cozzybob (cozzybob) wrote in cozzybabbles, @ 2008-02-26 00:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | 1x2, duo, heero |
[GW] (Off The Dollar) Menu
(Off The Dollar) Menu
by cozzybob
Pair: Duo, Heero.
Warning: disturbing images, depression, mental break down, starvation, language, the burial of burgers... gets a little intense. Please take the warnings seriously, I'm not joking this time.
Note: For gw500's "zone." Sort of a venting piece.
Summary: Duo doesn't eat meat.
I wonder what it is to be something that lives only to be eaten by others, like a chicken hatched and grown--not raised, grown--in a factory without sunlight, bearing eggs that will die nameless deaths with billions of others before their mother dies too, ground up in some horrendous blood-stained machine, breaded into millions of McNuggets they sell on the Dollar Menu. You don't think about that when you're eating a burger, but someone had to die so you could fill a well-fed stomach, often better left unfed if you're an American. I don't think it has anything to do with me being Duo Maxwell, but rather me being an L2 convict and therefore a US citizen by law, which somehow translates into a blood-born need to wolf down gross amounts of food between breakfast, lunch, and dinner, while running to work, working, during lunch, on the way home, in bed.
The truth is, I haven't eaten anything since the day before yesterday and now that I've fucking given in and bought a goddamn burger, I've lost my appetite. Here comes my fellow agents giving me the thumbs up, joking, "Didn't you want a Super Size?"
Fucking Duo Maxwell the American with the bottomless stomach and the Super Sized wallet that eats roaches off the street and rats in the sewers rather than starve himself for an hour or two between meals. Helen always said a healthy stomach makes a healthy boy, and look at me, mama, I'm as healthy as they come. I've got a burger from Mickey D's and everyone stares because they know this is my fifth, like they know I'm the goddamn Queen of England.
But the agents don't know that I'm the Queen of Hell today and they just grin their stupid little grin and wave and walk away and die slowly in my head. I get up and push the burger into that little swinging THANK YOU door to all fast food joints and I waste my five dead presidents. Keep the change, 'mam, I'm better off without it. My American stomach rumbles, quiets, and the hunger pangs soothe some rotten part of me that I can't remember where. I'm on a diet, and they don't know it, and that's okay, because I never wanted anyone to notice anyway.
They said it was a childhood thing, first, and then they said it was a defect from the war, until they called in the chemists and the chemists said it was a chemical imbalance and here-you-go-Mister-Maxwell-drug-yourself-u
You can't trust an unstable man in the field, so the Woman Upstairs cuffed me to my desk and asked me to train the rookies. The rookies have names that I can never remember, and sometimes in the middle of a lesson I call in Sally so I can break a finger and pretend it was an accident. I always laugh it off, but the rookies are afraid of me because everyone has a broken finger, now, and Sally has refused to come down the last few days. My amusements run thin, and so does my appetite, so I stalk random McDonald's and stare blankly at the cashier as I try not to think about the scent of Grade A beef punching my nostrils, clawing its way up into my brain to tell me about the poor cow that had to die because her utters ran dry and her children were chained and locked up in some awful contraption so they couldn't move--preserves the flavor, makes it smooth--and they moo, and whine, and cry out, and no one's going to listen to them. Hey you, you cashier motherfucker, why don't you listen to them?
"May I take your order?"
Back at the register again; how did I get here? Moo, moo, moo--
Let's see... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That's how they label the individuals these days, they give them numbers because there are too many Duo Maxwells in the world.
"Sir?"
"Number two."
Two burgers, two poor souls, and a little cheese from their mother without a name.
"That'll be four fifty."
Huh? Oh. They don't have Super Size Me anymore. Like any guy, I'd Super Size my di--
There's the wallet, here comes the five. Up--up--there. In her hand. The touch lingers, she jerks away. Fear? "Keep the change," I tell her softly.
And she blushes for a reason I don't understand, shakes her head, gives me my fifty cents. "I'm sorry, it's against company policy."
Two quarters in my palm, head up, heads down. Hello, Franklin. How have you been for the last millennia?
Oh, you know, just hangin' with the devil.
Is he hot?
Hot as lava.
Nice.
The girl spins left and right and up and down and my head hurts and I'm really not hungry, and I ask myself, how did I get here again? Didn't I just order a burger, didn't I just throw that away? I just wasted a life to toss it back into the trash, like--like--like me. Like the whole world has done to me.
I'm sorry, Frank, I tell to the heifer in that THANK YOU trash can. I'm truly sorry. I will honor your cousins--and I know honor, believe me, I'm a thief, and thieves know all about honor. Honor among thieves, as they say. And, Duo never lies.
But Solo did. Lied all the time.
"Here you go, sir." Paper bag. Did I say to go? Did I? When did I--"Enjoy your meal." When did I say to go? To go where? To go how? To go when and for how long?
Where the fuck am I going?
Quarters. In my pocket. Burgers in the bag, coke in my hand. The door, ten steps to the left. Walk, walk, walk... I can do that. I can walk. I can walk like any other normal person with two burgers in my Mickey D's bag, and my wallet in my pocket, and two Franklins--
Or was that Jefferson?
Hold on a minute.
Can you hold a minute?
Walking.
People stare, and I don't know why. Or maybe I think they stare and they really aren't--paranoid complex, that's another thing the chemists said. Mister Maxwell suffers from slight paranoia. I recommend we punch in every face that's out to get me and call it a day.
What is your first memory?
Dunno.
You can't remember?
I can't remember anything.
Walking. Walking, walking, walk--
Why can't you remember?
Bad memory.
--ing. There's a house. It's pretty, and so I approach it. Car in the driveway. Cadillac. Not mine. I go into the back, find a shovel. I take it, and go back to the front. There's a garden with cute little daisies. I put my bag and coke on the ground and I dig them up.
I thought you said your memory was perfect.
It is.
A lady looks out the window. She's holding a phone, and she's old. She's scared. I dig a hole, and I pull out the first burger. I kiss it. I look up at the lady, and I'm sad. I don't know why. She's afraid of me.
Oh?
I lay the burger in the hole, pat it gently. I mutter a prayer. Make one up, since I can't remember the teachings anymore.
Oh.
And then I put in the second one. The second one I pat too. The lady isn't in the window anymore, but I can see her silhouette pacing. She's calling the police. I want them to come, because I want someone to know about the children.
If you have a perfect memory, why can't you remember?
I take my time to add the fries, and I pour my coke over the mess. Diet? Dunno.
I killed my mother.
I put the dirt back, pat it down.
You killed your mother?
I hear sirens. I stand up.
Heh. No. Just wanted to see the look on your face.
And I wait for them.
They come.
"Sir?"
"Yeah?"
"What are you doing?"
"I'm burying the children. Number two. I told Frank I would honor them. Don't they deserve some honor like the rest of us? Don't they?"
The officer takes my arm. "You're going to have to come with me, sir."
Pulls me away, and I let them. Him. It. I've already said goodbye, now I get to go to jail.
"Okay."
He herds me into a door without handles, and a cage that separates the back from the front of the car. The radio whispers about a hooker on 3rd. I know that number, I'm a Preventer. I think about Helen. She'd have been a hooker in another life.
There are hookers in this world that believe in God.
I think about that as the officer marches back to the house and consoles the old lady. As he shakes his head, he twirls his finger beside his right ear in a lazy, He's a fuckin' nut, 'mam. She thanks him oh my hero style, and he kindly checks out the burial site before she shoos him away and he returns to his car. Gets in, turns the key, heads back to the station.
"What's your name, kid?"
"'M no kid."
"How old are you?"
"Seventeen." Frowning. Not so sure. Maybe ten? Hundred? Sixty nine?
"You're a kid." Hundred year old kid. The tone is firm, and I'm suddenly intimidated, like I'm gonna start wearing diapers, drooling and stinking up death, and I can't remember my name or who my mother was, and if I ever had a lover, any children--who am I again? Oh I really hate that, but now the darkness is over my head and the air is thick with salty moisture. I'm like a sponge that hasn't been squeezed of dirty dish water, and now the mold has come in to make babies. Have you ever cried moldy tears? Well, I don't cry. It's like that.
The wall that makes up the back of the cop car is scratched with too many people who didn't like to be back here. I want to get out. I think of OZ, of interrogations, of Hilde in that ugly gray uniform. Trant laughing like a lunatic, Zero blowing up colonies and babies and Hilde and Trant. Fucking Trant. Glad Trant died, that motherfucker.
"What's your name?"
Huh?
"Your name."
Oh. Um... "Duo Maxwell?" Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Duo. Duo Maxwell, never lies. Never, ever lies. Never. Wanna nutshell?
"Where do you live, Duo?"
"In a nutshell." Liar! "No, I mean, um--I mean... I..."
"Listen, Duo. I'm going to take you to the station. We'll call someone. Is that okay?"
Peachy.
"Okay. Do you have a friend we can call, then?"
"Um. I... friend?" I don't know why, but I laugh. I laugh so hard that I start crying, and then it turns into wracking sobs that make me blind, and I think, why am I crying, I don't cry, and what the hell? Fists bang against the wall in rage, the cop shouts, screams, cows half-moo and chickens half-cluck. Knockers knock heads and an ax comes down and chop chop chops, because Duo Maxwell needs to eat, he needs to eat, why the fuck won't he eat, what is wrong with him?
Friend.
Spell friend, Duo.
F-R-I... E? N... Uh... D. Yeah.
Good!
Now define it.
Friend. Noun. One attached to another by esteem and affection; an intimate associate, a superior. Also Friend. With a capital, meaning a member of the Quakers. And friendliness, friendly--
Thank you for photographic memory, Duo.
Right below it is frieze and above it is fried.
That's nice. Can you use it in a sentence?
Solo is my friend.
Can you tell me of your other friends?
Other?
Surely you have other friends--
"--uckin' lunatic outta my office!"
Huh?
Lunatic. Spell lunatic.
"El, You, En, A, Tee, Eye, See."
"What?"
"Lunatic."
"He's a fuckin' comic. Get em outta here."
Spell comic, Duo.
"See, Oh, Em, Eye, See."
Slowly, the world comes back. Station. Paper shuffles. Phones blaring off the hook. Curses. Coffee. Cops. Some staring, some reading, some laughing.
The one from the car walks me through a buzzing door to some cells. He puts me in an empty one, since he's caught on that I'm either too vulnerable to be with the others, or they're too vulnerable to be with me.
The cell bars are only made of steel, and I think of Heero. I giggle at that.
He gently pushes me inside, sighing, shaking his head, sighing, sighing, sighing. Like Father Maxwell after another report card. Does not play well with others.
Sighing.
They can only keep me for a day, then they have to let me go. Shove me back into the street, pick me up again, shove, pick, shove, pick... played this game. It's cool. I rub my eyes, annoyed at the irritation in them, sniffle my nose. Some guy next cell farts, and I giggle again. Giggle, sniffle, giggle some more.
There's a bed.
I lay down.
I don't sleep.
It says here that you don't eat meat.
Nope.
Can you tell me why?
Sure.
Why, then?
Killed enough, don't you think?
Don't you think?
Hm.
"Duo."
What the fuck's that mean?
Ah. I know that voice. My eyes are closed even though I can't remember closing them, and I twitch when a hand touches my bangs, brushing them away from my face. There's an inhalation, and I don't know of it's bad or good, like, oh god he's so beautiful, or, oh god he's so scarred.
Too many R's, there.
"I'm scared, Heero."
Better.
Hand down to my shoulder, now. Just there. There.
"I know."
Does he?
"Hee--"
"I know, Duo."
His arms don't embrace but they don't leave. They help me up, and the cell door creaks open and I'm staring at the floor, and we walk out of the station. Fading, now. The danger zone has passed. Duo Maxwell is back on Planet Earth.
"You hungry?"
"Yeah."
"Where do you want to eat?"
"How about McDonalds?"
Heero shakes his head and herds me into his shitty little Subaru. "How about my place, Duo?"
"Okay, Heero. I trust you not to poison me."
He knows I don't eat meat.
--Fini