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hackthis_archiveOh god, it felt fucking good to write this.
Haunted (All the Stories That You Tell)
Newborn
He is a corpse in her bathtub, water-logged with clammy skin and blue lips. He’s terribly bloated and she wouldn’t recognize him if it weren’t for the hairlessness and the eyes. It’s always the eyes. They follow her as she unpacks her toiletries, and when he coughs, water dribbles out his nose. It causes Helen to drops her Crème La Mer in the sink. It’s a very expensive bottle to break, and little flicks of glass and moisturizer embed themselves in her hands.
She wakes up with clammy palms and sun outside the cabin window. They’ll land in thirty minutes.
Scattered Black and Whites
She has the papers delivered by the same young man, Degei, every morning. US papers only, which in Suva are not particularly hard to come by. She scours the articles as they saturate the smallest sections: Metro and Sports, front page from Times (LA) to Times (NY). As the days pass the coverage changes: the minimalism of their wedding becomes attempted rescues, memorials. Their legacies.
‘A perfectly, charming society bride’ she made, apparently.
Still, she's moderately surprised at the gaping newspaper hole where biologically impossible Kansas boys should be.
At night she dreams of Clark Kent saving her from Lex.
Asleep in the Back
He comes to her during the day when she’s flipping through Harper’s & Queen. He sits down beside her and talks about china patterns and colors for the guest bathroom on the third floor. Water streams from every orifice and his shoes squish when he saunters away.
She knows it’s PTSD. She’ll get over it. She uses a personal stash of Ambien to help her sleep, which is okay. Lots of her fellow doctors self-medicate because they make such horrible patients.
There’s nothing wrong with Helen that sleep won’t help.
She self-medicates during the day and stays up all night.
Any Day Now
She reads voraciously. Coverage in the papers has died down, and there’s next to nothing about the lost Luthor Heir. She’s talked to Degei about the possibility of getting hold of a Metropolis paper, but he says he’ll try.
She supposes it’s the best he can do.
She’s been officially dead for thirty-two days when Degei finally delivers, and Helen’s copy of the Daily Planet is two days old. The headline is three inches high: ‘CEO of LuthorCorp missing.’
She takes more Ambien and dreams of Lex chasing her through the Pathology lab while Paul tries desperately to save her.
Red
Helen graduated third in her class at Stanford Med. She shouldn’t have taken that Geology course, but she’s made mistakes before. That’s life. She’s enjoyed hers: she’ll miss it when she’s gone.
She does not regret killing Lex.
She regrets not being there when her grandmother died. She’s angry that Lex Luthor was there when Cassandra Bryce Carver died and her granddaughter, Helen Marie, was not.
However, as the razor does its job the first time around and her blood swirls in the bathwater, Helen takes satisfaction in knowing that she won’t be the only person who’s been too late.
-finis-
Notes: Inspired by, and subheaders taken from, the Elbow LP ‘Asleep in the Back’
Haunted (All the Stories That You Tell)
Newborn
He is a corpse in her bathtub, water-logged with clammy skin and blue lips. He’s terribly bloated and she wouldn’t recognize him if it weren’t for the hairlessness and the eyes. It’s always the eyes. They follow her as she unpacks her toiletries, and when he coughs, water dribbles out his nose. It causes Helen to drops her Crème La Mer in the sink. It’s a very expensive bottle to break, and little flicks of glass and moisturizer embed themselves in her hands.
She wakes up with clammy palms and sun outside the cabin window. They’ll land in thirty minutes.
Scattered Black and Whites
She has the papers delivered by the same young man, Degei, every morning. US papers only, which in Suva are not particularly hard to come by. She scours the articles as they saturate the smallest sections: Metro and Sports, front page from Times (LA) to Times (NY). As the days pass the coverage changes: the minimalism of their wedding becomes attempted rescues, memorials. Their legacies.
‘A perfectly, charming society bride’ she made, apparently.
Still, she's moderately surprised at the gaping newspaper hole where biologically impossible Kansas boys should be.
At night she dreams of Clark Kent saving her from Lex.
Asleep in the Back
He comes to her during the day when she’s flipping through Harper’s & Queen. He sits down beside her and talks about china patterns and colors for the guest bathroom on the third floor. Water streams from every orifice and his shoes squish when he saunters away.
She knows it’s PTSD. She’ll get over it. She uses a personal stash of Ambien to help her sleep, which is okay. Lots of her fellow doctors self-medicate because they make such horrible patients.
There’s nothing wrong with Helen that sleep won’t help.
She self-medicates during the day and stays up all night.
Any Day Now
She reads voraciously. Coverage in the papers has died down, and there’s next to nothing about the lost Luthor Heir. She’s talked to Degei about the possibility of getting hold of a Metropolis paper, but he says he’ll try.
She supposes it’s the best he can do.
She’s been officially dead for thirty-two days when Degei finally delivers, and Helen’s copy of the Daily Planet is two days old. The headline is three inches high: ‘CEO of LuthorCorp missing.’
She takes more Ambien and dreams of Lex chasing her through the Pathology lab while Paul tries desperately to save her.
Red
Helen graduated third in her class at Stanford Med. She shouldn’t have taken that Geology course, but she’s made mistakes before. That’s life. She’s enjoyed hers: she’ll miss it when she’s gone.
She does not regret killing Lex.
She regrets not being there when her grandmother died. She’s angry that Lex Luthor was there when Cassandra Bryce Carver died and her granddaughter, Helen Marie, was not.
However, as the razor does its job the first time around and her blood swirls in the bathwater, Helen takes satisfaction in knowing that she won’t be the only person who’s been too late.
-finis-
Notes: Inspired by, and subheaders taken from, the Elbow LP ‘Asleep in the Back’
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Re: Ooooh...
Date: 2003-05-29 02:48 pm (UTC)How perfect is that? I've been thinking about the possibilities that Helen is enacting revenge instead of just being paid of by Lionel and I never even thought about Cassandra.
Very nice, thank.
Thank you for enjoying it. I had intended to write something completely different, I don't even like Helen, but I just couldn't help myself.