| Say It Ain't So |
[Oct. 23rd, 2007|11:32 pm] |
Memory one.
The phone rings low and quiet in Rhiannon’s ear. She chews the corner of her fingernail and paces. Each step is soft, a bare foot striking the wooden floor in no particular hurry. Despite this outward semblance of calm, there are nerves in the Slayer’s chest. She’s got a feeling like something’s not right... that what seems like a dream could be more.
She waits for him to answer and confirm the truth, just barely resisting the urge to cross her fingers. “Pick up.”
His phone vibrates on the night stand.
Whistler fiddles with the remote control, pausing the first court room scene from 'My Cousin Vinny'. He's seen this movie twelve times since checking in to Bally's and countless viewings earlier. He's even reciting Joe Pesci's dialogue a half-second before the actor speaks.
He could've had that part.
That was a curious thought.
The frame freezes on Pesci and Hermann Munster (the actor's name he never bothered to memorize) and checks the miniature screen on his cell. He quickly hits the green button.
"Can't sleep?" he asks, stifling his own yawn.
“I dunno.” Rhiannon puts her back to the kitchen sink. The apartment is a minor mess in front of her, complete with piled-up clothes and torn junk mail and soda cans. Diet Coke has become her replacement drink of champions, something innocuous to chug. Everything looks the way she remembers leaving it, but there’s a strange sense that time has elapsed.
Not to mention... “Did you ever wake up from a dream and it was so real, you walked around for a few hours convinced it actually happened?” The Slayer’s fingernail is jagged now. She leaves it alone.
Whistler bites his fingernail as the Slayer asks her question. A bad habit, letting them grow out and using teeth to trim them. Only as she waits for his answer, the hatted man stops chewing, mentally chiding himself that his manicurist will be pissed at having to do extra work.
Since when has this man, an Agent for the Powers That Be, accustomed to living out of his car, dressing from cast-offs from the local Goodwill, ever considered having his nails done?
"Like you were... somebody else?" he queried. "Same face, different memories. Like you were acting the part."
Rhiannon nods. “Like an alternate universe... that you suddenly... remember.” She isn’t sure how he made the leap from dreaming over to this new description, but it’s fitting. She exhales, hedging towards what she really wants to ask.
“I’ve got this feeling like the world got messed up and reset, but there’s a blip. I feel weird...” For a second, she gets distracted by a vivid mental picture, one that seems like a memory but can’t possible be real. It makes her cheeks and neck flush red. It’s unfamiliar to her. Rhiannon can’t remember the last time she flushed in humiliation. “I’m remembering another life, and it’s going to sound completely stupid, but it’s too full-color to be a regular dream and I don’t remember going to sleep. Did anything happen to you?”
Memories of his own play behind his eyes at twenty-four frames per second. I could've had that part.
"Everything's the same as I left it Rhi," Whistler responds. "Only it feels like me that's outta place. Whistler is my name, right? 'Cuz for some reason I wanna answer to August.
"So yeah," he exhaled. "Somethin' big might've gone down."
Rhiannon’s body slumps. She finds herself touching her forehead, and for some reason it doesn’t seem the slightest bit melodramatic. “Shit.”
No, that doesn’t quite cover it.
“SHIT!!” She moves off the sink, finally kicking off the haze and coming out of it angry enough to kick a cabinet. The door caves in and there’s a cacophony of falling pots and pans.
“What the fuck happened?!” The flush spreads all over her skin now, embarrassment traded for outrage. “I’m having this entire set of memories of being an actress in my own life! Do you think it’s some kind of spell? It’s not Elfleda, I’ll tell you that. I saw her the other night and she’s completely out of commission. Story for another time.”
He holds the cell phone as the combination of Slayer lungs and violence threatens to attack his eardrum. Whistler gingerly brings it back to catch the rest of Rhiannon's rant and while he'd like to know more about Elfleda's apparent fall from her pedestal, it's what the brunette said before that.
An actress in her own life.
"And I was a disgraced former West-End Shakespearean-trained prick slumming in a cable-produced television show." Whistler instinctively reaches for his cigarettes. "Well, fuck me."
Rhiannon practically snorts. “Yeah. I hate to break the bad news, but we’re not even fucking in that reality.” She yanks open her fridge and opens the bottom drawer, hoping that a forgotten beer might roll into view. There’s nothing but a wilted head of lettuce.
“However, I did have resume full of soap operas and French maid outfits, so things could be worse.” Sarcasm drips off her tongue. Rhiannon grabs a jar of peanut butter and a spoon. The thought about Deanna reoccurs to her and she considers again. “No... I take that back.”
"Try appearing as a guest on 'Maury' to discover paternity, which came back negative." Emphasis. Just to make it clear. "I doubt ya can beat that."
“I was sleeping with Deanna!” Rhiannon’s arm flies out to her side. A flourish before a bow that never comes.
Whistler is speechless. His imagination kicks into overdrive, then shuts down. Possibly never to recover.
"Okay," he croaks out. "You win. And I suspect whoever's responsible is about to experience a world of pain?"
Rhiannon’s arm goes behind her head. “How the hell am I supposed to kn... Wait.”
It’s so simple a possibility, she feels like an idiot for not trying it earlier. There’s a sound of papers shuffling and a chair dragging across the floor. The Slayer unearths her aging computer, bought on discount at a pawn shop. It blinks and churns before responding to her mouse clicks. There’s almost nothing and no one that can’t be googled.
“Everybody I remember from the... Okay we‘re gonna call it a dream for my sanity. Anyway, everyone I remember, I already know. Except two people. Do you remember any network types? Max Bickert or... an old bald guy?”
Whistler is up now, smoking and pacing the room. Pixels that form Hermann Munster's head give him a disapproving stare.
"I threw a tantrum in the writers' room," he recalls. "Scared the bejeezus outta a bunch of kids barely old enough to shave. Uh..." The Agent thinks harder. It's almost exactly like the time the Powers fired him for intervening and poked swiss-cheese holes in his memory. Only this time the file cabinets are over-stuffed with two sets of files.
"Lambert!" he exclaims into the telephone. Whistler takes a celebratory drag on the cigarette and blows victory rings. "Greasy fucker. Had a wife half his age I think."
Her eyebrow goes up. “At least she wasn’t a vampire.” Rhiannon waits for the search engine to deliver results on ‘Lambert’ and ‘Max Bickert’. It doesn’t take too long to deliver.
“Well what do you know. Ed Lambert and Max Bickert work for OZTv... It’s a cable network. Any clue what this might mean?” She’s praying there’s some way it’s a group delusion, but the names don’t ring any bells outside of the current situation, and she’s not an avid enough viewer of television to suggest she heard them there.
"We were actors, yeah?" The question was rhetorical, a way for Whistler to put the jumbled pieces together. "You got any recollection of what project you were on before things went... kerfluffy?"
“I don’t get what you mean.” Rhiannon’s eyebrows furrow. The glow of the monitor lights her face. “You mean what show we were on before I ‘woke up’? Or what show I was on before the one we were on together?” The sentence is a disaster. It’s appropriate, considering Rhiannon has no idea what’s going on. At least the sleuth work distracts her from her tainted memories. “Or... what I was doing in this reality before I got transformed into a tv actress?”
He takes one last drag of the tobacco before stubbing it into a nearby ashtray. The Agent is tempted to raid the miniature refrigerator for the peanuts. It feels like he hasn't eaten for a week.
"I don't think it matters what we were doin' before," he comments. "Neither of us were in the same room. If it was a spell, it was far-reachin' so probably not a simple trigger. I don't remember most of the players but you do, so that connection doesn't work either.... Wait."
He looks back at the seventeen-inch set nestled in the corner of his hotel room. "Television. You were on television. In that reality. Me too, and I played... Christ, I played me. Who were you, Rhi-Rhi? Were you an actress playin' yourself?"
“Yeah. On a show called Birthright.” Rhiannon gnaws on her ragged fingernail again. “I mean I don’t remember much outside of... you know, like talking to Max and Ed... my supposed life history... Deanna.... and some weird fan convention where we were sitting on a panel answering questions. Here’s the weird thing. I don’t know some of those faces. Like... okay there was this woman there with red hair. Everyone was calling her Sinovia, but I’ve never seen her before in m... wait a minute... yes I have! She works in the Nugget in Searchlight! Or at least she did when I lived there, I dunno if she still does.”
The Slayer’s hand freezes in the middle of pushing her hair back. “Oh my god, Hannah was there. I don't remember anything she said, but I saw her face!”
"Okay, so... same show. And who came up with that title anyway?" Whistler plops himself down on the edge of the bed, miscalculates the distance and hit the floor hard. "Owwww.
"Some people we know. And uh, Hannah. That's a conversation for another time." Whatever rules the Powers imposed that wouldn't allow him to reveal the truth has been broken. The Slayer witnessed the blonde. That was enough for him.
He considers another cigarette but enforces a measure of will power. "Supernatural bent, wouldn't you say? Common denominator. And all projected on the idiot box."
Rhiannon gets up and walks some more. “I still don’t get it. I mean we both have the same... delusion or dream or memory or whatever, but I mean the way we are, that doesn’t surprise me. It’s happened before, this could just be another case. Then again, I guess the internet puts a wrench in that theory. Who else can we call?”
Connor. She thinks of it because if memory serves, he was on that panel, too. But Rhiannon gets the feeling that every time she mentions the Destroyer, it puts a burr in Whistler’s side and vice versa.
“Can you call around while I do some looking into OZTv?” Rhiannon gives the computer a glance. “I can’t turn on the channel. I don’t have cable anymore.”
"There's one or two people I can get in touch with." It'll take effort, and bending a few hard-fast rules, but the Agent thinks he might be able to contact Hannah. "Plus, free cable. I'll take a look there too.
"Hey Rhi," Whistler continues after a pause. There's a knot in his stomach. "You good?"
“Can I answer that after you find out if I accidentally had sex with a vampire? Again?” Rhiannon flops on the couch. It’s a long way up to the ceiling. The only reason she’s not pulling her hair out by the roots is the thin possibility that it’s all a trick of the imagination. Hopefully one that Deanna didn’t also have.
“But before this... I was okay. Elfleda got cast out of hell. She’s still got power but it’s not the same. She actually asked me for help. I’d throw a parade, except she said her replacement’s worse than her, whatever that means. I didn‘t really have time to process it before the next big blow.”
"Well you know what they say about the big moments, Rhi." Another wave of deja vu, only this time Whistler remembers saying it clearly. "The stuff that comes after counts for seventy percent of your exam."
He swings one leg under so that he's sitting on it, reaching on top of the bed for the remote control. The movie will wait until later. The Agent wants to check out the upper-level cable channels. "If you're up to it, maybe we can grab a beer soon."
“Maybe.”
Rhiannon isn’t sure if they’re ready for that yet. Right now it feels okay, probably because problem solving is old tricks. Sooner or later though, the problem’s going to go away.
She doesn’t know if she should tell him the other news. It probably doesn’t make a difference. Nothing’s changed. But if he finds out from anybody other than her, Whistler will think something’s up, even if nothing is.
“I saw Joseph.” She bites her cheek. “He stopped by. He wanted to let me know he’s alive. It was okay. You know, awkward but... okay.”
Maybe he will raid the mini-bar after all. "Good. That he's alive."
“Yeah.” Rhiannon pushes her feet against the couch end. “I didn’t get the details. Looks like somebody tried to slit his throat. Probably a sensitive topic.”
"Any crash landing -- or knife fight -- you can walk away from." Whistler's feeling hesitant, uneasy. He holds no malice to Rhiannon's ex-boyfriend on a personal level, but he's instinctively jealous. "Tell him I'm glad he's not dead."
“I will, next time I run into him.” Rhiannon finds herself wishing for a cigarette. Sometimes she can’t remember why she quit, and other times it’s abundantly clear. “Anyway try to find out what’s up with the world, ‘August‘.”
"Yeah, yeah." Why anyone would name their child after a month on a calendar perplexes Whistler. "And if you find yourself in bed with Deanna, take pictures."
“If you were here right now, I’d punch you,” Rhiannon says. The most disturbing part is a clear mental picture of what the redhead looks like naked. Not necessarily legitimate, she reminds herself. So she can save the scalding bath for later.
"I'd take that." He smiles through the phone.
"That's because you're my bitch." Rhiannon smiles back.
He finally finds OZTv on the television. "See, that would make for a decent television show."
"Bye, Whistler."
"'Night, Rhi." |
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