loki laufeyson (toberuled) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-08-20 23:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | loki |
Who: Louis (Narrative)
What: Louis loses it at last, and the police arrive to be players in the show.
Where: A street in Vegas.
When: Today.
Warnings/Rating: Blood, mental illness.
Louis dropped Casey back at his apartment in the small hours of the morning after Sam left the hospital. He drove slowly, and sure, and he was very safe. He stopped at all the red lights, and waved Casey off with a promise that he would go home and sleep.
And he would have. He would have. But there was more work to do.
Dawn found Louis parked in the parking lot of a convenience store, drinking shitty coffee with his head against the headrest, half asleep and half awake, remembering nights like this staking out houses in the south of London. It was like waiting hours for a magic trick to happen - sit in front of a house long enough, and out of nowhere, everything would burst into a flurry of activity as the rabbit emerged from the hat, as the drug dealer wandered out into the drizzle with his supply.
Louis wasn't waiting for anyone. His gun was a heavy weight in his pocket, and it had been days since he'd slept more than twenty minutes at a stretch. His eyes tried to shutter almost comically, the left drifting halfway closed ahead of the other. Then he would see a flash of imagery behind his eyes, and they would flare open. He leaned forward and rest his head against the cool pleather of the steering wheel. His coffee had long since gone tepid and even more unappetizing than it had been when it first went into the cup.
Louis lifted his head and pulled away. Driving. He would drive to stay awake. Something had to happen.
He was a few blocks from the strip when everything began to slow down. It was like a bad simulation. Reality stuttered, rendering much too slowly to be real, and he stared as the world coalesced down. His sight vignetted black around his car, and he was trapped in a movie between the letter boxing, driving it like a road. Only the street ahead was still clear.
Then that was gone too.
How long was it? Louis didn't know. When the world came back, his throat was raw and there was smoke in his lungs, acrid, corrosive, sharp. He blinked, and realized he was looking down at a man in a blue uniform. There were more men coming. He turned his head. The front of his car was wrapped around a lightpost. He reached up to touch his forehead, his fingers shaking, and they came away bloody. He turned his hand over, and his knuckles were black and blue.
The men running up sounded like they were calling out from across a long beach, the waves in Louis' head blocking the sound. When they made it to Louis all they seemed to care about was the gun he was holding in his other hand. He didn't remember how it had gotten there, but his fingers were clenched white-pink around it, and someone on the sidewalk was running, screaming. The men had guns pointed at him, and his eyes went wide. They were talking, but the words sounded like a hammer hitting a nail, again and again. They sounded like his father building a barn in the yard of their house rather than speak to his children or his wife. They sounded like shots.
There was an urgent push at the back of his mind, unnamed and wordless, and the gun clattered to the ground. He released it, easy as falling. The world began to stutter its way back to regular speed, and he realized he was speaking. He was begging something. "Please," he said. "Please."
The first man hit him from behind with a kick as heavy and driving as a brick slamming him to the asphalt. Louis's cheek skidded against the pavement, and the man he had knocked to the ground stumbled to his feet. Police officers. They were police. "Sam," he said. He could hear himself this time. "You have to, someone has to go find Sam."
They wrenched his hands behind his back. Cool metal bit into his wrists. You do not have to say anything, but no, that wasn't how they did things here. He was back at college, learning the words, memorizing them before he fell asleep at night. He was in his car, falling asleep, ready to go, slamming down on the gas pedal with both feet. He was in the waiting room with Casey's hand on his back, bile in the back of his throat, and inside that memory was another, the memory of the man in the dark, all the things he had felt that she felt, things he never forgot, and the pictures that blossomed in the journal like dark bruises under his fingertips.
You do not have to say anything, but his mouth was closed. Blood and spit pooled on the ground. Bystanders murmured. "You alright?" Sharp assent from a bruised jaw above him. You do not have to say anything. And everyone always wished he wouldn't. Always wished he would leave it be. Always wished he would let the world fold in like an implosion. It was last night, and he had the gun in the passenger seat like a companion, had biting words in the journal in his hand, had waiting room coffee like convenience store coffee, didn't see her even for a second.
They were taking him to jail. "Are you taking me to jail?" His face burns and stings, and his neck is sore. His forehead hurts, and he must have hit it on the steering wheel, where earlier his head had rested. Just a moment's release. The world tilts and strong arms drag him to another car. "To jail?" he repeats. He thought his voice must have given out before he finished the sentence the first time, because no one answered. "I need to see him," his cracking voice tells them as they fold him into the car, pressing his head down. "Please. Please."
They shut the door. The car is cool and quiet. Washed out faces like runny watercolors watch through the window. It's five years ago, and rain turns the window into a quiet, clear haze. It's today, and blood is trailing against his tongue, and he's lapping it off his lips to keep them clean. His head swings around. Where are they?
But this isn't here, and he jerks up. He isn't in the police car. They've put him in the ambulance instead. A woman is telling him to keep his head down, lie still, he may have whiplash. He is crying and laughing, and he can't hear a thing. All those years spent feeling worthlessly unattractive, and now his face has roadburn. It's hilarious. He has to see Evan before the bandages come off. They need to take him to see him now, so he can spit blood in his face and they can laugh about a shared experience.
At last, at last. He thinks he hears someone's voice telling him to sleep, but that might be in the squad car, that might be a year ago in a warm deathbed, that might be tomorrow. Go to sleep.
Somebody told him to, so he does. He can bear that. He has a dream about sitting in a cell with the people he loves, and he doesn't wake up for a very long time.