FALLEN
Imaginary
*Paper flowers*
It sat in the corner, the newspaper eyes staring out the large glass windows behind him, and the only reason he noticed it was because of the sunbeams reflecting off the disc next to it made a prism of color on the door. He reached for the crane with his index finger and imaginary thumb, and cursed when it fell to the floor.
*I linger in the doorway of alarm clocks screaming monsters calling my name*
In his voice was blame, anger and repulsion. He looked down at his gloved hands.
"Bastard," he muttered, sliding the disc to the edge of the desk where he could finger it more easily.
He supposed he had it coming. Leaving her corpse in the bedroom for him to find had been overly cliché and had been purely for entertainment on his part.
"Your missing appendage is a small price to pay for your accomplishment."
Lyle wondered, what with the grinding wheels of the oxygen tank and his constant labored breathing, how a man like Raines managed to sneak up on him all the time.
Moving in downwind- clever.
He pushed his sister's voice from his mind and stood up, tucking the DSA into his pocket carefully. The last thing he needed at the moment was to have the Powers discover the growing thorn in his side.
*Let me stay where the wind will whisper to me Where the raindrops as they're falling tell a story*
"Killing her?" Lyle shrugged. "That was to easy to qualify as an accomplishment."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning instead of trying to devise clever and inconspicuous ways of clearing out the dead weight around here, it's a lot easier to shoot and have someone else clean up the mess."
Raines nodded slowly. "If at first you don't succeed..."
They'd planned it to a T- the classy Centre engagement all employees were required to attend was an uncomplicated yet unassuming way to get her away from the house long enough to slip a lethal combination of methadone and prescription anti-depressants into her wine; enough to kill her with a single glass.
*In my field of paper flowers and candied clouds of lullaby*
Of course, as his luck had it, she'd suddenly decided to stop drinking right after that, forcing him to try, try again. He hadn't counted on anyone taking it so serious. People at the Centre dropped like flies all the time, and now that Daddy wasn't around to protect her anymore, what made them think she hadn't outlived her usefulness?
*I lie inside myself for hours and watch my purple sky fly over me*
He'd thought about it for hours, staring into the photograph of their mother she'd had her on desk. He'd tried to take it, as a token of his "affection" but Sydney had snatched it angrily from his hands and told him bitterly it was a good thing that Catherine was dead.
After that day, a new ghost stalked the halls. For thirty years it has been their mother's, wandering around in her pink flowered dress, sometimes laughing, sometimes smiling, sometimes crying. But always with a glow. Now her presence had been replaced. Secretaries jumped out of the way when they heard the sound of heels clicking on the tile floor, but there was never anyone there.
*Don't say I'm out of touch with this rampant chaos- your reality*
Stalking the halls, he sometimes saw people huddled in corners, as if they were waiting for something. He'd come over and try to scare them, but it was never him they were waiting for. It had never been him.
It seemed that with her death people feared him less and her more, because, while her presence had never been a relaxing one, it was a constant, a sign to the lower beings that everything was still status quo.
Broots never spilled coffee on himself anymore, and Sydney never whistled. Those that had cursed her behind her back fell silent, and a few even attended the funeral a week later.
*I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge- the nightmare I built my own world to escape*
He was aware of the silence that had descended upon the echoing hallways, but shrugged it off casually. Silence had never unnerved him, like it did most people. In fact he welcomed it, just as he did the hollow stares people had started giving him. It was like they were seeing inside him, like he had a huge sign taped to his chest that said 'guilty'.
*In my field of paper flowers and candied clouds of lullaby*
"What is that?"
Lyle followed the direction of Raines's eyes to the crane that had fallen to the floor.
"Jarod's idea of retribution," he chuckled.
He stayed a moment more, breathing heavily over something that could easily have been emailed to him, then squeaked away. When he was gone, Lyle clumsily slid the disc into the player.
*I lie inside myself for hours And watch my purple sky fly over me*
The scene froze on his sister's face, thirty some-odd years before, the cry for her mother still on her lips, the elevator doors looming in the backdrop.
Lyle shook his head, wondering briefly why Jarod even bothered. It didn't make a difference to him that she was gone. He'd never liked her as anything more then something pretty to stare at and admire. With her out of the picture, the Centre would fall to the Parker's, and she had never really been one of them, not really. She didn't care about the power like he did, and that made her a weak adversary.
*Swallowed up in the sound of my screaming*
With that thought, Lyle frowned. In the back of his mind he kept the image of her, staring at him with widened eyes as the bullet first struck her chest, but somehow in the heat of the moment he'd pushed the second look she'd given him in farther away.
*Cannot cease for the fear of silent nights*
He sat down slowly, replaying scene by scene, and realized with a shocking and disturbing uneasiness, that she didn't care about anything. Not when he'd shot her and not months before.
*Oh how I long for the deep sleep dreaming*
She'd been slipping down so slowly that no one had noticed, and in the end, death hadn't made a damn bit of difference.
*The goddess of imaginary light*
**
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