Ray laughed and shook his head. Fraser sure talked about the weirdest stuff sometimes. "Of course this is all real. You, me, Chicago." He stretched his arms along the back of the park bench, feeling the snap and pull of his muscles, then jerked his chin toward the path. Lots of people out today, enjoying the unusually warm early-spring weather, which meant that he got to enjoy their bare legs and tight t-shirts. Tilting up his sunglasses, he smiled at one particularly cute girl as she roller-skated by, her breasts softly jiggling with each sideways sweep of her long legs. She smiled back…at Fraser. Figured. "She's got to be real, right?"
"How can we know? Perhaps she exists only in our minds, and will disappear as soon as she's out of sight."
"Yeah, and maybe we only exist in her mind, and as soon as she's around the corner, poof!"
"Perhaps none of us exist. We could be characters in a book, living only the limited lives our author bestows upon us, existing only as long as it takes to turn the page."
"Is this some librarian religion you learned from your grandparents? Because you're starting to sound like that preacher guy who is always talking about how we are all just thoughts in the mind of God, which, I don't know about you, but it sounds a little wacko to me."
Fraser didn't reply, and after a moment, Ray looked over at him. There was a strange look on his face, like his body was there sitting on the bench next to Ray but his brain was on some other planet.
"Fraser?" He was staring off into space, and he wasn't moving, and that was getting Ray worried, so he put a hand on Fraser's shoulder. "Hey, buddy, you okay?"
Fraser turned to look at him. His eyes had gone wide, and his body had tensed, and in all the time they'd known each other, Ray could not remember ever having seen such complete panic on Fraser's face. Fraser was clearly Not Okay.
Fraser's tongue moistened his lips. He breathed in and out a few times. Finally, in a voice that was little more than a hoarse whisper, he spoke. "Holy shit."
And if Ray had not already figured out things were Not Okay, this would have been the dead giveaway, because those words, coming out of Fraser's mouth? It didn't make any sense. Fraser did not say things like "Holy shit," no way, no how.
"Okay, not okay. Hang on, just relax a minute," he said, patting Fraser's shoulder, and he probably sounded like a total dork, but Fraser was freaking out here, and he had to do something.
"Ray," breathed Fraser in that same hoarse, tentative whisper. He stared at Ray, then at his own hands, and then down at his lap. He swiveled his head from side to side, taking in the sight of his red uniform as though he'd never seen it before. "Oh, my God. I totally didn't expect this to actually happen."
"You having some sort of religious revelation here?" said Ray uneasily.
"My God," repeated Fraser, which did not make Ray feel any better. Then he sprang to his feet, and that must have got Dief's attention, because he came running over from the tree he'd been inspecting. Looking, if possible, even more panicked, Fraser took two stumbling steps back before visibly steeling himself and reaching down to stroke Dief's head. "Diefenbaker. Uh. Good boy."
"Look, Fraser," said Ray, getting up from the bench and walking over to where Fraser was standing. He was looking awfully stiff, even for Fraser, but his eyes were darting from side to side as though he was searching for something. "You're obviously not feeling great right now. Let me take you back to the consulate." Fraser turned those wild eyes on him, and Ray felt a queer sort of shiver run through him. Maybe he should just take Fraser back to his apartment, keep an eye on him until he got over whatever it was that was screwing with his head.
Fraser was staring right into his eyes—no, into his sunglasses. The way he lifted a hand to touch his own face made it obvious: he was looking at his reflection in Ray's glasses, and something about his reflection was frightening him in a weird way that Ray couldn't even begin to guess at.
"Come on, the Goat's just—"
"Hold on," said Fraser. His voice still sounded shaky. He closed his eyes and his brow wrinkled in apparent concentration. "No good," he muttered as he opened his eyes again. "Ray's point of view. Damn it."
Weirder and weirder. He pitched his voice in the gentle tone he used for spaced-out druggies and possibly violent crazies. "Let's head back to my place, okay?"
"No!" yelped Fraser, jumping back a step. Then he offered Ray a hesitant smile and shook his head. "Sorry, I didn't mean—can you wait just a moment?" His eyes went unfocused and he lowered his voice to a whisper. "Um. You know what you have to do, right?"
Dief whined, and Fraser inhaled sharply. "I don't mean you. Oh, God."
Ray shook his head. "Don't get started with that religious stuff again."
Fraser looked thoughtful for a moment, then smiled. "Ah. Actually, I think this is the perfect time for a prayer." Fraser lifted his eyes to a spot above Ray's head. "If you're—listening, shall I say?—you should be able to figure this out. You know what you have to do to fix this. Right." He lowered his eyes to meet Ray's.
"Fraser, what the hell is going on here?"
Fraser opened his mouth, then closed it again. "I think I'll let someone else explain this one."
"Okay," Ray said warily. "So what do we do now?"
"You know, you're freaking me out."
"You think you're freaking out?" Fraser gave a strange, hollow laugh. "Believe me, Ray. You have no idea."
Fraser blinked, startled. He'd heard Ray speaking as though from a distance, his voice receding, the bright Chicago sunshine dimming into darkness, and then suddenly he was in a strange room, sitting not on a bench but in an office chair, at a desk covered in papers. Two computer screens gleamed at him, their surfaces an overlapping collage of colored squares. To his right was a staircase, rising up out of sight; to his left, a window looked out onto a woodpile, neatly stacked logs covered with snow, and a purple-painted house beyond.
His father's office didn't look anything like this. But where else could he be? "Da—" he started, but the word trailed off into nothing when he heard the unfamiliar voice issuing from his mouth.
"Did you say something?" It was another unfamiliar voice, coming from beyond the staircase. Fraser pushed his chair back far enough to see a second desk, with an uncurious man looking in his direction. Slender, in his late forties, graying hair, glasses—nobody he recognized.
"No, sorry," Fraser managed to choke out. His voice was—not high, precisely, but it was most definitely a female voice. His hands, resting on the laptop keyboard before him—they were small hands, female hands. Wearing rings, he absently noticed: an etched gold band that was likely a wedding ring on the left hand, a plain silver band on the right. The fingernails were short, the cuticles ragged.
And then his gaze moved up to the computer screen, to the actual words in the largest square on the screen directly in front of him, and the body he was wearing faded into insignificance.
"Perhaps none of us exist. We could be characters in a book, living only the limited lives our author bestows upon us, existing only as long as it takes to turn the page."
"Is this some librarian religion you learned from your grandparents? Because you're starting to sound like that preacher guy who is always talking about how we are all just thoughts in the mind of God, which, I don't know about you, but it sounds a little wacko to me."
Those were his words. The words he had said, sitting there on the bench next to Ray, shortly before the world had shifted on its axis and deposited him here; and that was Ray's reply. Ray's voice seemed to echo in his head as he read the words.
A shiver passed through him. The unseasonably warm day had teased philosophical thoughts from his head as he sat with Ray. Thoughts to discuss, to throw back and forth like a ball between close-matched partners. Idly he'd suggested the simulation hypothesis, thinking only of Decartes and Zhuangzi, of dreams and reality. Not for one moment had he actually believed…
He peered at the screen again. There it was, his conversation with Ray. Was this unknown woman, whom he seemed to have somehow become, eavesdropping on them, transcribing their words, guessing at their thoughts? Or was she—and this was the chilling thought, the thought that drove all other thoughts from his head—was she putting those words into their mouths? Was she the author of their lives?
He looked down at the body he was inhabiting. God could not possibly be a slender, long-haired woman with ragged cuticles. God would not wear eyeglasses. God would not be sitting at a desk with a shelf holding a Webster's Dictionary, a Roget's Thesaurus, and a…was that a toy squid? Bemused, he lifted the green felt tentacle. Behind it was a small figure made of clay: a red clay jacket and a brown clay Stetson and—dear Lord, he thought, his heart clenching. It was a figure of a Mountie, and next to it a second figurine, its hair a molded forest of yellow clay spikes. He and Ray, as clay dolls. He thought of sympathetic magic, of Voudoun. He swallowed hard, tasting bile.
Returning his gaze to the screen, he scrolled down the page.
Fraser's tongue moistened his lips. He breathed in and out a few times. Finally, in a voice that was little more than a hoarse whisper, he spoke. "Holy shit."
Wait a moment—he hadn't said that. Maybe the earlier conversation had been a coincidence. A story about two other people, people who happened to be named "Fraser" and "Ray." Then he glanced up at the dolls again, sitting on the shelf next to the plush squid, and he shuddered. Not a coincidence.
"Hold on," said Fraser. His voice still sounded shaky. He closed his eyes and his brow wrinkled in apparent concentration. "No good," he muttered as he opened his eyes again. "Ray's point of view. Damn it."
Ray's point of…ah. The story on the screen was Ray's experience, not Fraser's. Fraser was here, while Ray was there, with…with the author?
Fraser looked startled for a moment, then smiled. "Ah. Actually, I think this is the perfect time for a prayer." Fraser lifted his eyes to a spot above Ray's head. "If you're—listening, shall I say?—you should be able to figure this out. You know what you have to do to fix this. Right."
There were only a few paragraphs more. The story hung there unfinished, taunting him from the screen: You know what you have to do to fix this. It was a message. An instruction. The story was from Ray's point of view, and Ray had heard Right, but that wasn't what "Fraser"—what the author—had said.
Write.
He sat there for a moment, his fingers poised over the keyboard. Was he now the author of his own story? The story of himself and Ray and Diefenbaker; the story of all of Chicago? If he wrote that an angel scooped them out of Chicago and carried them to Whitehorse, would it happen? If he wrote that he himself sprouted wings and lifted Ray and Diefenbaker up into the sky, would it happen?
He smiled and shook his head. Where had that absurd thought come from? From the toys on the bookshelf, he should have imagined a giant squid, not an angel. But the image of himself spreading huge, white wings persisted.
Then he saw it: a list of files, in a window on the computer screen that was mostly hidden by the document above it, so only the last few names were visible, and the final one was wings.doc. Curious, he moved the mouse and clicked.
It was another story about him and Ray, but he didn't recognize the events alluded to: a rooftop battle, someone shooting at Ray, and now—in the story—they were in Ray's apartment, Fraser having apparently rescued him. Perhaps this would happen in the future. He read on. Ray was in shock, hallucinating that Fraser had wings….
…No. Not hallucinating. He stared at the screen.
Slowly he stood, turning sideways to the bed. Looking Ray in the eye, he unfurled his wings. There was just enough room; his right wingtip almost touched the closet door, and his left wing stretched across the bed, where Ray lay.
His shoulder blade started to itch, which made no sense considering that he was not, at the moment, in his own body. He'd never had wings. And yet—he felt an odd sort of resonance, reading the words. It was as though perhaps he could have wings, in some imagined other world, and it would not be so strange to him after all. Maybe he had dreamed about having wings once, and it had happened like this, only he'd forgotten. The Fraser in the story unfurled his wings, and Ray reached up and touched them, and…
He felt his borrowed face start turning red. Explicit descriptions of sexual acts between two men would be discomfiting to read under any circumstance. But the actors here were clearly intended to be him and Ray, and the same resonance that had made him wonder whether in some parallel universe he might indeed have wings, now crept over the threshold of his mind and took hold of his imagination. Ray, naked. Ray, touching him. Ray, his head thrown back, his eyes closed, panting with desire. No matter that he had never considered these things before; now, as he devoured the rest of the story, unable to look away, he couldn't think of anything else. When he reached the end, he found himself oddly reluctant to close the file. It was as though he would be closing off that heretofore unknown part of himself, the part with wings, the part that was Ray Kowalski's lover.
Finally he clicked the red "X" in the corner, and the story vanished, the list of files reappearing in its place. Were all this woman's stories of this nature? Good Lord, there were dozens of them! He started to move the cursor toward another file, then hesitated.
Perhaps there were things it was best not to know. About one's future, about one's life. He already felt the loss of the wings he had never actually possessed, missed the ghost of Ray's touch where it had never been. All these stories, all these possible worlds, all these possible Frasers and Rays sat in this computer. He could almost sense them. A Fraser who visited a cousin and met a man who looked like Ray. A Fraser who died in an avalanche and then came back in time as a ghost to warn himself. A Fraser who waited, alone and patient, for Ray to discover his heart. The walls separating his story from theirs were so very, very thin.
He could never contain them all. He had just one story to live, and that was his own.
Resolutely he turned from the list to the unfinished story, still waiting in its own window. "Let's head back to my place, okay?" Ray had said to the Fraser of his story, and suddenly those words took on new meaning in his mind. The combined pulse of those other Frasers thrummed under his skin; he felt their desire. He wanted those wings.
He was the author, now. He could finish the story however he chose. He could write that Ray took him up to his apartment and laid him on his bed and undid the buttons on his tunic, one by one. He could write of passion, of sweat and urgency, of hot kisses and gentle caresses.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard. He could write what he wanted—but what did Ray want? Fraser had been unaware of his own desire until he'd chanced upon the other story; then it had all come bursting in on him, a flood of uncontrollable emotion. But Ray hadn't read that. Ray didn't know. It would not be fair for Fraser to write Ray's story for him.
Fraser wondered what the author had planned. After he wrote the words that returned her to her own body and him to his, it would be her choices that ruled his destiny. Perhaps she'd write it out the way he envisioned it. But the idea made him uncomfortable. He wanted his own free will; he wanted Ray to have his own choices. And he didn't want any voyeurs.
He had lived his own life—or at least, he amended to himself, it had seemed that way—before the story on her computer began, and his life would continue after the story ended. And that, he realized, was the key. Smiling to himself, he began to type.
"Oh! Sorry, you startled me. I guess I fell asleep at my desk," she said, blinking. Wow. That had been one hell of a dream.
"Yeah, well, it's late. I'm going to bed, okay?"
"I'll be up in a moment. I just need to finish something." She gave him a kiss and then turned back to her computer. The screensaver was on, bright dots swooping and diving and changing color across the black background. It felt like her brain was doing that too, swooping and diving. She'd been dreaming about the due South guys, and that was usually kind of cool, except in this dream she had actually been Fraser—and that was just weird, because at the same time she knew she was herself, and Ray had looked at her and called her Fraser, and she hadn't known what to say.
The details were starting to slip away, the way dreams always did, but she remembered little bits and pieces, flashing across her brain like the bright colored dots on the screen. Dief bounding up to her. Fraser's reflection in Ray's sunglasses. The weird feeling that Fraser had turned into her somehow, just as she'd turned into him.
That's what I get for staying up late trying to finish
my ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
ds_flashfiction
story, she thought to herself. She'd fallen asleep while writing; no wonder
she'd dreamed herself right into the story. Too bad she couldn't remember
exactly what she'd done in the dream, because it would probably have made a
better story than the one she'd started. Oh, well.
It was past midnight; she'd just save her file and go to bed, and maybe she'd get the story done tomorrow. China would probably extend the challenge if she asked. She jiggled the mouse to bring the screen back to life.
And then she stared at what she saw.
Holy shit. There was her dream, right there in Microsoft Word, twelve-point Palatino Linotype black and white. When had she typed that? How had she typed that?
She scrolled down, astonished. She had written—no, someone had written—no. The story had been written, even if thinking about exactly how it had been written and who (or what!) had written it made her head want to explode. And it wasn't bad, really. Kind of weird—okay, really weird—but no way was she not going to post it. Even if it wasn't, strictly speaking, completely hers.
A voice came from the upstairs bedroom. "You coming to bed?"
"Just a minute. I just need to, um, see if this is really finished." Her eyes skimmed down to the very end. Just a few short sentences there, but they made her smile. Well done, Fraser, she thought.
She saved the file, then turned off the computer. In the morning, she'd send the story to Mal for beta.
"You sure you're okay?" asked Ray anxiously as he opened the door to his apartment. Fraser had been so quiet on the drive back, and he wasn't sure what to expect. "You were acting kind of goofy for a while."
"I'm fine," Fraser said. "But we need to talk."
"Yeah," said Ray. "You going to tell me what happened back there in the park?"
Fraser smiled. Then he tilted his head, so he was talking to empty space again, just like he'd done when he was being weird. "Some things," he said, "are better left to the imagination."
Then he followed Ray into his apartment, and closed the door behind him.
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http://hieroglyfics.net/fiction.htm | written March 2008 by Isis