I shouldn't be doing this. Posting a story which is far from being finished is not really sensible - but, on the other hand, my Muse needs a kick up the backside and this is quite possibly the only way of doing it. She's telling me that she needs encouragement, and posting is usually pretty effective... so here goes. Hope you like!
~ A Twist of Fates ~
The first thing she noticed was the noise.
It seemed to come from somewhere far away, and yet it cut through her skull with the force of an axe. Voices. People shouting. Screaming. A loud, continuous bell, like an alarm. Sirens wailing. And one voice, somehow familiar, weeping and repeating one word over and over. “No. No, no, no, no. No!”
Then she became aware of the light. Harsh, over-bright, it hurt her eyes. She blinked, trying to adjust, and gradually she became accustomed to it and found that she could see more clearly. Yet, as with the sound, it felt as if she were looking through a haze. A smoky mirror, or a greasy lens too rarely cleaned.
There were people, lots of people, in what seemed to be a large room. Everyone’s attention seemed to be concentrated on a small huddle on the floor. The lights were trained on the same spot. She saw men in uniform and recognised then as police officers.
As she watched, her attention was distracted by movement to the left. More men in uniform came through the door, their steps slow and exaggerated, as if she were watching the entire scene on video and someone had set the machine to slow motion. These, she somehow knew without being aware of the knowledge, were paramedics. They wheeled a gurney between them, and one carried a large red case.
Her gaze flicked back to the group on the floor. Now, the haze was clearing slightly and she could begin to make the figures out. One man bent, hunched, over a prone body, his hands rhythmically pummelling the person’s chest. Again, the movements were exaggeratedly slow. Beside the body, another man knelt, head bowed, his whole body shaking. And then she knew that it was this man she’d heard. He was the one who was weeping. He was the one calling out to some unseen power or force, crying out the impossibility of whatever had happened.
“No! Please god, no! Not her... don’t let her be dead! She can’t be dead...”
The voice was still familiar, but it was like listening to an old, warped tape. His words emerged in a faintly mechanical, slow, groaning sound. She shook her head, unable to understand why everything was so indistinct. What was happening here? Why did she have this nagging sense that she should know where she was? That she should know who this man was?
The other man spoke. Again, she had to focus closely to make out the slurred words. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do. It’s too late.”
A cry so painful that she felt her heart being torn in two emerged from the man on the floor. He seemed to fold in upon himself, again so slowly that she could see every single movement. And his head rested upon the chest of the body on the floor.
Her gaze shifted past the grieving man, wondering who the dead woman was who had inspired so much devotion. His wife? His girlfriend?
She saw a red dress. Dark hair. And blood - large, frightening pools, on the floor and on the woman’s body. The man’s hands, gripping the woman’s shoulders, were streaked with crimson.
The woman’s face was pale, her eyes wide and staring sightlessly upward. But it wasn’t the mingled surprise and agony on the woman’s face which made her freeze. Which made her look again before recoiling in shock.
The face of the woman on the floor was her own.
**********
She was dead.
She looked down at her hands. They were clean. Yet she knew that they had been covered in blood. She was still wearing the red dress. And it had a hole in it. She looked back at the corpse, and started to shake.
That really was her. And she was dead.
Now, she remembered it. Or some of it, anyway.
They’d been in a club. A gambling club... wait, the name was coming to her. Haircut, hairstyle... Hairdo! Georgie Hairdo; that was it. And they’d been there because... oh yeah. Someone had tipped her off that Al Capone might be there.
No. She shook her head, incredulity oozing from every pore. Every dead pore. Yeah, getting killed had really scrambled her brains. Or sent her back into the past. Or something weird like that. Al Capone was a gangster. Dated from the 1920s. No way he would’ve been walking the streets in the 1990s, much less going anywhere she and Clark were staking out.
And yet...
Al Capone had been there. Or had he? Had she seen him somewhere else? She had vague, shadowy memories of him growling something about stiffs and morons who couldn’t keep their guns in their pockets.
Guns. She remembered a gun. Somehow, that memory was all mixed up with something about a little old lady and a bucket of nickels. But that made no more sense than Al Capone being alive.
Indistinct images, like blurry silhouettes, danced elusively at the edge of her mind, almost close enough to touch. Tantalisingly close, but just far enough away that she couldn’t make them out clearly.
A tableau. A man standing too close to a woman. His hands... his words... She felt the woman recoiling. Another man moving close, his expression... what? Angry? Concerned? She wished she could work out what was happening. Somehow she knew it was important.
And then a fuzzy figure in her peripheral vision. This one holding something... She felt herself freeze as she saw the gun in his hand. The gun which was pointed at something... someone. Someone she cared about.
A scream echoed, loud and terrified. She whirled around, looking for the source. And then she realised. The woman in the tableau was herself. And she was the one who had screamed.
A scream, followed immediately by the loud report of a gun. And lightning-fast movement, almost too quick for her to follow. The angry man stumbling, as if losing his balance. The woman - herself - crying out. Clutching at her chest. Pain. And falling...
...tumbling, folding, collapsing, into the darkness.
*********
He was in his apartment. She’d tracked him there from the hospital and then the police precinct. Wherever he’d been, she’d been there watching him from a distance. For the past two hours, he’d been unlike she’d ever known him: grey, pale, his actions like an automaton, his voice cold and dead. And now he was alone and, she sensed, at the edge of his control.
At the hospital, he’d given her details to the orderly in a voice which was devoid of any emotion, an expression blank and empty. He’d repeated to the doctor the events which had led to Lois Lane being brought into the emergency room dead from a bullet-wound to the chest. And he’d then allowed the police officer who’d accompanied them to question him yet again about what had happened. She’d sensed his patience about to snap, and the iron control he’d been keeping on that patience.
Through the murky haze which clouded her vision, she’d seen him make a couple of phone calls. One to Perry White, which had brought the older man down to the hospital within minutes. The other to her mother. She’d seen him take Ellen Lane into his arms when she’d also arrived at the ER, heard him relate to her what had happened and then seen him sit with her until the doctor came out to speak to her and take her in to see her daughter.
She’d sensed his aching desire to follow her mother in, and somehow she’d understood it. If he’d been the one to die, she would have wanted to see him once the doctors could do no more for him - to convince herself that it really was all over, that she’d lost him. And to touch him one more time.
But he hadn’t asked. He’d just crossed back to where Perry White had been sitting and said that he had to go to the precinct to give a formal statement. Perry had insisted on accompanying him, though she’d known from the tightness of her partner’s jaw that he’d wanted to go alone.
And now, finally, he’d said goodbye to his unwanted escort and let himself into his apartment. She watched him, still shaken from the last words he’d said to Perry before the editor had eventually left.
“It was my fault, Perry. I got her killed. Now do you see why I want to be alone?”
“Clark, don’t!” Perry had caught at his arm, his own eyes over-bright. “It wasn’t your fault! You didn’t pull the trigger.”
The bitterness in Clark’s voice had sliced through her heart. “I might as well have. If it hadn’t been for me, she’d be alive now. How can I ever forgive myself for that?”
He’d flung himself out of Perry’s car and walked, slowly, wearily, up the steps to his apartment, his clothes wrinkled and hair mussed and spiky. And then, once inside, had sunk onto the steps inside, his expression still blank, his eyes... His eyes haunted.
She’d followed him into the apartment. She hadn’t been quick enough to go with him through the open door, and yet somehow the door had just given way as she’d approached it. She’d been there, standing behind him, ever since, thinking about what he’d said and what to do about it.
He blamed himself for her getting killed? But how could he possibly think that? It didn’t make sense. But that was Clark all over, with his highly-overdeveloped sense of responsibility.
He’d been sitting there for more than twenty minutes now. Not moving, not speaking, barely even breathing. In that time, the mist had evaporated and she could see clearly instead of from a long way away.
She’d never, ever seen Clark like this. He was always the cheerful one, always willing to find a bright side in everything. Ever the optimist, while she was always the one to see the bottle half-empty.
He looked lost. As if he’d lost...
As if he’d lost his best friend.
And he had.
She remembered it all now with horrible clarity. As vividly as if the grisly tableau were playing out directly in front of her, she could see it happen. Dillinger messing with her. Trying to grope her. Clark rushing to her defence like the white knight he always was. And then Clyde Barrow suddenly appearing on the scene, gun in hand.
The frozen expression on the faces of those around when they realised he was going to shoot. The ice-cold fingers of fear closing around her heart when it dawned on her that his target was Clark.
And then moving, moving faster than she ever had in her life before. Turning to Clark. Shoving at him. Pushing him away, down, to the floor. Anything to get him out of the path of the bullet.
And suddenly a fiery pain to the side of her chest. Warm gushing over her hands as she clapped them to the source of the pain. And being overcome with weakness, falling to the floor, shouts around her dying out and becoming fainter...
Hands gripping her shoulders, a voice she’d never heard before and yet she somehow knew was Clark pleading with her, begging her, not to die...
But she’d died anyway. Her best friend hadn’t been able to save her. Not this time.
She was dead. She should be feeling... what? Grief at having her life cut short? Regret for her actions, wanting to have those few split seconds back so that she could do something different? Anger at her murderer? Frustration, blazing rage for all she wasn’t now going to be able to do? The additional Kerths she’d never win, the Pulitzers she’d never now get a chance at.
That one great love of her life, the one she stubbornly believed was still out there somewhere despite all the disappointments she’d had, which now she would never find.
Yet she was feeling none of that. She stood at the top of the steps leading down into Clark’s apartment, her heart bleeding for her best friend. Tears streamed down her face as she watched him, wishing there was something she could do.
But she was here, wasn’t she? How, she had no idea. She was dead. Clark, the doctors, the police officers, everyone had said so. She even remembered dying. So it really didn’t make any sense that she was here, but right now that was so unimportant. All that mattered was that she was with Clark, and he needed her.
And, as she stood there, she knew that she regretted nothing. Sure, she was dead. But he was alive. She’d died to save him, and she would do it again in a heartbeat.
Galvanised, she dropped to the floor beside him. Stretched out her hand to him, reaching for his arm, to touch him and offer him comfort.
“Clark, I’m here.” She spoke softly, her hand stroking along his shoulder and down his arm.
He didn’t respond.
“Clark? It’s me. Lois.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath and she thought he was about to speak. But he didn’t. Instead, he got to his feet, and her hand fell away. His feet dragging, he walked to the couch and slumped onto it, letting his head fall into his hands.
“Clark? Why did you walk away from me? Clark!”
He didn’t raise his head.
She got up and walked over to him, standing in front of him. “Clark? Clark, look at me!”
Still, he didn’t move. She reached for him again, catching his hands in hers. He didn’t move at all, didn’t return her grasp, didn’t look up at her. His hands lay limply beneath hers.
And then his body shook, and she realised he was sobbing. “Lois... oh, god, Lois!” The words escaped him like a cry.
“I’m here, Clark!” She tried to squeeze his hands again, but once again he didn’t respond.
She didn’t understand. He was calling to her, wasn’t he? He was crying over *her*! So why wasn’t he glad to see her?
He moved, his hands dropping away from hers as he leaned towards the end of the sofa. He grabbed the phone, tugging it onto his lap, and hit a couple of numbers.
“Mom? Sorry to call you so late. I... needed to talk to you and Dad.” The pain in his voice made her ache for him.
There was silence for a few moments. She couldn’t hear the voice on the other end of the line. Then Clark spoke again. “It’s Lois... she’s dead.”
“But I’m here, Clark!” she exclaimed. “I may be dead, but I’m right here! Okay, I don’t understand it either, but that’s not important, is it? I’m here!”
He ignored her. “We were out tonight, undercover. And... well, it’s a long story and I’ll tell you all some other time, but we were after these gangsters.” A pause while he listened. “Oh, you saw the news reports? Yes, them. And they arrived. One of them started hitting on Lois, and I told him to leave her alone.”
Clark got to his feet, tucking the phone under his arm, and began to pace. She got the impression that he wasn’t even aware that he was doing it. His gaze was unfocused, his steps aimless as he continued talking.
Lois moved in front of him as he paced, trying to block his path. Trying to force him to acknowledge her. Again, he looked straight though her.
And, as she watched in incredulity, he walked straight past her.
One moment he was right in front of her, staring her in the face as he listened to whichever of his parents was on the phone. And the next he was behind her. Yet he hadn’t stepped around her; she was certain of that.
The really strange thing was that she’d felt something a bit like a faint breeze. For one second, she’d shivered as if a cold wind had brushed past her.
And then she realised. Clark hadn’t just walked past her. He’d walked through her.
Now it all made sense. He wasn’t ignoring her. He had no idea that she was there at all!
She’d wondered how she could be here with him given she was dead. And now she knew. She was a ghost. Insubstantial as a breath of wind. No, even less substantial: Clark would feel wind. He couldn’t feel her presence at all.
But she’d been able to touch him!
Or had she? Had she actually felt the warmth of his hand when she’d rested hers on it? Had she felt anything at all? Or had it just been her imagination?
She walked up to him again, raising her hand to his face and pressing hard. And her fingers seemed to melt, as if she were trying to grasp steam.
No, she couldn’t feel him either.
A ghost. That was all she was. Somehow trapped between life and... well, the permanence of death, she guessed. Somehow her spirit had got left behind. But why? So she could see how much pain her death had caused? So that she would cry along with Clark, but be completely unable to comfort him - or be comforted by him?
She trembled, a lump growing in her throat.
“So another one of them took out his gun and fired. He was aiming at me. Oh god, that’s the awful thing! He was aiming at me, but Lois... she pushed me out of the way. She was trying to save me. But she got killed instead.”
As her attention switched back to Clark, he took another shuddering breath and ran one hand through his hair, rumpling it further. The hand holding the receiver clenched and loosened, as if he couldn’t possibly keep even that still.
He was hurting so much. She wanted to comfort him. To take him into her arms just as he always did when she needed him. To hold his hand and stroke his hair and tell him that she was there for him and that she’d make the pain go away.
Except that he couldn’t see her. Or hear her. Or even feel her. To him, she wasn’t here at all. And it was killing her all over again to see his pain and be unable to do anything to comfort him.
“Oh, Clark,” she whispered. Tears trickling down her cheeks again, she fell to the sofa and simply sat watching him.
*********
...tbc
