Get Out the Map

by Carla Jane

Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine. No harm intended.

Author's Notes: Song choice by Frankie. First off. sorry this isn't closer to the song. I started fiddling ideas around after reading the lyrics and this one stuck. It's not very long. It seems I am rather out of practice at writing long fic. Oh. and it'd really help with understanding this if you've seen 'Kiss Tomorrow Good-bye'. Nope, I didn't vanish of the face of the earth... I've just been distracted.

Warning: fair warning, it's slightly surreal.

Rated: T for Teen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If there were lights on inside the house it would be a different story, but between the sinking sun and the electric illumination on the terrace the wide glass doors were turning into mirrors. Sitting in one of patio chairs, Dustin watched out of the corner of his eyes. He wasn't looking for it, he told himself. 'IT' was just something that happened. While he didn't actively seek it out, Dustin could cling to the illusion that it wasn't his fault.

He really should ask someone about this. He should find out if anyone else could see what he saw. There wasn't anyone he dared put the question to however. A psychiatrist would want to know more, would want to know about the background and what lead up to this hallucination. Maybe if it had started sooner, before he'd dragged Jarred into his last mess Dustin might have been able to tell his best friend, to ask him about these delusions but their friendship was already strained. on the edge of breaking. Besides all that, what if Dustin did try to show someone what he was seeing and they just shook their heads and said nothing was there?

Dustin glanced in the direction of the wide glass doors. He wasn't looking for it, really, he was considering if he should go inside and turn lights on, that's all. Like a water reflection the surface of the glass rippled and Dustin's likeness blurred and re-formed. There was a chair but the pool was gone. The mirror image of the slowly lowering sun disappeared completely. Dustin in the reflection was sprawled in his clunky-looking stuffed chair in a fashion that Dustin-on-the-patio couldn't relax enough duplicate.

Mirror-Dustin's arm twitched, his hand reaching toward a side-table but the motion was aborted before it completed. "It's just you." he relaxed again, putting booted feet up rather close to the surface of the glass. "Did you get the syringes and the chemicals I told you about?"

He was going to ignore the delusion this time, Dustin told himself, before it was too late he had to stop listening. Purposefully, Dustin turned his eyes away. That had worked in the beginning. when these optical fantasies were just fleeting glances in the stainless steel surface of an appliance or a store window. Of course mirror-Dustin didn't have voice back at the beginning. He had one now. a voice and a way of speaking that sometimes made Dustin wince.

"Don't even try it Yarma. You're so fucking limp." Mirror-Dustin straightened up in his chair. "What's it going to take to make you realize that this is the only fucking way you're going to get out from under that blond freak of nature? He's got most of your job. He's snatched your girl. He's taken almost all of your so-called friends. You're a sad, sorry son of bitch, Yarma. Hell, you're nothing but a whining little girl. What happened to the man who used to be able to make major players drop everything to take his calls?"

Yes, Dustin hated Minnow, hated the ruin Minnow had helped Dustin make of his life. Dustin hated every smirk, every knowing glance, every gesture Minnow made. but killing someone by accident was a completely different matter than premeditated murder. "It's poison! It's going to kill him." Dustin's resolution to refuse to acknowledge his reflection failed. "He's going to die and I will go to go to prison." The second part of his objection was more severe. It shouldn't be. Dustin realized that in the back corner of his brain. A human life was a precious thing, even one so repulsive as Minnow's, but going to jail somehow seemed more important whenever Dustin thought about following the plan all the way through. Jail terrified him. He'd had time to learn to think of himself as a murderer. Dustin could live with that. He'd been living with that for a while now. Jail, jail was a different story entirely.

"Not if you did what I told you. Not if you went through 'that' company and took the security measures I outlined for you. Not if you bought exactly what I told you. Don't be an idiot." Mirror-Dustin flipped on a light and a rather squalid apartment painted in tones of dust and grime became slightly clearer. "You're going to take the needles and inject that shit into every bottle of his store-bought water. as close to the cap as you can. It should only take about three bottles, but you should hide whatever is left of the drugs and the needles out in the garage because you might have to do another set later in the week if he doesn't drink three full bottles or if you fuck up the dosage. You can trash it on the other side of town when he's dead."

"But they'll search the house. The police will come and they'll find out what I've done." Dustin tried to keep his voice low. It minimized the terrified squeak his tone had acquired over the last few moments.

"The police don't search houses or investigate over heart failure." Mirror-Dustin smiled, a cold steel blade of a smile. "The boy has been working himself overtime. at your job, with your clients, doing your parties and fucking your ex-girlfriend every night. The coroner will discover that the walls of the bastard's heart were weak and they gave way. He'll likely croak in the middle of something stressful like a meeting or sex. He's not going to die with a bottle in his hand. Afterwards, you will quietly dispose of all the bottled water. You will hold your head up and see to taking back everything he took from you. except that skanky girl. I don't want to see her looking in the bathroom mirror, Yarma, not after the way she's acted."

There was a protest in the back of Dustin's throat. Darcy wasn't at fault. He'd failed her and Minnow and swooped in and snatched her up. A long look at the shimmer of his not-reflection in the glass stalled out that protest. If Dustin could just perfect that look of threat and contempt he was seeing no one would ever argue with him either.

"Come here, Dustin." The boots disappeared and mirror-Dustin leaned forward. It was 'Dustin' now, not 'Yarma'. It was time to coddle rather than disparage and threaten. Dustin was disgusted with himself when he felt a spike a pleasure deep in his belly and even more disgusted with himself when he rose out of the patio chair and approached the blackened glass.

This close to the delusion it grew more powerful. Dustin could smell leather and a faint gunpowder-y odor as if pyrotechnics had gone off nearby. The not-too distant sound of heavy traffic, the like of which Dustin never heard at his expensive property tickled his ears. Mirror-Dustin shuffled something to one side and seemed to kneel down, drawing Dustin down with him. What did it say about his state of mental health that he was on his knees at the patio doors resting his forehead against glass that felt like warm skin. Like another forehead?

"This is for your own good, Dustin." Phantom fingers brushed Dustin's cheek. Mirror-Dustin's right hand, never his left. That likely meant something, but Dustin couldn't find the energy to try and puzzle it out.

"You're not me. You can't be me." Dustin sighed. "Who are you? What are you?" All pretense of sanity was gone now, Dustin realized. He was asking his delusion to explain the situation. It had never felt so real as it did in this moment. Dustin could swear he was slumping down against a warm body, that he was resting his head on a denim-covered knee that felt gritty and worn, but the glass was still in the way. wasn't it? "Are you even real, or have I just gone crazy?"

"I'm real, Dustin. Someday I'll head out your way and prove that to you in person." Fingers petted, ruffling short cropped hair. "But you're not ready for me yet. You take care of Minnow and you'll be one step closer to ready. You'd like me to come by, wouldn't you. so you can see you're not cracked?"

"Who are you? Where are you?" Dustin's body felt heavy, the kind of heavy that weighs on a person when they first wake up and going back to sleep seems like a damned good idea.

"Would it help if you had a name for me, Dustin? Fine. You can call me Alex." Mirror-Dustin. no. Alex. chuckled. It was a low disquieting sort of laugh that prickled down Dustin's spine. "As to where I am." A considerable pause stretched out, made bearable only by the hypnotizing stroke of a hand over Dustin's hair. "Get out the map and lay your finger anywhere down." As if in illustration, a fingertip traced down the side of Dustin's face. "Because where I am today might not be where I am tomorrow. Places to go, people to see, magic to perform."

The hand stilled far too soon for Dustin's liking. "That's enough, Dustin. You've got work to do. The sooner you take care of Minnow, the sooner you can take your life back." He was pushed gently away. "Take the bottles into your rooms to inject them. Do two at a time, then bring them back out and put them back in the fridge and take two more. If anyone walks in, it's simple enough to pretend you heard them coming and offer one of the bottles up so it doesn't look like you were fiddling with them."

"What if Darcy drinks one?" It was hard, climbing back up to his feet.

"One bottle won't kill her. but don't drink it yourself, Dustin. Drop the bottle after you open it and then change your mind and get a cooler or a beer instead. Go on now. Get to it."

Dustin's nod was grim. It felt wrong, sliding open the door while the mirage was still there but once he was inside and the lights were on reassuring images flitted across the edge of Dustin's vision. He saw a hint of dark reflection in the shining surfaces of the kitchen. He heard a faint whisper of approval as he took the first two bottles of water out and carried them to his bathroom where he'd hidden the supplies. Then Alex was there again, in the bathroom mirror, coaching him on how much to inject into each bottle and assuring him the fine tip of the very expensive needles he had insisted on wouldn't cause any dribbling or leave a visible hole. All twelve of the bottles were done and Dustin was leaning on the kitchen counter with a glass of iced tea in hand by the time the front door crashed open.

Darcy was giggling. Minnow was loud and leaning heavily on her, bent over and kissing at Darcy's neck.

"You're going to have a hang-over in the morning," Dustin observed in a small voice from the door of the kitchen. "And you've got Ursula Janz coming to see you at ten am."

"Nah, I'll be fine. Some aspirins, some water, some sleep. I'll be right as rain," Minnow bragged. "You've been less fun than a priest lately, Dustin. You need to remember how to enjoy life. It's too short to waste on brooding, don't you think?"

Dustin considered the couple giggling and groping in front of him for a moment. "It's Ursula Janz. It's important. You'll need a clear head. I'll get you a bottle of water."

~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~

Get Out the Map, by Indigo Girls

The saddest sight my eyes can see
Is that big ball of orange sinking slyly down the trees
Sittin in a broken circle while you rest upon my knee
This perfect moment will soon be leaving me
Suzanne calls from Boston the coffee's hot the corn is high
And that same sun that warms your heart will suck the good earth dry
With everything it's opposite enough to keep you crying
Or keep this old world spinning with a twinkle in its eye
Get out the map get out the map
And lay your finger anywhere down
We'll leave the figuring to those we pass on our way out of town

Don't drink the water there seems to be something ailing everyone
I'm gonna clear my head
I'm gonna drink that sun
I'm gonna love you good and strong while our love is good and young

Joni left for South Africa a few years ago
And Beth took a job all the way over on the West Coast
And me I'm still trying to live half a life on the road
Seems I'm heavier by the year and heavier by the load
Why do we hurtle ourselves through ever inch of time and space
I must say around some corner I can sense a resting place
With every lesson learned a line upon your beautiful face
We'll amuse ourselves one day with these memories we'll trace
Get out the map get out the map
And lay your finger anywhere down
We'll leave the figuring to those we pass on our way out of town

That's it for now. Milk and cookies time.

~~~~~~~oo(O)oo~~~~~~~

Feedback to Carla Jane

| Alex Annex | Characters | Stories/Alpha | Stories/Author | Home |