Advent Calendar Challenge: Day 2
Dec. 2nd, 2015 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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eerieindianaToday's prompt was "we who are broken", submitted by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eviinsanemonkey.
Part of the Pay Attention 'verse.
On Christmas morning, Harley awakens in the narrow bed he's had since childhood, to hear his mother screaming his name.
He knows from painful past experience that it's not a good idea to scream back, so he rolls out from under the thin, stained blanket and pads towards the door, moving quietly just in case his father is sleeping off a tear down the hall. One of them up and awake is bad enough.
His mother is standing by the open front door. Sara Sue is waiting on the doorstep, head ducked, hair swinging in front of her face, looking for all the world as if she were examining her shoes. Harley raises one hand to wave hello, but pauses when Mrs. Holmes starts yelling.
"What have you done?" she demands shrilly. Harley blinks, stares at her blankly, then looks back at Sara Sue with a slow-dawning realisation. It's been so long now, he hardly notices the paper faces anymore, sees right through them without meaning to. He focuses, and the tall, spare figure of Sergeant Knight fills the doorway, eyes concealed behind mirrored shades.
"Oh," he says, stupidly. "Good morning, officer."
"Are you Harley Schwarzenegger Holmes, as in the current governor of California?" Sara Sue asks, and yet again Harley is baffled at how people could mistake her voice for that of Eerie's blank-faced officer of the law.
"Uh... yes?" says Harley.
"Could you follow me to the squad car, please?"
Harley shuffles into a pair of Sky Monsters Part II, over a decade old and repaired so many times that they're now little more than a pair of duct-tape slippers with blue and green trim. He follows Sara Sue out onto the crisp white layer of snow that fell during the night.
"What did he do?" his mother shrieks after them. Sergeant Knight's expression is as neutral as ever, but behind it, Sara Sue looks out from under her heavy fringe and fixes Mrs. Holmes with a stare of undisguised contempt .
"We just need to ask him a few questions, ma'am," she says.
The door slams shut behind them.
The squad car only runs if Sara Sue concentrates - she doesn't know enough about combustion engines to draw a real working one - so Harley doesn't say anything during the drive.
Sara Sue pulls up outside the Eeriemat, it's huge plate-glass windows garishly painted with a scene from Santa's workshop, executed with more enthusiasm than skill. She gets out of the car and looks at it for a moment, shaking her head. When Harley, struggling with an internal door handle that doesn't always work like it should, finally joins her on the sidewalk, she flips to a dog-eared page in her notebook and erases her signature. The police car vanishes back onto the paper in her hand.
"They're closed for the holidays," Harley says.
"I know," says Sara Sue. "What I wanted to show you is around back."
She takes his hand in hers and pulls him along. Harley's never had a girlfriend, but then he's never had a big sister, or a mom who was worth the name, and he's not sure exactly where on the scale their clasped hands should fall. But her hand is warm and strong and dry, and her fingers are calloused from holding pencils and paintbrushes all day long, and as it's been over ten years since anyone wanted to hold his hand as they walked down the street, he tries to stop worrying and just enjoy it.
There's a small door set in the dingy brick wall at the back of the Eeriemat. It smells of detergent and hot water. Sara Sue pulls out a key and unlocks it with quick, shaky gestures. She's nervous, and that makes Harley nervous too. Inside, a single bare bulb casts a harsh yellow light over frayed and dirty carpet, and a narrow set of stairs leads up into the darkness above. Sara Sue doesn't release his hand as they climb the staircase in an awkward single file.
At the top, there's another locked door, and Sara Sue is visibly trembling as she fits a second key into the heavy security lock. When it clicks and the door opens, she gives an audible sigh of relief.
Inside, there's a lopsided Christmas tree decorated in cracked and mismatched ornaments. It's real, a real, slightly crooked pine tree festooned in shabby, second-hand baubles and dollar-store tinsel that is going a little threadbare in places. The sofas and armchairs are faded and tattered and they smell faintly of old-lady talcum powder and thrift-store dust. There's no TV.
"What is it?" asks Harley, because he thinks he knows but needs to hear it.
"It's home," says Sara Sue. "I mean, it's mine, but it's yours too if you want it. Well, not really mine, I mean I'm renting it, but if you wanted to..."
"Yes," says Harley. "Yes, yes, yes." He's crying now, crying for second-hand furniture in a tiny set of rooms above a laundromatte, crying for a stunted pine tree that lost most of the needles off one side when Sara Sue dragged it up the stairs, crying for the smudgy-faced angel tied to the highest branch with twine so that it looks more like someone about to be burned for witchcraft.
Sara Sue hugs him and he buries his face in her hair and cries for the big brother who won't be dropping by with a housewarming gift, and for the girl who slept in a laundry room and travelled the world and came back to make a better, safer laundry room that was all her own.
eviinsanemonkey.Part of the Pay Attention 'verse.
On Christmas morning, Harley awakens in the narrow bed he's had since childhood, to hear his mother screaming his name.
He knows from painful past experience that it's not a good idea to scream back, so he rolls out from under the thin, stained blanket and pads towards the door, moving quietly just in case his father is sleeping off a tear down the hall. One of them up and awake is bad enough.
His mother is standing by the open front door. Sara Sue is waiting on the doorstep, head ducked, hair swinging in front of her face, looking for all the world as if she were examining her shoes. Harley raises one hand to wave hello, but pauses when Mrs. Holmes starts yelling.
"What have you done?" she demands shrilly. Harley blinks, stares at her blankly, then looks back at Sara Sue with a slow-dawning realisation. It's been so long now, he hardly notices the paper faces anymore, sees right through them without meaning to. He focuses, and the tall, spare figure of Sergeant Knight fills the doorway, eyes concealed behind mirrored shades.
"Oh," he says, stupidly. "Good morning, officer."
"Are you Harley Schwarzenegger Holmes, as in the current governor of California?" Sara Sue asks, and yet again Harley is baffled at how people could mistake her voice for that of Eerie's blank-faced officer of the law.
"Uh... yes?" says Harley.
"Could you follow me to the squad car, please?"
Harley shuffles into a pair of Sky Monsters Part II, over a decade old and repaired so many times that they're now little more than a pair of duct-tape slippers with blue and green trim. He follows Sara Sue out onto the crisp white layer of snow that fell during the night.
"What did he do?" his mother shrieks after them. Sergeant Knight's expression is as neutral as ever, but behind it, Sara Sue looks out from under her heavy fringe and fixes Mrs. Holmes with a stare of undisguised contempt .
"We just need to ask him a few questions, ma'am," she says.
The door slams shut behind them.
The squad car only runs if Sara Sue concentrates - she doesn't know enough about combustion engines to draw a real working one - so Harley doesn't say anything during the drive.
Sara Sue pulls up outside the Eeriemat, it's huge plate-glass windows garishly painted with a scene from Santa's workshop, executed with more enthusiasm than skill. She gets out of the car and looks at it for a moment, shaking her head. When Harley, struggling with an internal door handle that doesn't always work like it should, finally joins her on the sidewalk, she flips to a dog-eared page in her notebook and erases her signature. The police car vanishes back onto the paper in her hand.
"They're closed for the holidays," Harley says.
"I know," says Sara Sue. "What I wanted to show you is around back."
She takes his hand in hers and pulls him along. Harley's never had a girlfriend, but then he's never had a big sister, or a mom who was worth the name, and he's not sure exactly where on the scale their clasped hands should fall. But her hand is warm and strong and dry, and her fingers are calloused from holding pencils and paintbrushes all day long, and as it's been over ten years since anyone wanted to hold his hand as they walked down the street, he tries to stop worrying and just enjoy it.
There's a small door set in the dingy brick wall at the back of the Eeriemat. It smells of detergent and hot water. Sara Sue pulls out a key and unlocks it with quick, shaky gestures. She's nervous, and that makes Harley nervous too. Inside, a single bare bulb casts a harsh yellow light over frayed and dirty carpet, and a narrow set of stairs leads up into the darkness above. Sara Sue doesn't release his hand as they climb the staircase in an awkward single file.
At the top, there's another locked door, and Sara Sue is visibly trembling as she fits a second key into the heavy security lock. When it clicks and the door opens, she gives an audible sigh of relief.
Inside, there's a lopsided Christmas tree decorated in cracked and mismatched ornaments. It's real, a real, slightly crooked pine tree festooned in shabby, second-hand baubles and dollar-store tinsel that is going a little threadbare in places. The sofas and armchairs are faded and tattered and they smell faintly of old-lady talcum powder and thrift-store dust. There's no TV.
"What is it?" asks Harley, because he thinks he knows but needs to hear it.
"It's home," says Sara Sue. "I mean, it's mine, but it's yours too if you want it. Well, not really mine, I mean I'm renting it, but if you wanted to..."
"Yes," says Harley. "Yes, yes, yes." He's crying now, crying for second-hand furniture in a tiny set of rooms above a laundromatte, crying for a stunted pine tree that lost most of the needles off one side when Sara Sue dragged it up the stairs, crying for the smudgy-faced angel tied to the highest branch with twine so that it looks more like someone about to be burned for witchcraft.
Sara Sue hugs him and he buries his face in her hair and cries for the big brother who won't be dropping by with a housewarming gift, and for the girl who slept in a laundry room and travelled the world and came back to make a better, safer laundry room that was all her own.
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Date: 2015-12-02 03:14 am (UTC)this is so beautiful <3
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Date: 2015-12-02 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-02 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-02 09:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-02 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-12-03 11:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-16 01:20 am (UTC)Love this so much, froods