wine or cigarettes, set classical music or jazz on the players for them – like she was laying offerings at their feet. Her gods, her idols, her golden calves, laboring to bring the universe into creation, hunched over their desks and Petri dishes until they all but forgot she existed.
She didn’t mind. Back then, she answered different questions; and even though she spoke less, she said more.
“Could you bring me the results from last week’s test?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Be a doll and whip me up some tea?”
“It will only take a minute.”
“The music’s a bit loud. Get him to turn it down, will you?”
“Right away.”
“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?”
“Without a doubt.”
If only they would look and see that she would do anything for them; for both of them. Her responses were the same to each because they were both right, they needed each other, they were incomplete without the other – they were too similar. But without one, the other would fall to pieces. She told them in so many ways how far she was willing to follow them both, but neither seemed to notice. She was left to watch like a shadow against the wall as they built up their empire and became kings on their thrones.
Then things started to change. They pitched their idea and it took off like they thought it would. Success swelled them both and, by proximity alone, filled her, too. She was proud of her doctors, the men she’d helped, and all the wonderful things they’d be doing. It was important that they continue their work, vital that they did what they did – even if it wasn’t the cleanest of jobs. She fielded questions from the media and passed on the relevant ones to the people who really needed to answer them.
“And what of security?”
“I’ll let them answer your question.” It was jotted down onto a notepad, ready to be asked at a later time.
“This is all terribly exciting. What do you think of it?”
“Oh, yes, it’s very exciting.” The standard answer.
She watched the flurry of activity rise up like a cloud around her as the staff was handpicked from various places. A former psychiatrist from the 16th precinct of the New York Police Department, a maverick from Princeton-Plainsboro (and soon after, another from the same institution joined him), and several other doctors, nurses, orderlies, and front staff were picked and employed. Everyone, down to the cooks and service staff were all specially screened and selected by the two men who would soon be responsible for revolutionizing the world. The staff had to be the best and the brightest, because they would be dealing with the cream of the crop in patients. Soon the first roster of those to be admitted was passed to her desk, along with their files, and from her desk to theirs. Two copies, left in two very capable hands, or so she thought.
She watched it as they built the Institute up from nothing but a dream.
And she watched as the dream turned to rot and decay and evil, corrupting like a corpse left in the midsummer sun until not even God in His heaven would recognize the face.
It was horror like she’d never seen before in her life. Like two moths attracted to a flame, the doctors spiraled downward and became like the very demons she thought they were trying to defeat. (Or perhaps she was wrong and this was what they had aimed at all along.) Each thought they were in the right and the other was wrong – neither was willing to back down, and the patients were caught in the middle. The experiments were the problem, she thought, but she never had the courage to say as much. She’d seen them go from labs set side by side to chairs at the head of the world, so how could she ever say a thing to them about what she thought? All she could do was bring them tea or coffee, straighten their papers, arrange their world so they didn’t have to really look and see how rotten it was. Every night, though, she asked herself: How could they do this? How could they continue on when they had strayed so far from the path? How could she keep supporting them like this? How could she face the patients, the families, her family, her friends knowing what she did day in and day out?
So many questions.
And no answers were in sight.
In the end, their different ideas made everything go wrong, things she didn’t understand and was afraid to ask about. They began bickering and she desperately kept dancing from one flower to the other, in the hopes that she could keep them together. But each time their honeyed words started to sting her a little more. She watched as her gods tore into each others’ throats, hands ripping at the universe they created. Their war rent the sky in two and broke her heart, so she resolved to stay away from it all. She watched the nurses and the patients and she tried to forget what happened in the offices and the labs. She tried to ignore their endless fighting.
Finally, the day and the night separated and so did they. One left in a fury, anger and righteousness and vows of retribution for all the evils they had unleashed upon the world. The other remained and grew stronger, smarter, more confident, more arrogant. And then, it happened. Things got to the point where they had to fall apart or they had to adapt.
He chose to adapt and their vision, their beautiful world they had all spent so long laboring over changed into something else entirely, unrecognizable and monstrous. The night and the day, she began to fear them both. During the day, she was kept busy and at night... She’d never known nightmares until her first night there. All the horrors, all the blood – she could see why he disappeared and became a voice on the radio, taunting the one left behind. Still, she couldn’t leave like he had. She had a duty, she had been chosen – He had chosen her. So she listened and watched it all and she slowly came to know what was happening.
She stared the monster in the face.
And for him, she became part of it.
She went became more than just an assistant and took her place as the head of staff. She donned a new uniform and continued with her work. She followed him as she always did, obedient and demure – working so that he would learn to appreciate her and all she did for him. She kept up the appearance of the perfect Head Nurse; organized, efficient, somewhat tired as a nurse should be, but enthusiastic for her work when people asked. They always asked, but they never listened. New patients came by the busloads – soon they had so many, so very many in their ranks that she began to forget their names and their faces. She had to organize them all, put them into halls, rearrange the roommates and the rooms, set up their doctor schedules, make sure they didn’t have anything they weren’t supposed to have and tell the nurses that would be dealing with them on a daily basis. So many patients and she had to be able to tell him about every single one of them so that he could talk to them through the Intercom.
In the flurry of papers and duties, the patients became nothing more than files and case numbers and, after awhile, she stopped caring about what happened to them. She was tired and she still had to be nice and polite and pretend like everything was going perfectly when she knew that it wasn’t. When the patients left, they were that much less paperwork to worry about. They were that much less of a bother to her and her Doctor.
The only Doctor that had stayed. The only Doctor that mattered.
He had killed the other one. He’d murdered him up on the roof while she had kept running around below, pretending like nothing was wrong. She spent the day talking to the patients, to the people she’d given up as numbers and files, and told them just how little she cared in the way she automatically read off the script. She moved them around through the Institute bit by bit, shift by shift, while upstairs, her doctors talked and fought and finally...
She’d known the moment he’d come downstairs. The moment he walked through the door, bloodstained and smiling. It was over. He’d won.
He’d won and now everything was lost.
Soon after, the questions stopped coming. People stopped asking her how her job was. People stopped asking her anything. He went through the motions, but every request was a command. Her Doctor stopped asking her questions and now she had no way to talk with him. She simply obeyed and wished that the Radio would speak up again someday. She knew it wouldn’t though. Alec was dead. She’d helped clean the blood off Martin’s clothes, burned them when the stains wouldn’t come out – he was gone. She was trapped like the rest of them, but her sins were stained into the walls deeper than any of their blood. She’d helped build this place and now it would destroy everything that was precious to her.
Or so she thought.
One night, the night after he’d died, the radio crackled to life again. It played a song and fell silent. She was changing by then, too much monster and too little human, but that little bit of song broke through.
Then later, it happened.
“Hey, guys! Hope you liked that little eulogy I played earlier. I didn’t know Jack very well...”
Even without her wits about her, even at night, a little bit of hope shone through, and in her nightmare form, she smiled. The scalpels and pain and needles and rage and never-ending bloodlust gave way for just a brief moment as she realized that her dream wasn’t dead yet. Tomorrow, he’d be looking to her for an answer, for her to help him again because even with one Doctor dead, another had taken his place. Even if she hoped he won against this Jill one day, she was happy the Radio was back to life.
It meant there would be questions.
And with questions, came the hope that he would see what he had done.
And how far from Heaven he had fallen.
Author: MurasakiKaze "Kaze"
Beta (if applicable): Re, Duski, Kouje--er, Serey
Word Count: 2,109
Rating: G? Nothing much happens :c Mentions of blood but dude, Disney does that shit
Character(s): Lydia, Martin Landel, Alec Doyle, Jill - brief mention of certain doctors
Pairing(s) (if applicable): Nien :c
Summary: In her head, all the horror made sense. It all boiled down to the Q&A of everyday life.
Notes (if applicable): Oh, the fun of taking liberties. :|
When people asked her about her job, she never really said much. Oh, certainly she answered their questions and talked about it, but as anyone knows, a person could speak for years without ever really saying a thing. That was how it was for her. Her family and friends asked her how she was doing and she’d obediently and dutifully give the PR answers, as if she were reciting from a pamphlet. No one ever seemed to notice. People liked pamphlet answers. It meant they didn’t have to think.
“Is your job very difficult?”
“Oh, not very difficult at all.”
“What do you do?”
“I assist him as best I can. He’s very busy, you see, and sometimes needs the extra hands.”
“Isn’t it dangerous up there with them all?”
“The staff is well trained to handle any emergency or situation that might arise.”
“Don’t you ever think of quitting?”
“Never.”
It wasn’t like she could quit, even if she wanted. She owed him too much. He had too tight of a hold on her. The thought no longer crossed her mind, never even entered her brain as a minute possibility of “what if” or “down the line.” She worked here now and she would always work here. She would always work at his side.
Once, a long time ago, things could have been different. A long time ago, when there had been three instead of two standing at the head of the program and working feverishly into the night. Desks and laboratory equipment side by side, lamps burning in a pair like the Eyes of God until the daylight came and chased them away. Two bright stars that seemed like they could illuminate all of Heaven if only that one single something would just come to them in a flash of divine inspiration. Back then, things had been simpler. The past was to blame for all the things gone wrong today.
She used to flit back and forth like a hummingbird between those two jewels of the night. She’d bring them coffee or herbal tea, wine or cigarettes, set classical music or jazz on the players for them – like she was laying offerings at their feet. Her gods, her idols, her golden calves, laboring to bring the universe into creation, hunched over their desks and Petri dishes until they all but forgot she existed.
She didn’t mind. Back then, she answered different questions; and even though she spoke less, she said more.
“Could you bring me the results from last week’s test?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Be a doll and whip me up some tea?”
“It will only take a minute.”
“The music’s a bit loud. Get him to turn it down, will you?”
“Right away.”
“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?”
“Without a doubt.”
If only they would look and see that she would do anything for them; for both of them. Her responses were the same to each because they were both right, they needed each other, they were incomplete without the other – they were too similar. But without one, the other would fall to pieces. She told them in so many ways how far she was willing to follow them both, but neither seemed to notice. She was left to watch like a shadow against the wall as they built up their empire and became kings on their thrones.
Then things started to change. They pitched their idea and it took off like they thought it would. Success swelled them both and, by proximity alone, filled her, too. She was proud of her doctors, the men she’d helped, and all the wonderful things they’d be doing. It was important that they continue their work, vital that they did what they did – even if it wasn’t the cleanest of jobs. She fielded questions from the media and passed on the relevant ones to the people who really needed to answer them.
“And what of security?”
“I’ll let them answer your question.” It was jotted down onto a notepad, ready to be asked at a later time.
“This is all terribly exciting. What do you think of it?”
“Oh, yes, it’s very exciting.” The standard answer.
She watched the flurry of activity rise up like a cloud around her as the staff was handpicked from various places. A former psychiatrist from the 16th precinct of the New York Police Department, a maverick from Princeton-Plainsboro (and soon after, another from the same institution joined him), and several other doctors, nurses, orderlies, and front staff were picked and employed. Everyone, down to the cooks and service staff were all specially screened and selected by the two men who would soon be responsible for revolutionizing the world. The staff had to be the best and the brightest, because they would be dealing with the cream of the crop in patients. Soon the first roster of those to be admitted was passed to her desk, along with their files, and from her desk to theirs. Two copies, left in two very capable hands, or so she thought.
She watched it as they built the Institute up from nothing but a dream.
And she watched as the dream turned to rot and decay and evil, corrupting like a corpse left in the midsummer sun until not even God in His heaven would recognize the face.
It was horror like she’d never seen before in her life. Like two moths attracted to a flame, the doctors spiraled downward and became like the very demons she thought they were trying to defeat. (Or perhaps she was wrong and this was what they had aimed at all along.) Each thought they were in the right and the other was wrong – neither was willing to back down, and the patients were caught in the middle. The experiments were the problem, she thought, but she never had the courage to say as much. She’d seen them go from labs set side by side to chairs at the head of the world, so how could she ever say a thing to them about what she thought? All she could do was bring them tea or coffee, straighten their papers, arrange their world so they didn’t have to really look and see how rotten it was. Every night, though, she asked herself: How could they do this? How could they continue on when they had strayed so far from the path? How could she keep supporting them like this? How could she face the patients, the families, her family, her friends knowing what she did day in and day out?
So many questions.
And no answers were in sight.
In the end, their different ideas made everything go wrong, things she didn’t understand and was afraid to ask about. They began bickering and she desperately kept dancing from one flower to the other, in the hopes that she could keep them together. But each time their honeyed words started to sting her a little more. She watched as her gods tore into each others’ throats, hands ripping at the universe they created. Their war rent the sky in two and broke her heart, so she resolved to stay away from it all. She watched the nurses and the patients and she tried to forget what happened in the offices and the labs. She tried to ignore their endless fighting.
Finally, the day and the night separated and so did they. One left in a fury, anger and righteousness and vows of retribution for all the evils they had unleashed upon the world. The other remained and grew stronger, smarter, more confident, more arrogant. And then, it happened. Things got to the point where they had to fall apart or they had to adapt.
He chose to adapt and their vision, their beautiful world they had all spent so long laboring over changed into something else entirely, unrecognizable and monstrous. The night and the day, she began to fear them both. During the day, she was kept busy and at night... She’d never known nightmares until her first night there. All the horrors, all the blood – she could see why he disappeared and became a voice on the radio, taunting the one left behind. Still, she couldn’t leave like he had. She had a duty, she had been chosen – He had chosen her. So she listened and watched it all and she slowly came to know what was happening.
She stared the monster in the face.
And for him, she became part of it.
She went became more than just an assistant and took her place as the head of staff. She donned a new uniform and continued with her work. She followed him as she always did, obedient and demure – working so that he would learn to appreciate her and all she did for him. She kept up the appearance of the perfect Head Nurse; organized, efficient, somewhat tired as a nurse should be, but enthusiastic for her work when people asked. They always asked, but they never listened. New patients came by the busloads – soon they had so many, so very many in their ranks that she began to forget their names and their faces. She had to organize them all, put them into halls, rearrange the roommates and the rooms, set up their doctor schedules, make sure they didn’t have anything they weren’t supposed to have and tell the nurses that would be dealing with them on a daily basis. So many patients and she had to be able to tell him about every single one of them so that he could talk to them through the Intercom.
In the flurry of papers and duties, the patients became nothing more than files and case numbers and, after awhile, she stopped caring about what happened to them. She was tired and she still had to be nice and polite and pretend like everything was going perfectly when she knew that it wasn’t. When the patients left, they were that much less paperwork to worry about. They were that much less of a bother to her and her Doctor.
The only Doctor that had stayed. The only Doctor that mattered.
He had killed the other one. He’d murdered him up on the roof while she had kept running around below, pretending like nothing was wrong. She spent the day talking to the patients, to the people she’d given up as numbers and files, and told them just how little she cared in the way she automatically read off the script. She moved them around through the Institute bit by bit, shift by shift, while upstairs, her doctors talked and fought and finally...
She’d known the moment he’d come downstairs. The moment he walked through the door, bloodstained and smiling. It was over. He’d won.
He’d won and now everything was lost.
Soon after, the questions stopped coming. People stopped asking her how her job was. People stopped asking her anything. He went through the motions, but every request was a command. Her Doctor stopped asking her questions and now she had no way to talk with him. She simply obeyed and wished that the Radio would speak up again someday. She knew it wouldn’t though. Alec was dead. She’d helped clean the blood off Martin’s clothes, burned them when the stains wouldn’t come out – he was gone. She was trapped like the rest of them, but her sins were stained into the walls deeper than any of their blood. She’d helped build this place and now it would destroy everything that was precious to her.
Or so she thought.
One night, the night after he’d died, the radio crackled to life again. It played a song and fell silent. She was changing by then, too much monster and too little human, but that little bit of song broke through.
Then later, it happened.
“Hey, guys! Hope you liked that little eulogy I played earlier. I didn’t know Jack very well...”
Even without her wits about her, even at night, a little bit of hope shone through, and in her nightmare form, she smiled. The scalpels and pain and needles and rage and never-ending bloodlust gave way for just a brief moment as she realized that her dream wasn’t dead yet. Tomorrow, he’d be looking to her for an answer, for her to help him again because even with one Doctor dead, another had taken his place. Even if she hoped he won against this Jill one day, she was happy the Radio was back to life.
It meant there would be questions.
And with questions, came the hope that he would see what he had done.
And how far from Heaven he had fallen.