obligatoryass | OOM: The chains we forge in life

After Trina told him he wasn't welcome in her home in his state, Logan had the cab drop him off at the nearest beach, but not before making a pit stop for a bottle of vodka. He's long since depleted the small flask he's carried with him since discovering Milliways Bar, and his buzz is wearing off quickly. He just needs something to dull the pain, make the ache in his heart go away. Just for a little while. He'll deal with it.

Just...not now. Tomorrow will be soon enough to pick up the pieces of his life. (If he were honest, he'd admit the unlikeliness of that being true, but honesty isn't something that the self-medicated are normally capable of.)

Hey pays his fare with what's left over from the liquor store purchase - enough to cover the fare, but not a tip, as he's told as the cab driver roars off in a storm of swearing. Like Logan cares.

Logan strolls (stumbles, more like) down to the beach, where he stares at the ocean for a long moment before turning back to the lights of the city, feeling distant, floaty, just the way he likes. Not wasted, not messed up, just cushioned from the blows of the world. He can't even bring himself to care (much) that Trina's just told him he's too much of a screw-up to come in at Christmas - he's just where he likes to be. Comfortably numb.

Logan laughs and kicks off his shoes as he hums the Pink Floyd song by the same name, but pulls up short when he sees a shape in the sand. At first he took it to be a turtle or something - one of those damned sand sculptures people like to make. It looks like - is that a face?

He moves closer to it, then stumbles backwards. Surely he's imagining things. Surely that's not the face of his dead father, stretched into a cruel smile?

In his haste to move away from the face, Logan falls to the ground, and that's the last thing he knows for some time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's quiet, unnaturally so, on the beach for a while; even the surf seems to be a little muted.

And then . . . then there's a sound, distant and faint at first, but louder, ever louder, and louder. The sound of chains, making far more noise than they should being dragged, as they are, against nothing but the sand in which they leave no trail.

The man, if we can call him such, dragging them leaves no footprints, either, but even like this, transparent and ghostly and wrapped in chains, this is unmistakably Aaron Echolls.

Or his Ghost.

Logan's never been quick to rise - he tends to linger longer at the edges of sleep than some people (particularly his sister) can ever manage. Now, though, he goes from 'out cold' to 'wide awake' in nanoseconds, and he's deeply disoriented when he realizes he's on a beach, in the dark. Listening to the sound of clinking metal.

"What the hell?" he mutters, finally spotting the source. "What's your problem, man?"

"Oh, this isn't about my problem, son," says the Ghost. "That's beyond any Earthly help now.

"The better question is 'what is your problem'?"

Logan stares for a very long moment. The face...well. It's dark. He could write it off as a fluke, a trick of the lack of light, the resemblance to the late, not-so-great Aaron Echolls. But the voice - Logan knows it too well to think it could belong to anyone else.

"Dad? Dad?"

And he notices, then, that Aaron is see-through. He'd read reviews about Aaron's transparent attempts at acting, but this did seem a little literal, even for film critics.

"In life I was your father."

In death? Well, there are somethings that death does not alter, but it's not always readily apparent just what they are.

Logan takes a deep breath. "This can't be real. Can't. Even if we're in some fucked-up version of A Christmas Carol, you make a lousy Marley. And I'm pretty sure I'm gonna suck at playing Scrooge."

"What evidence would you have of my reality--" the Ghost begins, and then stops abruptly.

"You know, the Victorian language is really not working for me. Let's just get to the point. Whether I make a lousy Marley or not, Logan, I'm the only one you've got."

Logan can substitute "father" for "Marley" in that last sentence, too. It'll be just as true, if not truer.

"And I'm here to warn you."

The truth of the matter doesn't make it any easier to believe. But in the interests of cutting to the chase (and getting back to that nice, comfortably numb state he was in a few minutes ago), Logan just shrugs.

"Yeah? Not to go sleeping with underage girls? Or maybe you want to tell me not to murder them after?"

"Are you really going to make me do the whole 'the chains we forge in life' speech, son?"

And when he's beyond judging from the Academy, if not from . . . Something?

His father's ghost sighs.

"Do you ever think about the chain you're forging, Logan? Day by day, link by link, drink by drink, and choice by choice? Or the fact that every link you add brings you that much closer to the day you'll dragging it, just like I'm dragging this one?"

"I don't believe in an afterlife," Logan says, even though it's not exactly true. He's seen the dead, alive again, after a fashion. Known a few who went...elsewhere.

But this literal penance, with the chain and all, seems a little extreme.

"You don't have to believe in it, son. I didn't either."

Maybe it believes in him. Maybe belief has nothing to do with it. Maybe it's all a dream.

But maybe it's not.

"Believe in it or not, you will be haunted tonight by Three Spirits," the Ghost says, adding melodramatic reverb to this pronouncement.

"Sorry. Couldn't resist."

"Overacting, just like always," Logan mutters. "The world is just lucky you never got old enough to play Scrooge. It'd be just another crappy TV special that airs every year, ad nauseum."

He sighs. "OK, fine. Three spirits. Past, present, future. They coming soon?"

"Expect the first when the clock stikes . . . how does this even work on a beach?"

The Ghost sighs again.

"Yes. Tonight. And they are your hope and chance of escaping this fate.

"And, Logan, try to take this a little bit seriously. You're on a bad path, son, and whatever else is true, I'm still your father. Whatever my failings in that role were or are or always will be, you have to know I don't want this for you," he says, indicating the chains he carries.

Logan looks down, biting his lip. Whatever else may or may not be true, whatever else he may believe, he's mostly sure that's the truth.

"You've been, uh, dragging those since you died?"

"Everywhere I go," the Ghost says.

"And that is farther than I can say, or you could understand."

Logan looks stubborn, as if he's about to argue the limits of his understanding, but then thinks of Milliways, thinks of trying to explain a pan-dimensional pocket universe to anyone who hadn't been there, and he lets it go.

"I'll take your word for it."

It is ever, ever, ever so much farther than Milliways.

"You should. And take my word for it, too, that without these visits, you will wind on the same path I'm treading. Without rest, without pause.

"Remember what I've told you, Logan.

"Mark me," he adds . . . and then stops, and shakes his head.

"Sorry. Wrong literary ghost."

And with those words, he turns, and begins to walk back up the beach, growing more transparent with every step.

Scale becomes different when you're dead, it seems.

Logan gapes after him for a minute before plopping down in the sand, intending to think about what Aaron had to say, but falling asleep instead.

He doesn't waken until much later, when he feels a hand wiping sand out of his eyes.

OOM: The chains we forge in life

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject