#gas leak where my uncle lives. so bad the entire stretch of road is closed

[risingsunresistance]

i lied so hard on that old post of ppl saying they'd never been through this before and asking if it gets better and i talked about edd and said it does get better. i was 11 and did not process what happened and moved on and thought that i had "accepted it," now im 21 and actually realize what's going on and it is NOT getting better

[oswaldsleeping]

Series: medusa

Chapter Title: folk voice

Chapter(s): 1/?  Rating: E Wordcount: 3024 Warnings: suicide (for this chapter) Summary:  Author’s Notes: i’ve been thinking about this story for a long time.

The snow begins.

  The motor growls in the cold, headlights flashing gold-yellow in the dim light. The storm's just starting, the once tiny flakes beginning to fatten. The clouds are a dark grey, almost black – it's going to be a bad one.

It's been a quiet drive – the music's turned low on the stereo, the heat's turned down. He's used to the cold, has a soft spot for it. Indiana gets chilly in the mornings and he remembers the dawn, getting up to feed the livestock, his fingers burning and red at the tips. He remembers Chicago, remembers the year in the appropriately named “Windy City” (remembers that that is a year he'd like to forget, thanks) - the winds would bite down to the bone. He can still feel Chicago in his lungs sometimes.

Soft spot or not, he still has enough sense to dress for the occasion (somewhat). The biker jacket staves off the chill, the leather softened with age, the colors good and faded. It's a memento from an uncle that he can't force himself to throw out, a well loved high school graduation gift. There's a stray strand sticking out of the cuff that bothers the living hell out of him, but it's always been a reliable old thing. The inside is soft and warm and still smells of sweet tobacco.

The song ends – he quickly presses the replay button. Lets his fingers trail over to backpack in his passenger seat, onto the clutch.

  There's a brand new pack hidden in his center console. His fingers itch; he wants to rip open the console, tear away that plastic, suck down a good cancer stick. Suck down a few good cancer sticks, hell, he wants the entire goddamned pack. They're 5.99 now-a-days, damned if he's not going to get his money's worth. The girl behind the counter (kind of a ditzy looking thing, baby cheeked and sleepy eyed) mentioned “Quit a year ago” when she handed him the pack. The unspoken, universal sign for “you know these are bad for you, right?”

People always think they have your best interests at heart. In true Jack Morrison fashion, he gave her an award-winning smile and said, “These things are so bad for you – this is my last one.”, walked out the gas station, and threw them in the center console. Out of sight, out of mind.

That was a good three hours ago – the roads have gone from drowsy gas stations, fast food joints, and all-night-diners, to empty land and towering trees. It's startling – he'd forgotten that all of this even existed.

  The roads are all empty, save for the stray passing truck. The jeep putters along the lonely roads, the only discernible sound the growling motor and the music playing from his stereo. An mp3 from his phone, soft and sad. Staticky with age. He knows the words, mouths along, I wish to my lord, I'd never seen your face, or heard your lying tongue...

The only movement that catches his eye is the falling snow and the stray winter bird taking flight.

You cause me to weep, you cause me to mourn...

  Pa used to play this song sitting on the porch, watching the fields sway in the mid-summer's breeze. Strumming his guitar to the barn cats and the old hunting hound who did nothing but snore.

He can see it now - the colors leak behind his eyes and bitter begins to swell in his mouth. The sun set crimson in the summer nights, the off-gold stalks of wheat, the ever encroaching night. The old Morrison Farm, a painterly memory.

It's been so long, he didn't even say goodbye before he'd left. He'd meant to, meant to walk up the creaky front steps, meant to walk in his old home, but it...just never happened. No time, no energy, he justifies to no one in particular. No time, no energy (no guts).

Pa was going to scold the hell out of him, but he would understand. He always understands.

  - - -

  (you could go back a tiny voice whispers from the backseat it's only two miles, you could go back and forget this whole bad idea.)

  - - -

  The road turns from rough, holey asphalt to dirt. The jeep continues to putter, the wheels standing firm on the ice. Joan's a reliable old gal, probably the most consistent thing in his entire life. He'd saved the money for a summer, pinched here and there, worked and worked and worked. The year before he left, he'd bought her from the neighbor down the way for a cool $600. She was a mess, but she was his.

She'd survived Indiana, survived college, survived Chicago, and she would survive this. They were the duo, after all – Jack and his beat up jeep “Joan the Warbler” (so elegantly named after the warbling noise she would make after a freeze had set in). It's one of those titles that has to be said in full – Joan the Warbler, not just “Joan”, not “Jonnie”, and certainly not “Warbler”.

He eyes the backseat, sees a mess of blankets and pillows strategically placed to avoid unwanted viewers and thinks, for a humorless second, that Joan the Warbler's been his longest fling. How...strangely pathetic.

  He turns back to the road. The forest seems to grow in size every feet his travels, the spindly branches reaching higher and higher into the sky. It's quiet, so very still. The animals have lain down for their slumber, the birds all flown south. The almost black clouds lumber along in the sky, the branches look like fingers, clawing at the heavens.

  A dark figure stands at the side of the road, looking back and forth, waiting for him to drive past. A white tail, he supposes – they've been migrating in the area as of late, undeterred by the bitter cold. They're strangely polite creatures, watching him drive past before it crosses.

There's a glimmer of something as the headlights flash (a shine of eyes, he thinks) and in the rear-view mirror, he watches it walk slowly across the road and back into the forest...strange, he'd never seen a deer with that tall before...

No matter.

  - - -

  The road stops as a sort of plateau. He pulls Joan the Warbler to the very edge, places the car on idle. The song on the stereo changes, a symphony in allegretto time - a callback to his "all classical music, all the time" phase. He presses the “back” button.

Jack opens the door, sitting at the edge of the seat. Cold has a smell, crisp and clean, that floods his lungs and makes his heart flutter. He turns the stereo down low, leaning on the edge of the door to look into the forest.

In the dim light, the well-trod path into the forest looks almost like a mouth, wide and dark and gaping.

  There isn't a person in sight – hasn't been for the last twenty minutes. In the falling snow, there is a perfect stillness.

It's not surprising. No one knew this forest existed, let alone how to get here. It was one of those well kept secrets from his childhood – the forest his siblings had run through, had caught frogs in, the forest he would jog through during high school, the forest he took his first lover to... This is his forest.

It feels like he'd spent his entire life here, tucked against the paper birch trees, nestled in the stubborn tufts of grass, running with the deers and the rabbits. Even now he can remember the dark green of the leaves, the rich brown of the ground, the white-and-black flecks on the trees that created the perfect kind of maze for a child.

  In his youth, he could walk the two-and-a-half mile stretch from the farm to the very edge of the forest, over the creek. He remembers washing his feet in the water before trudging home as the sun set, his cheeks ruddy with exertion.

There's a ball of warmth that bubbles in his stomach when he thinks about that. Nostalgia incarnate.

  He pulls the keys from the ignition and Joan the Warbler gives a heavy sigh, seemingly happy to rest after such a long drive. Jack pats the steering wheel lovingly, reaches over the center console to snatch up his backpack. He pauses, opens the console and pulls out the cigarettes.

  The headlights shine even when the door closes - they'll turn off on their own in a moment. But for now, Jack leans against Joan's grill and tears the plastic with his teeth. His lighter still has a little juice in it, the tiny flame warming his fingers.

It's so weirdly delicious, the nasty tobacco calming the shake in his hands. Once upon a time, smoking was the only thing that could calm his nervous shakes - Laura Palmer, eat your heart out. He watches the snow, tendrils of smoke climbing into the air.

He's going to miss this car.

    - - -

  At the mouth of the forest, Jack hears that tiny voice again.

  We should go back.

  He walks in.

  - - -

  Jack falls into a steady march, his feet matching the slow beat of the blood in his ears. Left, right, left, right, left, right, left – it's soothing in it's monotony. He can concentrate on that, can mark the time in his head. Left, right, left, right, left, right.

His mind toes the line between working overtime and slowing to a crawl and in the chaos between the two, he's created a sort of cocoon to lull himself. The silence is a static white noise, the crunch of snow underfoot the only thing breaking through his pattern. Left, right, left, right.

  Clouds roil overhead. For a moment he thinks of the ocean. Is this what the fish see when they look up? Rolling clouds, sloshing and churning? What would be above it, then, where was the surface?

  Flakes fall into his eyes, catching in his eyelashes. The gentle fall has turned into a downpour, a fierce wind whipping through the trees. Cold clings like the lover, fingers slipping beneath the folds of his clothes and curling around his cheeks. He buries his head further in his jacket, the burn in his fingers bordering on painful.

  He can live with it a few minutes more. Left, right, left, right, left right.

Jack hums in time with his steps, softly singing to keep his pace steady. He can tie bits and pieces of the song together in his brain, frankensteining it as best he can. The song thrums in the back of his head, the steady pluck of a lonely guitar pulsing in his ears. In the pines, in the pines...

Left, right, left, right, left, right

  There's a note on the dashboard of his car. A note in the mailbox of the farm that he can't step foot on. A note en route to his sister that will arrive within the day. His affairs are in order to the best of his ability and now...now it's the final act. The curtains wait with bated breath in the wings, ready to close.

The small flutter of fear in his chest is drowned by a strange sort of determination. He begins to walk once more, despite the ache of his feet. The snow has soaked into his boots, blisters will form soon. And still his walks, aimed for the very heart of the forest.

Left, right, left, right

  Time clicks by. The storm continues, getting worse and worse with every step and he still he keeps his pace steady, Don't you lie to me...

  How awful would it be to find his body? This sad, lonely man, sitting in the center of a forest, waiting for death to find him. How could he do that to some poor person?

No, he'll walk until no one will find him. His note has enough information, they can glean the rest if they want to. Really, who's going to care? Jack didn't know that many people, was actually close to ever fewer. People were loud and chaotic and too much for him to bare half of the goddamned time.

  His mask fits perfectly. Quiet, polite, professional. Look any further and you start to see the black-vined kudzu growing on his perfectly polished persona.

    you can't have that, can you jackie-boy?

    His mask fit perfectly. Now it's askew, cracked at the edges. He can't wear it anymore.

And really, isn't this is a better solution? This is the only solution. And sure, it's equal parts selfish shame and justified hopelessness and goddamned if he cares.

  No one will miss him.

  It would be just like falling asleep. That's what they said. Like lying down for the great, big sleep; a quiet, dignified death.

If he was lucky, the animals would get to him before the people could – it's a strangely comforting thought. Coming from the earth, going back to it – the circle of life never ends.

There's a thick sheet of the snow on the ground now – up to his calves. The wet trees smells of fresh wood, the snow smells almost tinny now. He's tired, he's so tired. He's ready for that great big sleep, to float away on a magic carpet back to the land of dreams.

He's made his peace. He's ready to see his Pa again.

  Left, right, left, right, left, right. The monotonous steps that ring in his ear, the wind of the storm, the crunch of snow. Left, right, left, right.

  He walks and he walks until his breath becomes stilted. He leans against a tree, his vision swimming. Jack Morrison is not an unhealthy person – he's a goddamned runner, after all. But he's winded, the ache in his bones thrumming throughout his entire body, and the burn in his fingertips has turned into a full blaze. His face, his body, feels as if it's burning, eyes stinging from the wind. The snow in his boots have rubbed his feet raw and it's actually fairly painful to walk now.

For a second, he tries to remember how long he's walked. The trees behind him look just like the trees in front of him, which look just like the trees he passed ten minuets ago. Jack laughs, breathlessly – it...really never occurred to him how much the cold actually effects you. He really hadn't taken it into account – at the time it hadn't mattered.

Did it matter now?

  Jack...well, he just can't tell. The tiny flutter of fear has turned into a tiny flutter of regret, and it's still overpowered by that strange determination.

  Just a bit further. All he needs to find a tree big enough, a heavy trunk, one that will let him curl beneath it. And then he can rest. He pushes away, stumbles, rights himself. Begins to walk once more.

His steps are slower, each step taking every inch of strength to do. It's so cold. He wishes his phone had power, he wouldn't mind listening to that song again. Maybe just one last time, a fitting goodbye.

  There's something in the corner of his eyesight. Big, dark, creeping closer. Really, it should scare him – there was nothing natural about the way the thing crept, nothing natural about it's ever growing presence.

  Instead, it occurred to him that he never realized Death looked like that. Didn't think it walked on four legs or was so tall. Jack had imagined it as so much more...liquidy. Gooey, drippy even. Good for Death, he muses, being drippy and gooey was probably a huge hassle.

He trudges along, one eye watching the creeping-walking-thing, the other trained on the white-and-black trees. The snow billows about, the storm becoming a full fledged blizzard.

  The thing creeps closer – he's not afraid. For some morbid reason, he welcomes it. Dying in a blizzard is a surprisingly lonely way to die, after all. If this thing wanted to go with him, who was he to tell it no? He slows his pace even more, lets the thing catch up with his long, lumbering steps. It gives a grateful snort, shaking snow out of it's mane.

  They're walking beside each other, their steps slowly falling into the same time. Right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left.

It gives a grunting breath, giant puffs of air blowing from it's long snout. Jack gives it a quick once-over, his brain trying to piece Death together.

Long legs, very, very long legs. As tall as a man is long, a great, sharp snout, with pointed ears pulled against it's skull in the wind. Massive, oval paws that spread with every step. A long, wispy tail. Inky black fur, clean and silky looking, with a mane circled around it's head and neck. Are...are those wings tucked against it's shoulder blades?

  What a strange looking creature, Jack thinks as he collapses, his body finally giving out. Fitting, when you think about it – wasn't it the Egyptians that said the god of Death was a Jackal?

He didn't remember Anubis living in the US of A, or walking on all fours, or having fucking wings, but really, it's not his place to judge. Death could be a fucking clown for all he cares, as long as the job is done.

  Death spreads it's oily black wings to their fullest length, giving one, two flaps. The snow flies about, a halo of flakes exposing the forest's floor. Grass pokes from the leftover film of white, little blades peering into the blizzard.

It stands over him. It's probably quite the majestic sight, Jack thinks as Death leans down, it's snout rolling him onto his back. Death's eyes are the reddest thing he's ever seen – more red than rubies, then blood. They're crimson, as crimson as the sun setting on summer nights...

  'Pa's not gonna believe me' he thinks as he dies, watching as the thing opens it's mouth, a great maw of crystal teeth and black saliva, 'He's gonna think I'm nuts.'

  - - -

I want to tell you a story

about a priest that declared war on a god

medusa