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Canadian
Shack Challenge Drabbles Fandom: Angel
#1 Strange how the need to record persists, even now, when everything else is gone. Clumsy pencil-marks in a child's exercise book. Outside, an expanse of whiteness; inside, one small ivory rectangle, balanced on my knee. Room enough for a few sentences each day. A world of things left to say. No time or space left to say them. * Words are precious; a non-renewable resource. We use them sparingly, recycle where possible. "You think they got out of L.A. in time?" Gunn asks. "I'm sure they did. They've probably been held up somewhere. How are the supplies holding out?" "We still got enough. Your leg any better?" "Much. Thank you." "Hey, Wes. It stays dark for half the year up here, right?" "Yes." "So what's that light in the east?" "Probably nothing. Just one of the pipelines burning." Simple questions, and every answer a lie. * "Daddy had a cabin," Cordelia said. "The IRS repossessed it, but I guess it's still there. I mean, it's not like the developers are about to move in." "And definitely not after the apocalypse," Fred pointed out reasonably. Angel cradled the child closer, arms rigid. Looked at me. "Gunn and I will go ahead," I said. "You can follow later." I was in charge. I was supposed to be in charge. If I had made better choices -- Too late now. * The light in the east is not fire; the glow is too constant and too bright as it illuminates Gunn's face each time he moves to the shack's only window. He knows it is not a fire. He knows the true state of affairs in regard to our supplies, too: they are stored outside in the lean-to, where I cannot go. Food is not a problem -- we brought enough for five adults and an infant -- and we are surrounded by mile upon mile of water in handy solid form. But when the last of the wood is burnt, and the flame in the stove gutters and dies, so will we. "Don't sweat it, Wes," he says. "We got enough." I wish I believed him. * I have learned a lot since we arrived here. I have learned that there is nothing more profoundly sad than a child's teddy bear, lying in the corner, without a child to hold it. I have learned that the winters here are cold enough to freeze fuel. Today, Gunn brought the snowmobiles into the hut. They rest against the wall by the stove, nestling against each other, handlebars locked together like lovers' fingers entwined. I have learned that warmth is warmth, and an embrace is an embrace, and that it is more important that love is given freely than who gives it. I have learned it is impossible to use a snowmobile with a broken leg. * Today, Gunn burned the teddy
bear. Today, the light in the east grew brighter again. * Today, he said, "I'm not leaving you here. I won't leave you," and I believed him. The snow is deep, and the earth beneath hard, like iron, making a burial impossible. He empties the tank of the second snowmobile and douses the body. It is frozen in the attitude of supplication in which he found it, half a mile from the shack. He watches the blaze until it has died completely; then, returning to the shack for the last time, he pins a note to the door. The message is written in dull pencil on a page torn from a child's ruled notebook: 'I am going east. Follow me.
#2
What a long, strange trip it's been, Lindsey thinks. He should have known, of course, that it wouldn't be that easy. That he couldn't just quit, walk away, get in the truck and drive out of L.A. toward the wide open horizon. He was naïve to think he could. He sees now he was naïve about a lot of things. The last of his naiveté was beaten out of him -- literally -- in Phoenix, where a Wolfram & Hart lackey caught up with him in a bar. But they'd sent a human, and Lindsey was that much faster, that much more desperate to live. He's found that it helps, sometimes, to have the hand of a murderer. There were others after that. In Salt Lake City, three people asked Lindsey if he knew Jesus and one assassin tried to arrange a personal introduction. In Wyoming, he sold the truck to a man he met at a gas station, and felt a pang of loss as his last tangible link to another life vanished down the highway in a cloud of dust. He used the money to buy a fake passport in Montana; it shows a photograph of Lindsey next to the name 'Michael Burley'. He practiced his new name as the freight train rattled over the frontier into Canada's wide, empty spaces: Hi, I'm Michael, call me Mike. Saskatchewan. Alberta. Finally, in British Columbia, the shadows stopped falling behind him. The shack is tiny and anonymous, and if anyone ever owned it, no one remembers who they were. At any rate, no one's challenged Lindsey (Michael, he reminds himself, Mike) since he moved in. One room, no plumbing, intermittent electricity, but he thinks of it in a way he never thought of his apartment in L.A., stuffed with luxuries. He thinks of the shack as home. Four nights a week, he serves drinks in Charlie's place, the only bar in town, remembering skills he learnt as an impoverished law student, funding his education without the advantage of wealthy and indulgent parents. Sometimes he shoots the breeze with the regulars, listens more than he talks, but that's okay, people seem to like that. It turns out Mike's a good listener, better than Lindsey ever was. Lindsey was a lawyer, paid to listen, but Mike's different. Mike's interested. He absorbs the stories they tell him, strips them down to reveal plainly the emotion at the core, and hands them back to their owners in song, raw and beautiful. Once or twice a month, he brings his guitar and stays on after hours to play the guys whatever he's working on right now. His right hand moves as smoothly as his left, finding the notes, and the chords sweeten the air like rich, golden honey. He sings of old regrets and new hopes, and the men nod their heads as they listen, recognizing truths older than music, older than words. Lindsey could tell his own stories, if he chose to: stories about vengeful demons and vampire lovers, about magic and obsession and revenge. Most of all, about what it really means to sell your soul. Lindsey could tell one hell of a story. But Mike -- Mike's different. Mike strums his guitar with a hand that's a little darker and a little rougher than the rest of him, and tells other men's tales, and is content. |