[for Layla] Item Post
Aug. 3rd, 2011 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howmanylivesThey say our youth has become desensitized to violence. That the media, in its infinite wisdom, has blown the door on death wide open. By the time a child has reached their eighteenth birthday, he or she will have witnessed, on television alone, over 200,000 acts of violence, of which 40,000 murders are included. It's a big number. The kind of big that would send the Mrs. Lovejoys of the world into cries of hysteria... 'Think of the children!'
But the reality of death is not as clean as the idiot box would have you believe... There remains a difference between seeing a stunt guy fall to his 'death' accompanied by a Wilhelm scream and stumbling across the corpse of someone you know. Death -- real death -- carries a weight that's not so easily dismissed as hitting your remote's off switch. And I should know. Before the island, I made one of my livings working in a coroner's office. Gallows humor is the only thing that gets you through the day when a reminder of your own mortality is laying naked on a slab, cut wide open for anyone happening by to see. But cracking wise is just a stopgap. A coping mechanism. Because death isn't something you just get used to, even in that line of business. It hits you every time. The stench of decomposition. The lifeless stare. The simple, instinctive impulse to run away.
I've both killed and been killed. And believe me when I tell you that it doesn't matter how many times you've seen too-bright blood seep out of an actor's squib-ridden head. No amount of exposure to media violence will ever prepare you for the real thing... Even when the real thing's something you've seen before.
Looking back, Jamie'd consider himself lucky that this was the first time the force that ran this place had really sought to mess with him. Over the course of two years, his troubles on the Island had been largely self-manufactured -- personal drama born of ill-advised romantic entanglements, the sharp loss suffered by Moira and Brodie's disappearances, his prolonged flirtation with suicide. The few days he'd lost his voice hadn't been a picnic, but on the whole, he'd been in charge of his own destiny, here, the reminders of his colorful past brought up by his own doing. This, though, was different.
It was Richards who spotted it first: a shrunken hand clad in a blue glove, sticking out of the water. The dog pulled at the leash, leaving Jamie with little choice but to follow, but already he could feel dread settle in the pit of his stomach, the reluctance in his every step, born not by the proximity to a place he'd once tried to drown himself in in the past, but what potentially awaited him in the present. His reluctance was earned as he got in closer, Richards barking all the while as Jamie dropped down to one knee on the slippery rocks, the leash slipping from his grasp as he hauled the hand -- and the body necessarily attached to it -- out of the water.
The smell alone was like something out of a nightmare, sending Richards scampering off back through the trees, but Jamie barely registered it, too focused was he on the pale, wasted face of his deceased self. Shifting until he was seated gracelessly at the water's edge, he cradled the body -- his body -- in his arms, a dry sob tearing itself from his throat as he brushed back strands of stringy, too-long hair away from the dupe's forehead, his thumb catching on the thin strap of the cowl. For a man infamous for seeing every possibility, every permutation, his gaze was remarkably narrowed, fixed entirely on the corpse in front of him, his mind blank from thought as shock took over, and an eternity could pass in a second.
But the reality of death is not as clean as the idiot box would have you believe... There remains a difference between seeing a stunt guy fall to his 'death' accompanied by a Wilhelm scream and stumbling across the corpse of someone you know. Death -- real death -- carries a weight that's not so easily dismissed as hitting your remote's off switch. And I should know. Before the island, I made one of my livings working in a coroner's office. Gallows humor is the only thing that gets you through the day when a reminder of your own mortality is laying naked on a slab, cut wide open for anyone happening by to see. But cracking wise is just a stopgap. A coping mechanism. Because death isn't something you just get used to, even in that line of business. It hits you every time. The stench of decomposition. The lifeless stare. The simple, instinctive impulse to run away.
I've both killed and been killed. And believe me when I tell you that it doesn't matter how many times you've seen too-bright blood seep out of an actor's squib-ridden head. No amount of exposure to media violence will ever prepare you for the real thing... Even when the real thing's something you've seen before.
Looking back, Jamie'd consider himself lucky that this was the first time the force that ran this place had really sought to mess with him. Over the course of two years, his troubles on the Island had been largely self-manufactured -- personal drama born of ill-advised romantic entanglements, the sharp loss suffered by Moira and Brodie's disappearances, his prolonged flirtation with suicide. The few days he'd lost his voice hadn't been a picnic, but on the whole, he'd been in charge of his own destiny, here, the reminders of his colorful past brought up by his own doing. This, though, was different.
It was Richards who spotted it first: a shrunken hand clad in a blue glove, sticking out of the water. The dog pulled at the leash, leaving Jamie with little choice but to follow, but already he could feel dread settle in the pit of his stomach, the reluctance in his every step, born not by the proximity to a place he'd once tried to drown himself in in the past, but what potentially awaited him in the present. His reluctance was earned as he got in closer, Richards barking all the while as Jamie dropped down to one knee on the slippery rocks, the leash slipping from his grasp as he hauled the hand -- and the body necessarily attached to it -- out of the water.
The smell alone was like something out of a nightmare, sending Richards scampering off back through the trees, but Jamie barely registered it, too focused was he on the pale, wasted face of his deceased self. Shifting until he was seated gracelessly at the water's edge, he cradled the body -- his body -- in his arms, a dry sob tearing itself from his throat as he brushed back strands of stringy, too-long hair away from the dupe's forehead, his thumb catching on the thin strap of the cowl. For a man infamous for seeing every possibility, every permutation, his gaze was remarkably narrowed, fixed entirely on the corpse in front of him, his mind blank from thought as shock took over, and an eternity could pass in a second.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-09 04:32 pm (UTC)"But that's not an option."
no subject
Date: 2011-08-09 08:24 pm (UTC)She went around the dupe's leg to kneel beside Jamie.
"I'm sorry."
no subject
Date: 2011-08-10 05:37 am (UTC)The question was sharper than he necessarily intended, though it wasn't directed towards her, so much as it was towards the whole damned situation. Though the rational part of him knew that apologies were simply what was offered in times of distress, it frustrated him that she should have to take the role of the guilty party even as a gesture; this was the island's fault, or rather, whoever was in charge of the island. The jury was still out on a lot of things, but Jamie preferred not to buy into the idea of a sentient landmass that dropped bodies out of the sky. This reminder was deliberate, premeditated.
"It's not like you put this-- Him here."
no subject
Date: 2011-08-11 02:07 am (UTC)"I'm sorry he died, I'm sorry you have to live this over again. Of course I'm sorry for it, because I care. It's not really a matter of blame."
no subject
Date: 2011-08-11 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-16 09:10 pm (UTC)Then she felt horrifically, deeply guilty and pulled her hand back, fingers curled into a fist, and tucked it against her stomach.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-18 02:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-18 02:47 pm (UTC)"Are you ready?"
no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 06:23 am (UTC)The only difference was that this time she legitimately didn't know.
He waited a few seconds in tense silence, then positioned himself on the dupe's other side, hoisting the dead weight to take the brunt of it off Layla.
"As I'll ever be."