he is legend. (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} adammonroe) wrote,@ 2008-01-02 21:34:00 |
|
| Entry tags: | chapter: four, character: sylar, fiction, heroes, title: aesthetics of violence |
Fiction - OC, Sylar - Aesthetics Of Violence
Title: Aesthetics Of Violence
Rating: PG13
Character(s):
Overall: Narrator (OC Ella), Sylar
In Chapter: Isaac Mendez, Chandra Suresh, HRG.
Excerpt: Deep breath, gather mail, start a smoke. I call this one Dwight, a bookish cigarette from the slums, see I still have an imagination. Isaac‘s door. Knock, Knock. Open, he’s coming down from a high but still with it.
Aesthetics of Violence
Chapter Four
***
When I was sixteen and in high school I got myself a job at a funeral home. Just breathing and having a pulse made me feel important. Special. Just knowing that I was better off than the dead guy in the coffin made me smile. Gave me a bounce in my step, even when families came in crying their eyes out, gasping and gagging while trying to decided on a burial or cremation. The decisions we have to make to prove to the world that yes, we are capable to love and yes, we will remember you when we’re spending your money and selling your jewelry.
“White vinyl or oak honey?” Like couch shopping.
“Oh dear, what size headstone?” Like buying a plasma screen.
I could tell from “taping” my interview with Doctor Chandra Suresh, he definitely was a cremation kind of guy. Bake and burn. Fit in a jar, an easily down sizable man. You can tell these things after working at a funeral home all summer for $12 an hour. He just kept talking, even to simple questions. I suppose he loves having someone willing listing to him and his crack pot theories. Words I don’t understand spewing from his mouth in that Indian accent that had begun to grad on my nerves after fifteen minutes, it made me want to cut out his tongue. Not a word in edge from me. He takes a breath, I pounce.
“What about mental abilities besides the telekinesis you’ve spoke of? Are you saying that in theory someone could say, predict the future?” Isaac.
“I would say so, yes. Yes it’s very possible for someone to have that ability. The key as to say, for us as doctors and scientists is to find what triggers these unique individuals to unleash their ability. They are born with the gene, but it’s obvious none of them have natural use after birth, the ability usually shows itself at either a mildly young age, or rather older age. My research has lead me to believe that somewhere along the lines something makes the dormant gene awaken.” Time’s up.
“Well, I think that’s all I need from you Doctor Suresh, I have enough notes for the next week and half.” Insert the vapid air headed giggle. “I have to ask though, what’s the map for?”
“Just another theory, that those with abilities are somehow connected and those on the map may have the correct genetic coding.” He’s entirely too open and honest. Shake hands, countless thank you and I’m shown the door.
Down the stairs, five flights of stairs because the elevator doesn’t look like it can be trusted. Death by elevator, not wanted so much. But seriously, five flights is too much for a person like myself. I light up a cigarette, breathe in and exhale. Wonderful. I start the second cigarette on the second flight, almost back to smoking a pack a day. I finish, and smash the butt with the heel of my boots before noticing the man in a drab brown suit on a cell phone. Federal issue, wool suit maybe. Tight and uncomfortable so one always remembers they’re working when they’re in that suit. He’s working now, by the sound of the conversation, hushed and somewhat hurried, every word stressed. Not exactly the calm collected persona he would like to portray. Maybe I should have been a psych major instead of a photography major.
“Does a Doctor Suresh live here?” I shrug and take out another cigarette. Lucky number thrice.
“Yeah, fifth floor. Number 56.” Flick lighter, almost out of fluid. I’ll need to pick up another zippo. Most likely another pack of Reds too, bummer. Inhale, exhale, it only takes a second for the nicotine to hit my senses again. Release.
“You know, those will kill you.” Breaking news - cigarettes are killers! This coming from the guy about to step on a not so safe looking elevator.
“So would drinking contaminated water. Or maybe having the elevator collapse in on itself. But I think I’ll stick with these coffin nails.” Asshole. Elevator doors open, he steps on, pushes button and turns around. I’m almost done with my cigarette when I notice the glasses. Horn rimmed, so vintage and….out of place. Narrowed eyes. The elevator shaft creaks as I finish the cigarette, under boot again to join the second. A small smile is on his face, a smirk really. A smug look, like my ex-boss.
“Have a good day…Ella.” Doors close, I’m speechless.
How the fuck am I suppose to react to something like that?
***
My resume for the previous four year was very simple: I worked for a major insurance company. I toiled away from five to nine, three hundred and sixty days of the year answering phones, filling paper work, sending emails like Re: See Attached Claim, I invented new and exciting ways to waste everybody’s time and achieved the highly constructive feat of robbing hard working people from their money when their apartment caught fire by their stupidity. We can also welcome middle-management supreme John Roday, a dirty middle-aged man who in his youth had clearly imagined becoming a surgeon, such was his delight when he got to make anything amounting to a life or death decision, the kind of guy who would turn your ventilator off in hospital just so he could get to see the look on your face. It wasn’t enough for Roday simply to be in charge of the people under him, he loved to have power over all the decisions made in the department down to the most basic level. He was the man who had sacked me, and the man who should have understood that while I was being sullen and “customer unfriendly” I was saving reports with memos that we were suppose to destroy. Copies upon copies made, all filed by date and what they were lying about. People whose insurance had been pocked by the upper management of our division. Insurance fraud by said upper management.
You couldn’t see Roday from the door, his desk was located around the corner of the L-shaped office, next to his small mini-fridge. Even though he had tried to compose himself he still looked pretty flustered, unusual. He recognized me though, and his expression turned to anger. “Ella,” He was dressed in a bad suit and waistcoat like always. “How’d you get in here?”
“I followed the smell of starched collars,” insert careless shrug, “always seems to lead to you.”
“You’ve come to the wrong place. In fact…” he chuckled, “you’ve pretty much come to the wrong place whatever you wanted to chat about.”
“Is that right?” Try and appear calm, like this isn’t my first rodeo.
“Well, now that you’ve so rudely interrupted me,” he was like a fat cat, slinking to sit on the black leather sofa next to the back wall of his office making himself comfortable, “if you want to talk, let’s talk. You’ve got exactly one minute before I call security, have you thrown out.”
“Really? Then I’d better get on with it.”
“Bottom line,” said Roday, “you’re not getting your job back. And by the way, it’s Mister Roday to you.” The arrogance. I was no longer in his employ and he still expected me to answer to him.
“Who says I want my job back, Mister Roday?” Humor him.
“Well you know, dismissed as you were doesn’t exactly create a great impression for getting yourself another job, and despite my legal requirement not to give you a bad reference, don’t expect me to do any dirty work for you. Are we done? The door’s just there.” He pointed at the door, which I had shut as soon as I got into the room.
“You always were an asshole John,” conveniently forgetting the Mister part. “I thought I was going to get a minute to talk, yet as usual you seem to be the one who wants to conduct the entire conversation.”
“Only way I can be sure of having an intelligent one around here,” Roday smiled. His bad teeth would have sparkled had that not been impossible. “Particularly when it’s a conversation that involves you.”
“I don’t want my job back, I want to give you a parting gift.”
“Ah, so thoughtful,” Sarcastic, “but seriously, you have nothing that I could ever want, no advice that I would ever wish to take.”
“Oh I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I said, walking over to him, “after all, I’m sure the NYPD, and IRS would appreciate these gifts. There’s so many I suppose I could share. ” Papers down on table. His arrogant, in-control, smarmy face deserted him, and he froze. “Let’s see, how about the internal report from you and Joan Bennett about pocketing money from victims of 9/11? Or maybe the memo about destroying the incriminating papers of taking $50k from, what was it?” Pause, shuffle through papers, “Oh yes, two or three of the fire houses downtown?”
“Now, don’t do anything stupid Ella,” he’s panicked, stammering. He coughed a couple of times and all of a sudden he looked, like me, as if he had the weight of the world upon his shoulders. Well, he’s also got an extra case of possible Federal jail on his shoulders. At this moment, I wish I’d practiced something, written anything down before I’d come over. I could have recited it in front of my bathroom mirror. I bet that’s the kind of thing that Roday did for hours before he made a presentation, and he was still mediocre at them at best. I had to make my monologue up on the spur of the moment, and make it come as if it was from the heart.
“I wish I could say I was on a mission from God, I’m sure he’d love to see you get it in the end. I’d love to say that I was hired by your wife to expose you that she could get her hands on what money you’ve squirreled away. So she wouldn’t have to spend anymore of her evenings having to lie back and think of the shores of the Caribbean, or anything other than having sex with your, well let’s be frank here, plump frame.” Dramtic pause, bait him. “But, I’m not. I’m here because you fired me and I need a source of income. Without working and these memos and report seem like to be my ticket to making that happening. You know the truth is about you John? Let me enlighten you, you’re weak, you’re a bully. So how about it John, be exposed the whole wide world to what you really are, a dirty lowly man - or pay me, every month like clockwork. A regular check, holiday bonus, you know the drill.”
He was sweating, and it wasn’t because the office was warmed by the space heater next to the couch, “I’m not going to do it. You don’t have anything on us.” Wrong answer John.
“Really? I wonder what the New York Post has to say about that, and the New York times. I guess there’s only one way to find out, I keep them on speed dial.” Reach into pocket, pick up phone. Flip. Dial. Ring once, twice, thrice, pick up.
“Hello, New York Pos-” phone ripped out of hand, flipped shut. Roday is breathless, his face pale and eyes narrow. Putty in my hands.
“So, what do you say Johnny Boy; Pay me off, keep my silent or become the biggest corporate scandal after Enron?” Count down 5, 4, 3 2 -
“Fine.”
“I knew you’d see it my way Johnny.”
***
The company elevators were always nice, playing soothing music and the gentle rock. I’ll almost miss it, almost. I pulled out my ipod from my pocket, untangled wires, press play. Doors open, exit building with the confident in the knowledge that my monthly check would be sent to my loft. I wouldn’t work at all and that Roday had folded to me. As I walked down the street my steps sank into the rhythm of the music. Walking in time with the beat as I always did, it just seemed like the natural thing to do. I switched to a quicker song: I didn’t feel like walking slowly, too much adrenaline. As the music and I became one I felt myself standing tall and scowling to anyone who looked my way. The volume up, so sure people around me could hear. Let them hear.
Chalk up today as being eventful. No more working on the forty second level of hell, no more Kelly the secretary, or James the mail boy. Feeling smug. Take a taxi home, shell out $15.87 for the ride and realize that maybe I owe Isaac an apologue. I’ve never been good with those. Suresh’s words still hung in the back of my mind. Evolution. Unlimited possibilities. A trigger. Deep breath, gather daily mail, start a smoke. I call this one Dwight, a bookish cigarette from the slums, see I still have an imagination. Isaac‘s door. Knock, Knock. Open, he’s coming down but still with it.
“What?” Harsh
“So what, you can paint the future, yeah? Prove it.” That’s as close as an apologize as he’ll get. Grabbed at the forearm and yanked in, paint of my favorite coat. Jackass. Pulls and tuggs down the few stairs into his loft, to the paintings. Stock still.
“That’s you. That’s you’re boss, right?” Deep breath required for this realization.
“Ex-boss. That’s me?”
“Yes.” Oh he’s so smug now, hand to temple. Maybe some Tylenol is in order, find bottle in my bag, down 3 pills dry. Remember, I’m experienced kids. Might as well get this shit over with.
“What if I told you…you’re not alone Isaac?”
Notes: Happy New Years. I'm sick I suppose, Florida is insanly cold, I'm freezing. I actually felt confident in this chapter, I loathe however how some reviews on fanfiction.com called Ella a mary-sue. She is anything but a mary-sue. If she becomes one, or is precieved as such then damn I quit because the last thing I want to do is add to land of Heroes many mary-sues. Ugh I hate being put into the same league as them too :(
Rating: PG13
Character(s):
Overall: Narrator (OC Ella), Sylar
In Chapter: Isaac Mendez, Chandra Suresh, HRG.
Excerpt: Deep breath, gather mail, start a smoke. I call this one Dwight, a bookish cigarette from the slums, see I still have an imagination. Isaac‘s door. Knock, Knock. Open, he’s coming down from a high but still with it.
Chapter Four
***
When I was sixteen and in high school I got myself a job at a funeral home. Just breathing and having a pulse made me feel important. Special. Just knowing that I was better off than the dead guy in the coffin made me smile. Gave me a bounce in my step, even when families came in crying their eyes out, gasping and gagging while trying to decided on a burial or cremation. The decisions we have to make to prove to the world that yes, we are capable to love and yes, we will remember you when we’re spending your money and selling your jewelry.
“White vinyl or oak honey?” Like couch shopping.
“Oh dear, what size headstone?” Like buying a plasma screen.
I could tell from “taping” my interview with Doctor Chandra Suresh, he definitely was a cremation kind of guy. Bake and burn. Fit in a jar, an easily down sizable man. You can tell these things after working at a funeral home all summer for $12 an hour. He just kept talking, even to simple questions. I suppose he loves having someone willing listing to him and his crack pot theories. Words I don’t understand spewing from his mouth in that Indian accent that had begun to grad on my nerves after fifteen minutes, it made me want to cut out his tongue. Not a word in edge from me. He takes a breath, I pounce.
“What about mental abilities besides the telekinesis you’ve spoke of? Are you saying that in theory someone could say, predict the future?” Isaac.
“I would say so, yes. Yes it’s very possible for someone to have that ability. The key as to say, for us as doctors and scientists is to find what triggers these unique individuals to unleash their ability. They are born with the gene, but it’s obvious none of them have natural use after birth, the ability usually shows itself at either a mildly young age, or rather older age. My research has lead me to believe that somewhere along the lines something makes the dormant gene awaken.” Time’s up.
“Well, I think that’s all I need from you Doctor Suresh, I have enough notes for the next week and half.” Insert the vapid air headed giggle. “I have to ask though, what’s the map for?”
“Just another theory, that those with abilities are somehow connected and those on the map may have the correct genetic coding.” He’s entirely too open and honest. Shake hands, countless thank you and I’m shown the door.
Down the stairs, five flights of stairs because the elevator doesn’t look like it can be trusted. Death by elevator, not wanted so much. But seriously, five flights is too much for a person like myself. I light up a cigarette, breathe in and exhale. Wonderful. I start the second cigarette on the second flight, almost back to smoking a pack a day. I finish, and smash the butt with the heel of my boots before noticing the man in a drab brown suit on a cell phone. Federal issue, wool suit maybe. Tight and uncomfortable so one always remembers they’re working when they’re in that suit. He’s working now, by the sound of the conversation, hushed and somewhat hurried, every word stressed. Not exactly the calm collected persona he would like to portray. Maybe I should have been a psych major instead of a photography major.
“Does a Doctor Suresh live here?” I shrug and take out another cigarette. Lucky number thrice.
“Yeah, fifth floor. Number 56.” Flick lighter, almost out of fluid. I’ll need to pick up another zippo. Most likely another pack of Reds too, bummer. Inhale, exhale, it only takes a second for the nicotine to hit my senses again. Release.
“You know, those will kill you.” Breaking news - cigarettes are killers! This coming from the guy about to step on a not so safe looking elevator.
“So would drinking contaminated water. Or maybe having the elevator collapse in on itself. But I think I’ll stick with these coffin nails.” Asshole. Elevator doors open, he steps on, pushes button and turns around. I’m almost done with my cigarette when I notice the glasses. Horn rimmed, so vintage and….out of place. Narrowed eyes. The elevator shaft creaks as I finish the cigarette, under boot again to join the second. A small smile is on his face, a smirk really. A smug look, like my ex-boss.
“Have a good day…Ella.” Doors close, I’m speechless.
How the fuck am I suppose to react to something like that?
My resume for the previous four year was very simple: I worked for a major insurance company. I toiled away from five to nine, three hundred and sixty days of the year answering phones, filling paper work, sending emails like Re: See Attached Claim, I invented new and exciting ways to waste everybody’s time and achieved the highly constructive feat of robbing hard working people from their money when their apartment caught fire by their stupidity. We can also welcome middle-management supreme John Roday, a dirty middle-aged man who in his youth had clearly imagined becoming a surgeon, such was his delight when he got to make anything amounting to a life or death decision, the kind of guy who would turn your ventilator off in hospital just so he could get to see the look on your face. It wasn’t enough for Roday simply to be in charge of the people under him, he loved to have power over all the decisions made in the department down to the most basic level. He was the man who had sacked me, and the man who should have understood that while I was being sullen and “customer unfriendly” I was saving reports with memos that we were suppose to destroy. Copies upon copies made, all filed by date and what they were lying about. People whose insurance had been pocked by the upper management of our division. Insurance fraud by said upper management.
You couldn’t see Roday from the door, his desk was located around the corner of the L-shaped office, next to his small mini-fridge. Even though he had tried to compose himself he still looked pretty flustered, unusual. He recognized me though, and his expression turned to anger. “Ella,” He was dressed in a bad suit and waistcoat like always. “How’d you get in here?”
“I followed the smell of starched collars,” insert careless shrug, “always seems to lead to you.”
“You’ve come to the wrong place. In fact…” he chuckled, “you’ve pretty much come to the wrong place whatever you wanted to chat about.”
“Is that right?” Try and appear calm, like this isn’t my first rodeo.
“Well, now that you’ve so rudely interrupted me,” he was like a fat cat, slinking to sit on the black leather sofa next to the back wall of his office making himself comfortable, “if you want to talk, let’s talk. You’ve got exactly one minute before I call security, have you thrown out.”
“Really? Then I’d better get on with it.”
“Bottom line,” said Roday, “you’re not getting your job back. And by the way, it’s Mister Roday to you.” The arrogance. I was no longer in his employ and he still expected me to answer to him.
“Who says I want my job back, Mister Roday?” Humor him.
“Well you know, dismissed as you were doesn’t exactly create a great impression for getting yourself another job, and despite my legal requirement not to give you a bad reference, don’t expect me to do any dirty work for you. Are we done? The door’s just there.” He pointed at the door, which I had shut as soon as I got into the room.
“You always were an asshole John,” conveniently forgetting the Mister part. “I thought I was going to get a minute to talk, yet as usual you seem to be the one who wants to conduct the entire conversation.”
“Only way I can be sure of having an intelligent one around here,” Roday smiled. His bad teeth would have sparkled had that not been impossible. “Particularly when it’s a conversation that involves you.”
“I don’t want my job back, I want to give you a parting gift.”
“Ah, so thoughtful,” Sarcastic, “but seriously, you have nothing that I could ever want, no advice that I would ever wish to take.”
“Oh I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I said, walking over to him, “after all, I’m sure the NYPD, and IRS would appreciate these gifts. There’s so many I suppose I could share. ” Papers down on table. His arrogant, in-control, smarmy face deserted him, and he froze. “Let’s see, how about the internal report from you and Joan Bennett about pocketing money from victims of 9/11? Or maybe the memo about destroying the incriminating papers of taking $50k from, what was it?” Pause, shuffle through papers, “Oh yes, two or three of the fire houses downtown?”
“Now, don’t do anything stupid Ella,” he’s panicked, stammering. He coughed a couple of times and all of a sudden he looked, like me, as if he had the weight of the world upon his shoulders. Well, he’s also got an extra case of possible Federal jail on his shoulders. At this moment, I wish I’d practiced something, written anything down before I’d come over. I could have recited it in front of my bathroom mirror. I bet that’s the kind of thing that Roday did for hours before he made a presentation, and he was still mediocre at them at best. I had to make my monologue up on the spur of the moment, and make it come as if it was from the heart.
“I wish I could say I was on a mission from God, I’m sure he’d love to see you get it in the end. I’d love to say that I was hired by your wife to expose you that she could get her hands on what money you’ve squirreled away. So she wouldn’t have to spend anymore of her evenings having to lie back and think of the shores of the Caribbean, or anything other than having sex with your, well let’s be frank here, plump frame.” Dramtic pause, bait him. “But, I’m not. I’m here because you fired me and I need a source of income. Without working and these memos and report seem like to be my ticket to making that happening. You know the truth is about you John? Let me enlighten you, you’re weak, you’re a bully. So how about it John, be exposed the whole wide world to what you really are, a dirty lowly man - or pay me, every month like clockwork. A regular check, holiday bonus, you know the drill.”
He was sweating, and it wasn’t because the office was warmed by the space heater next to the couch, “I’m not going to do it. You don’t have anything on us.” Wrong answer John.
“Really? I wonder what the New York Post has to say about that, and the New York times. I guess there’s only one way to find out, I keep them on speed dial.” Reach into pocket, pick up phone. Flip. Dial. Ring once, twice, thrice, pick up.
“Hello, New York Pos-” phone ripped out of hand, flipped shut. Roday is breathless, his face pale and eyes narrow. Putty in my hands.
“So, what do you say Johnny Boy; Pay me off, keep my silent or become the biggest corporate scandal after Enron?” Count down 5, 4, 3 2 -
“Fine.”
“I knew you’d see it my way Johnny.”
The company elevators were always nice, playing soothing music and the gentle rock. I’ll almost miss it, almost. I pulled out my ipod from my pocket, untangled wires, press play. Doors open, exit building with the confident in the knowledge that my monthly check would be sent to my loft. I wouldn’t work at all and that Roday had folded to me. As I walked down the street my steps sank into the rhythm of the music. Walking in time with the beat as I always did, it just seemed like the natural thing to do. I switched to a quicker song: I didn’t feel like walking slowly, too much adrenaline. As the music and I became one I felt myself standing tall and scowling to anyone who looked my way. The volume up, so sure people around me could hear. Let them hear.
Chalk up today as being eventful. No more working on the forty second level of hell, no more Kelly the secretary, or James the mail boy. Feeling smug. Take a taxi home, shell out $15.87 for the ride and realize that maybe I owe Isaac an apologue. I’ve never been good with those. Suresh’s words still hung in the back of my mind. Evolution. Unlimited possibilities. A trigger. Deep breath, gather daily mail, start a smoke. I call this one Dwight, a bookish cigarette from the slums, see I still have an imagination. Isaac‘s door. Knock, Knock. Open, he’s coming down but still with it.
“What?” Harsh
“So what, you can paint the future, yeah? Prove it.” That’s as close as an apologize as he’ll get. Grabbed at the forearm and yanked in, paint of my favorite coat. Jackass. Pulls and tuggs down the few stairs into his loft, to the paintings. Stock still.
“That’s you. That’s you’re boss, right?” Deep breath required for this realization.
“Ex-boss. That’s me?”
“Yes.” Oh he’s so smug now, hand to temple. Maybe some Tylenol is in order, find bottle in my bag, down 3 pills dry. Remember, I’m experienced kids. Might as well get this shit over with.
“What if I told you…you’re not alone Isaac?”
Notes: Happy New Years. I'm sick I suppose, Florida is insanly cold, I'm freezing. I actually felt confident in this chapter, I loathe however how some reviews on fanfiction.com called Ella a mary-sue. She is anything but a mary-sue. If she becomes one, or is precieved as such then damn I quit because the last thing I want to do is add to land of Heroes many mary-sues. Ugh I hate being put into the same league as them too :(
